Reviews - Page 84

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

VIFF Review: ‘The Whale and the Raven’

The Whale and the Raven (Canada/Germany, Dir. Mirjam Leuze Recent documentary filmmaking, especially nature documentaries, has been plagued with redundant use of drone images. But when German filmmaker Miriam Leuze uses it to quietly observe a floating whale in the opening scene of her second feature The Whale and the Raven, it puts you into an introspective mood. Just like with any other nature sighting of impressive stature, attention is demanded. The mammal dives, with us in tow, into the story and the camera captures the full majestic scope of a humpback whale circled by its reverberating waterlines. The images of

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‘Human Nature’ Will Get Audiences Talking

Human Nature (USA, 94 min.) Dir. Adam Bolt Adam Bolt puts a bun in the science oven and births something mind-boggling in Human Nature. This densely informative but surprisingly accessible documentary provides an objective study of the present state of genetic engineering. Using an extensive range of scientists, everyday people living with a range of disabilities and genetic diseases, and family members who’ve either lost loved ones or act as caregivers, Human Nature considers all the angles. It breaks it down without dumbing it down. Get ready to consider some profound philosophical questions because Bolt’s doc offers few answers. The sheer volume of

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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: ‘Where’s My Roy Cohn?’ and Trump

Where’s My Roy Cohn? (USA, 97 min.) Dir. Matt Tyrnauer “Roy was an evil produced by certain parts of the American culture,” says interviewee Anne Koiphe at the end of Where’s My Roy Cohn?. “There is always the possibility of another person who cares not about our traditions—or our laws, or our protections—who can come in and wreck it and break it for the neediest among us and the most vulnerable.” Koiphe is the cousin of the late lawyer Roy Cohn. She, like many of the interviewees in Matt Tyrnauer’s timely portrait of the much-loathed figure, speaks plainly while describing her cousin.

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‘The River and the Wall’ Travels Borderland Beauty

The River and the Wall (USA, 109 min.) Dir. Ben Masters The list of stupid things Donald Trump has said or done is too vast to remember. However, if one formed them into bricks, or little paper rings, one could easily fulfil the soon-to-be-impeached POTUS’s meme-able promise to build a border wall between the USA and Mexico far better than his administration can. 1200 miles of borderland are the proposed site of this 30-billion dollar campaign promise. Regardless of whether the wall sounds stupid or necessary to viewers, they probably haven’t visited the site or even seen it. The River and the Wall aims to correct the ignorance

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TIFF Review: ‘State Funeral’

State Funeral (Netherlands/Lithuania, 135 min.) Programme: Wavelengths According to a survey done earlier this year by the Russian polling firm Levada, 70% of Russians are of the opinion that Josef Stalin’s rule was good for the country. To those in the West who equate Stalin with the likes of Hitler and Mao as men whose colossal crimes mark them as bloodthirsty tyrants and whose names are almost bywords for evil itself, this nostalgia is surprising, to say the least. It is somewhat less so to those reasonably familiar with the past thirty years of Russian history. Nostalgia for the USSR’s

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NYFF Review: ‘Born to Be’

Born To Be (USA, 92 min.) Dir. Tania Cypriano In 2015, New York became one of the first states in the U.S. to mandate that insurance companies were obligated to cover the cost of health services related to the transgender community. Tania Cypriano’s sympathetic yet journalistically precise film Born to Be looks at the ramifications of this ruling, the real-world effect it’s having on members of the community and the medical establishment,. We meet Dr. Jess Ting, a non-threatening, soft-spoken man moving between exam rooms in his white lab coat and rimmed glasses, almost gliding between appointments Ting is a remarkable subject; a former

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Linda Ronstadt Film Proves It’s Time for a Moratorium on Nostalgic Music Docs

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (USA, 93 min.) Dir. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman Earlier this week, I performed a familiar routine. I opened a Vimeo link, cut and pasted a password, and let a film buffer. Then began the familiar opening act: a few hit tunes, some famous talking heads, some early concert footage, b-roll of clapping hands, and a montage of spinning newspaper headlines accompanied by emcees and late night talk show hosts extolling the subject’s name. “Linda Ronstadt!” “Linda Ronstadt!” “Linda…Ronnnnnstaaaaaaaadt!” But then something unfamiliar happened. Out of nowhere, my laptop just died. My computer, like

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TIFF Review: ‘City Dream’

City Dream (China, 100 min) Dir. Weijun Chen Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere) It doesn’t seem to matter whether a system is capitalist or communist. The consequential things remain the same. Weijun Chen’s latest documentary City Dreams dramatically reveals what happens to an individual trapped in an urban structure that isn’t of his devising. We quickly find out that the “little guy” hasn’t got a hope in hell of emerging a winner in just about anywhere in the world. Street vendor Wang Tiancheng simply wants to run his business on the busy retail district he’s been serving for more than a decade. Tiancheng hasn’t

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TIFF Review: ‘Ibrahim: A Fate to Define’

Ibrahim: A Fate to Define (Denmark/Lebanon/Qatar/Slovenia/Palestine, 110 min.) Dir. Lina Al-Abed Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere) We’ve seen films like Ibrahim: A Fate to Define before, the ones where family members find out much—sometimes too much—about their missing relatives. It’s a great doc genre, incorporating thriller and mystery elements while allowing for deeper dives into questions of character and identity. Often they’re first features, since siblings, parents and cousins are far more likely to give you intimate access into their thoughts and lives than people you’ve just met. It’s a pleasure to see a new doc director create an intelligent, emotional film in this

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