Sugar (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Algenis Pérez Soto portrays a rookie pitcher in "Sugar."
April 3, 2009
Diamond in the Rough
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 3, 2009

There is something undeniably noble and beautiful about the love of sports: the appreciation of grace and excellence for their own sakes, the pleasure of competition, the discipline of training. But the practice of big-time sports is often cruel and corrupt, a business built on the exploitation of young people and the peddling of impossible dreams. This basic contradiction will be in vivid evidence this weekend, during the national college basketball championships. It is also, at least implicitly, a central concern in “Sugar,” a wise and lovely new film by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. More

The Song of Sparrows (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Reza Naji stars as an impoverished farmer in “The Song of Sparrows,” an Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi.
April 3, 2009
Losing His Soul, Then Finding It Again, After a Season in Hell
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 3, 2009

The first and last images in “The Song of Sparrows,” the Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi’s dogmatic spiritual fable, show a single ostrich, which as the tale unfolds becomes a symbol of the majesty and mystery of the natural world. More

Adventureland (2009) NYT Critics' Pick

Jesse Eisenberg, Martin Starr and Kristen Stewart in "Adventureland."
April 3, 2009
Coming of Age on the Midway
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 3, 2009

It’s the summer of 1987. The stock market crash is a few months off, but for James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) things have already taken a recessionary turn. His father (Jack Gilpin), a wilted, weak-chinned alcoholic, has been demoted, and the resulting financial pinch puts the kibosh on James’s rather modest postcollegiate dream of a summer in Europe followed by graduate school at Columbia. (His sights were set on journalism school, and given what his midcareer, 40-something self would be facing two decades later, it’s probably just as well he didn’t go.) More

Paris 36 (2008)

Cue the Accordions: Baguettes, Berets and Léon Blum
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 3, 2009

There is plenty of evidence to support the argument that French film is alive and well. Recent movies as diverse as “The Class,” “A Christmas Tale,” “The Secret of the Grain” and “La France” might even lead a Francophile cinephile to conclude that a new day of glory has arrived.

And then there is “Paris 36.” More

Fast and Furious (2009)

Vin Diesel in "Fast & Furious."
April 3, 2009
Burning Rubber One More Time
By NATHAN LEE
Published: April 3, 2009

The tagline of “Fast & Furious” promises “New Model. Original Parts.” Well, yes and no. “Parts” is a remarkably apt way to describe the people of the movie, a crew of affectless hard bodies reunited from the 2001 B-movie sensation “The Fast and the Furious.” More

The Escapist (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

THE ESCAPIST From left, Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox and Liam Cunningham as inmates who try to leave a London prison.
April 3, 2009
Surviving Inside a Decaying Museum
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: April 3, 2009

Without straying too far from formula or stock characters, “The Escapist” shapes a standard prison-break drama into a metaphysical study of freedom and reparation. More

Forbidden Lie$ (2007) NYT Critics' Pick

FORBIDDEN LIE$ Linda Mutawi as the victim in a re-enactment of the killing portrayed in Anna Broinowski’s documentary.
April 3, 2009
Fictional Realities
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: April 3, 2009

Cool-headed, lighthearted and outrageously entertaining, “Forbidden Lie$” is documentary-as-striptease, a careful peeling of claim and counterclaim to reveal one of the most complex literary scandals of our time. More

Alien Trespass (2008)

"Alien Trespass"
April 3, 2009
Monsters, Aliens and Nostalgia
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: April 3, 2009

A charmingly sentimental but ultimately pointless hommage to the sci-fi classics of yesteryear, “Alien Trespass” proves only that while styles and technology have moved on, the affection for corn is everlasting. More

Si, wot she sez.

Tulpan (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Askhat Kuchinchirekov as the lovelorn Asa in “Tulpan,” a coming-of-age film set in windswept southern Kazakhstan.
April 1, 2009
A Hapless Romantic, Smitten on the Steppe
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 1, 2009

“Tulpan,” the first fictional feature by the Kazakh director Sergey Dvortsevoy, might be described as an epic landscape film, a sweetly comic coming-of-age story or a lyrical work of social realism. But the setting — a windswept, sparely populated steppe in southern Kazakhstan — gives the movie a mood that sometimes feels closer to that of science fiction. More

For Deb

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