A lugubrious fable for what used to be known as the bubblegum set, American History X isn’t in the same league as such fraternal heartbreakers as Valerio Zurlini’s Family Diary (1962) and Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006). It’s a frantic, melodramatic soap opera, soft and sentimental in the extreme, beneath a […]

Co-written (along with Cédric Anger, Guillaume Bréaud, Jean-Eric Troubat) and expertly directed by Xavier Beauvois, Le petit lieutenant is a police procedural that transcends the genre. It humanizes a homicide unit, its commander and other members, and does so with a bare minimum of soap opera. The whole thing is done in a restrained, detailed […]