Laura Poitras’s expert, underrated documentary about the January 30, 2005, national election in Iraq makes us a fly on a multitude of walls without any voiceover commentary to intrude on our attention or flight. Poitras interviews no one; her camera observes various official meetings, such as ones pertaining to the policing of the upcoming election, […]

Brian De Palma’s hommage to Michelangelo Antonioni’s cool, elegant, captivating Blowup (1966) translates image into sound. Rather than a photographer, a B-movie soundman is the protagonist this time; rather than photographs revealing a hidden murder, sound does this in Blow Out. The passage where, at night, Jack Terry silently records natural sounds, of an owl, […]