AFI Fest 2012: Saturday Nov. 3rd and Sunday Nov. 4th

( Disclaimer: These notes were scribbled in between screenings while waiting in line for other films. Only minor editing, for grammatical an...

The Freethinker (Fritänkaren) A Film by Peter Watkins (1994)

If cinema is to survive as a democratic art form, one of its most crucial figures is the English filmmaker Peter Watkins, not because of any...

Wuthering Heights (2011) A Film by Andrea Arnold

If there was any doubt of the emotional infantilism and redundancy of Andrea Arnold's new and fiercely independent update to the classic...

Barry Lyndon (1975) A Film by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon , despite its superficial appearance as a departure for the great director, is Stanley Kubrick's immaculate, thought-provok...

Two Years at Sea (2011) A Film by Ben Rivers

Focusing with unflinching directness on the unbreakable bond between a human being and his environment, Ben Rivers' Two Years at Sea u...

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) A Film by Tomas Alfredson

Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy provides visual evidence of the significant distance between the impulses of literature ...

Backs to the Wall: Alps and Shame

Both Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos and British director Steve McQueen have released massive international festival hits in the past few y...

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...

The Descent (2005) A Film by Neil Marshall

In an essay about The Exorcist , Stephen of the blog Checking On My Sausages raises a notion he calls the "horror before the horror...

Never Let Me Go (2010) A Film by Mark Romanek

I'm a firm believer in the idea that a film inspired by literature need not transcribe its source material religiously, that it can, and...