Direction

In Defiance Edward Zwick tells the true story of three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liv Schreiber and Jamie Bell) who take refuge in the Belarussian forest after members of their family are massacred during an ethnic purge of their village during World War II. As a means of survival when other civilian refugees wander into their camp, they form a village deep in the woods and join with Russian partisans […]

Director Steven Soderbergh burst onto the scene in 1989 with his first feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape that won the Audience Award at its Sundance premiere and went on to win the top prize four months later at Cannes. In the subsequent two decades his path has been eclectic and unpredictable; ranging from arcane personal projects (Schizopolis) to highly commercial (Ocean’s Eleven). In 2000 he received an Academy Award for […]

In a departure from The Fountain, his cerebral last film, director Darren Aronofsky takes a decidedly gritty, realistic turn with The Wrestler. Relying on improvisation to garner reality-based performances from a cast composed largely of non-professional actors, Aronofsky tells the comeback story of retired professional wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke in a marvelous comeback performance of his own. As he gets back into the game for […]

Director Danny Boyle’s latest film, the India-set magical realist romantic fable Slumdog Millionaire, is vastly different to his previous film, the set-in-space thriller Sunshine. Both have settings that might strike western viewers as fantastical: the latter, in a spaceship headed for the sun, the most recent, in the slum, streets, alleys and more, of Mumbai. Of the sprawling, emblematic 21st century city, Boyle notes that it was “extraordinary, the contrast” […]