A spiritual sequel of sorts to her 2016 documentary We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice, celebrated First Nations filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin once again delves into the contested issues of healthcare and welfare pertaining to […]
Tag: Documentary
Apollo 11 (Miller, 2019)
It’s so gratifying to go into a documentary and not have to be talked at for two hours. For those that feel differently, there are many other films you can watch about the Apollo 11 […]
Black Mother (Allah, 2018)
Black Mother is filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah’s benediction to his homeland of Jamaica. In his polyphonic and contrapuntal vision, it is a place of many faces and attitudes, with eyes that see the road ahead […]
Free Solo (Vasarhelyi & Chin, 2018)
I spent a good portion of Free Solo loudly swearing at my walls. Not a heights guy, I’m afraid. Watching someone scale a rock formation without a rope or harness is the kind of cinematic event I […]
The 2019 Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Documentary (Various, 2017-2018)
Black Sheep (Perkins, 2018) I could definitely feel the Moonlight influences in this short documentary about a black boy’s desperate drive to survive after moving to a racist neighbourhood in Essex. The direct address to the camera, […]
Of Fathers and Sons (Derki, 2017)
Kudos to the Academy’s documentary branch for plucking this lesser-known choice out of its shortlist and giving it a top five berth over something more mainstream like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I’m sure it pissed off […]
RBG (West & Cohen, 2018)
I shall play the role of sober judge while writing this review, because Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want me to do nothing less. And so, while I admit RBG is highly entertaining and teeming with warmth for […]
24 Frames (Kiarostami, 2017)
Abbas Kiarostami left the world with an unusual goodbye. Not a narrative film, or a film of particular grandeur. Not a film that took us through his beloved Iran, meeting new faces and treading new […]
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Wilkerson, 2017)
Travis Wilkerson’s family history is not one he is proud of. You would forgive him if he never talked about it in public. I, too, would be apprehensive if I knew one of my closer […]
Minding the Gap (Liu, 2018)
Late into Minding the Gap, one of its subjects learns the true purpose of the documentary and remarks that it is a form a free therapy. So cleverly does Bing Liu frame the film at the […]
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Ross, 2018)
The cinematography in Hale County This Morning, This Evening rivals some of the best fictional work of the year, allowing every sprig of Alabaman life to become one with the larger spheres. For instance, there is one […]
They Shall Not Grow Old (Jackson, 2018)
Peter Jackson certainly does us a service in terms of historical preservation by restoring century-old footage for They Shall Not Grow Old. Seeing it in a normal frame rate, and in colour, opens up the past […]
Shirkers (Tan, 2018)
This is a film about loss and reclamation over a span of several decades, ending on a note of triumph even though its circumstances are anything but. There is nothing here about sexual assaults or […]
The Work (McLeary & Aldous, 2017)
Therapy can be intense. Intensive group therapy? Man. I don’t know how else to compare such extreme cathartic intervention other than as a form of non-supernatural exorcism. It must take mountains of courage for grown […]
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (Neville, 2018)
I watched this before the 38-minute featurette A Final Cut for Orson, which is where all the details about The Other Side of the Wind’s restoration work are included. I wouldn’t have minded one long and comprehensive […]
The Lonely Film Critic 