The New Republic

Lorna's Silence Sony Pictures Classics My Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler First Run Features READ MORE >>

  The Beaches of Agnes. A unique autobiography. Agnes Varda, pioneer of the French New Wave, looks back at her life and films now that she's eighty and makes of them a charming film in itself. Full of the joy and some of the sadness of her career. (Reviewed 7/15/09)   READ MORE >>

Quiet Chaos -- IFC Films The Girl From Monaco -- Magnolia Pictures READ MORE >>

QUIET CHAOS IFC FILMS   THE GIRL FROM MONACO MAGNOLIA PICTURES   Nanni Moretti, treasured in Europe, is scarcely known in the United States. This schism usually happens with film people whose work is strapped culturally to one country, but Moretti's writing and directing and acting are not only celebrated in Italy, they have prospered elsewhere. Not here, however, though his strongest concern is human commonality. READ MORE >>

  The Girl from Monaco. The "typical" lightweight French sex comedy brought up to date with strands of drama. A lawyer, in Monaco to defend a woman accused of murder, is guarded against thuggery by a man who was once the lover of the lawyer’s amour. Light but not featherweight. (8/12/09) READ MORE >>

The Beaches of Agnes--Cinema Guild The Windmill Movie--The Film Desk Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Naturally enough, the New Wave is rolling back. The tide of new French talent that flooded world screens just before and after 1960--bringing Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, Resnais, and Chabrol, among others--has been ebbing for some time. Movingly aware of this, Agnes Varda, one of the earliest if not one of the most eminent members of the group, has looked back at her life in a film. READ MORE >>

Treeless Mountain Oscilloscope Laboratories Il Divo Music Box Films CHILDREN DEEPEN ONE of the mysteries in film’s being. It is mysterious enough that, since film’s beginning, non-professional adults have given valuable film performances. Still, one can spin social and cultural explanations for this astonishment. But what about the performances by small children, children who were not child stars and who convinced millions? The list is too long to nibble at. How can we explain them? How can we understand the mystery? READ MORE >>

From “Album of My Germany”   READ MORE >>

Defiance Paramount Of Time and the City Strand Releasing READ MORE >>

A Christmas Tale -- IFC Films Wendy and Lucy -- Oscilloscope Pictures Every director needs at least some courage, but Arnaud Desplechin has quite a lot. With his new film, A Christmas Tale, he bravely took on a trite form, hoping that he could vitalize it. He succeeds. He also gave the picture a title that risks the corny, apparently sure that it would come to seem ironic. Eventually it even transcends irony. READ MORE >>