"documentary"

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is not a conventional documentary, though that was the original intention. Its inception started nearly forty years ago, in 1982. Robert B. Weide had just finished a well-received PBS documentary…

If you have never heard about Albert Speer, this documentary is a great introduction to his life. He grew up in a bourgeois family and studied architecture and eventually became a confidant of Hitler. He…

The Women and the Murderer starts with a series of clips of young, happy women dancing, going out. This footage is interspersed with pictures and images of murder scenes. Then, we are introduced to Anne…

When life gets you down, sometimes it seems like there’s no road up. Co-directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel take an in-depth look into The Cara Program, an employment support group that aids struggling Chicagoans…

It’s hard to deny the title has some punch to it. The peculiar world of chessboxing, a sport determined to find the smartest toughest guy. The art of chessboxing is finding the balance between two…

Take one look at, say, Netflix’s vast documentary catalog, and you’ll instantly realize that the true-crime documentary genre has found itself in a state of oversaturation. From the litany of same-ish docs on streaming services…

Nature documentaries often take a wonder-first approach to storytelling: the narration and cinematography are acutely focused on portraying the majesty of nature, the beauty of its subjects, and the stunning worlds that exist parallel to…

The nature of consciousness is a complex topic. One that humanity has tried to view through every lens that we’ve created or discovered. Religion, philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, and psychedelics, just to name a few.…

Eccentricity and innovation have always been defining features of any given artist — even more so for documentaries that specifically go out of their way to train a lens on them. Whether it be the…

Check out the rest of our coverage of the 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival: Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. Read Part 3 here. Paradise Without People Even though the Syrian refugee crisis…

Check out the rest of our coverage of the 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival: Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here. The Walrus and the Whistleblower CW: Mentions of animal abuse Nathalie Bibeau’s portrait…

Read part 1 of our 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival coverage here. The Wheels of Wonder Play is a very important aspect of every child’s development. It gets them moving, stimulates their imagination, and helps…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some film festivals have moved online. This allowed me to — despite being based in London — screen some of the slate in the 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.  So,…

I had a funny experience when I caught up with Netflix’s Miss Americana, the Taylor Swift documentary which captures her political awakening while also recapping her career and work leading up to the release of…

When the Academy releases their nominations for the Oscars, two things normally happen. 1) everyone erupts in rage as the Academy continues to make the wrong choices time and time again. And 2) most people…

In last year’s top 10, I remarked that we’d eventually look back on 2021 as a significant transition year in the history of cinema. Well, allow me to expand (and slightly hedge) on that proclamation:…

2022 was a fantastic year for film. I have always held the belief that there is no such thing as a bad year for the medium. There will always be multiple great movies released. This…

In reflecting on the year, a film that always comes up in my mind is Audrey Diwan’s 1960s abortion drama, Happening. Many would point to the film’s startlingly prescient release just weeks before the Dobbs…

There must be some kind of small glitch in the Netflix algorithm. In the span of a few weeks, the streamer has released two black-and-white documentaries about a very famous person interviewing someone with Parkinson’s…

Tubi TV is a fascinating, free service full of cult oddities from around the world. It’s got a little bit of everything a movie fan could ever want. As such, on a recurring basis, we’re…

One of the first notable visuals in Laura Poitras’s landmark documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, is an excerpt slideshow from Nan Goldin’s legendary photography collection, “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” — as good a time…

It’s almost staggering to think about how long Jonah Hill has been in the public eye at this point. 17 years after he really wanted those goldfish shoes in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I sometimes have to…

LEVINE. To those even decently well-versed in the classical music world, the name James Levine is likely to bring forth a slew of contradicting reactions. On one end is a sense of deep reverence: Levine…

An expansive, white-walled studio. A camera crew helmed by director Ruth Beckermann. A lavish, pink-red sofa that’s previously been used for erotic films. And 100 men, aged from 16 all the way to 99, who…

January 9th, 1997. David Bowie stands before a massive crowd at Madison Square Garden at a special concert event for his 50th birthday and exclaims, “I don’t know where I am going from here, but…

The Lawnmower Man isn’t the most popular sci-fi film ever made in the 90s. It’s certainly a weird one. Yet, it’s strangely relevant to 2022 and the wonders of modern technology. The Lawnmower Man is about Jobe…

Star-studded erotic thrillers have long been out of fashion. Perhaps this is due to the viewer being more desensitized to sexual content. The stuff you see on your regular HBO show is often far more…

The reported heinous acts committed by the Russian government sound like something straight out of a 1970s political thriller. And that’s probably exactly how they like it. “If you want to kill someone,” Alexei Navalny…

Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is truly a sensory overload, and not just because of its staggering archival footage of gorgeous volcanoes. On top of that, it’s edited like a French New Wave film to the tune…

I’ve given up on figuring out whether or not a given year is a “good” year for film. The conclusion is always based on a combination of personal taste and a willingness to explore. A…