Part 2 of the YA dystopian riff on Plato's Republic: the city as the soul writ large, with society segmented according to people's dominant traits. Of course, the real adventure here is in the Divergent (read: complicated) soul belonging to pixie-hero Tris (Shailene Woodley, alternatingly adorable and sullen). She's got …
A fair and balanced overview of the wonderful, horrible life of Roger Ailes: Republican kingmaker, architect of Fox News, and bullying pimp to woman in his employ. (His pickup line of choice: “If you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.”) Early …
An escapee of a Polish concentration camp hides out with a childless couple in his old Czech neighborhood -- a serious comedy, quite spiritual at the end, but with an insubstantial, unstable image. For moments of special intensity, the movie employs an odd, skipping, skidding kind of motion, mildly hallucinogenic. …
There aren’t many surprises in writer-director Jason Kim’s South Korean exorcist story. (Though maybe that should read “super-exorcist,” given the fact that our reluctant hero is an MMA champion whose demon-driving abilities come not from fervent faith, but from a mysterious manifestation of the stigmata in his unbelieving right hand. …
Misanthropic comedy from Palestine about hostilities and conflicts both intramural and across the Israeli border. It permits us if nothing else to reacquaint ourselves with the pleasures of composition, perspective, camera angle, the filmmaking basics. A tetchier Tati, director Elia Suleiman (who also appears as the, or a, central character) …
From Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Bull) comes the question “Does human bureaucracy exist, or is that just another name for privilege?” Brazil 2027, a time when the party of Supreme Love has surpassed Carnival as the country’s #1 attraction. Joana (Dira Paes) uses her position as notary at the divorce registration …
Bette Midler as a modernized Mae West who takes full advantage of what more she can get away with saying, gesturing, and gyrating, and doesn't have to trust to insinuation. She exercises a taste in songs not often carried over into her jokes, but she appears to enjoy herself enough …
In a town of Neanderthals (and that’s just the women), Nora (Marie Leuenberger) takes it upon herself to rally the locals in favor of petitioning to give ladies the vote. The most liberating moment in this otherwise conventional tale of suffrage coming to a small Swiss village in the early …
What do John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the end of the Cold War have in common? Robert Orlando's documentary tells all.
A Japanese live-action feature film that poses a question about our state of mind. What is the truth behind the curses that make people suffer? How do we fight back curses? Original Story by Ryuho Okawa, screenplay by Sayaka Okawa, directed by Hiroshi Akabane.
The title alone told you that you needed to read no further in the Rebecca Wells novel. But the screen version, written and directed by Callie Khouri, temptingly makes room for one of our premier performers, Ellen Burstyn, in addition to Fionnula Flanagan, Maggie Smith, and Shirley Knight, troupers one …
Julian Schnabel relates another true-life tale from the wide world of art, this one a little more liberated from convention than his Basquiat or his Before Night Falls (though it immediately and continually brings to mind Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside), the tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby, an editor at Elle …
If you think weddings cost a lot, just wait until you get to the divorce!