Reviews - Page 89

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

Watergate: “Never Be Petty”

Watergate (USA, 260 min.) Dir. Charles Ferguson “Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself,” said former President Richard Nixon in his farewell speech to the White House Cabinet and staff. Director Charles Ferguson, who won an Oscar for his outstanding look at the financial crisis Inside Job, offers this clip of Nixon at the end of his four-and-a-half hour marathon of a documentary about the Watergate scandal. Although the sheer volume of evidence Ferguson presents in Watergate proves (again) that Nixon was a crook who

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The Personal is Political in ‘Of Love & Law’

Of Love & Law (Japan, 97 min.) Dir. Hikaru Toda The Toronto Japanese Film Festival offers a timely selection for Pride Month with the documentary Of Love & Law. The film, which won top honours at the Tokyo and Hong Kong international film festivals, is director Hikaru Toda’s intimate portrait of everyday Japanese citizens fighting for equality in a conformist society. Of Love & Law tells the story of Masafumi Yoshida and Kazuyuki Minami, aka Fumi and Kazu, a gay couple in Osaka who are also professional partners operating the city’s first openly gay law firm. Their bravery is commendable as they live and work

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‘Echo in the Canyon’: The Babies Go Boom

Echo in the Canyon (USA, 82 min.) Dir. Andrew Slater Echo in the Canyon might be the Baby Boomer-iest film ever made. This laid-back and thoroughly entertaining rockumentatry spotlights the music scene in Laurel Canyon, California in the mid-to-late 1960s and early 1970s when musical acts like The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, and The Byrds created the sound of a generation. The film transports audiences to a time when attitudes were changing, people were loosening up, and folk music was plugging in. What’s old is new again as director Andrew Slater and “host”/executive producer/Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan reflect upon

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‘Pavarotti’ Is a Work For Hire Doc – And That’s Just Fine

Pavarotti (104 min.) Dir. Ron Howard “At first, I was engrossed just by the shape of his journey, this remarkable, nothing-but-high watermarks career, the vast success,” notes director Ron Howard in the press kit for Pavarotti. “But when I looked deeper, I also saw that he bore the brunt of taking so many artistic risks. That drama was unexpected and felt extremely human.” Howard’s generic statement on the joys of diving into the research on the late opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti reflects what transpires in his documentary. Pavarotti isn’t the work of an adoring fan, nor a work of a filmmaker paying tribute

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‘Forman vs. Forman’ Celebrates an Iconoclastic Director

Forman vs. Forman (Czech Republic/France, 78 min.) Dir Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna Oscar winning director Miloš Forman helped shape cinema for decades. From his internationally celebrated Czech output through Oscar winning Hollywood fare, the irascible director stamped his mark on films from historical dramas to musicals, broad farces to brilliant dramas. Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna Forman vs. Forman finds the late director narrating his own story via the use of contemporaneous interviews conducted in English, French and Czech. Employing a general chronological structure, the film uses this archive footage to weave the story from the streets of Prague to the

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‘Making Waves’ a Sound Appreciation of Cinematic Craft

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (USA, 94 min.) Dir. Midge Costin Since its inception, film has primarily been celebrated as a visual medium. The power of the moving image set it apart as a new art form. Midge Costin’s documentary Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound explores how the history of sound and image evolved together, primarily how modern soundtrack reproduction contributed directly to the rise of auteur-driven cinema in the 1970s, which laid the foundation for modern blockbuster spectacles. The film focusses on three of the giants of the industry from the last five decades. Walter Murch, whose

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‘Ice On Fire’: An Eco Doc That Gives Scientists Their Due

Ice on Fire (USA, 91 min.) Dir. Leila Connors Environmental docs can be like blockbusters in their habit of following tropes. There’s the visually stunning, dialogue-free documentation of our doom (Anthropocene), the activist manifesto (Sharkwater), or the didactic and self-aggrandizing PowerPoint presentation (An Inconvenient Truth). Leila Connors’ Ice on Fire focuses on something far too often overlooked: the scientists themselves. These unsung investigators have spent their lifetimes collecting empirical data that should be the basis for our policies, our actions, and understanding of the processes change the world we call home. Produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, like he did

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‘nîpawistamâsowin’ is 2019’s Best Canadian Doc so Far

nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up (Canada, 98 min.) Dir. Tasha Hubbard Anyone wondering what is the best Canadian documentary of the spring should look no further than Tasha Hubbard’s absorbing indictment of this country’s treatment of its Indigenous people nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up. The film won the Best Canadian documentary award at Hot Docs 2019 and the Colin Low prize for Canadian documentary at the Vancouver’s prestigious DOXA festival. Hubbard’s feature doc is a sobering account of the shooting of a young Cree man, Colten Boushie, because he and his friends had trespassed on a white farmer’s land. Despite the incontestable

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Halston: Rising and Falling in Fashion

Halston (USA, 105 min.) Dir. Frédéric Tcheng They may have erased his tapes, but fashion icon Halston (born Roy Halston Frowick) receives a slick record in this new documentary that bears his name. Director Frédéric Tcheng (Dior & I) charts the dramatic rise and fall of the man who put American clothes on the map and built the biggest fashion empire the country had ever seen at the time. Halston is a brisk and engaging fashion doc that sizzles with celebrity gossip and jolts with Shakespearean tragedy. The film is a fascinating study of ambition as Halston climbs to the top and

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