One of the brilliant posters for American Teen echoes the iconic poster for the movie The Breakfast Club, including its overly dramatic tagline.  While “Heart-throb” Mitch seems a little shoe-horned into Judd Nelson’s “Criminal” position, the other leads in this film slide effortlessly into their pigeonholes…at first.  It’s true that today’s teenagers are the most […]

Bigger Stronger Faster
Matinee with Snacks
Christopher Bell grew up watching big muscle guy movies of the 1980’s, with Stallone and Schwartzenegger, pro wrestlers, and basically the USA kicking tail all over the place.  In his film, he chronicles how these influences transformed himself and his brothers from low-end bully fodder into pumped-up competitive jocks.  Before long, […]

Cynically, I thought War/Dance would be one of those documentaries that is nominated just by virtue of being about Africa (see also: Holocaust). It focuses on a group of Acholi tribe primary school children in war-torn northern Uganda who get to compete in the National Music Competition of 2005. The film highlights the […]

Two journalists in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004 started to notice some trends in the Iraqi response to American troop presence, trends they thought were not being fully explored by their press colleagues. Steve Connors and Molly Bingham proceeded to obtain unheard of access to private footage and on-the-ground action. They wove that […]

Actor Annabelle Gurwitch was fired from a play by Woody Allen. While there are many ways to suffer indignities and setbacks, hers was one that appears to have opened her eyes to other people getting fired. Now that she has endured this most painful of slights, she undertakes to hear about others’ tragic […]

There are many kinds of competition in the world. Some train and take joy in the activity, sharing their triumphs with their adversaries. Some neglect their families, their work, anything but the prize. Others rely on winning as the sole measure of their worth. In physical sports, in sales, in hunting […]

Filmmaker Dori Berinstein knows her stuff.  She began this documentary at the beginning of the 2003-2004 Broadway season, choosing four musicals to follow through to the 2004 Tonys.  She chose Wicked, Avenue Q, Caroline, or Change, and Taboo to follow from pre-production through the awards show.  Luckily, they were all nominated, though not equally.  If […]

Director Pierra Rohov has the audacity to try and open a window into the mind of a suicide bomber with this documentary.  The challenge with such a thesis is that the upside-down logic of such a mind is nearly unfathomable to those outside it.  It goes against all our species’ inclinations and compulsions, and against […]

This film was unavailable to me in my conservative military town, but Britt Augenfield at Special Ops Media was kind enough to provide me with a screening DVD. Thanks, Britt!
The filmmakers (Barbara Kopple and Cecelia Peck) wisely created a double movie with this documentary. On one side, it’s a detailed snapshot of America […]

I have to admit that I went into this movie with a certain bias. Viewing it through my blue-tinted glasses, the film played to me as a scathing expose of the indoctrination practices of evangelist youth ministries in America. One of my companions (incidentally, a lapsed-Catholic atheist) pointed out that in no way […]