7 years ago
documentary 10
Hot Docs 2015: Roundtable, Part 1
When we think about manifestations of evil in the world, we are most comfortable with those that are outside our realm of experience. Monsters in childrens’ stories, corrupt world leaders in faraway places, or flashy serial killers in our primetime TV shows. W...
Read more →
Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 193: “Monkey Kingdom”
In the face of the brand-new Disneynature documentary Monkey Kingdom, here's a painful admission: I hate every ape I see, from Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z. No, you'll never make a monkey out of me. OK, fine, this may not be that specifically related to Planet of th...
Read more →
“Monkey Kingdom”
The films released under the Walt Disney Company’s Disneynature banner have a recognizable formula by now: a famous narrator, a slew of eye-popping images captured by sparkling high-definition photography, adorable animals preferably in exotic locales, various...
Read more →
“Dior and I”
The challenge: designing a couture collection for the legendary high fashion brand Christian Dior. The contender: Raf Simons, the newly appointed artistic director at the House of Dior. Time: eight stressful weeks in the spring of 2012. The output? That's like...
Read more →
“In Country”
With the rousing success of the final episodes of a certain recent HBO true-crime series, it has become something of a topic du jour to debate the utility of documentary reenactments. Are they meant to be taken as a representation of reality, or of a shady net...
Read more →
Mezzanine Essentials: “Peeping Tom”
The story of how Peeping Tom effectively killed Michael Powell’s career in the U.K. is well known, but perhaps Powell was actually trying to slay cinema itself? The film was trashed by British critics upon its release in 1960, resuscitated by the American New ...
Read more →
Going Glib: On Alex Gibney’s Fleet, Tactless Scientology Exposé
The Church of Scientology is famously thin-skinned as institutions go, but you can’t really fault them for wanting to take a collective hit out on Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. If the film isn’t quite the polemic its title su...
Read more →
“The Salt of the Earth”
A curious reunion of cinema with its ancestral art of photography, Wim Wenders’ co-directorial project The Salt of the Earth celebrates the life behind a cameraman's images. The film’s subject is world-renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado, an artful adventu...
Read more →
Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado on “The Salt of the Earth”
For decades, Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado has been one of the most celebrated social photographers in the world. He gets his due in the new documentary The Salt of the Earth, which both recounts his life and work, and uses both as a lens through...
Read more →
How to Survive a Plague: On the Resonance of “India’s Daughter”
Over the past two weeks, the Indian government has been fighting with the BBC over a documentary titled India’s Daughter, in a tussle that keeps revealing new facets with every passing day. At the time of writing, there is debate about, among other things, the...
Read more →