The New Republic

I Was Born, But...  (IFC Center)Wild Grass  (Sony Pictures Classics)Alamar (Film Movement) READ MORE >>

Restrepo National Geographic Entertainment Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Let It Rain IFC Films READ MORE >>

Mademoiselle Chambon Lorber Films The Father of My children IFC Films READ MORE >>

Two in the Wave Lorber Films Looking for Eric IFC Films No movement in any nation’s film history has had a greater effect, at home and abroad, than the French New Wave. Beginning in the late 1950s and cresting through the 1960s, it not only brought forth new and invaluable talents: it altered in some degree the expectations of audiences. Much has naturally been written about the New Wave. Now here is a French documentary, brisk and fertile, called Two in the Wave. READ MORE >>

Anton Chekhov’s The Duel High Line Pictures No One Knows About Persian Cats IFC Films “My business is to be talented,”Anton Chekhov wrote once to his publisher. He was explaining that his job was not to judge his characters but to vivify them, “to be able to illuminate the characters and speak their language.” A clear instance of this aim is in The Duel, his longest piece of fiction, written in 1891. It arrives now in film form, in English. READ MORE >>

Everyone Else (Cinema Group) Nobody's Perfect (Lorber Films) READ MORE >>

Harlan. A German documentary that interviews the descendants of Veit Harlan who in Nazi times directed Jew Suss, one of the most viciously anti-Semitic of the era’s films.  Harlan’s sons and niece and grandchildren explore interestingly how they have dealt with this burden in their lives.  (03/13/2010) READ MORE >>

The Eclipse Magnolia Pictures Handsome Harry Paladin Bluebeard Strand Releasing   A candle is lighted in the dark. This is the opening shot of The Eclipse, hinting at mystery. The next shot reveals that the candle is a taper on a table in a large hotel restaurant. Thus in its first few seconds the film suggests that it will inhabit two spheres, the mysterious and the diurnal, and that the two will virtually overlap. READ MORE >>

Ajami.  Not a documentary though it was made with residents of the district, this film concentrates on a multi-ethnic troubled area in the city of Jaffa.  Fast and skillfully integrated, it  races along the paths of drugs and prejudice, of love and rivalry that criss-cross the place.  (3/11/10) READ MORE >>

Vincere IFC Films Mid-August Lunch Zeitgeist Films Here, remarkably and remarkable, is a new film by Marco Bellocchio, a survivor of the Italian post-World War II directing galaxy. His first two films, Fist in His Pocket (1965) and China Is Near (1967), announced the arrival of a talented troublemaker. His subject was the bourgeois family in relation to a changing society--“the connection between the family and the wider political READ MORE >>