Reviews - Page 156

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

Review: ‘Bending the Arc’

Bending the Arc (USA, 102 min.) Dir. Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos   The right to health care—and, by implication, the right to life—is under the microscope again. Thanks to the unhealthy advice of Donald Trump, the Affordable Care Act is on the table again. It’s not on life support, though, since Dr. Death has opted to pull the plug. There are enormous precedents for saving lives by fixing a nation’s health care system and offering proper care to all, as the story of the compelling and timely documentary Bending the Arc shows with its depiction of small scale changes that

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Review: ‘Makala’

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Makala (France, 96 min.) Dir. Emmanuel Gras Programme: TIFF Docs (North American Premiere)   Makala, Emmanuel Gras’ documentary about an episode in the life of a Congolese charcoal producer/salesman, Kabwita Kasongo, is just about the bleakest cinematic evocation of poverty, comparable to De Sica’s classic The Bicycle Thief in its pure hopeless desperation. It’s the physicality and materiality and sheer strife of hard labour that are Gras’ subjects. We see, in exhaustive detail, Kasongo cutting down a tree, burning it for charcoal, packaging it, loading as much as he can of it onto a bicycle, walking it down a desolate

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Review: ‘Silas’

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Silas (Canada/South Africa/Kenya, 80 min.) Dir. Anjali Nayar, Hawa Essuman Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   Liberian activist and political candidate Silas Siakor is a voice the world desperately needs. His commitment to preserve the environment and cultural life of Africa from multinational corporations is a heroic struggle. Silas chronicles Siakor’s fight against illegal logging and political corruption. It’s a beautifully rendered portrait of an activist striving to change the world. Canadian director Anjali Nayar (Gun Runners) teams up with Kenyan actor and filmmaker Hawa Essuman for this character piece that charts the fight an activist engages in to deal

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Review: ‘Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me’

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Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me (USA, 100 min.) Dir. Sam Pollard Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere) Sam Pollard, who directed Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, has an extensive list of credits as a film editor in addition to being a veteran director. He’s chopped and spliced over forty flicks in his career, including several Spike Lee joints like Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, and Clockers. (His work as a producer includes Lee’s multi-award winning doc When the Levees Broke about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.) Pollard’s vast experience resonates in every sequence of his biopic on

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Review: ‘The Other Side of Everything’

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The Other Side of Everything (Serbia/France/Qatar, 100 min.) Dir. Mila Turajlic   Mila Turajlic’s The Other Side of Everything is two things: on one level, it’s a first-person doc about a daughter’s relationship with her mother; on another, it’s the story of modern Serbia. The person who makes that move possible is Srbijanka Turajlic, the director’s mother, who is a retired engineering professor and stalwart democratic political activist. The film begins with a locked door. The Turajlic’s apartment, we are told, was divided by the Communists when they came to power after World War II; their family was bourgeois and

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Review: ‘The China Hustle’

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The China Hustle Dir. Jed Rothstein Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   You saw The Big Short, right? Of course you did. And you came away with two thoughts: they ought to do something about this, and they won’t. Well get ready to think those thoughts all over again when you see Jed Rothstein’s brisk new doc The China Hustle. In case you’ve forgotten, short-selling is what happens when investors figure out that stocks are overvalued: they borrow shares in the company in question, sell them at the current rate, release a report showing that the company is overvalued, watch

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Review: ‘The Final Year’

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The Final Year (USA, 89 min.) Dir. Greg Barker Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   Sometimes with documentaries it is painfully obvious that the film that ends up in theatres is not the film the makers thought they were making. And The Final Year, Greg Barker’s new film about the last year of the Obama administration, is, for painfully obvious reasons, possibly the phenomenon’s epitome. Barker’s focus is on the foreign policy team of Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. He gets decent access to them, following the

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Review: ‘Long Time Running’

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Long Time Running (Canada, 90 min.) Dir. Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas De Pencier Programme: Galas (World Premiere)   Long Time Running has major expectations to fulfill given that the final performance of the Tragically Hip in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario in August 2016 provided a defining moment in contemporary Canadian culture. The CBC’s nation-wide live broadcast of this farewell concert endures as a rare moment in which Canadians in all corners of the land gathered to watch something other than hockey. Even Hip fans without TVs could sit out in the backyards with their cat and a beer and

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Review: ‘Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood’

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Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (USA, 98 min.) Dir. Matt Tyrnauer Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere)   It’s hard to divorce one’s opinion of subject Scotty Bowers from the documentary that shares his story. Bowers opens his little black book as he tells about his scandalous life as a Hollywood escort and pimp to the stars in Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. Matt Tyrnauer (Citizen Jane: Battle for the City) avoids making Bowers’ narrative one of tabloid trash, but the subject’s way of presenting his material is too problematic to endorse. There is an undeniable element

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Review: ‘Faces Places’

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Faces Places (Visages villages) (France, 90 min.) Dir. Agnès Varda, JR Programme: Masters (Canadian Premiere)   Agnès Varda, effervescent photographer and iconic filmmaker (The Beaches of Agnes, The Gleaners and I ; La Pointe Courte; Cleo from 5 to 7; Mur Murs; One Sings the other doesn’t), and JR, young mysterious photographer and street artist (including the massive child looking over the border wall between Mexico and the US), are the unlikely and utterly charming couple whose road trips to villages and communities across France resulted in the beautiful documentary Faces Places (Visages Villages). With matching energy and joy, the

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