Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****

According to her own commentary on this new DVD, Czech filmmaker Pavla Fleischer decided to make The Pied Piper of Hutzovina after taking a drunken car ride around Prague in 2004 with Eugene Hütz—the frontman of gypsy punk/hip-hop, New York-based band Gogol Bordello. Apparently she was so smitten by his boisterous but lively personality (not to mention his incredible sense of fashion), that making a film about him was the only excuse she could come up with to draw his attention and make him spend some time with her, hoping that he shared the same romantic interest towards her as she did for him.

To believe that Fleischer went into all that trouble, just so that Hütz would return her affections is somewhat far fetched. Yet, watching this documentary that takes us from London (where the director resides) and New York, to Kiev, Moscow, and Siberia where the successful band leader attempts to reconnect with his gypsy roots, one soon understands where Fleischer is coming from. Hütz has plenty of charm and charisma, and following him in his musical exchanges with gypsies who live in camps in Carpathia, and in meeting with his heroes, friends, and family, is truly an enjoyable experience.

Continue reading "The Pied Piper of Hutzovina" »

Posted by at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Until she made this extraordinary documentary debut in 2006 (at the Tribeca Film Fest), Linda Hattendorf had labored mostly as a film editor; her best-known work was probably on Josh Pais’ 7th Street and Danny Schechter’s In Debt We Trust. Then The Cats of Mirikitani [official site] was released to enormous critical acclaim, winning every one of the fifteen awards for which it was nominated at festivals worldwide. Still, it was not much seen by the general public. Its DVD release this month should slowly remedy that, especially with good word of mouth.

Continue reading "The Cats of Mirikitani" »

Posted by at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

Rob Stewart's gorgeously shot, informative - and wistful - documentary Sharkwater is about that mysterious and fascinating, and, the film argues, the most misunderstood, of all sea animals. If the film sometimes gets a little choppy, the filmmaker's passion for the subject and the disturbing revelations to be gained from watching the film make it more than worthwhile.

The youthful Canadian underwater photographer and biologist Stewart, who quit his job to make this film, narrates and "stars," along with a host of sharks. Sharkwater begins with montage VO from old shark documentaries which include a hilariously misinformed bit of instruction from the Navy on scaring off sharks when in the water, followed by montage of media portrayals of shark attacks, adding to the fear factor. It "makes 'good television," says one frustrated shak researcher. But after initial, entertaining educational section of the film, it segues into a disturbing examination of how sharks are being illegally hunted - most often, and most cruelly, for their fins - as Stewart joins in with GreenPeace's Paul Watson, a fellow Canadian and one of the most passionate and renowned defender of marine life.

Continue reading "Sharkwater" »

Posted by at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen

My Kid Could Paint That
Rating (out of 5): ****

Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollack
Rating (out of 5): ***

Two recent documentaries provide some fascinating glimpses into art, artists, the media, marketing and the documentary process itself, all the while slapping the viewer this way and that, as the stories told (they're both mysteries of a sort) grow stranger, sadder and funnier until they approach the ridiculous and the sublime. Often at the same time.

You've undoubtedly heard about the subjects of these films, for both were covered by the media --mostly, as is typical of our "news," in bits, pieces and sounds bites. The beauty of these documentaries is the depth of exploration they provide. You may come away feeling less certain about "Is it or isn't it?" (in the case of Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollack) or "Did she or didn't she?" (regarding My Kid Could Paint That), but you'll have entered a complicated world in which "truth" is not so easily accessed and may not exist at all. Best of all, even if you don't approach either film with any heavy-duty art credentials (or interest), both encompass so much more (class, wealth, parenting and responsibility, to start a very long list of themes) that they should easily grab and hold you.

Continue reading "Art & Commerce: My Kid Could Paint That and Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock" »

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): ****

For a while, I mulled over whether to limit my recommendation of American Hardcore to just fans of the music. And decided firmly against it.

American Hardcore is a great film, and, like the genre of music it showcases, too many Americans missed it the first time around. For the unaware, Hardcore Punk (or simply Hardcore) arose out of the more familiar Sex Pistols/ Ramones school of punk rock from the late 1970s. Characterized by speed, loudness, violence, an aversion to any attempts to lump it into mainstream arena-rock, and a visceral hatred of Ronald Reagan, hardcore emerged as a true grassroots, underground force in the music scene, and has had a tremendous influence on rock music ever since.

Continue reading "American Hardcore: Not just for hardcore fans" »

Posted by at 3:02 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***

The great Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) lived on the fringes, unwilling and unable to accept the humdrum. Jerry Aronson's documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg marches steadfastly down the middle, following all the accepted rules of documentary filmmaking. Sure, it's a very good journalistic presentation of facts, and things that happened to Ginsberg during his life, but it doesn't do much in letting us know just who he was. It's a shame because Aronson actually had access to Ginsberg in person over many years, and the best he manages to get is a few poetry readings. The litmus test for this kind of film is Crumb (1995), in which the subject became so comfortable in front of the camera and his director, Terry Zwigoff, that he laid bare his soul.

Continue reading "The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg" »

Posted by at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): ****

"Helvetica is like air. It's instantly recognizable and forgettable." These words are spoken fairly early in Helvetica, a surprisingly fascinating documentary about, of all things, typefaces. Specifically, the Helvetica typeface which was first introduced to graphic designers in the 1960s and has since become a worldwide phenomenon. From its roots in classical Danish printer's workshops, to the explosion of '60s mod culture, to its eventual adoption by corporate and government public-relations teams, I found myself realizing that I see the Helvetica typeface (don't call it a font) dozens of times per day without ever noticing it.

Helvetica is a short, sweet, and to-the-point documentary, and a great viewing experience. As an added bonus, you will no doubt start to find yourself spotting the typeface in the most unexpected places.

Posted by at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): ***

The “quirky” documentary has had a long history of sad subjects with goofy, yellow-colored posters, the marketing departments correctly assuming that people would rather laugh than squirm at unflinching looks at humanity. So filmmakers have mined deeply the vein of odd folks at the fringes of society, and this film is no different.

The characters of Matt Ogens' Confessions of a Superhero (produced and introduced by Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock) come from the same funny/sad dichotomy as the denizens of American Movie, Grey Gardens or even Errol Morris' folk from Vernon, Florida and Gates of Heaven. It's the kind of movie where, at first blush, the viewer is supposed to think “Freaks,” before softening near the end and learning something about society and themselves. Or at least that's the hope.

Continue reading "Confessions of a Superhero" »

Posted by at 11:24 PM | Permalink

By Erin Donovan

These were the best documentaries I saw this year, new to theaters or new to DVD in '07.

51 Birch Street - Doug Block, so incensed by the betrayal of his father getting remarried just 3 months after the death of his mother, turns an investigative lens on the once romanticized memories of his childhood to discover (via decades of journals, interviews with friends and home-made movies) the starkly different inner life his mother was leading to the woman he'd grown up with. Through the discovery of sad and ordinary dysfunctions 51 Birch Street is as much a touching family portrait as it is a window into the generational contrast between expectations about marriage.

Girl 27 - A surprising documentary that played to quiet appreciation at Sundance this year. Girl 27 starts out as a true crime expose about a vicious assault and the cover up by the svengalis of 1930s Hollywood but becomes a touching (platonic) romance about how intertwined a documentary film-makers can become with their subjects.

King Corn - Two affable food activists grow an acre of corn in Iowa and attempt to trace it into our food system only to learn that between starchy fast foods, artificial sweeteners and preservatives Americans eat so much corn that an acre (producing 10,000 pounds) is a mere drop in the bucket. In the vein of Super Size Me, co-stars/directors Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis create an oral history of a declining farm town as well as illuminate some of the absurdities of food production in America.

Manufactured Landscapes - Director Jennifer Baichwal (already having demonstrated a flare for creating fascinating portraits of artists with her previous work The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia and Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles) uses the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky to examine the human toll and ecological exploitation of global industrialism. Manufactured Landscapes plays like the cinematic, silent film version of Inconvenient Truth.

Continue reading "Best Docs of 2007" »

Posted by at 2:58 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Any movie that knocks about your most cherished belief, say, that Capitalism--or, what the hell, Communism, Christianity, the Internet, the motion picture industry--is the greatest achievement of the modern world, is to be treasured. Doubting one's dream is generally salutary, and Czech Dream leaves us doing just this—and more; this little (less-than-90-minutes) documentary is a knockout.

The concept is certainly original and funny: Filmmakers Vít Klusák and Filip Remundathe use modern marketing techniques to wage a massive promotional campaign for a super-supermarket in the Czech Republic--only it's all a ruse. The film is full of surprising and meaningful moments, all along the way: the ad man explaining why he can't "lie" is wonderfully ironic, even touching, in its naiveté. But the best is the last half hour, once the hoax has been unmasked. Seeing/hearing the various Czechs give us their thoughts and feelings on the matter forces us, too, to stop and think about how we are all manipulated, by all the media--left, right and center--all the time. These two Czech filmmakers, bless their hearts and minds, have opened the door a crack wider so that we can begin to see and understand this influence/control of the people by the powers that be and by society itself, our ever-loving peers.

Continue reading "Czech Dream: A welcome consumer nightmare" »

Posted by at 2:09 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

The mystery of family has received some major exploration over the past few years, particularly in the documentary category: Capturing the Friedmans and 51 Birch Street are two that spring immediately to mind. To these, and others, must now be added Red Without Blue, the fascinating, low-key, painful, sad, funny and majestic true-life movie by Brooke Sebold, Benita Sills and Todd Sills. All three are credited with writing, producing and directing; Brooke and Benita handled the editing and Brooke and Todd the cinematography. Talk about a collaborative venture. However it happened, the end result is rich and nearly seamless in its examination of twin brothers, their mother and father, the lover of one of the twins and a few more assorted friends and family.

As usual, I suggest you go into this movie knowing little more about the facts than what I've just told you because the surprises in store are many and strong. This is a journey for the subjects on view and for the viewers, too, and where it takes us all is pretty amazing. Many narratives and documentary films these days are heralded for being "non-judgmental"; until I saw Red Without Blue, I don't think I had nearly the understanding of that term that I now possess. As with all documentaries, I did find myself wondering, "Can all of this be true? And how would I really ever know?" But then I decided that, were this fiction, I'd buy it just as willingly. Because these filmmakers have found a way to reach out to their subjects and their viewers--and bring us all home.

Posted by at 10:04 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): ****

The Road to Guantanamo is not what I expected. In a market flush with post-9-11 documentaries, I was expecting more of the same: interviews with experts, former government officials, a brief history lesson, some stock footage, a few classic rock songs, and maybe a stunt or two thrown in to spice things up.

Instead, The Road to Guantanamo presents us with the firsthand accounts of three former detainees from Tipton, England. Asif, Shafiq and Ruhel, along with their cousin, are arrested in war-torn Afghanistan after haphazardly deciding to become fighters. Using reenacted scenes and interviews with the three young men, filmmakers Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom present the viewer with a savage and suspenseful tale of mistaken identity. The film is still timely, too - the three men are tortured (in brutal re-enactments) by American and British intelligence trying to get a false confession out of them.

Continue reading "The Road to Guantanamo" »

Posted by at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): **½

So Goes the Nation takes a look at the grassroots mobilization of voters during the hotly contested 2004 Presidential election. Documentary filmmakers Adam Del Deo and James Stern (who's had a more successful career as a producer) follow rival bands of political volunteers for the Kerry and Bush Ohio campaigns, in an examination interspersed with interviews with more well-known national political and media figures.

Although the film is an interesting look at the campaign strategy of the 2004 election, sadly it also already feels a little dated as we gear up for the next Presidential race. Folks that are interested in politics will regard much of the subject material as old news and other viewers might be turned off by the wonk-ish nature of a film that examines the nuts and bolts of campaign strategy.

But for newcomers to the political scene, So Goes the Nation provides a worthy refresher course on the 2004 election. The director commentary provides some added insight into the making of the documentary and more background on the personalities interviewed.

Overall So Goes the Nation is a solid, admirably fair-minded film, but most people will probably be more interested in 2008, than 2004.

See also: Unprecedented: 2000 Election ; Bush's Brain

Posted by at 12:13 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): ****

From Tugboats to Polar Bears

Recommending experimental short films can be a tough business. As so much of liking a regular movie is about taste, it seems that with shorts it can even be more so. They're the pinncale of the vitamin movie in your queue - the one that's in there that you should watch because it's "good for you," even if the thought of watching it is grim business. Well, while Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick's From Tugboats to Polar Bears is indeed a compendium of short films, some of which did even making their debuts in art galleries, it could hardly be thought of as anything but fine, engaging entertainment, with only the bare minimum of vitamins.

The best known of the collection - and the finest of the lot - is definitely The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal: a funny, thought provoking short narrated by Miranda July, of Me and You and Everyone You Know fame. The short posits that the city employees that drive around painting over graffiti with paint-rollers are they themselves the unwitting, subconscious members next step of abstract expressionism. It's laugh-out-loud good, poking gentle fun at graffiti artists, well-meaning governmental types and art theorists as well as giving you something to think about later while you stare at the blocky mis-colored boxes painted over tags or stencils on overpasses or warehouse walls.

Continue reading "From Tugboats to Polar Bears" »

Posted by at 3:17 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

If you're into movies that really deal with the importance of family--and not in a feel-good, Disney-fied way--give Journey From the Fall a try. I would particularly recommend it to those, like most of us, who felt the Vietnam War was a waste and a mistake, and those who followed the history, who knew that honest elections ought to have been held in that country when they were first promised, no matter that Ho Chi Minh would have easily won. All this may have been true, but it will not prepare you for the degradations experienced by those South Vietnamese left behind to endure "re-education" by the North. The family that is sundered here--dad left behind in a re-education camp, while mom, son and grandma try their escape via boat--is shown with great dignity.

Continue reading "Journey From the Fall: A South Vietnamese family story" »

Posted by at 7:09 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

The ever-charming, always good for a jest-at-the-expense-of-the-dead Donald Rumsfeld leads off Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, one of the best of the umpteen Iraq documentaries so far. Rummy makes a statement that, if any justice still prevails, should come back to haunt him and his "Decider" for the rest of their wanton lives. The movie--which covers the inane and terrorist-producing lack on the part of the Bush administration of any intelligent plan for what might happen once its fake "Mission Accomplished" occurred--treads relatively new ground among the Iraq docs. It speaks with people from whom we've not heard much: Jay Garner, the man originally in charge of post-invasion Iraq; Ambassador Barbara Bodine; Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State; and many more. What these people tell us, without mincing words but also with more pain, shock and regret than anger (the latter has undoubtedly already been spent), results in a very nearly air-tight case for the war being run about as badly as possible.

Continue reading "No End in Sight: Intellectual "shock doc"" »

Posted by at 9:47 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½

It's commendable that Kevin Smith and his View Askew production group (yes, the ones responsible for the Clerks movies, Chasing Amy and Dogma) helped produce and distribute Small Town Gay Bar, a documentary explores two gay bars in small Mississippi towns. Unless we've grown up in or--less likely--moved to a small town as an adult, we have little knowledge of what it's like to be "other" in a place where almost everybody knows your business. And the movie does give us entry into that somewhat creepy and inauspicious realm. While many of the straight denizens interviewed here are quick to point out their live-and-let-live philosophy, they let us know, just the same, that they don't much care for "that type." But then we learn about one young gay man, who was murdered while still in his late teens, who obviously was not the beneficiary of this "kindly and informed" philosophy.

Continue reading "Small Town Gay Bar: Exactly that, for better and worse" »

Posted by at 5:41 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***

According to none other than acclaimed author Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff) in Tom Thurman's documentary Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film, the gonzo journalist was one of the greatest comic writers of our time. It turns out that much of Hollywood made pilgrimages to visit Thompson at his home of many years in Woody Creek, Colorado, and many are interviewed in this engaging film, including John Cusack, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Gary Busey, Ed Bradley, Bill Murray and Johnny Depp (who lived in his basement for a while and described himself as a partner in crime with Thompson after they initially bonded over their mutual hometown of Louisville, Kentucky). "If you let Thompson into your psyche, he has this way of slipping in and out from time to time and continuing to inhabit you for the rest of your life." This was the cautionary advice Murray gave Depp over the phone just before Depp played a character based on Thompson (Raoul Duke) in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Murray knew all too well, having already portrayed Thompson himself in the underrated 1980 cult movie Where the Buffalo Roam (which co-starred Peter Boyle and Bruno Kirby). Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in February of 2005, and his ashes have since been shot out of a large cannon shaped like a two-thumbed fist (paid for by Depp and envisioned by Thompson) on the property of his Owl Farm in Woody Creek. This film (originally produced for the Starz channel) has been made as a sort of love note back to Thompson, with plenty of rarely seen, candid footage of the wily man himself, often in his kitchen telling stories or elsewhere in private settings, although his actual words are sometimes garbled and nearly indiscernible. There is likewise a rather incomprehensible narration by none other than raspy, ravaged-sounding Nick Nolte.

Continue reading "Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film" »

Posted by at 3:59 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): *½

For seven years the World Air Guitar training camp and championships existed in Finland as a meditative movement for peace focused on transforming the world through a communal perception change (no, really). Two American club promoters attended the camp in 2002 and upon realizing there was no American presence they spearheaded a US Air Guitar Championship to find the greatest to represent us on a world stage.

After the inaugural event was heavily plugged on the Howard Stern show, air guitar hopefuls (as well as people who just enjoy a good spectacle) came out in droves. And it's at this point when the brakes start squealing on any heady expectations of zen and the art of air guitar. This group consists of unemployed actors looking for non-traditional entrees into fame and disaffected, Brooklyn hipsters. In other words, the last people on Earth that need to be the focus of any 90 minute documentary that isn't about forcible organ donation. In Air Guitar Nation, their collective, ironic detachment is not helped by the fact that the film didn't secure licensing for most of the songs "played" so while we watch what would be pretty hilarious (after a few beers) performances we're only hearing voiceovers of these people trying to out-clever each other. And I probably don't need to tell you that if they had any gift for wit they wouldn't be there in the first place. A few choice nuggets: "Taking on a stage persona is a good way to create a barrier between you and the world, or you and your girlfriend." "Air guitar is probably less absurd than figure skating... if you think about it." Thanks for the share, guys.

Continue reading "Air Guitar Nation: Silent, but deadly." »

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Liz Hille
Rating (out of 5): ****

The beautifully shot film To Be and To Have started, admittedly, a little slow for me, but bit by bit I became hypnotized. French documentarian Nicolas Philibert takes us through a year in George Lopez's classroom--about a dozen kids, ages 4-11--in a rural section of Auvergne. Anyone who's taught is familiar with the chaotic scenes presented, and Philibert does a spectacular job of catching the quiet, banal moments that, when looking closer, are actually sublime. Nothing special happens in class: there are fights, dictations, distraction, but the patient and direct way Lopez deals with the kids is at the center of the film. He doesn't coddle nor lie to them, instead, he lovingly prepares them for the harsher world they'll soon be entering (for some, that's a larger, bureaucratic middle school).

Continue reading "To Be and To Have: To learn and to teach" »

Posted by at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

It's pretty easy to get fired up about Fired!, the short, funny and increasingly pertinent documentary from Annabelle Gurwitch, Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache about, yes, getting fired. Actress Gurwitch got the ax from no less a personage than Woody Allen, when he found her work wanting in one of his increasingly tiresome theatre pieces. According to Gurwitch, Allen was rather nasty in his choice of verbiage when he "let her go," and she shows us this via a scene between herself and a friend who does a very nice Woody imitation. Then she gets inspired to ask a many other people about their experiences of being fired. From this came a theatre piece, a book and, now, this film.

Our critical establishment roundly faulted the moviemakers for their choice of mostly actors as the subjects. Well, Gurwitch is an actor, so of course she's going to choose from her own field. And her choices--Tim Allen, Anne Meara, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Fisher Stevens, Illeana Douglas, Bob Odenkirk and many more--prove generally funny and pointed. The very best is Tate Donovan with his story, told via puppets, of getting the bounce from the movie version of Torch Song Trilogy. As with this section, the film team usually finds interesting ways to vary the film, so we don’t get as bored as we might by all the talking heads.

It's when Gurwitch and company move into the larger world (specifically of General Motors and Michigan, Michael Moore territory, though Gurwitch offers her own “take�? on the situation) that her film grows even more interesting and certainly a lot sadder. Her interviewees now include economist Robert Reich and others and, suddenly, what we've been chortling over takes on a much darker hue. Unless you have absolutely no appreciation of actors (and their lot in life), Fired! should make most of its 71 minutes entertaining and thought-provoking.

Posted by at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***

Director Ralph Arlyck's 2005 documentary Following Sean is based on the premise of a somewhat strange, but certainly compelling, reunion--namely, the act of revisiting the main character of your own film from 30 years ago.

Arlyck had lived in the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco at the height of the hippie revolution in the late 1960's and studied filmmaking at the time. During this period, he shot and edited together a short student film of a charming, barefooted four and a half year-old boy named Sean, the son of wild bohemian parents who lived in the boisterous apartment above him on Cole Street. The original film was apparently well-received in Europe but it became controversial in the U.S. because the seemingly frank young boy at one point says, "I smoke grass," (meaning marijuana) and when pressed further even boasts that he prefers to eat grass rather than smoke it. As Arlyck says in the voice-over of Following Sean, "Sean turned out to be the perfect foil for a decade known as infantile... This little boy I was so fond of, and his whole family, had become a symbol (of what was wrong with America), and it was my fault."

Continue reading "Following Sean: 34 and a half Up" »

Posted by at 4:59 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **** 1/2

In our current time of growing threats from fundamentalist religions of every sort, including increasingly rabid Holocaust deniers, a calm, thoughtful yet quite moving documentary such as Hiding and Seeking is of enormous importance. In fact, I haven't seen a more important film in quite some time. Made in 2003, released only briefly the following year, then shown on the PBS series POV in 2005, it is the work of a father/filmmaker Menachem Daum and his partner/friend Oren Rudavsky. Daum--disturbed by the idea of his two adult sons living in Israel, growing ever more circumscribed by their religious faith--organizes a trip to Poland, where he and his family can meet for the first time the Poles who saved the lives of his wife's family during WWII. Out of this grows a movie that witnesses how people come to terms with tolerance, faith, the "other," heroism, duty, and much more.

Continue reading "Hiding And Seeking: Unearthing something positive from the Holocaust in Poland" »

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

We could create a subgenre of documentaries that are about the filmmaker's estranged, or strange, relationship with their artist father - Tell Them Who You Are, Mark Wexler's film about his father, famed cinematographer Haskell, not to mention the superior My Architect, come to mind - but Lucia Small's unsettling little film My Father, the Genius, winner of the documentary jury prize at 2002's Slamdance Film Festival, is even more personal than most. What at first seems like a gentle salute to the man's undeniable talents and eccentricities gradually becomes something more interesting, and disturbing.

Continue reading "My Father, the Genius: Blueprint for family healing" »

Posted by at 10:32 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

How is it that the Diebold company still exists? In a country in which the citizens were more interested in their real well-being (rather than in being entertained into oblivion), any firm that provided completely "hackable" (perhaps intentionally so) voting machines that provided wrong results and then lied again and again about this fact would be out business, its leaders jailed, and its machines placed on the junk heap where they belong. Not here in the U.S., of course, where, these days, political connections trump ability, decency, common sense and all the other positive virtues. The documentary Hacking Democracy, first shown on HBO, tracks the course of one surprised, inquisitive and steadfast PR woman who begins to question voting results from Diebold's machines and turns this into full-time work that may yet pay enormous dividends to the American public. We watch, mouths agape, as Bev Harris and her co-workers track down more than enough evidence of wrong-doing (intentional or merely stupid?) at various poll sties across the country.

Continue reading "Hacking Democracy: Showing up Diebold for what it is." »

Posted by at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

What's great about the baseball documentary Bottom of the Ninth (2002), directed by Chuck Braverman, is that it isn't about hype. It's about heart and a genuine love of baseball that is palpable on the players' faces as they talk about their ongoing season with the minor league Somerset Patriots and the course of their lives to date. All of them appear to have sacrificed a great deal for their dream of playing professional baseball, and quite a few, if not most, have had to reluctantly give up the fantasy that they will some day make it big in the majors. With a running time of only 50 minutes, Bottom of the Ninth plays out more like a feature-length film and delivers the big picture of life in the minor leagues with simple clarity and a somewhat unexpected sense of compassion for the players caught in the throes of their passion for the game.

Continue reading "Bottom of the Ninth: Minor leagues, major heart." »

Posted by at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Garnering a bevy of swell reviews, the documentary The Heart Of The Game still managed to fall between the cracks with movie-goers during its quick theatrical release last year. Take advantage of the DVD opportunity to discover a fascinating and genuinely uplifting story about a new girl's basketball coach and the team and star player he helps bring to fruition. Director Ward Serrill manages to delve into things without making you feel like a voyeur or some scuzzy, gimme-all-the sordid-details, Court-TV camp follower. The documentary does open up some difficult subjects but Serrill's handling of these seems decent and honest. Even better, he raises important questions for which neither he nor life provides easy answers. You'll have to decide some things for yourself--why, for instance, does the coach insist on giving the team such aggressive, go-for-the-kill themes such as a marauding wolf pack that decimates its victims?

Considering everything that happens here, the director's restraint is surprising and laudatory. Instead of some mindless feel-good finish, the movie leaves you feeling positive, sure, but also aware of the larger picture and its importance to the lives on view. Basketball can be great fun (not to mention the discipline and life-lessons aspects), and so can the playoffs. But, as Serrill wisely shows us, they're just a part of The Heart of the Game.

Posted by at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

I am not sure, given a limited knowledge of film history and my rather circumscribed life, that documentaries come much weirder than The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. The film won half a dozen awards at various film festivals at the time of its release. Now, twenty years later it comes to DVD. Though it deals with events that happened during WWII, on the island of New Guinea among the Japanese troops just after the official end of war, I suspect it has lost none of its immediacy or--to western eyes--its strangeness.

Continue reading "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On: And what did you do in the war, daddy?" »

Posted by at 2:05 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

One over-riding question that arises while watching Andrew Berends' 2005 Iraq-set documentary The Blood of My Brother is, how did an American filmmaker get access to all of this, short of joining Sayid Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army himself? Several reviewers have already commented that much of the footage here puts Western media coverage to shame, and it certainly does. We see inside a mosque during prayer time with hundreds of men lined up shoulder to shoulder; we watch Shia insurgents get charged up and then battle an American tank and an Apache helicopter (feeling oddly mundane compared to scenes from Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down); and we view badly wounded civilians inside an Iraqi hospital, including young children and elderly men. It seems clear that Berends has a viewpoint he wants to get across, although his goal appears to be more humanitarian than political.

Continue reading "The Blood of My Brother" »

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Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ***

In a recent op-ed piece Cintra Wilson wrote of Republican 2008 Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani (seen at right in drag, with Donald Trump, in still from the film):

On 9/11, all Americans were frightened children, and in a moment of mythic personal heroism, Mayor Giuliani filled the gaping leadership void. The president looked like a petrified chimp; Cheney was spirited to an underground bunker. Only Giuliani could pull himself together sufficiently to get on TV in the midst of the wreckage and show America that a grown-up was still breathing. On that terrible day our reptile brains looked at Rudy Giuliani and said, "We're OK now. Daddy's home."

And we forgot, some for a moment, some permanently, that Daddy was psycho.

Giuliani Time focuses on his more "psycho" period in politics, specifically his eight year tenure as mayor of New York City (with a quick overview of his role in Reagan's Department of Justice). The film delves (and at a hefty 2 hour running time that delve is deep) into the civil rights violations and general absurdities wrought by his neo-conservative policies, egotism and political ambitions.

Continue reading "Giuliani Time: Who is the real Rudy?" »

Posted by at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

The American food industry spends billions of dollars each year in advertising, lobbying and creating counter-agencies to release half-baked, obfusicating "research" convincing the public they're addressing health concerns. Another consortium of doom and loathing, the diet industry, makes possibly just as many billions in profits plying us with their programs, pills and elective surgeries. Meanwhile models are dropping dead on the runway while an indifferent fashion industry bickers over who will get the television rights. It's almost a wonder that anyone in this country has a healthy relationship with food or their body.

Enter Lauren Greenfield, a photojournalist and chronicler of girls and girl culture. With Thin she brings her fly-on-the-wall perspective to renfrew, an in-patient eating disorder treatment facility. The film premiered at last year's Sundance film festival and follows four patients through their recovery. They're an atypical assortment: a 15-year-old red-headed goth girl; a bawdy Southern woman; a nurse who had been stealing anti-depressants; and a mother of two who fought in the first Gulf War.

Continue reading "Thin" »

Posted by at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): *** ½

Kirby Dick's most entertaining documentary on the mysterious Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system and the board it operates in conjunction with the National Association of Theater Owners, does a smart thing fairly early on: it becomes an investigation of the organization itself rather than simply a film of interviews about how twisted the system is. (It doesn't take much to convince us of this.) Dick is more interested in how it works, or doesn't work, and who actually comprises the ratings board itself - an anonymous/secret group of "regular" folks who hold the power in their hands to make or break the life of a film before it ever sees the light of day. The villain here, such as he is, long-time MPAA president and just as interestingly, pro-copyright lobbyist Jack Valenti, wasn't interviewed directly for this film (I'm sure he refused) but is given plenty of rope to hang himself here with television interviews and other appearances. The doc even reveals him to be a fibber - denying that harsher ratings are given to films based on sex over violence, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Continue reading "This Film is Not Yet Rated" »

Posted by at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Unforeseen is a mostly terrific, beautifully shot documentary that uses a microcosmic story of development in Austin, Texas, to tell another of a more cosmic environmental struggle affecting us all. The film splits focus between an ongoing battle between environmentalists and developers over Barton Springs, a longtime favorite site of sunbathers and swimmers, as well as a place where some even find religion (Baptists long used it as a spot for baptisms, while another woman interviewed in the film talked about the spiritual nature of being at the spot itself); and the way development encroaches on rapidly shrinking farmland in the area, focusing on one old-time corn farmer who sees the open space and agriculture around him disappearing.

Continue reading "Park City Dispatch: The Unforeseen" »

Posted by at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

In a recent interview Yves Béhar, chief designer on the $100 laptop project, told Wired magazine, "There's a criticism that comes up. I think it's the stupidest argument: Send kids food, send them water." These critics, he says, imagine all the developing world to be a famine-stricken village in Africa. "This is the typical ignorance of the West. There are different conditions in different places," he says. "And there are a lot of places where kids are not starving, where kids want to learn more than anything else."

The Beauty Academy of Kabul documents a team of British and American women from an NGO called Beauty Without Borders setting up the first teaching salon in Kabul since the 70s. It seems a bit deranged at first - are people really worrying about split ends with bombs still falling on their city? As it turns out, even during the oppressive rule of the Taliban women were running secret salons out of their homes and apparently making more money than any deputy minister of their Parliament.

Continue reading "Beauty Academy of Kabul" »

Posted by at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

David Zieger's Sir! No Sir! is not only a well-crafted documentary, but certainly timely: it was released with My Lai once again on our (hearts and) minds, given revelations from Iraq on the "November massacre" and as more and more members of the American military come forth to question our motives and tactics in Iraq.

Sir! No Sir! is one of the best documentaries about American protest movements since Mark Kitchell's Berkeley in the Sixties. Just when you think you've heard every last bit, every possible anecdote about Vietnam, comes this film to serve as a reminder that the story of the soldiers movement to end the war has up until now been a buried one. As with Berkeley, the film uses a mix of striking archival footage, modern interviews, newscasts, and newspaper stories - backed, of course, by music from the period - to get out this story (and its many subplots - the film does go on perhaps ten minutes too long).

Continue reading "Sir! No Sir!" »

Posted by at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wordplay manages to both teach us about how crossword puzzles are concocted - by the fiendishly clever Will Shortz and Merle Reagle, in this case - while demonstrating how a crossword addict "trains" for a competition in puzzle-solving - rendered here in surprisingly intense fashion. Mix these quirky characters with more famous puzzle addicts like Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, New York Yankee Mike Mussina and the Indigo Girls, and you have a very engaging documentary. If it at times feels like a lovefest for The New York Times (and, hey, why not?), "the film is made with a lot of style and visual ingenuity," says Roger Ebert, and is "near letter-perfect," adds The Baltimore Sun's Michael Sragow.

Now GreenCine's giving away copies of the new Wordplay DVD (which also includes a few challenging Times puzzles as an insert) to two clever (and lucky) people who solve our latest trivia contest, courtesy of IFC Films. Lucky winners will also receive Wordplay pens and the official companion book!

To be eligible, send an email with the correct answer to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Wordplay" in the subject header. Winners will be selected at random from all correct entries. The deadline is Thursday, November 9, at 12PM PST. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

The Question: New England city in which the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, featured in Wordplay, is held. (Hint: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.)

See also: Word Wars; Spellbound.

Posted by at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vote early, vote often, and then leave yourself some extra time to watch these films about the American democratic process - which may not always be so democratic, but certainly makes good fodder for filmmakers. Ratings are by GreenCine staff and not subject to a recount (but discussion is acceptable).

Ratings (*s) are out of 5.

To make you more cynical and paranoid:

• American Blackout ***
• Medium Cool ****
• The Manchurian Candidate **** 1/2 (and the halfway decent remake ***)
• Silver City ** 1/2
• Voting in America ** 1/2 (a mixed bag but a few definitely make it worth a rent)
• Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election ****

Campaigns:

• Primary *** 1/2
• The War Room ***
• Last Man Standing: Politics, Texas Style
• The Wire: Season 4 (ongoing)

The Darkly Comical Side:

• Election **** (Out of print but we have for rent)
• Tanner '88 ***
• Ballot Box Bunny ****
• The Candidate *** 1/2
• Bulworth ****
• Primary Colors

Historical Perspective:

Any other suggestions?

Let us know.

Posted by at 2:34 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ***½

With not even enough national wins under their belt to count on one hand, why wouldn't three of the top-paid American political consultants franchise out their brand of vague market-driven democracy and export it around the world? The fascinating documentary Our Brand is Crisis dares to ask, what's the worst that could happen? The film recounts the 2002 Bolivian presidential race when Bolivian-born political exile Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez was elected with the help of GCS, an American political consulting firm started by Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Bob Shrum.

Continue reading "Our Brand is Crisis" »

Posted by at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): **½
In theaters now.

To me, Al Franken is like an uncle who has an amusing, if corny, sense of humor, whose politics you admire and agree with, and who often repeats himself to the point of tedium.

In many ways Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob's new documentary about, and starring, the comedian/author, Al Franken: God Spoke [official site], is a film in search of a story. But if one thinks of it as a character study framed by politics - and, obviously isn't a right-winger who has Franken on their public enemies list - then the doc is an entertaining, fitfully amusing watch.

Continue reading "Al Franken: God Spoke" »

Posted by at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): **** for both

Both Winter Soldier and The Police Tapes were made cinema verite style by film-making teams (Winter Solider by a 19-person collective, The Police Tapes by husband and wife team Alan and Susan Raymond). When viewed together the films provide a time capsule into the tail-end of a period of social upheaval in America, but also two unique voices about the destruction wrought by moral indifference and national ennui. In the case of Winter Soldier it's a "blank check" approach to a poorly strategized war against a misunderstood enemy; in Police Tapes it's the cycle of unrelenting brutality that flourishes when poverty goes ignored.

Continue reading "Winter Soldier and The Police Tapes" »

Posted by at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½ (your rating may rise according to your knowledge of Russia and classical music)

Sonata For Viola presumes an immense amount of knowledge on the part of the viewer regarding - for starters - Dmitri Shostakovich and Russian history. Since this 75-minute documentary supposedly covers the life of the famous composer, I expected a certain level of "groundwork" information that would lead me into an understanding and appreciation of Shostakovich and the world in which he lived. While the movie will not deliver this to the uninitiated, that's not to say it isn't a somewhat enjoyable experience - particularly if you are familiar with the films of Alexander Sokurov (Father & Son, Russian Ark), who, via editing, shaped the work of the original filmmaker Semyon Aranovich into his own more elliptical, impressionistic view.

Continue reading "Sonata For Viola" »

Posted by at 4:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (70)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): **½

A British man wakes up one morning on a subway in Brooklyn with a headache and no memory of who he is. His backpack contains a few odds and ends but no identification. He turns himself into the police who
send him to a psychiatric ward where he's told he can't leave until someone recognizes him and picks him up. Eventually a woman he dated briefly (who doesn't seem to care much for him) comes to collect him. He arrives to his enormous Manhattan loft where he slowly excavates hundreds of hours of videotapes that make up his forgotten life. He learns his name is Doug Bruce. He's rich, well-traveled and after visiting a procession of neurologists, endocrinologists and psychologists he learns no one can conclusively state where his memory has gone.

Rupert Murray's occasionally fascinating but uneven documentary Unknown White Male asks the questions, What does memory loss feel like and how can a person reconstruct their life based on moments filtered through a camera? It's a noble ambition but these ideas seem fairly out of the reach of a director who asks three different times in voiceover whether or not he and his former friend - Douglas Bruce, the subject of the film - will still like each other.

Continue reading "Unknown White Male" »

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Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

I originally saw the truly marvelous documentary Promises at San Francisco's Jewish Film Festival a few years ago and then saw it again on the recently released DVD, and found it both times to be nothing less than one of the most moving documentaries of the last few years. It a crucial film, too, given the seemingly never-ending, tragic war between Israelis and Palestinians, and the lack of truth we receive from the evening news and the leaders of both groups. The film depicts both sides of the struggle and the daily violence they all must live with through the eyes of the children, who, sadly, are all susceptible to the propaganda spouted by their parents. Some of them also show enough of an individualist spark to give us all hope, but where they likely would have never crossed paths or acknowledged their counterparts on the "other side," the filmmakers B.Z. Goldberg (who is the on-screen presence), Justine Shapiro and Carlos Bolado took the bold step of bringing them together. The parents of the more open-minded of the Israelis, brothers Yarko and Daniel, warily allow them to accompany the filmmakers to meet the similarly athletically inclined Faraj, a short ride away but many worlds apart, in an eye-opening (for the Israelis and for us) meeting in a Palestinian refugee camp. The gathering is intensely moving, giving us hope for the future even if the headlines often make us feel the hope is short-lived. Promises manages to do what many other documents of the Middle East have not: illuminate without preaching and manipulating.

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