It's 1988 and rising features writer at New Republic magazine Stephen Glass has charm, style, modesty and good looks. Trouble is, his reportage is pure fiction. Billy Ray's film, based on a true story, juxtaposes two fine performances from Hayden Christensen, who plays Glass as a passive-aggressive manipulator, and Peter Sarsgaard as his editor Chuck Lane.
Provocatively, one of the most eloquent feminist film-makers extant is an Iranian muslim, Samira Makhmalbaf. Her latest entrancing— and most expansive—movie is set in the rubble of Kabul, where a young woman dreams of becoming Afghanistan's first female president. Men—Taliban mullahs and foreign invaders—have ruined this country, is her subtext, but Makhmalbaf is too artful to be merely polemical.
In remotest Russia, a father suddenly returns to the wife and sons he left 12 years earlier, and takes the two boys into the barren countryside on a fishing trip. Whether you read it as psychological thriller or allegory on human existence, Andrei Zvyagintsev's devastating directorial debut has established itself as a modern classic. This elegant film is charged with mystery, and dread that descends like fog.
