All 50 articles by Michael Atkinson
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Features
Robert Redford Doesn’t Know Which Way the Wind’s Blowing
Redford's 'political' film about '60s radicals, The Company You Keep, is anything but.
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Culture
Upstream Color Reinvents Cinema
We've seen the future of film, and it's incomprehensible.
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Views
Hollywood Is the Wrong Target
Entertainment isn't causing a culture of gun violence--we are.
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Views
A Romanian Exorcism
Cristian Mungiu's film 'Beyond the Hills' will take your breath away.
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Culture
‘Forget About Morality’
Two Oscar-nominated documentaries present footage of Israel and Palestine you'll never see on network TV.
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Features
Zero Nuance
Kathryn Bigelow’s “apolitical” film about bin Laden’s death might as well be a video game.
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Culture
A Heathcliff We Haven’t Seen Before
Crafty casting turns Wuthering Heights into a love story haunted by the guilt and ghosts of slavery.
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Culture
Tears of Gaza
A new documentary explores the Gaza War from the point of view of children.
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Culture
There Will Be Blood ... and Movies
The evolution of our interaction with film
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Features
How to Create a Cult
In Kumaré, Vikram Gandhi sets out to determine whether a fake guru could be just as convincing as a “real” guru.
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Culture
Arthritic Docs
Documentaries are everywhere, but they've become stale and clichéd.
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Culture
I, Cyclops: Monocularity in a 3-D World
The future of cinema doesn't look good for the 700 million people who can't process 3-D films.
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Culture
War and Popcorn
Serious war films are going extinct as Hollywood cranks out childish fantasies about heroism and violence.
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Culture
Adam Curtis: Conspiracist of Long-Lost Facts
The BBC producer/director's brilliant oeuvre is nothing less than astonishing.
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Culture
Lifting the Veil on Iranian Censors
With A Separation, Asghar Farhadi artfully subverts Iran's reactionary big-screen rules.
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Culture
Required Viewing: 2011’s Top Political Films
From The Black Power Mixtape to Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss, here's what you need to watch now.
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Culture
The Secrets, Lies and Elisions of J. Edgar
Clint Eastwood's biopic of the FBI Director inventively avoids the massive damage he inflicted.
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Culture
George Clooney: The Man From Yesterday
Ides of March isn't great, but at least its director and star actually cares about politics, history and memory.
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Culture
In Defense of Nostalgia
It's gotten a bum rap, but it's worth revisiting our collective history—and resisting the market's obsession with novelty.
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Culture
Once Upon a Time in Mississippi
The Help proves, yet again, that Hollywood can't resist placing white people at the center of racial struggles.
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Culture
Godard’s Oblique Socialism
The French director has never been dogmatic—he'd rather ask questions.
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Culture
ELF’s Appetite for Destruction
The new documentary If a Tree Falls details the doomed saga of the Earth Liberation Front.
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Culture
Atrocities Beyond Our Gates
City of Life and Death details the Rape of Nanking—and reminds us of the 20th century's widespread horrors.
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Culture
Another Grunt’s-Eye View
Like Restrepo, the battle documentary Armadillo hyperfocuses on homegrown Everyboys. Not a good idea.
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Culture
Chile’s One-Man Truth Commission
Patricio Guzmán's latest film extends his 35-year yowl of rage.
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Culture
Meet Joe, the World’s Most Original Filmmaker
2011 has hardly begun, but Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is probably the year's best film.
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Culture
Gareth Edwards’ Monstrous Realism
Monsters explores the frontier of Americans' privileges and presumptions.
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Culture
Friend Your Day Away: The Anti-Social Network
The Social Network and Facebook are seriously overrated.
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Culture
Get Angry: The Year’s 10 Best Political Docs
From Eliot Spitzer to Daniel Ellsberg, documentary filmmakers didn't lack engrossing subjects this year.
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Culture
The Politics of a New Metropolis
Fritz Lang's newly expanded dystopian classic looks better than ever. Its vision of humanity? Not so much.
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Culture
Reading Gandhi in Budrus
A new documentary illuminates the power of nonviolent protest in a Palestinian village opposing the West Bank barrier.
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Culture
The Fog of Jihad
The Oath, now out on DVD, brilliantly explores the muddy battle lines between the U.S. and al Qaeda.
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Culture
Once Upon a Time, in America…
The right has one fundamental advantage over its opponents: storytelling.
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Culture
Todd Solondz’s Dystopia in Suburbia
In his sixth film, Life During Wartime, the film director offers another twisted modern fairy tale that revels in taboos.
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Culture
Virtually Conservative
Most video games—in which you accumulate stuff and/or dominate the world—are the opposite of progressive.
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Culture
Plight of the Living Dead
The strange longevity of George A. Romero's zombies.
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Culture
Always Look on the Bright Side of Genocide
When did the Holocaust become morally ambiguous?
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Culture
A Massacre in 3/4 Time
Waltz with Bashir is hallucinatory, relentless, and amazing.
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Culture
Moore Than You or Me
Slacker Uprising offers nothing new, but it will be worth something if it affects November's election
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Culture
Errol Morris’ Myopia
Filmmaker Errol Morris has grown famous and revered as the pioneer of what could be called interrogatory cinema...
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Culture
Iraq: Mismanagement or Mass Murder?
No End in Sight explores how we got into Iraq and what screw-ups have made the situation spiral out of control
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Culture
Iraq on the Big Screen
Who should define what a war is "about"? By any ethical standard, that right should fall to the...
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Culture
When We Were Psychos
In 1969, news of the My Lai massacre hit the American press and gave the already-queasy stateside citizenry a...
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Culture
Look Out, It’s Real!
"Look out, Haskell, it's real!," shouts a crew member, in the watershed moment from Haskell Wexler's 1969 seminal is-it-real-or-is-it-cinema,...
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Culture
Helping Themselves
There may not be a more thoroughly ravaged national economy on the planet than Argentina’s—it’s...
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Culture
Swan Song of the Century
Now, Johnny Ramone is dead. Like a chilling, not-so-funny answer to Spinal Tap—the fictional rock band whose...
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Culture
Stranger Than Fiction
Seems simple now: Observe as a cabal of Christian billionaires cadges an election and takes over the country,...
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Culture
Spin’s the Thing
How much credit, exactly, does Jonathan Demme’s remake of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 paranoid-nation classic The Manchurian Candidate...
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Culture
When Yes Means No
The worst of times, the best of times: Sure, our nation is in the hands of a federal...
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Culture
Counter Cultural Programming
The November firefight approaches and here we are, awash in a media flashflood of press secretary prevarication, corporate...
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