The International Documentary Association has announced the winners of the 36th annual IDA Documentary Awards, and the Barack Obama-produced “Crip Camp” has been awarded the Best Documentary Prize.
Read more‘Born to Be’: Provocative and Grueling Documentary Tackling Transgender Surgery [Trailer]
Kino Lorber will be releasing “Born to Be,” an absolutely fascinating doc I saw at last year’s New York Film Festival. This is poignant stuff, following the work of Dr. Ting, the head surgeon at Mt. Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, Director Tania Cypriano uses an extremely sensitive touch to her film, this is not the easiest watch, depicting the grueling process of sex-change operations.
Read moreLil Peep Doc ‘Everybody's Everything': A Haunting and Touching Statement on Millennial Angst [Review]
I saw this doc about the late Lil Peep when it premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival back in March. “Everybody’s Everything” opens in select theaters on November 15th. It’s a dark and personal journey about the life of a lost and isolated millenial celebrity.
Read more‘Love, Antosha' is An Immensely Personal Doc Tribute to Anton Yelchin [Review]
Anton Yelchin was only blossoming as a young actor when he tragically died of a freak accident back in June of 2016. As a performer, it’s so easy talking about his talents, because he was unequivocally brilliant and intensely into his art. It has to be said, but his career was mostly filled with supporting turns, and some lead roles, but he always found a way to steal the show. The last time we saw Yelchin on-screen, he stole scenes from the highly talented Anya Taylor-Jones and Olivia Cooke in “Thoroughbreds,” a pitch-black crime drama in which his drug-dealing smack-talker turned out to be the moral compass of the film. That was the beauty of Anton, he always loved to choose bizarre characters and fully flesh them out to make them feel humane.
Read more‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Trailer: Martin Scorsese’s New Bob Dylan Doc Focuses on 1975 Tour
Now that the trailer for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming music documentary “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese” has finally been released, I can safely say this is my most anticipated doc of the year. The trailer opens with his protest song “Hurricane” and ends with “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” as we come across a 1975 America well over the done-to-death, post-Manson flower-power and social justice era of just a few years back. At the same time, Dylan decided to hit the road with his Rolling Thunder Revue Tour and, if you’re a Dylan aficionado, it represents the very best of live Bob Dylan. Forget about the theatrics for a second (the makeup and mask-wearing, magicians, boxers) and focus on the indelible music and the way Dylan, fresh off retirement and an endless mysterious spirit, explored the roots of the country in a barnstorming tour like no other. The likes of Joan Baez, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Sam Shepard, and Allen Ginsberg took the bus with Dylan and The Band to add extra oomph to the surroundings.
Read more‘Hail Satan’ Plays Devil’s Advocate [Review]
“Hail Satan” is, first and foremost, about resistance; resistance against sectors of Christianity which have heavily deviated into their own toxic kind of militant evangelism. In fact, it’s this problematic nature of religion that kick-started the creation of The Satanic Temple. In Penny Lane’s documentary, The temple is rendered as nothing short of a troll-punking organization. It’s also an atheist-minded religion which keeps the positives that would come with religion — such as the camaraderie, organization but intersects these positives with progressive liberal values. You might ask, where does Satan fit into all of this? Oh, he’s mostly used as a direct conduit to infuriate Christian extremists, most of which actually believe The Satanic Temple abides by Lucifer’s throne. They don’t. In fact, The Satanic Temple does not worship Satan as a literal god at all. It’s all about the symbolism, baby. After all, the lord of darkness was the ultimate rebel by which the earliest biblical stories were told. These post-modernist Satanic followers mostly just want to place his statues all around red-state public spaces, including a Baphomet smack-dab in the middle of the Arkansas State Capitol. The fight to take the statue down, not to mention the idea of replacing it with a replica of the ten commandment plates, thanks to one Arkansas lawymaker, form the absurdist drama of the doc. Lane uses talking-heads footage from high-ranking TST members to forward her narrative, including the inner dilemmas such as the ethical rivalry between spokesman Lucien Greaves and Jex Blackmore, the founder of TST’s Detroit chapter who caused controversy within the organization, and ensuingly got booted out of it, after deciding to incite violence towards the temple’s enemies. Blackmore believes the separation of church and state isn’t enough, and that anarchy is needed to further promote the Staanic Temple’s goals.The rest of the movie is surprisingly infused in light and satirical manner by Lane, to further establish Satan’s rebelliously playful demeanor. If anything, Lane tries to make the case for America, in all its divisiveness, to take the moral examples presented by these lord-of-darkness-worshiping jokesters and change its mindset for the greater good. [B/B+]
Peter Jackson's Landmark “They Shall Not Grow Old" [Review]
Peter Jackson’s "They Shall Not Grow Old" uses never-before-seen archival footage of the "great war," which then colorizes and restores them in 3D format. This is an incredibly fascinating project which was originally screened in the U.K. last fall but has only come out this past month in the States. The result is nothing short of a landmark cinematic event.
Read more‘Leaving Neverland’ Trailer: Problematic and One-Sided HBO Documentary Has Abuse Victims Speaking Out
I saw Dan Reed’s problematic “Leaving Neverland” a week, or so, ago and it disturbed me in more ways than one. First off, the graphically detailed description by James Safechuck and Mark Robson of how Jackson sexually abused them as kids makes for some uncomfortable viewing. But also, if you know the background of these two guys, Robson has, by all accounts, lied under oath about Jackson in a court of law, among other sketchy things, you start to also become disturbed by Reed’s one-sided argument.
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