Review of the Oscar-nominated short documentaries Heaven Is a Traffic Jam, Edith and Eddie, Heroine, Knife Skills, Traffic Stop.
A Kid from Somewhere (Canada, 54 min.) Dir. Adam Beck and Paul Johnson It’s nice to see images of Millennials that go beyond entitled avocado toast eating brats. A Kid from Somewhere follows three young creatives as they make their mark on the world and defy convention. The film encourages youths to escape their
Seeing Allred (USA, 96 min.) Dir. Sophie Sartain, Roberta Grossman “I don’t think Gloria is in a popularity contest because if she is, she lost that one,” says lawyer and commentator Greta Van Susteren in the new Netflix documentary Seeing Allred. Van Susteren laughs about the no-nonsense attitude of civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred
Fake Blood (Canada, 81 min.) Dir. Rob Grant, Writ. Rob Grant, Mike Kovac If there are two forms of filmmaking that go hand-in-hand with low budgets, they’re documentary and B-horror. Director Rob Grant and actor/writer Mike Kovac have ample experience with the latter having made oodles of horror flicks in Canada’s underground scene. Screaming
carus (USA, 121 min.) Dir. Bryan Fogel, Writ. Bryan Fogel, Mark Monroe, Jon Bertain, Timothy Rode Super Size Me meets Citizenfour in the mind-boggling and suspenseful doc Icarus. Bryan Fogel’s worthy Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature begins as a personal challenge and morphs into an international scandal. The film is an alarming whistleblower
Every year in Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival kicks off the documentary season, with many of the season’s best new works. Even more so than their fiction film cousins, the doc selection at Sundance helps define the entire year’s output of films that vie for critical and audience attention. With the draw of
If you’ve seen Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies, you’ve met Jim. And probably never forgotten him.
Free Lunch Society (Austria/Germany, 95 min.) Dir. Christian Tod With: Gotz Werner (billionaire), Charles Murray (Libertarian), Evelyn Forget (Canadian economist), Emmanuel Saez (French-American economist), Michael Bohmeyer (entrepreneur), Zepahania Kameeta (Namibian Minister), Marshall Brain (computer scientist and sci-fi author) Christian Tod’s The Free Lunch Society begins in outer space, which is unique terrain for a
Midnight Return: The Story of Billy Hayes and Turkey (USA, 99 min.) Written and directed by Sally Sussman Alan Parker’s 1978 film Midnight Express generally holds up as a Hollywood classic. The film, which won Oscars for Oliver Stone’s screenplay and Giorgio Moroder’s memorable disco score, is a tense political thriller about the arrest
Two Trains Runnin’ (USA, 80 min.) Dir. Sam Pollard The number of good American music docs that combine the songs of the South with the nation’s turbulent history of racism are too numerous to count. Add Sam Pollard’s Two Trains Runnin’ to the list, however, since it smartly intertwines the two historical narratives and