IT ALWAYS COMES down to this: Movies you must experience versus movies that threaten to diminish you. That’s the point of making a Better-Than List rather than pretending that the typical over-hyped product constitutes a consensus of worthwhile movies. Most of these high-profile films insult one’s intelligence, while the year’s best movies vanish from the marketplace for lack of critical support. Th...

IN GRAD SCHOOL at Columbia, we were able to study a private print of Jean- Luc Godard’s Made in U.S.A. Never theatrically released in America, its scarcity made it special, so I watched it repeatedly. It was one of the experiences that made me unafraid of movie art; drawn-in by Godard’s dense narrative and thrilled by its Cinemascope colors.The story of Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) searching a town called A...

MEXICO’S CRITICALLY OVER- RATED Carlos Reygadas is unlikely to breakthrough to popular acclaim with his latest film, Stellet Licht, while Mexico’s highly publicized “Three Amigos”— Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñáritu and Guillermo del Toro—are just that: commercial clowns. Between these camps stands Julián Hernández, Mexico’s ...

Holocaust denial is a universally reviled sin, but the status of Holocaust embellishment offers a debatable conundrum. The issue arose last month when genuine Buchenwald survivor Herman Rosenblat reve

IN SCOTT KIRSNER’S recent book, Inventing the Movies: Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, the author breaks down the forces behind the technological progress of the movie business into three categories: innovators, preservationists and sideline-sitters.The innovators continuously seek new ways to create and disseminate movies, while the others eithe...

MEXICO’S CRITICALLY OVER- RATED Carlos Reygadas is unlikely to breakthrough to popular acclaim with his latest film, Stellet Licht, while Mexico’s highly publicized “Three Amigos”— Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñáritu and Guillermo del Toro—are just that: commercial clowns. Between these camps stands Julián Hernández, Mexico’s ...

Zwick relates the true-life story of Tuvia, Zus and Asael, the three Bielski brothers who formed an armed resistance gang when the German Army marched into Belorussia in 1941.The badass title suggests a revenge flick tinged with righteousnessa Holocaust movie where the Jews fight back.