Tag: documentary

Screening Room: ‘Boorman and the Devil’

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I reviewed the new documentary Boorman and the Devil for The Playlist:

The columnist Murray Kempton had a secret for getting a great story: Always go to the loser’s locker room. That was where the real drama was. This is why stories about films that went disastrously wrong will almost always be more compelling than making-of accounts about a classic where everything came together perfectly. There is also more to learn in watching Francis Ford Coppola flail about in “Hearts of Darkness” or “Megadoc” than yet another story about the mastery of “The Godfather.” Witnessing how easy it is for an artist to crash and burn can make the great works resonate as even more rare and precious. “It’s a precarious business,” John Boorman says in David Kittredge’s “Boorman and the Devil,” quoting a producer who once told him that maybe five percent of films succeed. Kittredge’s fraught subject, the making of Boorman’s 1977 misfire “The Exorcist II: The Heretic,” was not among that five percent…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Wham! 10 Days in China’

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My review of Wham! 10 Days in China ran at The Playlist:

Among the most refreshing aspects of “WHAM! 10 Days in China” is the film’s openness about the mercenary nature of the groundbreaking event it depicts. In 1985, Wham! had become massive stars in the UK, their effervescent catchiness creating an infectious bridge between New Romantic synth and bubblegum pop. But they had not achieved the end goal of every British act, namely, breaking into the U.S. market. Seeking an attention-grabbing stunt, Wham!’s management came up with a high-risk gambit: Become the first Western pop band to play in China…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Nova ’78’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - Festivals, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

One of the must-see documentaries at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight festival was Nova ’78.

My review ran in The Playlist:

Backstage at the Nova Convention, a three-day gathering in late 1978 ostensibly to celebrate the work of William S. Burroughs, an organizer worries that audience members will be upset by the news that Keith Richards has cancelled, as rock stars do. About to mount the stage, Patti Smith agrees to deliver the bad news, saying with the grinning nonchalance of a bohemian gunslinger (or neo-punk Bob Dylan), “if they’re going to give anybody shit, let them try to give me shit.” It’s a barely buffed-up little diamond of a moment in Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias’ “Nova ’78,” a gratifyingly non-exhaustive documentary filled with them…

Screening Room: ‘The Story of Documentary Film’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

I reviewed the first episode of Mark Cousins’ new series, The Story of Documentary Film from the Sundance Film Festival for The Playlist:

Excited as we might be about ‘Dune: Messiah’ or ‘Wuthering Heights,’ the cinematic event of 2026 is more likely to be seen on a small screen and is about five times as long as ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash.’ The greatest chronicler of modern film and what it means to the world, Mark Cousins, has followed up his landmark series ‘The Story of Film’ with a new sixteen-parter, ‘The Story of Documentary Film,’ the first episode of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. If this initial taste is any indication, the next fifteen hours will be something glorious…

Screening Room: ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’

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The new documentary from Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) just had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I reviewed the film for The Playlist:

Everyone has their own George Orwell and tends to think everyone else gets him wrong. As such, making a sprawling quasi-biographical documentary like “Orwell: 2+2=5” is a brave effort bound to exasperate people across the political spectrum. Even so, Raoul Peck’s repeated usage of the author’s words to buttress his own hazily presented view of current events makes this a less rigorous and engaging work than anything about Orwell should be…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Devo’

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My review of Chris Smith’s documentary Devo ran at The Playlist:

Weaving in spectacular early footage of Devo’s first shows back in Ohio, Smith shows them happily alienating audiences who didn’t know what to make of these robotic weirdoes in the era of denim, sideburns, mellow harmonies, and noodly guitar solos. One show at an Akron bar called the Crypt, right by the Firestone plant, nearly led to the band getting pummeled. After being inspired a couple of years later by the Ramones’ first album to speed up their music and start playing CBGB in New York, Devo actually did get into it with the Dead Boys. This showed Devo could annoy even punks, whose music they appreciated for its sonic velocity but looked down on as “simple” and “anti-intellectual”…

Devo runs on Netflix next week. Are we not men?

Screening Room: ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’

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My review of the documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley was published at Slant Magazine:

…relates Jeff Buckley’s meteoric rise and early death in the 1990s through the adoring and wounded voices of his family, friends, and bandmates. Berg leavens their wistful memories with personal and concert footage, along with Buckley’s notebook jottings, ramblingly funny and emotional voicemails, and jagged animations that are meant to simulate his manic and at times self-destructive mindset…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Dahomey’

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My review of Mati Diop’s new documentary Dahomey ran at PopMatters:

Looking back at the 19th century, when European powers rampaged across Africa and cut apart kingdoms to plunder resources and kidnap millions for the slave trade, it would be understandable to argue that stolen artifacts were not top of mind for those being colonized. To its credit, Mati Diop’s lovely yet fractious documentary Dahomey does not try to make that argument. What she does attempt is a deeper story about the loss that lingers from colonial conquest and the uncertainty about how to move forward…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Look Into My Eyes’

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My review of the documentary Look Into My Eyes ran at PopMatters:

It shouldn’t be a shock that many of the New York psychics profiled by Lana Wilson in her fascinating and, at times, maddening documentary Look Into My Eyes are actors, writers, or artists. At the very least, they are fascinated by invented worlds. Mediums and other people who have claimed to communicate with the spirits of the dead have historically relied on a bit of theater. Thus, the seances are conducted with heavy drapes, dark shadows, and guttering candles rather than in a fluorescent-lit WeWork space…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Elton John: Never Too Late’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - New, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment
Elton John and John Lennon backstage at Madison Square Garden, 1974. (Sam Emerson)

The new documentary Elton John: Never Too Late just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It should be coming relatively soon to Disney+.

My review ran at The Playlist:

The makers of “Elton John: Never Too Late” wisely didn’t try to be completists. After a half-century-plus of touring as well as recording approximately eleventy thousand albums and musicals, attempting a complete survey of Elton John’s output in one film is a fool’s errand. However, the film ends up covering enough of his career that the resulting gaps are more noticeable than they should be. Viewers will leave the movie with a good-enough appreciation of his work, but not necessarily any deeper an understanding of the man than could be gleaned from viewing “Rocketman“…

Screening Room: ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’

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My review of the new documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics (which just screened at both Venice and Telluride film festivals), was published in The Playlist:

It might be challenging for some viewers to take activists seriously when they are speaking in tongues. But that is exactly what Petra Costa does in her edgy yet empathetic documentary ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics.’ Overlapping somewhat with the events chronicled in 2019’s ‘The Edge of Democracy,’ her epic account of Brazil’s recent whipsawing political battles, this film takes a step back from the action to investigate how the nation’s governance devolved into a near-permanent state of crisis. A crucial and underappreciated factor, according to Costa, is the rocketing surge of a politicized strain of evangelism that aims to accelerate rather than alleviate chaos…

Screening Room: ‘War Game’

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I reviewed the new documentary War Game for Slant:

Much of the criticism thrown at Alex Garland’s Civil War centered on it presenting the titular conflict without really explaining its origins. Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s documentary War Game goes the other way by showing in very specific ways not how a modern-day American civil war might be fought but how one might start…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Made in England’

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My review of the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger ran in Slant:

Given the sense of wonder and promotion of emotion over reason that courses through Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s work, it’s appropriate that David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger starts with a recollection of a defining childhood moment. The film’s narrator and one of its executive producers, Martin Scorsese describes himself as an asthmatic child confined indoors and thunderstruck by these old films he was seeing on television. Giddy with the memory of being a young boy accidentally coming across fantastical mindblowers like The Thief of Baghdad, Scorsese says there was simply “no better initiation” into what he calls “the mysteries of Michael Powell”…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Repertory, Film-Documentary1 Comment

With Dune 2 packing them into theaters, it seemed a good time to lok back at the now 10-year-old documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune for Eyes Wide Open:

This never-dull if not always believable bull session lets cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky describe at length his absolutely mad idea for an early adaptation of Dune which never happened. Pavich couldn’t be bothered less with how the money came and went; only the creative vision matters. Given what a gonzo undertaking it all appears to have been (Apocalypse Now looks simple in comparison), that’s probably the right approach for one of film history’s great Could Have Been stories…

Here’s the trailer: