Annette Insdorf

Along with the glamor and the gushing over auteurs that dominate the Cannes Film Festival, documentaries are among this year's strongest movies in the Official Selection. In addition to Trashed -- which chronicles actor Jeremy Irons' impassioned investigation of the challenges posed by waste accumulation around the world -- audiences...

"Road movies" may be associated primarily with American film -- from The Grapes of Wrath to Easy Rider -- but the Brazilian director Walter Salles is growing into a master of the genre. In films like Central Station (1989), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and now On the Road, he...

It's no surprise that Philip Kaufman -- perhaps the most European of American filmmakers -- was drawn to the passionate story of Ernest Hemingway and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Kaufman is a consummate adapter of complex novels including The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Right Stuff, as well as...

An earnest, boyish quality has often been half of the Edward Norton screen persona. In films like Primal Fear, Fight Club, The Incredible Hulk and Leaves of Grass, a violent or even diabolical side coexists with his innocent protagonist. But in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom -- which had its world...

Two very different Israeli documentaries are opening at New York's Quad Cinema over the next 10 days. These fascinating films have less to do with the political tensions that dominate headlines from the Middle East than with exploring personal identity. Dolphin Boy (April 27) is about an Arab teenager who...

When In Darkness was announced as one of the five Oscar nominees in the Foreign-Language Film category, many Polish people expressed effusive pride and hope, both in Poland and the U.S. It wasn't simply the prestige of an Academy Award nomination for director Agnieszka Holland, but gratification that a relatively...

The last thing a moviegoer might expect from W.E. is that the film is more Merchant-Ivory than Material Girl. Because the director is Madonna -- who will be a magnet to the media when she performs the Super Bowl Halftime Show on Sunday -- it has been easy for some...

Some American film critics are responding to the film adaptation of The Reader as if it were the tale of a Nazi guard. However, much like Bernhard Schlink's international bestseller -- to which it is remarkably faithful -- the new movie is the story of a young German man. We...