FEATURES
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
By Oliver Sacks
A neurological take on Powell & Pressburger’s heavenly fantasy
JIM JARMUSCH
By Gavin Smith
The director of The Limits of Control talks about going out on a limb
Plus: Kent Jones on a trance film for our times
THE HURT LOCKER
By Amy Taubin
What makes Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War procedural tick
SECOND IMPRESSIONS
By Phillip Lopate
Reversals of opinion, about-faces, flip-flops, and other acts of wanton revisionism
Plus: nine critics fess up to changing their minds
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER
By Kent Jones
Movies rarely depict the realities of the workplace but Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 classic gets it right
CINEMA’S AFTERLIFE
By Chris Petit
If cinema as we know it ended sometime last century, it lives on as a succession of haunted screens, unmade films, and empty rooms
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S LETTER
OPENING SHOTS
News, Hot Property: Esther Rots’s Can Go Through Skin by Chris Chang, Alex Cox’s 1,000 Ways to Die: Marco Ferreri’s Don’t Touch the White Woman!, Site Specifics: The National Film Board of Canada by Paul Fileri, The Trivial Top 20® (expanded to 40): Best Directors Who Died Young
OLAF’S WORLD
Vlado Škafar by Olaf Möller
CRITICS CHOICE
Eight critics rate 25 new releases
SOUND & VISION
Peer Raben by Chris Chang and Jane & Louise Wilson’s Kubrick installation by Chris Darke
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Agnès Jaoui by Harlan Jacobson
ENCORE
The Small Back Room by Megan Ratner
FESTIVALS
Berlin by Olaf Möller
SCREENINGS
The Girlfriend Experience by Melissa Anderson, Away We Go by David Zuckerman, Departures by Tony Rayns, Pontypool by José Teodoro, Tetro by Nathan Lee, Chéri by Phillip Lopate, Three Monkeys by Can Eskinazi
SHORT TAKES
Easy Virtue by Laura Kern, Eldorado by Nicolas Rapold, Empty Nest by Nicolas Rapold, Food, Inc. by Nicolas Rapold, Moon by Laura Kern, O’Horten by Laura Kern
HOME MOVIES
Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes: Criterion’s Imamura box set
READINGS
Thorold Dickinson: A World of Film, Life as We Show It
CLOSING SHOTS
Who’s who at recent Film Society events
