It seems that every time I come to review a documentary, I have the urge to expound on the virtues and potential great fortune of the medium. For like any genre of film, documentary has the ability to transcend mere entertainment. Regardless of whether its subject is biographical, historical, or political, it can permeate…
Cheryl Strayed hiked the 1,100-mile expanse of the Pacific Crest Trail for a reason not dissimilar from any generic, vanilla character study: she was attempting to “find herself.” But there is something uniquely human about Cheryl’s story, and something deeply moving about Wild, a film whose sneaky profundity feels indebted …
Joe Albany (John Hawkes) is a talented musician living in Hollywood during the 1970. He deeply loves jazz, his young daughter Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning), and heroin. The real Joe Albany was esteemed, playing with well-recognized musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Director Jeff Preiss tells the story of Joe from …
Every person is different. Every relationship is unique, with its own ups and downs, its own intricacies and complexities. Any group has its own dynamics that are worked out over time, its own ways of functioning, its own definition of functional. Everybody has a story, and no two stories are alike. All of these things are fairly …
The wait has been exceptionally long, but the new trailer for Foxcatcher, let’s us know just how close general audiences are to seeing what looks like a terrifying Steve Carell. A full…
I have never hiked, but I have friends who have done some crazy hikes. I have no survival skills. However, one day in a post partum depression phase after a walk, I decided to run a marathon. I needed to prove something to myself, at least, that I could do something with my life. Checking off the miles on my training schedule had me progressing and pushing my limits. Every long…
Mere days before its premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, we are offered a glimpse at Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini with its first trailer. As its title suggests, the film is focused…
Klinger’s Double Play (2014) incorporates cinema history into the readings of two similar minded but stylistically different auteurs of our time. Beginning with shots from a program called Cinema de notre temps (Cinema of our time), and images of famous film critics, historians, and filmmakers, such as Andre Bazin, Klinger ensures that a …
The below- freezing conditions, mind-affecting isolation and destructive winter snowstorms - why would anyone want to live in Antarctica? And the ones that have braved those horrible conditions, who the heck are these people? With all the possible scientific angles on that southern icy continent covered in various documentaries already, these questions remained…
Joe Berlinger, the Academy Award-nominated documentarian behind Paradise Lost and Some Kind of Monster, collaborated with CNN Films to make his newest film about Whitey Bulger and the recent legal proceedings surrounding his case. The film doesn’t cover much about Bulger’s personal history as a criminal, opting more to …