The New Republic

Alexandra (Cinema Guild) The Unforeseen (Cinema Guild) Frownland (Frownland, Inc.) Galina Vishnevskaya, the renowned singer who is now in her eighties and who has hitherto acted principally in opera, plays the leading role in the Russian film Alexandra. Possibly this came about because the previous film by this director was a documentary on Vishnevskaya and her late husband, the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. That director is Alexander Sokurov, READ MORE >>

Alexandra. With surprising frankness, this Russian film explores the barbarities of war, especially in Chechnya (unnamed). The picture is much heightened by the performance of a former opera star as a grandmother who visits her soldier-grandson at his army base. (Reviewed 4/9/08) READ MORE >>

Chop Shop (Koch Lorber) Paranoid Park (IFC First Take) READ MORE >>

The Duchess of Langeais -- IFC Summer Palace -- Palm Who is Jacques Rivette? The question would stump many regular filmgoers, but for those who are intemperately close to film history, the name will chime. Born in 1928, Rivette was a leader of the postwar Nouvelle Vague and is still working. Alan Williams, in Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking, writes: "Rivette, by most reports, carried his filmmaking generation's cinephilia to its greatest extreme." READ MORE >>

Caramel (Roadside Attractions) Woman on the Beach (New Yorker) The Silence Before Bach (Films 59) READ MORE >>

Fans of the show "24," or anyone who has followed the recent controversy surrounding its portrayal of torture, may have been understandably surprised by a mid-summer announcement by Fox network executives: The series—whose co-creator and executive producer, Joel Surnow, is a Rick Santorum- supporting, friend-of-Ann-Coulter sort of conservative, and whose hero, Jack Bauer, knows his way around a waterboard—was going green. In fact, it would be the first TV series ever to do so. Henceforth, every electroshock session would require the purchase of carbon offsets. READ MORE >>

The SavagesFox Searchlight4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 DaysIFCBeaufortKino READ MORE >>

Look Liberated Artists Protagonist IFC Billy the Kid Elephant Eye READ MORE >>

American Gangster UniversalBefore the Devil Knows You're DeadThinkFilm READ MORE >>

American Gangster Universal Before the Devil Knows You're Dead ThinkFilmIn its way, American Gangster pulls its audience up on to the screen along with its characters. This violent picture would never have been made unless the makers thought the audience wanted to be in it. Audiences have always been thrilled by vicarious lives of crime for a couple of hours--those swaggering thugs done by James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson!--but we had an escape hatch for our errant morality: READ MORE >>