Don’t get mad, get even—or, better yet, get your own secret police. That’s what a frustrated informer does in The Color of the Chameleon, a deadpan Cold War satire from Bulgaria. In Emil Christov’s directorial debut,…
What ever happened to Cheyenne, the (fictional) front man of the Fellows? The answer is first banal—he’s retired to a Dublin castle in a standard rock-star move—and then deeply consequential, as he embarks on an improbable…
“Now you’ll see a real movie,” snaps a haughty actress in The Student after a young production assistant spills hot tea on her. She phones her banker husband, two thugs in suits arrive, and a beating…
Two motifs predominate in Ross McElwee’s 25-plus years of autobiographical filmmaking: the search for identity in the face of handed-down ideas about family, love, and work; and the undertaking of journeys fueled by desire, curiosity, and varying…
Lawless-ness and brutality rule the frontier worlds of Australian director John Hillcoat’s The Proposition (05) and The Road (09). This time out, Hillcoat makes a foray into Virginia’s Prohibition-era moonshine country, locating a kindred sensibility in…
