A horror movie about Christian nationalism, Jesus Camp investigates the religious indoctrination of children, noting very little regard for charity or kindness. –September 30, 2024
Tag: Documentary
American Symphony
American Symphony is the best romance-turned biography of the decade. –February 29, 2024
Waltz with Bashir
Waltz with Bashir animates one man’s autobiography around the horror of service in the Israeli Defense Force. Powerful stuff for all it suggests and refers to and considers. –February 29, 2024
Faces Places
Faces Places centers on how art creates memories that can be thoughtfully considered. Magnificent. The penultimate work of Agnès Varda approaching her 90th birthday. –November 30, 2023
Grizzly Man
Don’t mess with nature is the message of Grizzly Man, in which a wild man-turned-bear’s meal gallivants across Alaska. –November 30, 2023
Murderball
Disability is a tough subject, and Murderball adjusts our POV through a sports story that makes me cry. –November 30, 2023
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour presents breathtaking photography of the most dominant voice in pop music today. Must have been a real drag for front row concertgoers. –October 31, 2023
Cameraperson
Cameraperson is the memoir of a cinematographer (Kirsten Johnson) who uses outtakes to consider life, death, pain, satisfaction, and beauty. I cried three times. –October 31, 2023
Shoah
Shoah means “catastrophe”, and Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary demonstrates what this means through first-hand, heart-breaking testimony. –September 30, 2023
Blackfish
Blackfish is about captive mammals that kill people. And you’ll believe they were justified. –September 30, 2023
They Shall Not Grow Old
Colorization mangles source footage for commercial appeal. Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Oldembraces this potential and marries colorization with sound recordings of now-dead soldiers to arrive at something upsettingly, impressively, vivid. –July 31, 2023
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Summer of Soul is a slice of cultural history made interesting through vivid music. Peak for Sly and the Family Stone, the Staples Singers, and The 5th Dimension, and feel free to cry when you watch people watch themselves in images from 50 years in the past. –May 31, 2023
Perspolis
Take 1: I re-watch it every few years, and Persepolis is always a treat. Why? It’s an animated documentary that treats a girl’s transition into womanhood as something worth celebrating, warts, war, cubist people, and all. Take 2: Again, Persepolis pleases me, this time for the benefit of my second daughter. Wow. –July 31, 2023
My Octopus Teacher
My Octopus Teacher is a beautiful-looking nature documentary about a man who falls in love with a mollusc on the way to accepting his place in the natural world. –May 31, 2023
Pumping Iron
Pitching Pumping Iron by contextualizing the history of bodybuilding is a fast track to yawns. Instead, notice how it’s the story of nearly naked men cruising each other while starving themselves on the way to a public pose down that made Arnold famous. –May 31, 2023
2000 Mules
2000 Mules is not about animal husbandry. –April 30, 2023
Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 suggests that George W. Bush destroyed America through the War on Terror. You may hate the film, but you’ll remember Lila Lipscomb and the found footage of American troopers in combat. –October 31, 2022
Super Size Me
“A Pizza Hut! A Pizza Hut! Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut!” –September 30, 2022
David Byrne’s American Utopia
David Byrne’s American Utopia is Spike Lee’s whitest movie. And it’s brilliant. –May 31, 2022
Bus 174
Poverty + Violence X Time = Tragedy: or, the story of Bus 174 that thoughtfully, vividly, and critically considers a real-life Brazilian bus hostage situation that ended terribly. –December 31, 2021
Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine hits hard when it uses the surveillance footage inside Columbine High. Otherwise, it’s a guy with a weight problem talking to people who all agree that guns let people shoot people, and we all know that already, don’t we? –October 31, 2020
RBG
Being supported by women all my life, the documentary of RBG’s life RBG is like a salve for all the meanness I am aware of in the world. I cried a lot. You might, too. –August 31, 2020
The Biggest Little Farm
The Biggest Little Farm is a noble experiment in transforming White guilt into sustainable living. It’s a model few can emulate, but it’s worth remembering when buying apples out of season. –April 30, 2020
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus made really bad movies. But they made a lot of really bad movies, and a couple of gems, too. See Electric Bugaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films to learn the full history of their weird, mediocre genius. –March 31, 2020
78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
“78 Shots & 52 Cuts that Changed Cinema Forever” Film studies is reducible to several main approaches: aesthetic-technical, theoretical-ideological, self-reflective, socio-cultural, and/or obscurantist-celebratory.[1] In all five approaches, the point is expressing pleasure, for if a person doesn’t feel drawn to thinking about movies, there is no reason for any film studies project. But if a person… Continue reading 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
Stop Making Sense
“I’ve got a tape I want to play.” –December 31, 2019
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert is brilliant. Equal parts storytelling + profane turns of phrase + racial mimicry + nervy performance = Kevin Hart X 2. –November 30, 2019
Surviving Home
Surviving (adjective): remaining alive, especially after the death of another or others Home (noun): 1- the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family; 2- an institution for people needing professional care; 3- the goal or end point; 4- the place where a player is free from attack; 5- a game on… Continue reading Surviving Home
Sans Soleil
“Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything – except wounds.” French filmmaker Chris Marker experimented widely across his 60+ year career, most often as an essayist. The reason this term of art fits is that his body of work, including shorts, features, books, and installations,… Continue reading Sans Soleil
I Am Not Your Negro
When Samuel L. Jackson stops chewing scenery and simply narrates the words of James Baldwin, the result is a kind of magic. I Am Not Your Negro is a showcase for documentary editing and sound mixing, and also of Black American creative brilliance. –October 31, 2019
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Take 1: Jiro Dreams of Sushi features an artist. See it on an empty stomach and avoid your local grocery store’s prefab sushi lunch trays forever. Take 2: Jiro Dreams of Sushi presents edible magic in movie form. –November 30, 2024
Winged Migration
“The story of bird migration is the story of promise – a promise to return.” It’s difficult to overstate the scale of the natural world. This planet is big; the oceans cover most of the world’s surface area; we are but a speck among teaming millions of living species, competing with one another for water… Continue reading Winged Migration
Fail State
Higher education is expensive. Many students do poorly, get into debt, and drop-out, and that’s a design feature of many for-profit schools. Read all about it in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Lower Ed and/or watch Alexander Shebanow’s doc Fail State. –April 20, 2019
Free Solo
When a person commits suicide unsuccessfully, and they have world-class balance, strength, and Autism spectrum single-mindedness, that person might Free Solo like Alex Honnold. Remember: he climbed El Capitan without safety equipment, alone. –March 31, 2019
Riding Giants
Ocean waves are beautiful but mean. People who ride them are crazy. People who make movies about crazy athletes riding beautiful, mean waves are magicians. See Riding Giants. –December 31, 2018
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
“Cults, they prey on people, suggesting that, you know, you should be able to think for yourself and then tell you exactly how you have to think, or get out. And if you get out, there will be consequences.” It’s easy to throw stones at Scientology. The group is variously called a cult or thriving… Continue reading Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
When We Were Kings
“I have wrestled with an alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.” Long before he was an ad man for an electric grill, George Forman hit hard. In Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings (1996) we see this power expressed through archival footage of the young Foreman training with… Continue reading When We Were Kings
American Promise
“Fourteen years in the making.” The idea of watching documentaries turns many people off. In fact, the number of blockbuster documentaries in history is short; only Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) has earned $100 million in box office receipts, compared to a minimum of 700 fictional feature-length blockbusters. Why is this the case? One reason is the… Continue reading American Promise
Looking for Richard
“What’s this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?” What, exactly, is Looking for Richard, the 1996 directorial debut-documentary of Oscar-Emmy-Tony winning actor Al Pacino? First: Looking for Richard is Pacino’s sincere pursuit of the reasons why Americans don’t like William Shakespeare. Despite the fact that “Richard III,” the historical play Shakespeare wrote during the period 1592-1594, may… Continue reading Looking for Richard
Inequality for All
“We make the rules of the economy – and we have the power to change those rules.” Possession of a steady income leads to asset accumulation that can, over time, lead to wealth and make a person immune to the tides of financial markets or personal catastrophe. Jacob Kornbluth’s lecture-documentary Inequality for All (2013) focuses on former… Continue reading Inequality for All
Religulous
Bill Maher mocks God(s) in Religulous and then lets faithful people offer terrible origin stories. The best part is touring the Creation Museum. –August 30, 2018
Pumping Iron II: The Women
Pumping Iron II: The Women almost has its Arnold in Rachel McLish, but mostly it’s a sideshow concerning the way female strength was once an addendum to bikini contests and dance competitions before it became a building block for all sports, generally. –April 30, 2018
The Red Chapel
North Korea is mostly off-limits outsiders, so any glimpse into its social fabric is interesting. The Red Chapel is real-life agit prop built around two comedians, earlier adopted out of NK, now returning to it on a cultural exchange to satirize life inside an authoritarian state. –April 30, 2018
Rodents of Unusual Size
Take 1: Documentaries are best when they explore a subject that you didn’t know you urgently wanted to know more about. Rodents of Unusual Size is one such glimpse of the fascinating problem of nutria in North America. See it for the orange incisors. Then shop for a nutria-skin coat. Take 2: Watching Rodents of Unusual Size among newbies… Continue reading Rodents of Unusual Size
American Teacher
A chronicle of public education, American Teacher concentrates on the lives four people in a several years-long study. Sometimes dry, sometimes maddening, always on the level with seeing how care-giving adults try to encourage an education among children. –March 31, 2018
Life, Animated
ASD folks face many challenges. Life, Animated concerns one non-verbal boy who acquires speech and meaning through watching Disney videotapes on the way to manhood where he seeks independence from the limits of neuro-atypical life. –February 28, 2018
13th
Ava DuVernay is a big deal. Her doc 13th is about the US Constitution and America’s carceral state. Like DuVernay, it’s really provocative, and it reveals the “natural” rule of law as something constructed, artificial, biased, and cruel. –February 28, 2018
