Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story
The story behind Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story begins in the intensely racially segregated South of 1965. An NBC News documentarian named Frank DeFelitta went to Greenwood, Mississippi to gently prod its residents on the subjects of race and racism. He ended up turning a black waiter, Booker Wright, into an “accidental activist,” when he […]
God Bless America Review
RATING: (3 STARS) The way you respond to Bobcat Goldthwaite’s latest, God Bless America, might depend on your feelings toward 2010’s Kick-Ass. The two films have a lot of things in common—not the least of which is a murderous, and very nonplussed, teenage girl. In fact, the way both films deal with violence in general […]
The Giant Mechanical Man Review
RATING: (2 STARS) Calling Lee Kirk’s The Giant Mechanical Man slight would be a massive understatement. It’s infinitesimal. It focuses on two kindly individuals going through pre-mid-life mid-life crises. That’s a subject certainly worthy of the screen, but any film this formulaic just isn’t. The characters are flat and frustrating, the beats are totally predictable, […]
The Russian Winter
John Forte was once on top of the music world, helping write and produce songs on The Fugees tremendous, Grammy-winning album The Score. Just a few years later, however, Forte was arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison for cocaine trafficking. In 2008, his sentence was commuted by President Bush, and though he’s still […]
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, the latest documentary from Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock, opens with the titular convention’s founder expressing hope that 500 or so will attend the inaugural event. Cut to hordes of costumed men and women frantically descending on San Diego. The entire history of Comic-Con would have made for […]
Perfect Sense Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Another year, another apocalypse movie. In Perfect Sense, however, the end of the world comes with a delicious twist. It’s not another planet coming to destroy us (a la Melancholia), nor is it necessarily a Contagion-like epidemic. Rather, it’s the sudden and inexplicable loss of our senses. Director David Mackenzie utilizes an […]
Margin Call Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Margin Call does for business what The Ides of March did for politics. It tells a familiar, high-stakes story about people making difficult and morally-questionable decisions. And like George Clooney’s film from earlier this month, rookie writer/director J.C. Chandor’s film isn’t afraid to get very technical on its viewers. If you’re unfamiliar […]
Melancholia Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Lars von Trier’s Melancholia defies classification about as much as it does your expectations. What else is there to expect, really, from the director of Antichrist and from a very personal story of depression and the end of the world. I guess the easiest thing to call it would be the anti-Tree […]
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
By combining elements of fellow show-biz docs I’m Still Here and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop manages to fall right between the two quality-wise. It’s certainly not the abomination that Casey Affleck’s Joaquin Phoenix hoax was. But it also doesn’t touch the brilliance of last year’s brilliant Joan Rivers portrait. […]
