Godfrey Cheshire

Every once in a while a movie comes along that elicits the description “philosophical,” or even “metaphysical.” Those terms, we can be sure, are meant not in the rather narrow and specific senses that would define them in academia, but, on the contrary, in the very general and encompassing sense of dealing with the big […]

Conceivably the most important nonfiction film that we will see in a year that’s exploding with them, the extraordinary Canadian documentary The Corporation has the odd, and perhaps unintended, effect of suggesting that the age of prophets didn’t end with the Old Testament or the Koran. But if you’re expecting some bearded, wild-eyed Jeremiah, think […]

The eponymous heroine of Joshua Marston’s stunning debut feature Maria Full of Grace is a pretty 18-year-old who, when the film begins, works a boring job de-thorning roses at a flower plantation in provincial Colombia. The movie’s early scenes are brisk and flavorful in sketching the routines and other people in her life, but there’s […]

Tom Cruise is Vincent, a taciturn hit man who has just arrived in L.A. and who, in addition to a bag full of guns, sports a spiffy gray suit that neatly matches his salt-and-pepper beard and hair. You can decide if Tom’s new hair color is a rinse or a rug; I vote for the […]

In the post-9/11 world, thrillers have a lot of genuine geopolitical nastiness to draw upon to give their plots credibility and nerve-rattling trenchancy. Yet thematic currency can also function as mere wallpaper in a creative enterprise that depends mostly on the solid foundations of genre basics like surprise and imaginative mayhem. Two new thrillers suggest […]

Richard Linklater’s captivating romance Before Sunset is such a complete triumph–warm, wise, brilliantly executed–that I have no trouble believing it will end up being regarded as the best American film of 2004, bar none, by scads of critics including this one. Indeed, the movie, which stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in a nine-years-later continuation […]

I’ll say this for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11: These days it’s rare that I go into a high-profile, much-discussed-in-advance movie completely unsure of how I’ll feel about it coming out. With F9/11, though, I genuinely felt my reactions to the film could range anywhere across the spectrum from hugely positive to direly negative. That’s another […]

André Téchiné’s Strayed seems to be this summer’s definition of a sleeper, foreign-language division. The French drama opened several weeks ago in a few major U. S. cities with little fanfare. And why should there be any hoopla? It’s a modest, essentially conventional movie with nothing flashy or sensational about it. Set in the early […]

Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring has one of the most striking and unforgettable settings I’ve ever seen in a film. The Korean drama transpires entirely on or near a small artificial island made of wood that contains a two-man Buddhist monastery. The island–which in reality is an elaborate raft, of course–floats on a […]