When “No” Means “Hell Yeah!”: Why I’ll Pass on Pitch Perfect 2
Pitch Perfect 2 sends some confusing--and disappointing--messages in its trailer.
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In Country (Attie and O’Hara, 2014)
War reenactment…huh…yeah…what is it good for? “Possibly something,” is the reply emanating from this documentary tracking a group of Vietnam War reenactors in Oregon.
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Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Christians may enjoy seeing a cult get exposed, but they should be wary of this documentaries none-too-hidden subtext.
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2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Day 3: Outsider Art, Afghan Archeology, African Democracy, and the Black Panthers
My last day in Durham featured documentaries about artwork by institutionalized psychiatric patients, an imperiled archeology dig near Kabul, the battle to maintain democracy in Senegal, and a comprehensive history of the Black Panthers.
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2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Day 2: Afghan Soldiers, Evel Knievel, and an Unconventional Marriage
Today’s documentaries showed us brave filmmaking in Afghanistan, a flawed biography of a legendary American stuntman, and a daughter’s joyous, smile-inducing reflections on the marriage between her mother and transgender father.
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(Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies (Melamede, 2015)
A famous G. K. Chesterton quote states, "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable."
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2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Day 1: Lies, Tigers, and Mountains, Oh My!
Today’s trio of films featured a journey inside the deceiving mind, as well as adventures in the forests and mountains of South Asia.
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Revisiting Ben-Hur (1959) in Anticipation of a Remake
I am skeptical about remaking Ben-Hur, but revisiting William Wyler's classic reminded me that it is far from a perfect movie.
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Red Army (Polsky, 2014)
This briskly paced documentary about Soviet hockey excels both as a gripping personal story and a microcosmic portrait of life in the USSR.
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The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her (Benson, 2013)
Eleanor Rigby's conceit—I'm tempted to say "gimmick"—is that it shows their two stories back to back rather than interweaving or cutting between them. Thus it becomes both a Rashomon story and a meditation on how we make and preserve memories. The films are designed to be played in either order, with one screening at TIFF flip-flopping to give us Her and Him.