The obsession with due process and the cult of brutal prisons, the argument goes, share an essential impersonality.

NEWYORKER: The Caging of America

The animation, computer-assisted in some of the more elaborate sequences, is sometimes impressive, but rarely impressive enough to overcome a certain impersonality a stubborn mechanical coldness.

NEWYORKER: The Lion King

Northern impersonality and Southern revenge converge on a common American theme: a growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies.

NEWYORKER: The Caging of America

Assayas is a virtuoso with the camera, and he may have something serious to say about the brutal impersonality of global capitalism, yet the characters jump around so much, and shift alliances so rapidly, that you wind up not giving a damn about any of them.

NEWYORKER: Boarding Gate