Isild Le Besco’s second feature film, “Charly,” made its U.S. premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. While known primarily as an actress (”A Tout De Suite,” “The Untouchable”), Le Besco wrote and directed her first feature, “Demi-tarif,” when she was only nineteen. Read more>>.

Riggen attempts to show the enormous hardship illegals immigrants face, but the actual storytelling is so filled with sunshine and resilient good cheer that true pathos of the situation never rings true. Read more>>

Nadine Labaki’s Caramel provides an intimate look at women’s lives in modern day Lebanon: Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, young and old. As expected, these women laugh and cry and talk about love; but while formulaic in structure, the film is actually quite lovely. Read more>>

“Filmmaker André Téchiné’s seventeenth feature is a story about AIDS, but it dosn’t play like a melodrama. The constant unexpected twists and turns in “The Witnesses” are always presented matter-of-factly, without sentiment or histrionics. Read more>>

Jenkins scored two of America’s best actors to embody her cantankerous savages: Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Much to her credit, she also penned many excellent jokes: my favorite moment happens when older brother Jon (Hoffman) attempts to calm down little sister Wendy (Linney): “We’re not in a Sam Shepherd play.” Read more

Movie trailers often boast the “triumph of the human spirit,” but in this case, it’s true: the story is extraordinary. Read more

The opening scenes of Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding are so sharp and funny and good, that it’s upsetting to report that the film cannot maintain its momentum, but flails and flounders, before finally giving way to a deluge of histrionics and an unsatisfying conclusion. Read more

Egged on by the media, working class families go into debt to provide their loved ones with expensive gifts. Shoppers are trampled by their fellow men while racing down aisles to get that first flat screen TV. Behind all the gaga consumerism lies real pain — not only for the consumer, but also the workers of the world. Read more

There’s much to admire in No Country For Old Men. An unnerving sense of suspense is sustained throughout. Read more

Imagine you’ve killed yourself to escape life’s suffering only to find yourself in an afterlife that’s much the same, only worse. Read more