Standard Operating Procedure, directed by Errol Morris Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure is a documentary that focuses on the famous photographs showing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of their American captors at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, once the center of...
Sometimes, every few weeks during the fall and spring semesters, my home is overrun by a creature I call The Pile. The Pile is a stack of student papers, usually some 25-30 in number, in dry times as few as 10 or 15, at flood-tide (the unholy confluence of, say, two written assignments in...
Still Life, directed by Jia Zhangke Now at Cinema Village after more than a month’s limited release, Jia Zhangke’s lovely, haunting Still Life (2006) is as provocative and disturbing a look at human life as any yet produced on film in the 21st century. Set at the site of the Three...
Book Review Works discussed in this essay: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, 624 pages) I finished reading Denis Johnson’s new novel, Tree of Smoke, a few weeks ago, and I can’t remember when I’ve been this elated at having read a work of...
Film Review Works discussed in this essay: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, directed by Sidney Lumet. There’s a lot to like in Sidney Lumet’s new movie, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a taut, frequently moving, although entirely overblown, morality thriller....
