Hello, Dankness (2023)
The value of experimental filmmaking is in challenging [...]
Documentary
A Compassionate Spy (2023)
Released at virtually any other time on the calendar, Hoop Dreams director Steve James’ new documentary A Compassionate Spy might have flown through the critical circuits and gone unnoticed. But here, just two weeks after the release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film that effectively be paired along with his three-hour brobdingnagian epic. Both […]
After the Bite (2023)
At the same moment when Discovery is blowing its over-inflated horn about Shark Week (bolstered slightly out of familiarity by the presents of Jason Mamoa) it is nice that HBO offers an alternative that the channel’s decades-long theme week wouldn’t touch. After the Bite is a little more thoughtful, a little more meaningful then almost […]
Kokomo City (2023)
Smith’s Kokomo City is the kind of film that makes you grateful for the documentary form. At a moment when new voices are crying out to be heard, it is often found that certain voices are silenced for fear of the backlash from the larger portion of the population. At this juncture, it is difficult […]
The YouTube Effect (2023)
Alright, so in March I got Susan Hillinger’s documentary Money Shot about the rise and social disintegration of Pornhub and now Alex Winter gives the same treatment to YouTube with The YouTube Effect. What is a little frightening is that both films do almost the same job. They want to illustrate how supply and demand […]
Stan Lee (2023)
Stan Lee, for me, has always been like the world’s coolest uncle – that uncle who drives up to your mom’s house on a chopper. As the founder and eternal figurehead of Marvel Comics, he had a public image of that reminded us that not all senior citizens are grouchy old fuddy-fuddies. He understood his […]
Money Shot: The PornHub Story (2022)
Let’s face it, PornHub redefines the idea that sex sells, just ask any of its content creators who are earning enough money through the site to buy houses and cars. PornHub, in spite of it’s potentially forbidden implications, remains a ridiculously popular site with a snarl of traffic that rivals the L.A. freeway – a […]
The 95th Academy Award nominees: ‘Navalny’
Nominations:• Best Documentary Feature It is clear from the very beginning that we know that Alexi Navalny is a marked man. He is certain that his time upon this mortal coil is short and so he uses the best defense that is available to him: humor. Stepping into Daniel Roher’s documentary Navalny, he makes the […]
The 95th Academy Award Nominees: ‘All That Breathes’
Nominations:• Best Documentary Feature Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is a deeply moving and deeply introspective documentary that uses the poetry of observation to convey the information that the natural world is being strangled by the reckless impulses of mankind. This, of course, is nothing new, but the movie doesn’t shame us. It doesn’t rub […]
