HOWARD ZINN: YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN is a robust telling of the historian’s life and times that does the spirit of the man credit. First Run Feature has re-released the 2004 documentary with a plethora of bonus features, and were smart enough to realize that the only thing better than this… Read More »
Illuminating DARK STAR: H.R. GIGER’S WORLD
DARK STAR: H.R. GIGER’s WORLD provides much of the information we would expect from an documentary appreciation in cinematic form of an artist’s work. We are given a glimpse into his private life. We are given tantalizing clues into the childhood events from whence sprang the psyche that expresses itself with such strange and compelling images; who… Read More »
Caroll Spinney Says I AM BIG BIRD
I AM BIG BIRD is a gentle, sensitive film about a gentle, sensitive man. The man is Caroll Spinney, known to perhaps a billion people as his alter ego, Big Bird, on Sesame Street, but revealed here as the creative force as both a master puppeteer and as an actor willing to bury himself, literally,… Read More »
TANGERINES (Mandariinid)
There are films that tear you limb from limb with their shrill bombast and flagrant moralizing, and then there are films like TANGERINES, that quietly break your heart with the folly of humankind. This year’s Oscar™ nominee for best foreign language film from Estonia is an anti-war statement of the first order, and one that… Read More »
How to Wield A CANDLESTICK
It takes a great deal of moxie to begin a film by referencing Hitchcock in both title sequence and score, but director/co-writer Christopher Presswell’s CANDLESTICK does just that, and then, with an impudent wink at the audience, does a more than credible job of making good on its promise. An intelligently crafted plot, driven by… Read More »
NED RIFLE Completes the Cycle
Hal Hartley is the master of astringent whimsy and scathingly erudite satire. No better examples of his talents are to be found than HENRY FOOL (1997) and its follow-up, FAY GRIM (2007). Both deal with a character, Henry (Robert John Burke), who may or may not be the devil inserting himself into the desperately dull… Read More »
GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
Alex Gibney has proven himself an able and engaging documentarian, bringing to light with films such as TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, and most recently THE ARMSTRONG LIE, the hubris, self-deception, and other foibles of human nature that allow people to commit crimes without ever quite admitting to… Read More »
TROUBLE THE WATER
Tia Lessen and Carl Deal went to Louisiana just days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans with the idea of making a documentary about the Louisiana National Guard troops who returning home from Iraq to find their homes changed forever. Instead, while doing an interview for that film, two people walked up and introduced themselves.… Read More »
OLIVE OR TWIST
Consider the martini. That just what Peter Moody has done with OLIVE OR TWIST, a kitschy 55-minute valentine to that most persistent and evocative of cocktails. Standard references will give you facts, figures, and the twisted history surrounding Martini’s origins, but only Moody will also give you the ambiance, the gestalt, and yes, the cult… Read More »
CROP CIRCLES: QUEST FOR TRUTH DVD
Last fall, when I saw William Gazeckis intriguing documentary, CROP CIRCLES: QUEST FOR TRUTH, I came away wanting to see more. Now that CIRCLES is out on DVD, I get my wish. Though, to be honest, I still want to see more, but then Gazecki has found a topic that is endlessly fascinating and seemingly… Read More »
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