Reviews - Page 144

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

(Pictured: Kedi / Blue Ice Docs)

Review: ‘The Song and the Sorrow’

The Song and the Sorrow (Canada, 43 min.) Dir. Millefiore Clarkes Anne Murray’s “Snowbird” is a buoyant and breezy ray of sunshine that helped put Canadian music on the map. Listen closely to the words, though, and this song is actually one of great sadness. As penned by the late singer-songwriter Gene MacLellan, “Songbird” conveys great sorrow as it expresses a hunger to escape and fly freely. It takes MacLellan’s daughter Catherine to recognize the heartache in the song that many people find so sweet. Catherine continues her father’s legacy as a musician, but she also inherited his struggles with

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Review: ‘Belle- Île-en-Mer’

Belle- Île-en-Mer (Canada, 26 min.) Dir. Phil Comeau The Acadians in the Maritimes have a rich culture and legacy, but one wouldn’t know it from the way we discuss Canadian history. Director Phil Comeau (Ron Turcotte, jockey légendaire, Le secret de Jérôme) offers a touching and personal portrait of the oft-overlooked Acadian culture that charts back long before Canada’s confederation and endures today. Screening at Toronto’s Cinéfranco, the doc will be of special interest to Hot Docs audiences who savoured the slice of Acadiana in Samara Chadwick’s 1999. While 1999 focuses on a contemporary tragedy, Comeau’s film offers a heartfelt excavation of the rich

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Review: ‘Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.’

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. (USA/UK, 96 min.) Dir. Steve Loveridge Who knew M.I.A. originally wanted to be a documentary filmmaker? Thank goodness the British-Sri Lankan rapper (née Mathangi Arulpragasam) had a fascination with video cameras, since she fortuitously chronicled her rise to fame. The tapes of M.I.A.’s childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood are meticulously chronicled on a range of home movies in the documentary Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. It’s a fun and revealing portrait told with M.I.A.’s countercultural voice and peppy energy. M.I.A. apparently isn’t happy with this documentary, but audiences should be. Early reports from Sundance indicate that the rapper gave director Steve Loveridge oodles of tapes

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Review: ‘Rubén Blades is Not My Name’

Rubén Blades is Not My Name (Panama/Colombia, 84 min.) Dir. Abner Benaim Canadian audiences might recognize Rubén Blades as one of those great character actors they’ve seen in a dozen things but would never call famous. There’s a lot more to Blades, however, than his acting credits in the TV series Fear the Walking Dead, Robert Rodriguez’s exhilarating Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and Ridley Scott’s epic bomb The Counsellor, just to name a few. Audiences might know his prolific work in music, depending on the medium in which they discovered him, but from a film buff’s perspective, it turns out Blades

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Review: ‘Minding the Gap’

Minding the Gap (USA, 100 min.) Dir. Bing Liu Kartemquin Films has enjoyed a long history as one of the benchmark homes for socially conscious documentaries about everyday Americans. That tradition for excellence looks to be in good hands as director Bing Liu confidently announces himself with one of the most remarkable directorial debuts of the year with Minding the Gap. It could prove to be the Hoop Dreams of a new generation. (Hoop Dreams director Steve James is among the film’s executive producers.) Liu offers a frank portrait of his tightly knit social circle of skateboarder friends as they rule

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Review: ‘My Generation’

My Generation (UK, 85 min.) Dir. David Batty Listen up, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England! Michael Caine might be a regular English gentleman to younger viewers on this side of the pond, but the two-time Oscar winning actor was never destined for stardom. As Caine narrates in this tour of the swinging 60s, English society was still very much caught in the stranglehold of the class system when his parents brought him into the world. Kids, depending on the social strata that were born into, knew their place and couldn’t aspire to much if they hailed

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TIFF Review: ‘American Dharma’

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American Dharma (UK/US, 100 min.) Dir. Errol Morris Programme: TIFF Docs (North American premiere) “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” That’s what newly elected president Obama told Eric Cantor in the early days of his presidency during debates about the stimulus package that Democrats hoped would end the financial crisis. It’s also, in a very different way, the rationale for Errol Morris’s new documentary American Dharma, about ex-Breitbart boss, Trump strategist and populist crusader Steve Bannon. Whatever you may think of him—and if you’re reading this, I think I know exactly what you think of him, and

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TIFF Reviews: ‘The Trial’ and ‘Donbass’

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The Trial and Donbass (Netherlands, 127 min.; Germany/Ukraine/France/Netherlands/Romania, 121 min.) Dir. Sergei Loznitsa Sergei Loznitsa must be unique in the history of film in working in three distinct modes. This year, madman that he is, he released three films, one from each mode. At Hot Docs, I saw his latest observational documentary, Victory Day, which pursues the vein he has previously tapped in work like Austerlitz (2016) and Maidan (2014). In these works, Loznitsa’s approach is austere: long takes; wide shots; little in the way of incident; an obsessive focus on crowds. It’s like the last shot of Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005) blown up into an entire aesthetic. In addition to

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TIFF Review: ‘An Elephant Sitting Still’

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An Elephant Sitting Still (China, 234 min.) Dir. Hu Bo Sometimes criticism is beside the point. An Elephant Sitting Still is Chinese director Hu Bo’s first feature film. It’s also his last: he committed suicide last October. The film premiered at the Berlinale to the very particular kind of rave reviews a four-hour film by a dead director might be expected to get. The film weaves together four storylines that crisscross over the course of an exceptionally violent day in a post-industrial town in China. The moody teenagers, abusive parents, small-time gangsters, neglected old folks, and unscrupulous administrators who make up

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TIFF Review: ‘Fausto’

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Fausto (Canada/Mexico, 70 min.) Dir. Andrea Bussmann Andrea Bussmann’s solo debut feature after 2016’s Tales of Two Who Dreamt, made in collaboration with partner Nicolas Pereda, is a bit slippery. Ostensibly, it’s a freeform adaptation of the Faust myth, but I can’t say I caught many of those resonances beyond occasional references to the devil. Much of the film is comprised of voiceover narrators, or occasionally on-screen characters, telling enigmatic fables about ghosts or other shadowy figures often over hazy images of the Oaxaca coast. Very little, indeed almost nothing, happens onscreen. Though the images are often lovely they don’t quite

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