Carsten Knox

The PassengerDirected by: Michelangelo Antonioni(Sony)A lazily-paced drama set in Saharan Africa starring Jack Nicholson as a journalist who takes over the identity of an arms dealer. Directed by Michaelango Antonioni, this quintessentially ’70s film is all about gradually insinuating mood and environment.Carsten KnoxCategories: Best of the year (2006)

Crash Directed by: Paul Haggis (DEJ Productions)Paul Haggis, screenwriter of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, is Canadian, and has said his outsider’s viewpoint allowed him to make an objective film about racism in America. If that’s true, why does it feel so false and heavy-handed? An ensemble cast of actors including Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle […]

Caché (Hidden)Directed by: Michael Haneke(Columbia TriStar)This socio-political puzzler is in a rare genre: the movie as interesting to watch as hash over in a coffee shop—or living room—afterwards. Did you see the meeting of two supporting characters in the final scene? Which shots were supposed to be prerecorded video and which “reality?”Carsten KnoxCategories: Best of […]

Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season(Warner Home Video)With the exception of 24, the single best example of TV for the DVD age. Veronica Mars would be next to incomprehensible broadcast weekly, especially if you missed an episode—and it does struggle in the ratings—but is enormously rewarding devoured on DVD. Season two expands on the adventures […]

Days of Glory Directed by: Rachid BoucharebIFCA great war movie. Based on a true story, it features four North African men fighting to free France from the Nazis in WWII. Despite their courage and conviction, they suffer discrimination, echoed through the decades. A dark companion-piece to Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and nearly as powerful.Carsten KnoxCategories: […]

The AgronomistDirected by: Jonathan Demme(ThinkFilm)Hollywood auteur and periodic documentarian Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, the Talking Heads doc Stop Making Sense) tells the story of Jean Dominique, a Haitian journalist and human rights activist who got his start working on farms in the Caribbean nation. Dominique and his wife Michaele Montas are compelling […]

Planet Earth: The Complete SeriesBBCIt’s been called the greatest nature documentary series ever, and for sheer visual grandeur, that’s hard to refute. With 40 camera crews shooting over five years, for both the macro and the micro, this series will remind you of both the beauty (mating dances of jungle birds) and horror (parasitic spores […]

Saw: Uncut Edition Directed by: James WanLions Gate FilmsTwo men wake up in a grungy, industrial bathroom. They’re shackled to opposite walls. In between them is a dead man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. What follows is a bloody but creative gross-out thriller, the kind of movie that ignores plausibility, reality and even, in places, […]

Separate Lies Directed by: Julian Fellowes (Fox Searchlight)The first feature by the Academy Award-winning writer of Gosford Park is an odd little affair, and brief, clocking in at a little over 80 minutes. Upper crust London solicitor James (Tom Wilkinson) and his young wife, Anne (Emily Watson) live well at their country house. A neighbour, […]