“Lone Survivor” is based on Marcus Luttrell’s homonymous non-fiction novel in which he detailed the events of the failed Operation Red Wings mission undertaken by Navy SEALs during the Afghanistan invasion on June 2005. The purpose of the mission was …Read more

In recent years, British filmmakers like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Clio Barnard have rediscovered the strange kind of beauty Ken Loach found in the working-class suburbs. They have taken advantage of the combination of steel, concrete and dista …Read more

There is something terribly off-putting about the film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Tony Award-winning play “August: Osage County” and it might be precisely that it wasn’t appropriately adapted for the medium. Cinema after all demands a kind of acting …Read more

“The Past” opens almost exactly where “A Separation” left us two years ago. In the latter, a husband and wife on the brink of divorce are left wondering where the future will take them; while the former opens with the arrival of Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) i …Read more

With films like “Juno” and “Up in the Air”, writer/director Jason Reitman has proved to be a filmmaker who understands that every day life contains a very fine balance between comedy and tragedy. He has also shown interest in chronicling the struggle …Read more

In “The Punk Singer”, director Sini Anderson crafts an endlessly entertaining and revealing documentary about Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. From her importance as part of the revolutionary Riot grrrl movement, to her current rol …Read more

The one thing that can be said about “Caught in the Web” is that it’s an undeniably Chinese film. Imagining a Hollywood adaptation would be unimaginable because its idiosyncrasies would be completely lost in translation, which is what it makes such a …Read more

Disney pictures are often accused of being irrelevant (Fairy tales in the age of robots?), racist (by way of Caucasian beauty idealization) and anti-feminist (why bother working when Prince Charming will come and fix your life?). Watching “Frozen”, o …Read more

The first thing I said to “Mission Congo” director, David Turner, when we spoke on the phone, was how angry his film had made me. The documentary, which played at this year’s DOC NYC, reveals how a charity organization helmed by legendary televangeli …Read more

With a two-decade long career in photojournalism, Shaul Schwarz is certainly no stranger to the violence and cruelty that permeate our world. In 2008 he began chronicling the outbursts of crime in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which had become the main batt …Read more