Before Night Falls Before Night Falls
The Chilean coup of 1973 was carried out with a Lone Ranger comic book, a bicycle and several cans of condensed milk.
Jan 6, 2005 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Howard’s End Howard’s End
Martin Scorsese's The Aviator overlays three legends, all of them made of celluloid.
Dec 16, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Godard’s Inferno Godard’s Inferno
Michelangelo and Ulysses came home from the war with knapsacks bulging, bearing the reward for hardships suffered and inflicted. "We promised you the world," the soldiers boasted...
Dec 2, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Dark Habits Dark Habits
As times change, so do the questions that a movie prompts.
Nov 11, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
War Games War Games
In the players' handbooks that once circulated among commedia dell'arte troupes, the wandering actors of early modern Italy used to set down inventories of the lazzi, or comic tu...
Oct 28, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
In the Cut In the Cut
Throughout the four decades of his great career--which is the same thing as saying, throughout the history of filmmaking in sub-Saharan Africa--Ousmane Sembene has switched back ...
Oct 14, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
iCinema iCinema
Fussing repetitively with a lock of blond hair, nervously flashing an incomplete set of front teeth, the figure on screen begins to cough up her "testimony" in the accents of a S...
Sep 30, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Styles of Radical Will Styles of Radical Will
One of South America's most brilliantly talented filmmakers has made a political road movie: the story of a young man who sets out on a journey of discovery and self-discovery th...
Sep 16, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Ashes of Time Ashes of Time
It was the perfect setup for an op-ed article: the release, between the Democratic and Republican conventions, of Alien vs.
Aug 26, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Bad Brains Bad Brains
More than once in Jonathan Demme's reimagining of The Manchurian Candidate, a distraught Denzel Washington jabs at his skull and rasps, "They got in here." He means it literally.
Aug 12, 2004 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans