Michael Atkinson is a film reviewer for In These Times. He has written or edited many books, including Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood (2008) and the mystery novels Hemingway Deadlights (2009) and Hemingway Cutthroat (2010). He blogs at Zero For Conduct.
Culture
Top 10 Strangest (and Most Beautiful) Films of 2018
The best films of the year explore the hollowness of contemporary Korean culture, faith in an era of climate change, the last frantic day in the life of a Hollywood director and more.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
China’s Digitized Abyss: YY and the Void of Online Fame
Hao Wu’s documentary People’s Republic of Desire explores the dystopia of livestream fandom.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Araby: A Road Movie Driven By Economic Necessity, Not Wanderlust
A new film follows a working-class everyman through the margins of Brazilian capitalism.
Michael Atkinson
Feature
The 10 Best Off-the-Beaten-Path Films of 2017
Film is dead. Long live these films.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Specter Haunting Infowars
The new documentary A Gray State, executive produced by Werner Herzog, explores a murder-suicide that has become a far-right obsession.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
How a Small-Town Theater Project Became a Study in Post-Industrial Life
The new documentary Spettacolo captures a Tuscan village’s annual play.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Frustrating Yet Beautiful Drama of “A Ghost Story”
Filmmaker David Lowery's latest is slow, but contains a few genuine spiritual ideas.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Okja: The Veggie-Prop Children’s Film You Really Need to See
The director of Snowpiercer is back with a kiddie film that meets vegetarian propaganda, with surprising success.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Return of Nunsploitation
Jeff Baena’s The Little Hours is a clever update on Boccaccio's The Decameron.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Elusive Emily Dickinson
A new film explores the poet's restless mind and lonely life.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Girl, You’ll Be a Cannibal Soon
A new French horror film explores identity, coming of age and the various temptations of the flesh.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Asghar Farhadi Is One of the Most Important Directors Working Today—And Trump Has Banned Him
The Iranian filmmaker's masterful, Oscar-nominated The Salesman shows the futility of progressives trying to tolerantly endure repressive regimes.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
We Hunted Down the 10 Best Films of 2016
From the Iranian mystery Fireworks Wednesday to the German black comedy Toni Erdmann, this year's stand-out films were far off the beaten path.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
This Christmas, Go See a German Comedy About Consulting. No, Really.
Filmmaker Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann takes a wise and whimsical look at the struggles women face in the corporate world.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Dissident-Poet on the Lam: A New Film Captures Pablo Neruda’s Year as a Fugitive
Pablo Larrain's Neruda follows the love-poet-cum-Communist-dissident in a cat-and-mouse chase with the Chilean government.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
In Ixcanul, Guatemala’s First-Ever Oscar Entry, Feminism Erupts in a Small Mayan Community
Filmed entirely in Kaqchikel, Jayro Bustamante’s new movie explores a clash between reproductive rights and tradition.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Werner Herzog Wants To Know: “Does the Internet Dream?”
In Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, the septuagenarian filmmaker explores online gaming, self-driving cars and soccer-playing robots.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
These Newly Restored Indie Films from Cinema’s Early Days Show Black Life From a Black Perspective
A five-disc DVD set offers a glimpse into pre-civil rights era black culture.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
A French Take on John Wayne
When a French family tries to hold on to the past, it doesn't end well.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Requiem for an American Dream
Between fiction and reality in rural Louisiana.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
In Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, A Refugees-Eye View of a France We Rarely See
Three Sri Lankan strangers must pretend to be a family in a strange land
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Two Upcoming Fims Not Coming to a Theater Near You
'Francofonia' and 'Cemetery of Splendour' are worth tracking down
Michael Atkinson
Culture
‘London Has Fallen’ and the 9/11-ization of Entertainment
The sequel to 'Olympus Has Fallen' shows our ever-more-extravagant taste for destruction
Michael Atkinson
Culture
You Probably Haven’t Seen the Ten Best Films of 2015
They're obscure, they're poorly distributed—but you can track them down. It will be worth it.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Austerity Is Stranger Than Fiction
Filmed in Portugal in 2013 and 2014, Miguel Gomes' new documentary Arabian Nights tries to make sense of life under IMF rules.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Love in the Time of 3D Boners
Do the genitalia in Gaspar Noé’s Love herald the rise or the fall of 3D cinema?
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Neverending Presidency: An Unfettered Look at How Democracy Lost to Mugabe
Camilla Nielsson’s new documentary, Democrats, is a study in how a dictatorship can weather a 'democratic transition'
Michael Atkinson
Culture
‘Welcome to Leith’ Charts A White Supremacist Attempt to Take Over a Tiny North Dakota Town
A new documentary by Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker explores a firefight between American individualism and the public good
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Why the Youngest Country on Earth Can’t Escape the Yoke of Colonialism
'We Come as Friends' captures the Western exploitation of South Sudan from the moment of its conception
Michael Atkinson
Culture
A Quiet Return to the Killing Fields of Indonesia
Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing focused on the perpetrators of genocide; in the sequel, the stage is shared by traumatized survivors.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Tribe Is a Silent Lord of the Flies
Though entirely in Ukrainian Sign, without subtitles, Slaboshpytskiy's remarkable film will speak to a hearing audience.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Pigeons Under Late Capitalism
An existentialist Swedish movie occupies a completely original universe.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Asghar Farhadi’s Early Masterpiece
Through a seaside mystery, About Elly explores the irrational rules placed on women in Iran.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
In Jauja, Cinema Takes on Colonialism, Slowly
Viggo Mortensen and Lisandro Alonso tour Argentina's dark, imperialist past in a new film.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Despite a Rosy Lens, Timbuktu Has Something to Teach Us About Resistance to Oppression
Abderrahmane Sissako’s Oscar-nominated film may be improbably beautiful and relatively apolitical, but it's worth seeing.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
American Sniper: Guns, God and Gallons of Testo’
Clint Eastwood treats Iraq like Iwo Jima. Will Americans really go for this horseshit?
Michael Atkinson
Feature
From Ukraine’s Maidan to Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, Our Top 10 Films of 2014
Despite the ever-growing obsession with crappy remakes and computerized images of blowing shit up, the year featured some challenging, meaningful films.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Brother, Can You Spare a Euro?
By posing the choice between a coworker's job and 1,000 Euros, Two Days, One Night explores the state of worker solidarity.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Vampire Princess of Persia
Not your kid sister's vampire flick.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Filmmaker Any Cinema-Literate Progressive Must Know
Finally, more of Chris Marker's work is becoming available in the U.S. Here's where to start.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Portrait of a Husband, Father and Genocidal Butcher
Heading the SS didn't excuse Heinrich Himmler from his fatherly duties.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Agitpopcorn
Propaganda tells the truth.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Jan Palach: Prague’s Human Torch
A new film takes a rare look behind the Iron Curtain.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Use Your Words, Wolverine
The bad lessons of superhero movies.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
The Summer Movie Road Not Taken
1977's Sorceror was the antithesis of Star Wars, and we could learn from it
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Nymphomaniac: Lars Von Trier’s Masturbatory Fantasy
The two-part film feels like the work of teenage boy.
Michael Atkinson
Culture
For Cambodian Documentarians, a Conundrum
How do you show the past when the Khmer Rouge torched all traces?
Michael Atkinson
Culture
Let the Witness Speak
In Claude Lanzmann's new Holocaust documentary The Last of the Unjust, the line between right and wrong blurs.
Michael Atkinson
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