8 years ago
All posts by Dan Schindel
LAFF Review: ‘The Crash Reel’
"The brave might not live forever, but the cautious never live at all."
This quote pops up prominently in The Crash Reel. But if this documentary was meant to inspire me to abandon my extremely cautious existence and take more risks in life, then it failed ...
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LAFF Review: ‘First Cousin Once Removed’
We are accumulations of memories. Cinema is a way to preserve a memory. Documentarian Alan Berliner has made a career out of using film to pick apart what makes us who we are. First Cousin Once Removed is a magnificent addition to his ouvre. It's a haunting, m...
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LAFF Review: ‘In a World…’
It's an unexpected development that a relatively mainstream film has been made about voiceover artists, a subject which I had figured would only ever get its due in a nice-but-forgettable documentary. In a World... is about more than just the people who talk o...
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‘Dirty Wars’
"America knows war. They are war masters."
"You can't even call this a war."
"Why not?"
"Wars end."
That first quote is from this documentary. The second is from The Wire (and if you didn't automatically recognize it, then you need to go watch The ...
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‘The History of Future Folk’
The planet Hondo is threatened by an impending comet impact. General Trius (Nils d'Aulaire) came to Earth to kill humanity so that the Hondonians could have a new home. But he was entranced by an invention that Hondo doesn't have: music. So he spared us and se...
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‘The Kings of Summer’
Usually, describing something as “adolescent” is a put-down. Not so in the case of The Kings of Summer. The movie accomplishes the uncommon feat of capturing what it’s like to be a teenager, while at the same time casting a critical eye on how teenagers can be...
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Flimsy and Dull ‘Interior. Leather Bar.’
One certainly can't accuse James Franco of not stretching himself artistically. In the same summer where he's played an exaggerated version of himself as he goes through the apocalypse, he's also co-directed a documentary/fiction chimera about him filming scen...
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