Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins

The Bukowski Stops Here

Hamer's detachment suits the desultory exploits of Bukowski alter ego Henry Chinaski, who's underplayed with stunning authority by a bearded, lumpy Matt Dillon.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-25-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Bent Hamer, Factotum

The protagonist, a villain by the standards of most American movies, is treated not as a hero but as something more interesting: a fully drawn individual characterized not only by pivotal mistakes but also by the reasons for making them.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-25-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Half Nelson, Ryan Fleck

Old Romantic

20 years on, Gartside's got a perfect way with love songs.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-18-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Scritti Politti, White Bread Black Beer

Rolling Back the Years

If this is largely untraveled territory, that doesn't mean the jokes are fresh.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-18-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Susan Seidelman, The Boynton Beach Club

Magical Revisionism

In moving from the page to the screen, Burger kept crucial developments but tied them more tightly to a realistic narrative.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-18-2006 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: Neil Burger, The Illusionist

No Pain, No Gain

Time to Leave makes the prelude to doom look remarkably banal and largely painless.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-18-2006 | Reviews

Tags: François Ozon, Time to Leave

Beached Wails

Heading South understands the Third World-tourist dynamic, and neatly delineates the way two different kinds of people can live different kinds of existence in the same place.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-18-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Heading South, Laurent Cantet

Auteur Redemption

World Trade Center doesn't stint on devastation, but ultimately it depicts the towers' smoking remains as a place where souls are reclaimed -- and thus, by implication, where a director's shattered career can also be reborn.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-14-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Oliver Stone, World Trade Center

Hear and There

Stettner decided to "open up" the narrative, thus rendering an intriguingly elusive tale into something that's as predictable as a teen horror flick.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-04-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Patrick Stettner, The Night Listener

Twin Tone

Rather than question glam rock's adolescent self-analysis, the filmmakers simply second it, yielding a film that's less analysis than sham artifact.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 08-04-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Brothers of the Head, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe

We Are Not a Muse'd

It no longer matters whether Allen's inspiration is Russian literature or Catskills burlesque; his real subject is the slow death of a wisecracking ladies' man.

Washington City Paper | Mark Jenkins | 07-28-2006 | Reviews

Tags: Scoop, Woody Allen