| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 24, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

A maddening movie that gives the viewer plenty to think about, but little to care about.

| Apr 14, 2011

White Material is unhurried in its storytelling but unshakable in its impact.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 31, 2011

A thoughtful, if sometimes frustrating, tale of a Frenchwoman caught in the middle of a civil war in an unidentified African country.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2011

It's one of those movies where questions like "Why didn't they do that?" or "Wait, what's their relationship?" keep popping up. And for the most part, those questions never get answered.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 17, 2010

This haunting drama by Claire Denis burns with a mute fear and rage at the ongoing atrocities in central Africa.

| Dec 17, 2010

A mournful, frightening, powerful film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 9, 2010

Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, "White Material" is an altogether stunning work.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2010

A visually ravishing, structurally beguiling portrait of post-colonial race-conflict as a hallucinatory apocalyptic dream.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 1, 2010

The films of the masterful French director Claire Denis often brilliantly portray the true complexity of life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 19, 2010

It's a disorientingly beautiful movie at times, which promises -- as Denis always does, I think -- that human madness and human love will balance each other out, in the fullness of time.

Full Review | Nov 19, 2010

'White Material" unites France's most precious actress, Isabelle Huppert, with one of that nation's leading directors, Claire Denis. The result is as impressive as one would expect.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 19, 2010

Its dramatic vexations are at war with Denis' prodigious visual skill. And the fight, ultimately, rewards the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 19, 2010

A striking film filled with images that sometimes reveal their full meaning only when their beauty curdles in the chain of signification.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 18, 2010

The chief pleasure of Claire Denis' work is that it's incomplete, at least in the sense that the audience has to be engaged in completing it.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 18, 2010

This is a beautiful, puzzling film. The enigmatic quality of Huppert's performance draws us in.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 18, 2010

An intense, mysterious drama exploring revolution and loss.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 18, 2010

Almost everything here seems off.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2010

[Claire Denis's] tense, convulsive White Material is a portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty.

| Nov 16, 2010