Big Fan (2009)
Big Fan (2009) Director/Screenwriter: Robert D. Siegel By Marilyn Ferdinand Are diehard sports fans sick? This seems to be the central question around which The Wrestler screenwriter Robert Siegel has built the literate, intelligent script for his directorial debut, Big Fan. He shines his interrogatory light on Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt), a 37-year-old parking lot attendant who lives—and almost dies—for his team, the New York Giants, presenting us with a character study with all the intensity o

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959)
The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959) Director: Francois Truffaut By Roderick Heath The 400 Blows, Francois Truffaut’s debut film, is a work around which implicit ironies swirl. It looks as much backwards as it does forwards, to Truffaut’s youthful experiences, and the artworks and ideals he considered vital, as well as attempting to articulate a fresh sense of what the cinema could and ought to be capable of. The movie made an immediate impact, proved a vanguard for the Nouvelle Vague, and ironically, won for

Fantastic Planet (La planète sauvage, 1973)/De Profundis (2007)
Fantastic Planet (La planète sauvage, 1973) Director/Coscreenwriter: Réne Laloux De Profundis (2007) Director/Screenwriter: Miguelanxo Prado By Marilyn Ferdinand The realists and the impressionists are at it again. No, we’re not in 19th century France or Nazi Germany. Our battle is in the very commercial realm of animated film. Here

Batman (1989)
Batman (1989) Director: Tim Burton By Roderick Heath Yeah, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, either. And it’s been at least 15 since I last saw Tim Burton’s grandiose redesign of the classic comic strip and the campy TV show derived from it. I remember the hype around its release exceptionally well, because it was impossible to get away from. In commercial terms, as other writers have noted lately, Batman altered how Hollywood conceived and sold its blockbusters. Whilst ’80s cinema had been replete with sequel

PFFAmerica 2009: Operation Danube (Operace Dunaj, 2009)
2009 Polish Film Festival in America Operation Danube (Operace Dunaj, 2009) Director: Janek Glomb By Marilyn Ferdinand There’s a subgenre of war film that likes to emphasize the absurdity of war by showing how people who have no quarrel with each other and exist in the backwaters of battle react, not like dehumanized