Reviews - Page 137

Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.

Review: ‘The Little Prince’

Invisible Essence: The Little Prince (Canada, 90 min.) Dir. Charles Officer What turns certain books into classics? Scott Fitzgerald wrote some fine novels and many terrific short stories but it’s The Great Gatsby we return to read again and again. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is clearly the product of the same novelist as Sense and Sensibility but which is the overwhelming favourite? If you have the time, you can easily read all of J.D. Salinger’s work but the only one you have to encounter in your life is The Catcher in the Rye. So it is with the vast majority of writers including the very gifted

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‘Panama Papers’ Spotlights Truth Tellers in a Dark Age

The Panama Papers (USA, 97 min.) Dir. Alex Winter Alex Winter is quickly becoming a master of something one could call the techno-thriller documentary. After the Napster doc Downloaded (2013) and the true crime caper Deep Web (2015), comes another quickly paced, slickly assembled, and tech savvy film about the world 2.0. The Panama Paper offers a deep dive into one of the most seismic leaks in world history. It will have audiences feeling maddened and motivated. Perhaps outmatched only by the whistleblowing of Edward Snowden, and whatever bomb is ticking in the Mueller report, the story in The Panama Papers relays how governments were toppled and titans

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Review: ‘The Impossible Swim’

The Impossible Swim (Canada, 47 min.) Dir. Ali Weinstein, Larry Weinstein 16-year-old Maya Farrell hopes to follow in the footsteps of the legendary swimmers Marilyn Bell and Vicki Keith. Like them, she wants to glide through the waters of Lake Ontario. Farrell hopes to bring their achievement to a next generation by matching their monumental marathon swims across Lake Ontario. The task would be an ambitious endeavour, even if the creatures were born with gills and fins. She aims to cross an 88 km path in the Great Lake, which can takes a seasoned and well-trained swimmer upwards of a

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‘Mr. Jane and Finch’: Portrait of a Community Advocate

Mr. Jane and Finch (Canada, 44 min.) Dir. Ngardy Conteh George Some people call Winston LaRose a “pillar of the community,” an “advocate,” and a “fighter.” But everyone knows him as “Mr. Jane and Finch.” The 81-year-old community leader gets the RBG treatment in this engaging and timely documentary from director Ngardy Conteh George (The Flying Stars). Mr. Jane and Finch, which premieres this month at the Toronto Black Film Festival before a run on CBC, portrays the sprightly LaRose as a figure with the same kind of scrappy spirit that makes Ruth Bader Ginsburg such an engaging octogenarian in her hit feature. Both LaRose

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Oscar-Nominated Short Docs a Dire But Worthy Bunch

Goodness gracious, this year’s Oscar-nominated short docs are a dire bunch! They’re great, naturally, but, as the kids say, they’re depressing AF!!! The menu of the nominated shorts features death, racism, the migration crisis, women fighting the Patriarchy, and some good old-fashioned Nazis. In short, they’re an appropriate bunch to represent the cultural pulse of 2018. Let’s start with the Nazis. An unsettling chorus of “Heil, Hitler!” echoes throughout Marshall Curry’s haunting nominee A Night at the Garden. This archival film presents footage of a 1939 event in which 20,000 hate-filled white supremacists convened at New York’s Madison Square Garden to

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‘The World Before Your Feet’ and the Sidewalks of New York

The World Before Your Feet (USA, 95 min._ Dir. Jeremy Workman Not many documentaries out there can offer the in-the-moment perspective The World Before Your Feet can. Matt Green, the curious subject of this simple yet compelling documentary from Jeremy Workman, is on a personal quest to walk every street in New York City’s five boroughs, inhabited or not. He started this endlessly interesting, undeniably obsessive, and slightly peculiar walk, alongside a blog of research and photographs, nearly seven years ago. By the end of the film, Green is still far from completing his walk, but he’s in no hurry. At one

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‘The World Before Your Feet’: Experience NYC in the Moment

The World Before Your Feet (USA, 95 min.) Dir. Jeremy Workman Not many documentaries out there can offer the in-the-moment perspective The World Before Your Feet can. Matt Green, the curious subject of this simple yet compelling documentary from Jeremy Workman, is on a personal quest to walk every street in New York City’s five boroughs, inhabited or not. He started this endlessly interesting, undeniably obsessive, and slightly peculiar walk, alongside a blog of research and photographs, nearly seven years ago. By the end of the film, Green is still far from completing his walk, but he’s in no hurry. At one

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‘That Higher Level’: A Doc that Sings

That Higher Level (Canada, 75 min.) Dir. John Bolton This one time, at band camp, the NFB made a documentary. That Higher Level goes behind the scenes with the devoted flutists, tromboners, violinists, and other musicians in the National Youth Orchestra during the summer of 2017. Director John Bolton (Aim for the Roses) captures the passion and dedication of these students who commit themselves to the arts. The doc chronicles their intensive rehearsals and ambitious cross-country tour (which sees them travel nearly half the Earth’s circumference in distance) over two months. Focusing more on the collective voice the artists create, rather than the

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Review: ‘Tales from the Winnipeg Film Group’

Tales from the Winnipeg Film Group (Canada, 80 min.) Dir. Kevin Nikkel and Dave Barber When the delirious, gnarled tale of Canada’s quixotic film history is properly told, much of its telling should be devoted to the film co-operative movement that swept across the country in the mid-1970s. From St. John’s to Vancouver, local collectives of people wanting to get their hands on the apparatus of cinema would come to embody the independent DIY collaborative spirit of Canadian cinematic expression. This movement also established essential training grounds and creative hothouse environments for some of the most important film artists in our history.

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