- January 12, 2004 | Movie Review
- Prescient Tense
Re-creating the carnage of fifties Algeria—bombings, assassinations, police torture—The Battle of Algiers is as relevant today as it was in 1965.
- October 25, 2004 | Movie Review
- The Grape Escape
Running from commitments and failures, two college buddies romp through California, sampling the local wine—and women—in Sideways.
- October 18, 2004 | Movie Review
- Tea and Sympathy
And abortions. That’s what Vera Drake offers working-class girls in distress, in Mike Leigh’s realist portrait of postwar London.
- October 11, 2004 | Movie Review
- Charming Billy
As London’s greatest Desdemona, Billy Crudup gets in touch with his masculine side (and finds true love) in the gender-bending Stage Beauty.
- October 4, 2004 | Movie Review
- Love-Less
David O. Russell’s star-studded comedy about “existential detectives” is strictly for the McSweeney’s set. Plus: In Going Upriver, a polite Kerry.
- September 27, 2004 | Movie Review
- Che Sera Sera
Gael García Bernal’s South American road trip turns him into the revolutionary of everyone’s dreams. Plus: A Dirty Shame is a misnomer.
- September 20, 2004 | Movie Review
- The Candidate
Dubya gets a noir makeover in John Sayles’s Silver City, but the movie can’t compete with the reality-show drama of the campaign itself.
- September 6, 2004 | Movie Review
- Smoke and Mirrors
Ross McElwee reflects on his family’s tobacco-growing past—and its fleeting future—in the raw and lovely documentary Bright Leaves.
- August 23, 2004 | Movie Review
- Vile Bodies, Ourselves
Evelyn Waugh’s classic satire of soirées and scandals is luridly familiar (if a bit overwrought) in Stephen Fry’s adaptation, Bright Young Things.
- August 16, 2004 | Movie Review
- Cheat Drink Man Woman
Two couples struggle through a bitter cycle of anger, adultery, revenge, and friendship in We Don’t Live Here Anymore.