Samurai have never been strangers to film; in fact, an entire genre has sprung from their legend, with plenty of attendant offshoots, cross-pollinators and beneficiaries (Westerns, slasher films, Star Wars). Lately, the feudal Japanese warriors have enjoyed a particular bounty of screen time: Last year brought us The Last Samurai,…

Every once in a while, you encounter a person who seems to have been born under an urgent, righteous star, a person who is both a fiery activist lit with the passion of his convictions and a dramatic storyteller who naturally occupies a place in the public eye. When this…

If you were expecting the first film to emerge from Afghanistan since the defeat of the Taliban to be even remotely celebratory, you’ll have to adjust your expectations. Radically. In Osama, filmed in 2002 and 2003 in a “suburb” of Kabul, writer-director Siddiq Barmak is not interested in showing us…

In the beginning, there was nudity. Along a bank of the Colorado River, cradled by jutting cliffs, a community of sun-kissed river guides bathed happily in the nude. They were young and lithe; they were wild and free; they were hirsute; they had nothing but time. It was 1978, and…

At the start of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed and middle-aged Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: first, whether the chart he’s set up is visible, and second,…

The world can always use another documentary that makes a passionate plea against the death penalty. When a film takes us inside a particular case to show us how the system has failed to serve justice — how politics, errant logic, reactionary fear, classism and racism govern the use of…

In 1998, a passionate majority of Venezuelans elected a new president. His name was Hugo Chavez, and he was the first leader in generations to come from outside the ruling class. He vowed to redistribute Venezuela’s oil wealth and to involve the people intimately in the political process. Openly comparing…