In “Black Flies” the full-frontal reality of two nighttime paramedics grabs you at the throat and doesn’t let go. The new Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire film is an infernal ride of double-shifts and bullying and death into the belly of the beast, the film pops, hits hard, the image is jumpy, the screams are loud, it’s a pressure-cooker, I came out of there traumatized and a little shaken. This is not the New York City I know. Had an inkling.

"The Last Face," starring Charlize Theron, Javier Bardem and Adèle Exarchopoulos and directed by Sean Penn, premiered in Cannes this morning. In this romance drama juxtaposed with a humanitarian action story Theron plays the director of an international aid agency who meets a Doctors Without Borders doctor (Bardem), as an armed conflict in Liberia drifts into full-on civil war.

Sean Penn, there’s an actor with range. This time around, […]

In a past issue of the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, actor Ted Danson talks to Elizabeth Kolbert—the magazine’s environment expert—about his work in the field of oceanography and marine conservation. He talks about the protection of oceans and marine life, about his concern over the fact that a year after the BP oil spill, offshore drilling is again being promoted. (Though why he should be disappointed by

For the last twelve months the film world rallied behind […]

Just when the recession was starting to make the Iraq […]

I was apprehensive when I went to see the new […]