One of the world's most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital—and post-9/11—age. This witty and allusive book in the style of classic film theorists/critics like André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer includes considerations of global cinema's most important figures and films from Lars von Trier and Jia Zhangke to <i>WALL-E</i> <i>Avatar</i> and <i>Inception</i>.