The Top 10 Roman Polanski Films

Paranoia runs deep under Roman Polanski's work, an obvious feature of a man who has lived under the pressure of social scrutiny since ch...

The Revisionaries (Scott Thurman, 2012)

A bit unfocused, The Revisionaries  nevertheless offers an insightful look into the issue of textbook revisionism in Texas (and beyond, as T...

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams, 2012)

Having only become aware of John Hyams' work recently, I nevertheless quickly fell for his elegantly composed long takes and Carpenteria...

We Own the Night (James Gray, 2007)

James Gray opens We Own the Night with a brief montage of gritty black-and-white still photographs of policemen in the late 1980s. These ph...

Nobody Walks (Ry Russo-Young, 2012)

A listless, meaningless diversion into a cloistered L.A. home where the disaffected engage in casual affairs, Nobody Walks  seems to aim for...

Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)

As a claustrophobic, I got tremendous discomfort from Argo 's crushed shots against throngs of hostile crowds packed so tightly that nav...

Capsule Reviews: Macbeth (1971), The Book of Mary, They All Laughed

Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971) Polanski's Macbeth , made in the wake of his wife and unborn child's brutal murder, manages to extrap...

Cactus River (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's shorts are the only thing more confounding than his full-length works, and Cactus River  is his most obscure...

I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

Upon its release, I'm Not There  struck me as a hollow experiment, a nifty "what-if" but nothing more. Not helping matters, ce...

The Heartbreak Kid (1972) vs. The HeartbreakKid (2007)

Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid  is such an overwhelmingly black comedy that I cannot think of another movie to even approach its level ...

Killer Joe (William Friedkin, 2012)

Matthew McConaughey enters as the titular hitman in  Killer Joe  literally coated in leather, clad in hide gloves, jacket and boots. It is o...

Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985)

The trio of films that followed Jean-Luc Godard's return to cinema mirrored, in some cases, his early work. Sauve qui peut (la vie) , Pa...

David Lynch's features, ranked

For October's favorite director ranking, I thought I would choose one of my two favorite directors of horror films that are not exactly ...