Former president Barack Obama is not interviewed during the five hours of Peter Kunhardt’s HBO docuseries “Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union.” The two-term president is instead shown speaking from the past: in old news features, from behind a podium, or at a barbershop, ragging on a constituent’s shoes. But this documentary is not…

French director Leos Carax was once asked if his name was “real” or “assumed.” He answered, “It’s a real assumed name.” This was not a wisecrack. Ever since he made his directorial debut at the age of 24, he has played around with the real and the assumed, the truth and the lie. In many…

In the opening paragraph of his review of “Pola X,” the fourth film from acclaimed French director Leos Carax, Roger Ebert wrote “It takes a raving lunatic to know one. Not that I have ever met Leos Carax, the director of “Pola X,” so that I can say for sure he’s as tempestuous and impulsive…

Aside from being Roger’s wife and partner in life for 24 years, my movie viewing was also influenced by Siskel and Ebert. They started on public television in Chicago, WTTW, in 1975, and remain part of the zeitgeist, influencing how we watch movies, even to this very day. So when I was contacted by Brian…

Billy Corben knows how to let people tell their own stories. That might sound easy, but it’s not. In films like “Cocaine Cowboys” and “Screwball,” he draws fascinating anecdotes from people and really understands how to cut together sound bites to form a narrative. Let people feel comfortable enough to tell their own stories, and…

On paper, Michael Sarnoski’s “Pig” sounds almost absurd: a man goes to the nearest city to find his beloved stolen pig. But the movie’s outward simplicity and absurdity belie its layered spiritual depths. Even the story mirrors a parable told in the Hebrew Bible, flipped on its head: a very rich man who has more…