David Fellerath

Why is it acceptable for children–or anyone, for that matter–to watch so much appalling violence in the movies, while a film with an exposed female nipple automatically becomes absolutely-not-for-children? This was one question on my mind as I watched Swimming Pool, a sexy, thoughtful if not terribly thrilling thriller from the young French director Francois […]

If there was ever a real-life counterpart to sex, lies and videotape, then Andrew Jarecki’s harrowing and mysterious Capturing the Friedmans is it. Jarecki’s Sundance Grand Jury prize winner charts the destruction of the Friedmans of Great Neck, Long Island, a family that documented itself obsessively on Super-8 film and videotape. This footage forms the […]

W hen I was an exuberant little undergrad in the early 1990s, my friends and I used to spend a lot of time speculating about the private lives of mysterious authors, men who never appeared in public and produced dark conspiratorial books at rare intervals. The primary object of our fascination was Thomas Pynchon, the […]

It’s striking how many conversations about movies consist of sharing feelings about actors, feelings that usually are visceral and difficult to explain. We don’t talk about the various shadings of Jack Nicholson’s performances as much as we say, “I like Jack Nicholson” or “I don’t like Jack Nicholson.” As a result, successful movie stars cultivate […]

First, a confession: I am a failed spelling-bee champ, haunted by my squandered potential and my brush with sixth grade greatness. Yes, I’m an embittered nearly-was, the Mighty Casey of the “i-before-e except-after-c” set, a rising star of the Asheville geeks who won his school bee and his district bee before swaggering into the Buncombe […]

Patrice Leconte is a guy who makes a lot of mildly satisfying movies in regular succession. Although this could sound a little like the desired result of a diet heavy in granola, bananas and water, it’s also an honorable resume for a hardworking if unexciting filmmaker. In his quarter-century career he’s made such flicks as […]

Nowhere in AfricaOver the last half-century, the Holocaust has provided a seemingly bottomless supply of material for the movies. Unfortunately, the Nazis had more nefarious motives and cinephiles would gladly return such landmark films as Judgment at Nuremberg, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Enemies: A Love Story, The Sorrow and the Pity and The Pianist […]

David Cronenberg has always been fascinated with mind-and-body issues, though with a decided emphasis on diseased or mutated or lacerated flesh, and he achieved lasting fame and notoriety for such bloody sci-fi excursions as Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Crash. His last film, the little-seen but quite interesting eXistenZ, was an exploration of virtual […]