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MICHAEL ATKINSON

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Kino pravda

‘Envisioning Russia’ at the MFA
Because Mosfilm, the subject of the Museum of Fine Arts’ “Envisioning Russia” retrospective, was the Soviet state production studio, any cross-section of its history lays out the entirety of Soviet film history.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | August 26, 2008

Darkness visible

The HFA’s ‘Unseen Noir’ unveils America’s post-war gloom
Welcome to the dark territories again, the republic of bitterness and bile known as noir.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 19, 2008

Film on the fringe

Jewishfilm.2008 explores the frontiers
Virtually every major city in this country hosts at least one “Jewish Film Festival” each year (even Baton Rouge and Dayton).

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 25, 2008

Hell boy

Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz at the ICA
Fassbinderians rejoice — your crucifixion, your tribulative martyrdom, has arrived.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 18, 2008

Portuguese man of war

Manoel de Oliveira at the HFA
Manoel de Oliveira occupies a unique seat on the global film culture’s board of directors.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 12, 2008

The Yacoubian Building

Three-hour Egyptian epic
A massive Arabic soap opera, a Cairo-based Gone with the Wind.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | December 12, 2007

The anti-Ozu

Shohei Imamura at the HFA
You can draw the time line of the Japanese new wave in scores of different ways.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 27, 2007

Not such a wonderful place

The 19th annual Boston Jewish Film Festival
The Boston Jewish Film Festival has always been more about the tenuous experience of that global community than about great films.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | October 30, 2007

Dark new wave

Contemporary Romanian cinema at the HFA
Every now and then, it happens: a new wave from where?

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | October 01, 2007

The Last Winter

The big ideas get out, despite clumsy dialogue
Modern American psychotronica needs Larry Fessenden.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 26, 2007

The Rape of Europa

Art-love tunnel vision
The filmmakers are assuming that after so much documentation of murder and torture we could stand to consider instead the material and cultural losses.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 26, 2007

Hairy Potter

Hormones submit to dreary Order
Whatever else it may be, the Harry Potter Edda is surely the most popular narrative about the dawning of pubertal awareness ever created.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | July 10, 2007

Comme ci, comme ça

No wave in sight at the Boston French Film Festival
The menu bops between feel-good indies and full-on commercial fare, with a few seasoned auteur numbers thrown in like rosemary twigs.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | July 10, 2007

Mon Meilleur Ami | My Best Friend

Yet another mismatched-buddy pairing
The set-up is so labored and unconvincing that it hardly matters when our hero latches onto Dany Boon’s trivia buff/cab driver.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | July 03, 2007

Evan Almighty

The movie of the summer for the timid Christian paranoiacs
Finally, the 21st-century redo of the Oh, God!

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | June 20, 2007

Flotsam and jetsam

The tars are adrift in Ocean’s Thirteen
Steven Soderbergh’s third “Ocean” film is a pastry of a movie, airy, insubstantial, and meant to fill in the gaps between heartier meals.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | June 05, 2007

Belle Toujours

Quel dommage!
Manoel de Oliveira made this long-range sequel to Buñuel’s 1967 fetish classic Belle de jour .

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 17, 2007

Glee and venom

Lacerating Harold Pinter at the Harvard Film Archive
Of the great modernist playwrights, Harold Pinter has had the most intimate relationship with film.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 08, 2007

Gay abandon?

The edge has gone from the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Has gay cinema become a mere ghetto nowadays, of interest to its sexual demographic and no one else?

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 01, 2007

Life, truth, and Jean-Luc

2 or 3 things we know about Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is 76 now, of fading productivity and perhaps fading health, and so we’re faced with the unfathomable prospect of no longer living in the Age of Godard.

By: MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 06, 2007

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