Recent American films about families, like last year’s Rachel Getting Married and Revolutionary Road, all too often pierce eardrums with unrelenting shrieks of dysfunction and misery. Amid the din, French filmmaker Claire Denis’s sublime 35 Shots of Rum stands out all the more for its soothing quiet (one character is…

Another poor, massive, uneducated African-American teenager lumbers onto screens this month, two weeks after Precious and obviously timed as a pre-Thanksgiving-dinner lesson in the Golden Rule. But unlike the howling rage of Claireece Precious Jones, The Blind Side’s Michael “Big Mike” Oher (Quinton Aaron) is mute, docile, and ever-grateful to…

Don Imus’s hateful, racist 2007 remarks about “nappy-headed hos” underscored the immense fear of, and fascination with, the hair follicles of African-American women. Chris Rock, the host, co-writer, and co-producer of first-time director Jeff Stilson’s Good Hair, never mentions Imus’s outburst; his interest in the political, social and sexual entanglements…

When, in the early ’00s, I worked as a freelancer for a publication two floors below Vogue — this was pre-Devil Wears Prada — each sighting of Anna Wintour, from no matter how great a distance, was terrifying enough to immobilize me for a few seconds, leading to a sweaty…

If you remember Woodstock, you probably weren’t there,” the expression goes. And if you were, can you please stop gassing on about it? Aquarian Nostalgia™ is the most oppressively sanctimonious and dull stripe of reminiscing. Sure, the three free days of peace and music at Max Yasgur’s farm passed without…

Jennifer Lynch — like Sofia Coppola on occasion — has been tarred with the unfounded claim that her films get made only because of who her father is. David Lynch serves as executive producer of Surveillance, Jennifer’s first film since the near-stoning she received after her 1993 debut feature, the…

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have transformed some of the saggiest, most cliched genres with smarts, non-screechy politics, superb acting and visual beauty. Though on paper its premise could have easily elicited groans, Half Nelson — their 2006 feature debut (that Fleck directed and the two co-wrote) about a white…

Two weeks after jowly Matthew Perry transformed into pretty Zac Efron to relive his adolescence in 17 Again, Warner Bros. releases Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, another backward and backward-looking child-is-father-to-the-man rom-com, with Matthew McConaughey, who, eighteen years Efron’s senior and slightly butcher, has just a few more years of prettiness…

The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would be a handheld doc featuring former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain sobbing into the camera and begging the American public to forgive him for purchasing a $35,000 commode. With its curious release date — the film is meant to be…