michael atkinson

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Review: Straw Dogs

Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 23, 2011

Ends of the earth

Now in its 20th incarnation, the Boston Jewish Film Festival is almost the oldest three-ring circus of its kind (San Francisco’s annual program got there first by nine years), and in that span we’ve seen the elusive idea of “Jewish film” become an instit
The 20th Boston Jewish Film Festival reaches deep and far
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 04, 2008

Kino pravda

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.
‘Envisioning Russia’ at the MFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | August 26, 2008

Darkness visible

Welcome to the dark territories again, the republic of bitterness and bile known as noir.
The HFA’s ‘Unseen Noir’ unveils America’s post-war gloom
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 19, 2008

Film on the fringe

Virtually every major city in this country hosts at least one “Jewish Film Festival” each year (even Baton Rouge and Dayton).
Jewishfilm.2008 explores the frontiers
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | March 25, 2008

The anti-Ozu

You can draw the time line of the Japanese new wave in scores of different ways.
Shohei Imamura at the HFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 27, 2007

Not such a wonderful place

The Boston Jewish Film Festival has always been more about the tenuous experience of that global community than about great films.
The 19th annual Boston Jewish Film Festival
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | October 30, 2007

Bravo Rivo!

September 30 was a delicious day for this secular Jew
Plus Flickipedia
By GERALD PEARY | October 17, 2007

Dark new wave

Every now and then, it happens: a new wave from where?
Contemporary Romanian cinema at the HFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | October 01, 2007

The last Potter

The end is never easy, is it?
What does the end mean for Harry’s strange Boston disciples?
By SHARON STEEL | July 24, 2007

Comme ci, comme ça

The menu bops between feel-good indies and full-on commercial fare, with a few seasoned auteur numbers thrown in like rosemary twigs.
No wave in sight at the Boston French Film Festival
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | July 10, 2007

Glee and venom

Of the great modernist playwrights, Harold Pinter has had the most intimate relationship with film.
Lacerating Harold Pinter at the Harvard Film Archive
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 08, 2007

Land ahoy

Unlike The Birthday Party and The Homecoming , now staples of the repertory, this play by the 2005 Nobel laureate is seldom mounted.
Vintage Pinter takes the ART stage
By IRIS FANGER | May 03, 2007

Gay abandon?

Has gay cinema become a mere ghetto nowadays, of interest to its sexual demographic and no one else?
The edge has gone from the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 01, 2007

Film among the ruins

Helmut Käutner, as an eloquent narrative stylist, is the peer of his contemporaries William Wyler, Frank Borzage, Michael Powell, and Vincente Minnelli.
Helmut Käutner at the HFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | February 21, 2007

Waved off

Ah, Eurocinema, the blood and backbone of film culture as it grew from out of the Hollywood shadow in the post-war decades — the Godards, the Bergmans, the Antonionis, the bristling Hungarians, the mordant Poles, the café-dawdling French!
‘New Films from Europe’ at the HFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | January 19, 2007

Rain man

Let’s take stock of Béla Tarr, the great Hungarian dyspeptic, and maybe the most famous and revered international film titan to have been so pitifully screened in American theaters that his public profile here is tantamount to an embargo.
The lingering gaze of Béla Tarr at the HFA
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | January 10, 2007

Cinema belongs to him

For many backlashing film scholars and canonical cinéastes, most of the big players in the French New Wave — Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, Resnais, etc. — have been, over time, at least a touch overrated, save two: Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette.
The je ne c’est quoi world of Jacques Rivette
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | January 03, 2007

Devine DVDs

Sure, we all know Get Smart! is out on DVD in time for the holidays, and the Superman films (all of them, going back to 1948), and Mission Impossible: The Ultimate Missions Collection , sure, sure, as if you could miss the bleating sirens of studio pu
Film-smart gifts for people who think they’ve seen everything
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | December 07, 2006

Movies from outer space

Our new-found DVD-ness and cable-TV luxury notwithstanding, movies have always been a public medium, a spatial experience we share in the theater and a topical experience we share in the culture at large.
From the tsars to the stars at Harvard
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 30, 2006

Fissionable material

The Iranian masters upon whom we’ve come to depend seem for the moment to be indulging in their global fame.
Gauging the new wave at the Festival of Films from Iran
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | November 10, 2006

Eternal returns

When film festivals are programmed as extensions of life, not merely celebrations of cinema, commerce, or hype, everybody wins.
The Boston Jewish Film Festival celebrates life as usual
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | October 31, 2006

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