Trumbo A documentary, written by Christopher Trumbo and directed by Peter Askin Filbert Steps Productions, Reno Productions, and Safehouse Pictures, 2007   The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one on either side of it came through it untouched by evil. —Dalton Trumbo, 1970 In 1934, a young writer named Dalton Trumbo decided to try his luck in [...] read more »

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine directed by Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach, Art Kaleidoscope Foundation, 2008 With an oeuvre anchored in longevity and suspended by contradiction, 96-year-old Louise Bourgeois may be the most singularly fascinating contemporary artist, if by no means – and therein lies part of her poise – an art world [...] read more »

“If Allah wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.” That was the rule for Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) in her Bangladesh girlhood in the 1970s. It was the rule when, at 17, she was sent far from home to be the wife of a man more than twice her age, whom she had never met. read more »

This festival, now in its eighth year, is unlike most in its insistence on community screenings throughout the world. The stories are humane, emotionally rich and often humorous despite the heavy subject matter. read more »

A modest, lean, thoroughly engrossing independent feature by co-directors Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, Take Out follows one day in the life of Ming Ding (Charles Jang), a recent, undocumented Chinese immigrant working as a deliveryman for a small restaurant. The opening sequence sets up expectations of a suspense thriller: behind on the debt he [...] read more »

Iraq, the crime of our time, has made lawlessness a national pastime. The Democrats have taken impeachment off the table and no one else is looking to hand out arrest warrants anytime soon. Despite this prosecutorial vacuum, the documentary filmmakers of the world have been compiling the evidence and the latest is no other than Errol Morris. read more »

A must-see at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, "War Child" documents the unlikely, awe-inspiring odyssey of Sudanese hip-hop star and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal, who has translated his experience into a powerful advocacy of renaissance for his home country and a voice of redemption for the generation of ‘lost boys’ he became part of. read more »

The film accomplishes in 35 jarring minutes what hours of news coverage nearly two years ago did not: to convey the weight of civilian suffering in this war through the personal narrative of Salman herself, a mother trying to survive bombardment. read more »

If one wanted to argue Truffaut’s point that it is impossible to make an antiwar film, the first 10 minutes of Kimberly Peirce’s new film Stop-Loss would serve as fine fodder. Kinetic Iraqi alleyway battles (with rocket launchers!) are dutifully employed alongside earnest expressions of American soldiers’ valor and sacrifice. read more »

Alexandra directed by Alexander Sokurov Cinema Guild, 2007 Muted, blank colors give the universe of Alexandra an aura of fading immanence equivalent to the timeworn spirit of its title character, Alexandra Nikolaevna (opera icon Galina Vishnevskaya), whose large-as-life-itself presence envelops the three-day visit she pays her grandson Denis (Vasily Shevtsov), a captain stationed at an army [...] read more »