Sleep Dealer (2008)

Virtual border crossings: Mexican workers in “Sleep Dealer.”
April 17, 2009
Tale of an Anxious Wanderer
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 17, 2009

“Sleep Dealer,” the feature directing debut of Alex Rivera (who wrote the screenplay with David Riker), is an unusually thoughtful science fiction film, using the speculative energy of the genre to explore some troubling and complex contemporary issues. Set mostly in Mexico, it imagines a future in which local water rights have been snatched up by multinational corporations, and in which people connect to a virtual-reality cybernetwork by means of “nodes,” electronic jacks implanted in their arms and necks. More

Is Anybody There? (2008)

April 17, 2009
Magician’s Twisting Road Comes to Bittersweet End
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 17, 2009

Sooner or later it comes to this: Alfie develops senile dementia and lands in an old-age home. More

Lemon Tree (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

Tarik Copti, left, and Hiam Abbass in “Lemon Tree.”
April 17, 2009
In a Grove, a War of Wills and Words
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 17, 2009

Salma Zidane (Hiam Abbass), the proud, handsome 45-year-old Palestinian woman at the center of “Lemon Tree,” an allegory of Israeli-Palestinian strife, has the misfortune of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Widowed for 10 years, with a son in the United States, Salma earns a meager living from a lemon grove on the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied territories of the West Bank. The grove has been in her family for 50 years. More

17 Again (2009)

Zac Efron as Mike O'Donnell in "17 Again."
April 17, 2009
Those Cheekbones! That Wind-Swept Hair! OMG, It’s Zac Efron!
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: April 17, 2009

What is Zac Efron? Despite his ubiquity and supernova stardom in certain shrieking demographic circles, I feel confident that there are others who are curious about this weighty question of culture. For starters Zac Efron is a he, a Californian by birth and of drinking age in the state of his birth (21). He is pale, pliable and very pretty (picture-perfect for bedroom walls), with a curtain of hair that sweeps across his forehead and well-manicured dark brows as if gently stirred by the collective exhalation of a thousand virgins. I’m fairly certain I heard that exhalation — I certainly heard the shrieks — when I watched his new movie, “17 Again.” More

Black Swan?

Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Shamelessly Stolen from supergee