A second viewing only solidified what I knew to be true (but didn't explicitly say) in my first review: Upstream Color is one of the great works of modern American cinema.

It's been noted here and elsewhere that this is a film that rewards repeat viewings, and I don't disagree. But here's the funny thing: seeing it a second time did little to help me better understand what was actually happening on-screen. That's not to say that the plot is…

"Show, don't tell," as the old Hollywood adage goes. The films of Shane Carruth, however, take this idea one step further: show, don't spoon-feed. I can't think of another modern director who asks as much of his audience as he does. Primer was a brilliant puzzle executed with monastic asceticism, the kind of film that begged to be logically dissected, via flow-charts and on message boards, for decades. Upstream Color is Primer's diametric opposite: a film of rich beauty and…

There's a moment about halfway through Before Sunset that I can't get out of my mind. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are sitting in a Parisian café, and she lights up a cigarette. He's got the demeanor of a man who has quit smoking against his will (probably at the behest of a significant other, whom I'm guessing broke his spirit with the subtlest "I just want you to be healthy" psychological warfare imaginable), so he steals a…

A few years ago I was talking to a friend who had just seen David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls." My friend isn't much of a film buff, but he knew that he'd seen something special. When I asked what he liked most about it, he didn't say anything about the acting or the direction or nuances of the plot. Instead, he simply said "because that stuff really happened."

Of course, my friend was not speaking literally. Instead, I…