Michael Barker

"My first foreign film experience, at the age of eleven, is one of the finest films on the subject of the Holocaust. Without showing any scenes of extreme violence, it fully realizes, through its simple characters, the devastation of what happened and how it can happen if people don’t pay attention or fall prey to delusion. Here is where I also discovered great acting for the first time. Forty years later, Ida Kaminska and Josef Kroner’s performances remain amongst the best I have ever seen on the screen."

"The lack of interest in Fassbinder’s work depresses the hell out of me. For me, he is the birth of the new. His high-concept stories, told in bold dramatic strokes and with vibrant colors, teach us about everything from class and racial politics to family responsibility and true love. His theatricality comes out of the Brecht mold, but it is new, it is melodramatic and involving and funny, often bitter and ironic, always with good humor, but, for me anyway, never cynical. He wears his heart and soul on his sleeve. He traverses the taboo, attacks intolerance, and loves his characters so much, even if at first they appear totally unappealing. Fassbinder is an original, and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is one of his best films, made on the run like so many of his others. The world would be a better place if more people embraced movies like this one."

"A visual and aural feast. The best movie ever made about moviemaking. Greece and Brigitte Bardot provide the purest form of seduction; Jack Palance provides the sleaziest. The subtext that explains the title is sexual politics at its most provocative. Every frame of this movie is invigorating. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard and composer Georges Delerue deserve to be canonized. The already anointed Fritz Lang, playing himself, gives the film yet another pleasurable dimension of film truth."

"A powerful story told simply and with finesse. This movie is all clarity and as lean as a movie can be. A tale of redemption that has inspired and influenced countless other really good movies. The protagonist’s face will haunt your dreams. This one is a real beauty. Paul Schrader’s DVD introduction (once again) provides an ideal context."