Anyone who goes into this thinking they’re going to learn about the physiology of rats and their historical notoriety as carriers of infection will be disappointed. This isn’t your standard nature documentary. It’s actually an […]
Tag: Documentary
Casting JonBenet (Green, 2017)
Kudos to Kitty Green for keeping this immensely gossipy doc tethered to a concept she could pull off. I was weary at first, because the actors in this run through almost every sordid speculation about […]
Strong Island (Ford, 2017)
This deeply personal film finds horror in the fact that a murder has been stripped of its horror. Yance Ford’s brother was gunned down by a white mechanic, despite the fact that he was not […]
Last Men in Aleppo (Fayyad, 2017)
There are so many documentaries about the crisis in Syria out there right now that you’re spoiled for choice. Last year, a Netflix short called The White Helmets won an Oscar; this year, at least three (City […]
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (James, 2016)
It is a testament to Steve James that he can turn a subject that, by all accounts, is best understood by a small subset of the population (namely, a federal savings bank being prosecuted by […]
Rodents of Unusual Size (Costello, Metzler & Springer, 2017)
Though it’s only just slightly over an hour, Rodents of Unusual Size covers a lot of ground when it comes to the nutria, a large, rat-like invasive species terrorizing the wetlands of Louisiana. From its history as […]
Icarus (Fogel, 2017)
I am tickled that everyone on here had the same thought as I had when I started watching this: Super Size Me: Doping Edition. I was even confused as to whether this film was the right […]
Dawson City: Frozen Time (Morrison, 2016)
I learned a lot about Dawson City, Yukon while watching this. Heck, it was like a free history lesson. So many tidbits about the Gold Rush, the social life of its residents, and the population […]
Nothing Like a Dame / Tea with the Dames (Michell, 2018)
Anyone who is a fan of acting legends should give Nothing Like a Dame (or, as it is now known in North America, Tea with the Dames) a spin. Ideally during a sunny afternoon, with a spot of […]
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Neville, 2018)
I remember seeing snippets of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when I was young. I didn’t catch it in its entirety because I was at school when it aired, but I remember finding it so serene. Fred Rogers had […]
Three Identical Strangers (Wardle, 2018)
This is the kind of documentary film you’d show to a university data methods class while rapping the desk with a pointer and shouting ETHICAL STANDARDS MATTER. It’s pretty much how Wardle goes about setting […]
All These Sleepless Nights (Marczak, 2016)
All These Sleepless Nights is a weird hybrid of documentary and artifice, dealing with real Polish youth and their restlessness
Kate Plays Christine (Greene, 2016)
Kate Plays Christine is all about the ethical concerns of this kind of memorialising. It wonders aloud why Christine Chubbuck mattered if not for the way she died, and the answers are hard to come by.
Life, Animated (Williams, 2016)
This is not just a documentary about a boy with autism. It’s also a film about seeing the world through film, and that’s something we can all attest to.
13th (DuVernay, 2016)
Ava DuVernay’s 13th looks and feels like something criminology professors will be screening to their students in perpetuity, yet why should that matter in the end?
The Lonely Film Critic 