Tag: Documentary film

Screening Room: Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Awards, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment
stlouissuperman1
‘St. Louis Superman’

The 2020 edition of the Oscar-Nominated shorts program is hitting theaters next week.

My review of the five-part documentary program, nearly all of which are fantastic if sometimes hard to watch, was published at PopMatters:

When assessing a short-film anthology, sometimes a theme presents itself and other times you have to go looking for one. The movies in The 2020 Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Documentary come from places far and wide, presenting an array of tones and personalities. But the thread that seems to link all of them together is worry that the future will not be an improvement on the problematic present…

Coming Soon: ‘The Unknown Known’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - New, Film - UpcomingLeave a comment
Rumsfeld: 'The only things that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing.'
Rumsfeld: ‘The only things that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing.’

The_Unknown_Known_posterErrol Morris’ riveting new documentary is a feature-length interview with none other than the Bush era’s greatest poetic dissembler, Donald Rumsfeld. The Unknown Known has been playing festival dates recently and is going to hit theaters on December 13.

My early review is at Short Ends & Leader:

In The Unknown Known, Rumsfeld shows time and again why he’s a perfect subject for another of Morris’s documentary investigations into American military adventurism and hubris. For one, he’s the sharpest verbalist of the three. For another, he’s willing to tangle with other points of view; though not necessarily concede an inch of ground. If the film can’t compare in the end to 2003’s The Fog of War, that’s because Rumsfeld doesn’t appear to have had the come-to-Jesus moment about Iraq that Robert McNamara had about his role in the disaster that was the Vietnam War. Given the placidly combative figure presented here, that moment will probably never come…

Here’s a look at the trailer:

 

Department of Cinematic Complaints: Perceived Biases Edition

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, OmniculturalLeave a comment

dinesh1It was bad enough that the semi-scholar Dinesh D’Souza put his efforts behind a particularly seamy piece of Andrew Breitbart-ish video propaganda disguised as a documentary about Barack Obama. (This still from 2016: Obama’s America shows Dinesh intrepidly scouring the globe for clues to the president’s ignominy.)

Then came this:

…the makers of the documentary 2016: Obama’s America were peeved that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ shortlist of Oscar-contending documentaries didn’t include their film. The articles notes that 2016 was a surprise hit that pulled in over $33 million, a staggering amount for a nonfiction film and more than the 15 documentaries have made combined.

My post about this “controversy” is at Short Ends & Leader.

New in Theaters: ‘Brooklyn Castle’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

The fresh new documentary Brooklyn Castle has an unlikely band of protagonists—a record-breaking and mostly minority chess team from an unassuming Brooklyn neighborhood—and a welcome, optimistic take on the modern school. My full review is at Film Journal International:

When documentaries take on schools as a subject, the film is either a lament for a nation’s crumbling educational edifice or a feel-good film about a band of plucky upstarts defying the odds. In either event, the assumption is generally that things are fairly horrendous, school-wise, and that only particularly lucky or unique groups can hope to win out. What makes Katie Dellamaggiore’s Brooklyn Castle so wonderful and fresh-feeling in many ways is how it neatly skirts those preassigned roles for the students, parents and teachers it follows around…

Brooklyn Castle is playing now in very limited release.

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Six Million and One’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

 

My review of the new documentary Six Million and One is running now at Film Journal International:

Some of the most discomfiting imagery in films about the Holocaust comes not from wartime footage showing the savage effects on the prisoners or even the ghostly sites themselves. What creates the most emotional dissonance is more often the sight of these places of unbelievable butchery now sitting in well-manicured European suburbs, woven fully back into the fabric of everyday life. It begs the question: How does one live in the shadow of the unimaginable? In David Fisher’s emotional and acidic documentary Six Million and One, he digs into this question on a broader level, in effect asking: What is the point of memory? What and whom does it serve?…

Six Million and One is playing now in very limited release.

You can see the trailer here:

 

New in Theaters: ‘Detropia’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

“We are here at a critical time!” shouts a tent-revival preacher somewhere in the gloom of a rapidly downsizing Detroit. His is one of the many frightened, brave, saddened, still-fighting voices that Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady include as a chorus of the forgotten in their tragedy-tinted but clear-eyed look at what happens when a city’s reason for being up and leaves. Unfortunately, though the city is inarguably at a crisis point—in 1930, Detroit was the fastest-growing city in the world, and it’s shrunk by over 25 percent in the last decade alone—Detropia doesn’t show any evidence of a consensus on the solution…

Detropia opens this week in limited release and goes wider around the country over the next few weeks. My full review is at Film Journal International.