Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
As Robert Clift states in the film: “The people in my life who loved Monty lost him twice: in his death, and then again when they couldn’t find him in[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Essays
I think that this delicate line between reality, and fact, and truth needs to be more clearly defined. We have to redefine reality.1 – Werner Herzog There are dignified stupidities.[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Medical
We’re reposting this review of The Bleeding Edge today, July 27, as it debuts on Netflix. See this important documentary. * * * This is the kind of cogent, well-researched exposé[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
The film’s childhood-centric poignancy is underscored by the depravity of today’s kindergarteners having to be concerned more with the logistics of hardened desks or evacuation drills thanks in part to[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
“I’m grateful I didn’t grow up with Barbie.” – Gloria Steinem * * * Gloria Steinem isn’t alone. Lisa Simpson hates Barbie. Feminist writer Roxanne Gay wishes Barbie had never[…]
Comedy · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards
The effect is intimate, but not particularly enlightening. Love, Gilda offers a lot of reminiscing, some sweet (and a few heavy) insights, but very little new information about Radner’s life.[…]
Covering topics as banal as the production of plastics and as profound as cultural appropriation, these films aren’t workaday projects so much as serious visual essays that extend Resnais’ preoccupation[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
“All time exists all the time” – from the documentary What Is Reality? * * * Emancipate yourself from the tunnel-visioned timekeeper! Return the unbending arrow of time to its[…]
The notion of the body as entry to the soul becomes a fallacy: penetration is not a portal to another person’s psyche – just as Sagawa’s cannibalism of Hartevelt could[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Davies – who can be described as a cultural conservative but never a simple nostalgist – wears his affection for his forgotten eras on his sleeve, generally eschewing close-ups in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words makes clear that her life was messy and episodic, but she earned great love from her directors, co-stars, and family. Don’t wait for Mommie[…]
Documentaries · Religion & Spirituality
Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016) can be read as a brilliant subversion of the colonising role that the camera plays in appropriating native cultures in favour of Western[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · War
Naturally, Huston was furious about the film’s suppression and remained so all through the intervening years. In his words, “I think it boils down to the fact that they wanted[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries
Jeffrey Toobin, whose 2008 New Yorker article inspired this film, describes Roger Stone as “a malevolent Forrest Gump.” Stone is more than okay with that. He’s happy for people to[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival started April 19 and runs through April 30. Claire Baiz reports on a film screened in the fest’s “Spotlight Documentary” section on one of[…]
The story is that of the driven, disciplined youth turned rebellious and excessive – brought to the fore by Ilan Eshkeri’s viscerally punchy soundtrack – but also of an almost[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · New Media
Black Code sheds light on the commercialisation of cybercrime through the development of surveillance malware by security companies for sale to governments. Referring to Orwell’s seminal work 1984, Shehabi notes[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
On this day, March 9, 1959, Barbie was introduced to the world at New York’s American International Toy Fair. The date also became Barbie’s official birthday. She’s 58. To honor/revile what[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
The response to Weiner shows us (yet again) that the greater the access to a subject, the more likely a documentary is to be lavishly praised . . . no[…]
African American · Crime · Documentaries
By ignoring the black lives involved, the new Netflix documentary Amanda Knox (premiering on Netflix on September 30) is not only a very white film, it ends up producing its own miscarriage of[…]
