Putty Hill (2011) A Film by Matthew Porterfield

Avoiding cliché, hyperbole, and mumblecore posturing, Matthew Porterfield's Putty Hill gets right to the heart of its eponymous communi...

Cyclo (Xich lo) A Film by Tran Anh Hung (1995)

The traditional tenets of a Westernized concept of a nation – those of family, gender difference, and cultural identity – have been splinter...

Drive (2011) A Film by Nicholas Winding Refn

It's pretty clear at this point where Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn's strengths and weaknesses lie: his eye for cinematic sp...

Nostalgia Without Memory in Glen Goei's "That's The Way I Like It"

Like Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Ôshima before him, Singaporean director Glen Goei’s concerns lie in the shifting face of Asian culture, in the clas...

Screening Notes #7

Scarface (1932): Paul Muni's turn as the immoral, faux-Italian, pseudo-philosophizing titular character in Howard Hawks' Scarface ...

State of Dogs (1998) A Film by Peter Brosens and Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh

The delicacy of human memory outweighs the unknowable depths of postmortem enlightenment in Belgian filmmaker Peter Brosens and Mongolian di...

Edvard Munch (1974) A Film by Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch so thoroughly intermingles the tenets of drama, documentary, and experimental cinema that it ultimately obl...