Waltz With Bashir is a unique, arresting piece of work. As a documentary, it mostly trucks with events locked in memories, rather than assembling found footage or archival documents. A fellow Israeli veteran of the 1982 Lebanon War recounts his disturbing recurring dream to the writer/director/narrator Ari Folman, who was then inspired in [...]

What is it about the French embrace of whimsy that is so particular to their culture?  Man on Wire is a documentary (BBC/Discovery) of Philippe Petit, a man whose life’s dream was to wire walk (we might call it tightrope walking) between the World Trade Center twin towers in 1974.  Little fuss is made over [...]

I.O.U.S.A. is not trying to be subtle.  It is very, very careful to be factual, politically neutral, and revelatory – but subtle, no way.  Director Patrick Creadon and advocates David Walker and Bob Bixby have a message to get out there and this! Movie! Is! It!  It seems clear that they were inspired by the [...]

My companion exhorted me, before the movie began, and after we had had animated conversation with many folks in the theatre, “Don’t write a good review of this movie just because you like [Bill Maher.]” Well, I’m not writing a good review of this movie because I think Maher is funny, or right, or [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I recently read the book Bee Season, and the notion of a real documentary about eight contestants in the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee was too compelling to resist after reading that (unrelated) wonderful novel. I was very pleased by the film, to the point that I took practically no notes. All [...]

If you just ask someone what Winged Migration is about, they are forced to say, “well, it’s about migrating birds, and they follow a bunch of different flocks all over the world, and boy are their arms tired.” Without further elaboration, this sounds like a nice film for birders and zoologists only. Yes, [...]