Friday, August 5 2011
‘Millennium People’: The Middle Class Catastrophe
J.G. Ballard’s helter-skelter novel of terrorism and bourgeois revolt is really an elegy for the fantasy of the comfortable and secured life.
Sunday, May 8 2011
‘Four Lions’ With a Ridiculous Roar
Chris Morris transcends the obstacles of the delicate subject matter of suicide bombers and creates a sharp satire.
Wednesday, February 9 2011
‘The Weekend’: Terrorism Without Any Terror
The Weekend is a light and superficial novel that side-steps the core issues of the subject matter, terrorism, leaving readers feeling still hungry after eating a full-course meal.
Wednesday, October 27 2010
‘The Oath’: American Intelligence Gets it Wrong
With The Oath, director Laura Poitras highlights the contradictions and failures of America's "war on terror".
Monday, March 8 2010
The German Issue: Still Straddling the Berlin Wall
The German Issue provides us with a time capsule from a very different era, but so much of its content remains pertinent.
Wednesday, January 6 2010
The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again by Tom Ridge
Determinedly apolitical, refreshingly willing to shoulder responsibility, folksy, even charming, Ridge is the good soldier dangerously close to living by blind faith in his superior officers.
Friday, April 6 2007
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Hamid gives us the actions, we create the motives.
Thursday, January 11 2007
The Road to Guantánamo (2006)
While the movie has been termed a "docudrama" for its mix of reenactments, interviews, and archival news footage, it is not nearly so easy or easygoing about "truth" as such a label suggests. The film's complex form corresponds to its story, in the sense that "truth" is precisely what troubles it.
