The Baader Meinhof Complex.
This German film about German terrorists of the 1970s is not only dynamically made and acted, it tries to tell the truth about the reason for the outbursts. Certainly there is a great deal of violence, but there is also some understanding of character and of political texture. (Reviewed 9/23/09)
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The actor John Krasinski is not only in this film, he adapted and directed it. Drawn from David Foster Wallace’s fiction, it explores contemporary male attitudes toward women with less bravura than Wallace but with considerable insight and humor. (10/7/09)
Disgrace. J. M. Coetzee’s celebrated novel is rendered into a film worthy of it. A university professor has an affair with one of his students which leads to an unlocking of chambers in himself of which he wasn’t quite aware. John Malkovich is splendid in the lead. (10/21/09)
35 Shots of Rum. Claire Denis evokes tenderness and rue in this quiet account of a Parisian father and his student daughter and their friends, all of whom happen to be black. Acutely directed and sensitively acted. (10/7/09)