The Fungi Film Festival (FFF) doesn’t make sense. First of all, it’s not really a festival. With an overall length of two hours and fifteen minutes, watching everything on offer this year won’t take you much longer than an average movie at the cinema. The short films are an aggregate of disparate styles and genres, […]
Prehistoric Planet Review
Almost a century ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle showed The Lost World (1925), a film filled with prehistoric creatures, to a meeting of the Society of American Magicians, and impishly refused to disclose the origin of the film. Willis H. O’Brien’s stop-motion dinosaurs were impressive enough to convince at least some of the audience that […]
Salem Film Fest 2021: The Long Coast Q&A
Seafolk are a uniquely resilient bunch. Growing up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the oldest seaport in the country, I learned prosperity and precarity can alternate like the tide for fishermen. The danger of commercial fishing also means coastal communities often bequeath a cultural inheritance of grief. These elements drew me with great curiosity to The Long […]
Warehoused
For reasons that boil down to my own naïveté and exposure to imperialist propaganda (better known as the American education system), I grew up assuming that entities like the United Nations and its member countries were infallibly dedicated to the welfare of human beings. That line of thought has since been killed, which makes Warehoused […]
I Am Not Your Negro
I Am Not Your Negro, a movie which cannot spell out its own true name, sanitizes itself for the sake of the MPAA and declares itself at once a film catered to a certain audience. And yet that is perhaps where the film’s greatest strength lies. Director Raoul Peck makes an impassioned plea through the […]
Bashir’s Vision
It’s tough to think of a better documentary topic than “the Blind Boxer.” I’m not overly familiar with the sport, but I imagine it has to be something of a novel concept even to the most diehard fans. However, by the last scene in Bashir’s Vision, I began to wonder if the topic is a bit too rich – so much […]
Manakamana
Manakamana is one of the most important films of 2014: not for greater culture or the world at large, but for cinema. Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s documentary about passengers taking a cable car to a Nepalese temple is one of the most unusual films I’ve ever seen. These filmmakers show an innate understanding of the power of […]
Life Itself
I was in pieces when Roger Ebert died. I have never felt so broken up about the passing of someone I had never met in person. Following his death, I picked up Life Itself, which has now become something of a holy book to me. It is an informative autobiography, manifesting itself as both an […]
Blackfish
Filmmakers have long understood that animals garner more sympathy than humans. In a strange phenomenon of mass desensitization, the injury or death of a fellow Homo sapien just doesn’t have as much of an impact on moviegoers. Bucking that trend, Blackfish invests emotional collateral in both its human and animal subjects. In doing so, it becomes a […]
Kids of the Rocket Siren
Kids of the Rocket Siren is a short documentary that offers a personal look at the town of Sderot, a small town on the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip. In an community where schools, bus stops, and playgrounds are built to withstand the rockets fired daily over the border, the children who live […]
20 Feet from Stardom
The poster for 20 Feet from Stardom features impassioned back-up artist Judith Hill singing into a microphone. Below her is the title of the film in large pink and white text. Underneath the title, where one might expect to see the names of other back-up legends like Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton, The Waters, Claudia Lennear, […]
Searching for Sugar Man
My father is a white South African who moved to the United States around 20 years ago. Because of him, I grew up listening to Sixto Rodriguez’s album Cold Fact on loop for most of my childhood. While most of the artist’s very adult metaphors were lost on me as a kid, I was nevertheless […]
Batmobile Documentary Incoming
UPDATE: The Huffington Post has officially revealed The Batmobile, a documentary set to air on the CW on July 16 at 8pm EST. The special will premiere at Comic-Con on July 12. You may remember the above image from a post I wrote on Twitter and Facebook. At the time, it was unclear under what circumstances the photo […]
