Review: ‘Tickling Giants’
In Tickling Giants, Sara Taksler chronicles Bassem Youssef’s journey from wisecracking surgeon to YouTuber, late night celebrity and political pariah.
Review: ‘Floyd Norman: An Animated Life’
Floyd Norman: An Animated Life tells history from the perspective of its most passionate players.
Review: ‘Kedi’
“A cat meowing at your feet, looking up at you, is life smiling at you,” says one of the many affectionate cat people of Kedi. “Those are the moments when we’re lucky they remind us we’re alive.”
Review: 2016 Oscar-nominated Short Docs
Reviews of the Oscar nominated short docs The White Helmet, Extremis, Joe's Violin, 4.1 Miles, and Watani: My Homeland.
Review: ‘Exit: Music’
Exit Music (Canada, 82 min.) Dir. James Murdoch “What, then, do these five ever-greats have in common?” asks host Simon Wynberg in this doc that explores the lives and work of composers Paul Ben-Haim, Adolph Busch, Walter Braunfels, Erich Korngold and Mieczyslaw Weinberg. “Even though all had different stories, all shared in the loss of family, friends, security, identity, and the trauma of displacement.” Exit: Music examines the different stories and legacies of these five composers, all of whom were Jewish musicians whose lives were changed by Nazism. In many of these cases, the composers still struggle to achieve
Review: ‘Dancer’
Steven Cantor's documentary Dancer profiles Sergei Polunin, aka the 'bad boy of ballet'.
Review: ‘Reset’
Reset takes audiences behind the scenes as Benjamin Millepied embarks on his new responsibility as the dance director of the Paris Opera Ballet.
Review: ‘Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened’
Best Worst Thing That Ever Happened offers a story to which anybody in the arts can relate: failure.
Review: ‘PTSD: Beyond Trauma’
Patrick Reed's PTSD: Beyond Trauma provides a humane account of how survivors negotiate the difficulty of living in the present moment when one has PTSD.
Review: ‘Kate Plays Christine’
Kate Plays Christine (USA, 112 min.) Kate, in Robert Greene’s haunted and haunting new film, is actress Kate Lyn Sheil. Christine is Christine Chubbuck, a local TV station reporter who shot herself in the head on air. Greene, who won acclaim for 2014’s Actress, came up with the probably unprecedented idea of filming Kate researching Christine so that she can play her in a movie about her suicide. Ironically, a drama, Christine, has since been made but its star was Rebecca Hall, not Sheil. Greene’s seamless, compellingly edited, doc begins with Sheil travelling from New York City to Sarasota,