In 1977, 27-year-old Robyn Davidson walked from Alice Springs, Australia, to the west coast of that country, a 2700-kilometer hike primarily through desert that took nine months. The trip was financed by National Geographic out of the United States, which published an article written by Davidson the year following her journey, and filmmakers have been […]

To begin with, Wild is a great deal better than 2007’s Into the Wild, its most direct antecedent in the “people finding themselves by dropping out and trekking through nature, meeting several people along the way who give symbolic life lessons, and ‘Wild’ is in the title” genre. And really, that’s all I needed to […]

Marion Cotillard can do anything, anyway. Whatever else one walks away from The Immigrant certain of, one can be certain of that. As the recipient of the first-ever leading female character (co-)written and directed by James Gray, specialist in portraits of New York masculinity in moments of self-doubt, Cotillard has been handed a role with […]

The impressive thing about Big Eyes, the most sedate film directed by Tim Burton in over a decade, maybe even two, is how many different ways its creative team came up with to interpret one script, written by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski. I count at least five totally different movies jockeying for attention in […]

There is such a great pleasure to be had in being surprised by artists you already expect to be impressed by, and this is a pleasure that A Most Violent Year offers in abundance. It combines the talents of the three of the most interesting new voices in cinema of the 2010s: writer-director J.C. Chandor, […]