The New Republic

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 >>

Seraphine--Music Box Films 24 City--Cinema Guild Seraphine de Senlis (1864-1942) was a servant and a painter. She worked as a housemaid, a laundress, a butcher's helper, anything she could find. She also painted, in her room at night. Some of her work now hangs in museums. READ MORE >>

The Beaches of Agnes. Beaches have been especially dear in the life of Agnes Varda, one of the surviving members of the French New Wave. With beaches as base, she creates an autobiography of film clips, interviews, and diversions that is fascinating, lively, and frequently moving. (Reviewed 7/15/09) READ MORE >>

Summer Hours -- IFC FilmsBurma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country -- Oscilloscope READ MORE >>

Burma VJ. VJ means video journalist. VJs were amidst the protesting crowds in Rangoon in 2007, filmimg when the police weren’t watching. A stirring and somewhat scary documentary of people, including Buddhist monks, asserting their rights at the risk of their lives. (Reviewed 6/17/09) READ MORE >>

Jerichow--The Cinema Guild The Window--Film Movement James M. Cain's famous postman not only rings twice, he keeps delivering. Especially on screen. Cain's novel has been filmed twice in Hollywood, as well as in France, Italy, and Greece. Now comes a German film called Jerichow whose credits don't mention Cain's book, but very clearly the writer-director, Christian Petzold, has been sparked by its tone and tale. 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 >>

Il Divo. An Italian film about a prime minister--not a documentary--that is dazzlingly made. The director Paolo Sorrentino has transformed the life of Giulio Andreotti, who headed seven governments and is still in the senate, into a fascinating series of contrasts between facility and crime, reticence and flash. (Reviewed 5/20/09) READ MORE >>

Goodbye SoloRoadside AttractionsThe Song of SparrowsRegent Releasing READ MORE >>

Goodbye Solo.  Rahmin Bahrani, American-born son of Iranian parents, made his first two films about New York. But his third, set in North Carolina, is Iranian in mood and manner.  A Senegalese taxi driver and a grizzled American loner are linked by the prospect of the latter’s suicide.  Tender, deep, beautiful.  (5/6/09) READ MORE >>