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Cynthia Fuchs

PopMatters Film and TV Editor

About Cynthia Fuchs

Cynthia Fuchs is director of Film & Media Studies, as well as Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, and Film & Video Studies, at George Mason University. She has published articles on Buffy and Dark Angel; Shakira; Jay-Z; Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise; Taxi Driver; hip-hop, Michael Jackson, Prince, Juvenile and Cash Money, "gangsta rap", the Spice Girls, queer punks, alternative masculinities in rock, "bad" kids in Bully and George Washington, the war in Iraq, and Vietnam war movies. She edited Spike Lee: Interviews (University of Mississippi Press 2002), and co-edited Between the Sheets, In the Streets: Queer, Lesbian, and Gay Documentary (University of Minnesota 1997). She is currently co-editing "Iraq War Cultures" and writing a book on Iraq war documentaries.

Features

Film

The Best Movies of 2007

[18.Jan.08] :. Fuchs' picks for the year's best movies reveal the difficulty of the quest, uncovering in their seeming failures more remarkable potentials.

Recent features

 

TV

Ken Burns' Arithmetic of War: 'The War' Premieres Tonight

[21.Sep.07] :. To its credit, The War considers the terrible effects of difference. But even as it argues that representations can make differences, it also exemplifies how limited vision can reinforce them.

Recent features

 

TV

"Gods Warriors": Raging Fires

[21.Aug.07] :. Christiane Amanpour does not back down from difficult questions. She opens her six-hour report, airing over three nights on CNN, by noting that Jerusalem, the "so-called city of peace, has been torn by centuries of war."

Recent features

 

TV

Time Is Standing Still: White Light/Black Rain

[6.Aug.07] :. HBO's new Hiroshima and Nagasaki documentary is at once simple and infinitely complex. The atomic bombs were disasters both man-made and calculated.

Recent features

 

Film

Unbridled with Life: Interview with Mira Nair

[22.Mar.07] :. With The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri's popular novel, Mira Nair has found an ideal subject -- a family full of complex characters who spend their lives traversing traditions and expectations.

Recent features

 
Featured Article

Film

Paul Robeson: Showing a Little Grit

[8.Mar.07] :. Today, Paul Robeson seems impossible. How could one man have accomplished so much, commanded such respect, be so large and legendary, even during his lifetime?

Recent features

 
Featured Article

Music

Dixie-chicked

[21.Feb.07] :. Introducing the Chicks' Grammys performance, Joan Baez called them "three brave women who are still 'not ready to make nice.'" It may be the long way, but it's the right way too.

Recent features

 

Film   A Symbol of Transition: Interview with Guillermo del Toro

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2006   War Stories: Top 12 Films of 2006

Reviews

Film

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

[16.May.08] :. Prince Caspian includes mêlée after mêlée, as well as recriminations against the commander in chief who goes in without an exit strategy or even much of a battle plan.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film

Reprise

[16.May.08] :. Anguished and ambitious, the man-boy writers in Joachim Trier's Reprise imagine themselves into alternate lives.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film

The Fall

[15.May.08] :. The story Roy tells reflects both their desires, revealed throughout The Fall in brilliantly colored images.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film

Unsettled

[14.May.08] :. Adam Hootnick's trenchant, intelligent documentary, Unsettled, concerns the forced evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza and the West Bank in 2005.

Recent Film reviews

 

TV

Frontline: Storm Over Everest

[13.May.08] :. As Storm Over Everest shows, it's impossible to know any single story of the disaster in 1996, to know exactly how it was for the 15 climbers who perished or even for those who survived.

Recent TV reviews

 

TV   Nova: A Walk to Beautiful

Film   Speed Racer

Film   Redbelt

Film   What Happens in Vegas

Film   Then She Found Me

PopMatters Pick

Film

The Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Voyage du ballon rouge)

[7.May.08] :. In Hou Hsiao-hsien's first French film, interactions are mirrored and refracted, images of images, reflections of longing.

Recent Film reviews

 

TV   Independent Lens: Nā Kamalei: The Men of Hula

Film   Son of Rambow

PopMatters Pick

Film

Standard Operating Procedure

[2.May.08] :. Errol Morris' new documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, remembers the pictures' effects -- the shock, the outrage, and the anger that greeted their release.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Made of Honor

Film   Iron Man

Film   CJ7 (Cheung Gong 7 hou)

TV   Shark

Film   Deception

Film   Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay

Film   Baby Mama

Film   Without the King

Film   Jellyfish (Meduzot)

Film   The Life Before Her Eyes

Film   Forbidden Kingdom

TV   American Experience: Roberto Clemente

Film   Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Film   Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

Film   88 Minutes

Film   The Visitor

Film   Young@Heart

TV   American Experience: Walt Whitman

TV   King Corn

Film   Street Kings

Film   Smart People

Film   My Blueberry Nights

Film   Body of War

Film   Fighting For Life

Film   Shine a Light

Film   Leatherheads

Film   Nim's Island

Film   The Ruins

TV   Black in America - Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination

Film   Flawless

TV   Compañeras

Film   Shotgun Stories

Film   Stop-Loss

Film   21

Film   Chapter 27

TV   Peter & the Wolf

TV   Autism: the Musical

Film   The Grand

Film   Drillbit Taylor

Film   Shutter (2008)

Film   Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna)

Featured Article

TV

Nice Bombs

[19.Mar.08] :. Airing on Sundance as part of its "Iraq War Anniversary" programming, Nice Bombs is an extraordinary film, the story focused through personal experience and resonating outward.

Recent TV reviews

 

TV   The Situation

TV   Iron Ladies of Liberia

Film   Doomsday

Film   Funny Games

Film   Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!

Film   Never Back Down

Film   Snow Angels

PopMatters Pick

Film

Paranoid Park

[12.Mar.08] :. The movie realizes Alex's desperate, poetic subjectivity in layers. His halting voiceover is perfectly unmatched with the uneven editing and skips back and forth in time.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Girls Rock!

TV   Canterbury's Law

Film   10,000 B.C.

Film   The Bank Job

Film   Married Life

Film   Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

TV   New Amsterdam

Film   Penelope

Film   Semi-Pro

Film   Chicago 10

Film   City of Men (Cidade Dos Homens)

Film   The Other Boleyn Girl

Film   The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)

TV   The Gates

TV   Hard Road Home

TV   Buffalo Bill

PopMatters Pick

Film

Be Kind Rewind

[22.Feb.08] :. A set of relationships -- father and son, past and present, fiction and something like history -- forms the foundation of Be Kind Rewind, another gently antic film by Michel Gondry.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Charlie Bartlett

Film   Vantage Point

TV   Joe Louis: America's Hero… Betrayed

Film   The Signal

PopMatters Pick

Film

Taxi to the Dark Side

[20.Feb.08] :. Methodically, relentlessly, Gibney's Oscar-nominated documentary assembles stories, evidence, and testimony from witnesses and experts.

Recent Film reviews

 

TV   Banished: American Ethnic Cleansings

TV   Dexter

Film   Diary of the Dead

Film   The Spiderwick Chronicles

Film   Step Up 2 The Streets

Film   Jumper

Film   Definitely, Maybe

Film   Caramel (Sukkar banat)

TV   Jericho

PopMatters Pick

Film

Liberty Kid

[11.Feb.08] :. It's not long before this small, extraordinary movie begins to unveil its many dimensions.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   In Bruges

Film   Fool's Gold

Film   The Hottie & the Nottie

Film   Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins

TV   Bernard and Doris

TV   Lipstick Jungle

PopMatters Pick

Film

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

[5.Feb.08] :. The clock is ticking in the very first moment of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. It's Romania, 1987, and time is running down.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   The Eye

TV   Prince Among Slaves

Film   Honeydripper

Film   Over Her Dead Body

Film   Orthodox Stance

Film   Shoot Down

Film   Beaufort

Film   Rambo

Film   Untraceable

Film   How She Move

Film   Teeth

Film   The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret)

Film   Cloverfield

Film   Cassandra's Dream

Film   Mad Money

Film   27 Dresses

TV   Andrew Jenks, Room 335

TV   Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows

TV   Oswald's Ghost: American Experience

TV   Comanche Moon

TV   Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Film   First Sunday

Film   The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie

Film   Terror's Advocate

Film   Protagonist

Film   King Corn

Film   Lake of Fire

PopMatters Pick

Film

There Will Be Blood

[4.Jan.08] :. Land, oil, blood. There will be lots of all in Paul Thomas Anderson's stunning new movie.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   One Missed Call (2008)

Film   Persepolis

Film   The Killing of John Lennon

Film   The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

Film   Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

Film   The Great Debaters

Film   The Bucket List

Film   The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

Film   Charlie Wilson's War

PopMatters Pick

Film

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

[21.Dec.07] :. Sweeney Todd is delirious with blood and violence: bright red spurting from the barber's expert slashes, necks snapping and bodies crumpling.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Film   P.S. I Love You

Film   National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Film   Youth Without Youth

TV   Missing in MiG Alley

TV   Hard as Nails

Film   The Kite Runner

Film   I Am Legend

Film   Alvin and the Chipmunks

Film   Billy the Kid

Film   Nanking

Film   The Perfect Holiday

PopMatters Pick

Film

War/Dance

[11.Dec.07] :. As Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine's documentary frames it, survival in Uganda's war zones is political and moral, an effort to sort out the frankly unimaginable horrors that have shaped the children's existence.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   The Walker

Film   The Golden Compass

Film   Atonement

Film   Grace Is Gone

TV   Sand and Sorrow

Film   What Would Jesus Buy?

Film   Awake

PopMatters Pick

Film

Oswalds Ghost

[30.Nov.07] :. The question at the center of Oswald's Ghost is less about facts and figures, the unsolved case, than it is about perception.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon)

PopMatters Pick

Film

Confessions of a Superhero

[29.Nov.07] :. Less an exposé than a graceful, sometimes sad, reverie, the documentary features gorgeous still photos, casual-seeming sidewalk footage, and fascinating talking heads.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   The Savages

Film   Starting Out in the Evening

Film   August Rush

PopMatters Pick

Film

I'm Not There

[21.Nov.07] :. Dylan Per Se is a trip, an embodiment of potential meanings for fans and detractors, a performative opportunity for movie stars.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Stephen King's The Mist

Film   Hitman

Film   Enchanted

Film   This Christmas

Film   Margot at the Wedding

TV   I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA

Film   Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium

Film   Redacted

Film   Beowulf

Film   Love in the Time of Cholera

Film   Southland Tales

Film   Holly

TV   Darkon

Film   Fred Claus

PopMatters Pick

Film

No Country for Old Men

[9.Nov.07] :. The desolate landscape and moral layout evoke old Westerns, but the film, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, also reconsiders the genre's conventions, comparing now and "the old times."

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Lions for Lambs

Film   P2

Film   Desert Bayou

Film   Control

TV   The Unit

Film   Darfur Now

Film   American Gangster

Film   Bee Movie

Film   Martian Child

TV   To Die in Jerusalem

TV   Criminal Minds

TV   The Undertaking

Film   Mr. Untouchable

Film   Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Film   Music Within

PopMatters Pick

Film

Jimmy Carter Man from Plains

[26.Oct.07] :. He's not like Bill Clinton, he's not a rock star. He is instead a politician and a diplomat, facing rejection and resentment as well as respect, absorbing all responses as part of an ongoing, crucial "conversation".

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Dan in Real Life

Film   Reservation Road

Film   Meeting Resistance

TV   Planet in Peril

TV   Run Granny Run

Film   30 Days of Night

Film   Gone Baby Gone

Film   Rendition

Film   Things We Lost in the Fire

Film   The Darjeeling Limited

Film   Lars and the Real Girl

Film   Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Film   We Own the Night

Film   Sleuth

PopMatters Pick

Film

My Kid Could Paint That

[10.Oct.07] :. My Kid Could Paint That asks viewers to ponder how certainty and doubt reinforce one another, how the need for truth creates its own truth.

Recent Film reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

TV

49 Up

[9.Oct.07] :. As the Up films regularly incorporate footage from previous installments, the portraits have become increasingly layered and meditative.

Recent TV reviews

 

Film   Strange Culture

TV   The Boondocks

PopMatters Pick

TV

Breaking Point

[5.Oct.07] :. Pulling together a remarkable range of material, this beautifully written, incisive, and powerful documentary reminds you how much you miss nightly Koppel.

Recent TV reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

Film

Michael Clayton

[5.Oct.07] :. The film's strength lies in its poetic inclinations, its meditation on the ways that money, politics, and fear shape moral choices.

Recent Film reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

Film

Lust, Caution (Se, jie)

[5.Oct.07] :. The primary question in Lust, Caution (Se, jie) is: "What is real?"

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   The Last Winter

Film   The Hearbreak Kid (2007)

Film   The Kingdom

Film   The Game Plan

Film   The Jane Austen Book Club

Film   Feast of Love

TV   Bionic Woman

TV   Life

TV   Cane

PopMatters Pick

TV

Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later

[25.Sep.07] :. The film is not so much interested in comparing then and now as it is in telling the stories of students and teachers still struggling to make sense of segregation, ongoing if shapeshifted.

Recent TV reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

Film

Into the Wild

[21.Sep.07] :. Into the Wild reveals the sense of loss that drove Chris McCandless. It also shows that it isn't only his.

Recent Film reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

Film

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

[21.Sep.07] :. By turns brutal and lyrical, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford considers Wild Western mythology and masculinity, violence and madness.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Across the Universe

Film   Resident Evil: Extinction

Film   Good Luck Chuck

Film   In the Valley of Elah

TV   Lumo

TV   K-Ville

TV   Prison Break

PopMatters Pick

TV

Lifting the Veil

[14.Sep.07] :. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy counters George Bush's "confident" display with her own observations: "Now we've come back six years later," she narrates, "to ask if life for women in Afghanistan is any better in a liberated country."

Recent TV reviews

 

Film   The Brave One

PopMatters Pick

Film

Eastern Promises

[14.Sep.07] :. Eastern Promises crosses up and recombines stories of parents and children, even violence and history.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Mr. Woodcock

Film   The Hunting Party

Film   In the Shadow of the Moon

Featured Article

TV

The Camden 28

[11.Sep.07] :. Anthony Giacchino's The Camden 28, airing tonight as part of PBS' outstanding POV series, considers the complexities of the crime, the arrest, and the trial, as all these aspects "make a statement."

Recent TV reviews

 

TV   Tell Me You Love Me

TV   Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq

Film   3:10 to Yuma

Film   The Devil Came on Horseback

Film   Shoot Em Up

Film   Halloween

Film   Ten Canoes

TV   Made in L.A.

Film   Quiet City

Film   Death Sentence

Film   The Hottest State

Film   Self-Medicated

Film   Dedication

TV   Children of the Storm

TV   Libby, Montana

Film   September Dawn

Film   Illegal Tender

Film   The Nanny Diaries

Film   Resurrecting the Champ

Film   Right at Your Door

Film   Mr. Bean's Holiday (Les Vacances de Mr. Bean)

Film   Primo Levi's Journey (La Strada di Levi)

Film   The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Film   The Last Legion

Film   Superbad

Film   The Invasion (2007)

Film   Death at a Funeral

Film   The 11th Hour

Film   If I Didnt Care

PopMatters Pick

Film

Summercamp!

[14.Aug.07] :. Respectful and perceptive, Summercamp! isn't quite what you expect.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Skinwalkers

Film   Rush Hour 3

Film   Rocket Science

Film   2 Days in Paris

Film   I Know Who Killed Me

Film   Molière

PopMatters Pick

Film

The Bourne Ultimatum

[3.Aug.07] :. Bourne is the logical product of the secret CIA program that made him, the dark routes by which a desire for surveillance and security gives way to brutal dominion and extreme measures.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   El Cantante

Film   Interview

Film   Becoming Jane

TV   Following Sean

Film   The Simpsons Movie

PopMatters Pick

Film

No End in Sight (2007)

[27.Jul.07] :. Charles Ferguson's smart, meticulous documentary No End in Sight explains the first year in Iraq in detail, at once alarming and dismal.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   No Reservations (2007)

Film   Arctic Tale

TV   Damages

TV   Prison Town, USA

Film   Goya's Ghosts (Los Fantasmas de Goya) (2006)

PopMatters Pick

Film

Sunshine (2007)

[20.Jul.07] :. The notion of loss pervades Sunshine, even as calculations of self are increasingly complex.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)

Film   Shadow Company (2006)

PopMatters Pick

Film

Nice Bombs (2006)

[18.Jul.07] :. Though it seems casual, even random, Nice Bombs manages a consistently acute observation of tensions between troops and citizens, expectations and realities.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami) (2006)

Film   Captivity (2007)

TV   State of Mind

PopMatters Pick

Film

Talk To Me (2007)

[13.Jul.07] :. Part biopic, part portrait of an era, Talk to Me presents an ongoing dilemma -- what does it mean to be "black enough" and how does "talk" shape the question and answers?

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Broken English (2007)

Film   Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Film   Introducing the Dwights (2007)

TV   Spielberg on Spielberg

PopMatters Pick

Film

Rescue Dawn (2007)

[6.Jul.07] :. Dieter's dedication grants him passion and strength, but the film never lets you forget the paradox he lives, his illicit status and the fact that "America" cannot rescue him.

Recent Film reviews

 

Film   Joshua (2007)

Film   Transformers (2007)

TV