Scenes From a Parish (Rutenbeck, 2009)
James Rutenbeck's Scenes from a Parish is the sort of documentary essay film that makes one pretty darn grateful for the 00.01% of the the federal budget that is granted to PBS.
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Simon & The Oaks (Ohlin, 2012)
There have now been enough films about--or set in and around-- the Holocaust that it is almost possible to group these films into subgenres.
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Thanks for Sharing (Blumberg, 2012)
Long before the soundtrack rhapsodizes about "tender comrades" in the film's final scene, Thanks for Sharing has made its central (and somewhat strange) thesis abundantly clear: addiction, however unpleasant it might be, is a small price to pay for the acquisition of the types of steadfast, loyal, and lifelong friends one acquires in support groups.
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Room 237 (Ascher, 2012)
In the picture above do you see: a) a scene from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining?; b) a sly clue that the director of the film helped fake the Apollo moon landings?; c) an abstract phallic symbol denoting the mechanization of even man's most organic actions?; d) a preoccupation with the genocide of the American Indian?; or e) Hitler--the answer is always Hitler.
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Artifact (Cubbins, 2012)
Given the target audience's love for Jared Leto and Thirty Seconds to Mars, the built in animosity towards record (or any) executives, and the universal love of David versus Goliath stories, Artifact ought to have been a slam dunk.
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Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (Cantet, 2012)
If you had asked me to pick a director best suited to adapt an Oates work to cinema, you would have waited a long time before I came up with the name of Laurence Cantet, best known as a Palme d'Or winner in 2008 for The Class. In retrospect it is a perfect pairing.
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Great Expectations (Newell, 2012)
A surprisingly emotionally engaging film, Mike Newell's Great Expectations is easily the best Dickens adaptation I've ever seen. (Yes, I've seen the David Lean version...more than once.)
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To the Wonder (Malick, 2012)
I didn't hate To The Wonder. I didn't much like it, but for me and Terence Malick, that's progress.
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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (Gibney, 2012)
During a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival, Alex Gibney opined that the inference behind that exchange--she continually asking if he is a Catholic, he insisting that he is talking about molestation not religion--is that she is telling the man he should "take one for the team."
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Argo (Affleck, 2012)
I approached Argo with a certain amount of trepidation since it depicted events very close to my own life.