Renaissance Village (2008) Movie Review

Good documentaries provide the viewer with an intimate perspective of a person, place, event or period of time. A great documentary either simply educates, if unbiased, or improves social awareness by immersing people in the world being documented. Renaiassance Village, while admirable in it’s...

November 30th, 2008 | Read More

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (2008) Movie Review

Morgan Spurlock, the man famous for putting on the pounds eating McDonalds three meals a day for thirty days in Super Size Me, is back and he’s on a mission, a global one this time. He’s decided that he doesn’t want to bring his unborn child into a world where the US can’t find...

August 18th, 2008 | Read More

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief (2006) Movie Review

As the credits rolled at the end of “The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief” (2006), I immediately thought of “Leaving Las Vegas,” “The Grifters,” and “Requiem for a Dream,” three feature films that have also left me with a similar sense of numbness and depression. All...

June 28th, 2008 | Read More

Fight or Flight (2006) Movie Review

When watching documentaries there is, commonly, a great deal of material that needs to be overlooked in order to fully enjoy the film. Typically, the cinematography, the editing and a number of other purely technical aspects have to be “gotten used to” before one can completely immerse themselves...

April 12th, 2008 | Read More

King of Kong (2007) Movie Review

Every boy grows up loving videogames, whether it be the clunky arcades of the ’80s or the virtual fighters of the ’90s and beyond, but we never loved them as much as the men in “King of Kong”. My biggest commitment to videogames peaked at skipping school while in Middle School...

November 25th, 2007 | Read More

Behind Forgotten Eyes (2006) Movie Review

Anthony Gilmore’s “Behind Forgotten Eyes” is an unendingly mesmerizing tale of cruelty, survival, and the indomitable human spirit. It is at times gut wrenching, and at other times a truly inspiration tribute to women who refuse to admit defeat, even in the face of great and impossible...

July 8th, 2007 | Read More

Dong (2006) Movie Review

“Dong” is a companion piece to Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s prize winning “Still Life”, and both played at the 2006 Venice Film Festival. Interestingly, it was this documentary which was actually planned first, with the joint project coming about after Jia was invited...

June 3rd, 2007 | Read More

Manufacturing Dissent (2007) Movie Review

(Movie Review by Christiaan Harden) When Debbie Melnyk and Nick Caine, two self-proclaimed progressive liberal filmmakers, set out to make a biography celebrating Michael Moore, they began as admirers and fans. After discovering a number of otherwise unknown facts about his documentaries, however, they...

April 29th, 2007 | Read More

Bukowski: Born Into This (2003) Movie Review

Unlike documentaries on musicians and even visual artists, docs focused on major literary figures are far and few in between. Of course, there are the obligatory A&E spotlights on Mark Twain and Shakespeare, but when I am scouring my online movie provider of choice and can’t find anything...

October 2nd, 2006 | Read More

How is Your Fish Today? (2006) Movie Review

“How Is Your Fish Today?” began life as a British-commissioned Chinese documentary about Mohe, a small village in the northernmost part of China , lying on the Russian border. However, when the crew reached Mohe, a supposedly mystical town where it’s light twenty hours out of the...

August 31st, 2006 | Read More

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic (2005) Movie Review

It really pays to be born a woman with a genotype predestined for phenotypic cuteness; that is, if you are misfortunate enough to have to be born at all. What can’t they get away with saying? Who is going to persecute them? Men? An attractive woman could call almost any man by his racial slur-name...

August 25th, 2006 | Read More

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2005) Movie Review

Nothing gets me more hype than finding out that a musician I am a fan of is really as fucking weird as I imagined them to be. For instance, Prince. Now, if you’re a rabid Prince enthusiast like myself, you will have watched posted interviews and all of his videos on launch.com at every party you...

July 2nd, 2006 | Read More

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005) Movie Review

Documentaries should always be approached with a grain of salt already in hand. While they always purport to tell ‘the truth’ about their subjects, they invariably choose a side and rely on generous helpings of embellishment to make their point. The crazy genius has always been an easy target...

April 29th, 2006 | Read More

Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2004) Movie Review

As a musician, I truly savor films which are made in effigy, in historical retrospect or just in plain celebration of the lives and artwork of other, considerably better known musicians. And the musician or band in question does not play into this fascination; it is becoming acquainted with small pieces...

April 9th, 2006 | Read More

The Future of Food (2004) Movie Review

Besides all of the generous plants who give us oxygen, photosynthesis which makes that possible, and the 99.5% reliability of the TV turning on everyday if our cable bills have been paid, there is nothing we over-nourished Americans take advantage of more than food. Most of us eat with our eyes; we choose...

April 2nd, 2006 | Read More

The Aristocrats (2005) Movie Review

On paper, the concept of “The Aristocrats” sounds terrible: it is, essentially, 90 minutes of comedians being interviewed about a very dirty joke with the titular two-word punch line, “The Aristocrats”, and the role said joke plays in the comedy community. From this, one would...

March 23rd, 2006 | Read More

Overnight (2003) Movie Review

There is a telling scene in the documentary “Overnight” when Troy Duffy, the documentary’s star, is discussing the fate of his band with his bandmates, wherein he uses the word “we” a lot. What we will come to know about this man named Troy Duffy is that, in his world, the...

March 4th, 2006 | Read More

Murderball (2005) Movie Review

“Can you believe this? These guys get more tail than I do.” Once the above thought pops into your head while watching the documentary “Murderball”, pity for the people being profiled goes right out the window. Then again, if you were to tell a guy like Mark Zupan that you pity...

October 14th, 2005 | Read More

Gunner Palace (2004) Movie Review

“Gunner Palace” is a frank and at times profanity-laden look at the life of the 2/3 Field Artillery, which found itself occupying Uday Hussein’s bombed out palace after the end of major combat in the second Iraq War. Now tasked with patrolling a section of Baghdad that is also home...

July 12th, 2005 | Read More

Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong (2004) Movie Review

If your interest lies in Hong Kong Cinema of old, the new documentary “Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong” is what you’re looking for. “Chop Socky” is an hour-long, made-for-TV documentary that has assembled quite an impressive history of Hong Kong’s “chop socky”...

March 31st, 2005 | Read More