Film
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters: Following the Famed Photographer
A decade’s fretting and futzing, and the few ecstatic moments rendered along the way, are compressed into 77…
Michelle Orange
Film
Brooklyn Castle: Pint-Sized Chess Prodigies
He’s glimpsed only briefly in Katie Dellamaggiore’s magnanimous look into the agonies and ecstasies of the country’s top-rated…
Film
Girl Model: Russian Teens as International Fashion Commodity
Although the title of directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s dual portrait of two players in the underage-modeling…
Film
Wild Horse, Wild Ride: Texas Ponies Need Protection
For George Gregory—one of nine participants in the Fort Worth, Texas, horse-training competition profiled in this doc—the process…
Film
Side by Side: Keanu Reeves Grills Martin Scorsese About the Future of Film
It’s a credit to Side by Side—an impressively thorough, expertly assembled survey of the debate surrounding the movie…
Film
Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance: Great Footage, Little Depth
A deeply archived and circumspect history of the Joffrey dance company, this doc does a perfect white swan…
Film
Patience (After Sebald): A Trek Through Suffolk
As suggested by a scholar in this numinous essay-doc, if the current craze for walking a pilgrim’s path…
Film
Monsieur Lazhar: A Moving Schoolyard Tale From Montreal
A blanket of white covers Montreal inside and out in this understated, affecting Canadian drama. The schoolyard where…
Film
Chico & Rita: An Oscar-Nominated Jazz Cartoon
In this Oscar nominee, the life of Cuban pianist and composer Bebo Valdés seems to have been translated…
Film
Eames: The Architect and the Artist: Two Titans of Postwar Design
“The best for the most for the least” was the utopian business credo of Charles Eames, who with…
Film
Hell and Back Again: Following a Wounded Vet Home From Afghanistan
Danfung Dennis’ documentary seeks to chronicle the personal experience of war with extreme and sustained intimacy. The nightmare-vivid…
Film
Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog in the Lone Star State
An egalitarian study of crime and punishment in a small Texas town, Into the Abyss is also an…
Film
The Revenge of the Electric Car: Would You Like to Buy a Tesla?
I couldn’t get my parents to watch Who Killed the Electric Car?, Chris Paine’s indictment of the forces…
Film
A Good Old Fashioned Orgy: Less Sexy Than It Sounds
A group of 30-somethings trapped in the amber of their high-school years attempt to bone their way into…
Film
The First Beautiful Thing: An Italian Salute to a Very Strong Woman
If there’s a more complicated place than Italy to be a beautiful woman, the filmmaking world has yet…
Film
Griff the Invisible: Not-So-Adorable Defectives Fall in Love
An Australian misfits-in-love story manufactured from whole quirk, Griff the Invisible is more mannerism than movie. Griff (True…
Film
Forks Over Knives: Yet Another Vegan Manifesto
Looking to documentaries to learn how to live could easily become a life-consuming occupation in itself. I’m waiting…
Film
Henry’s Crime: Vera Farmiga Nearly Saves the Show
A low-blood-sugar heist movie set in the tumbleweed thoroughfares of downtown Buffalo, Henry’s Crime has a little too…
Film
The Bang Bang Club: Ryan Phillippe as South African War Junkie
“Yes, I think we all used her,” Eve Arnold once said of Marilyn Monroe. “I think as a…
Film
Carbon Nation: Walk, Don’t Drive, to See This Movie
Built more like an education module than a documentary, Carbon Nation might make you nostalgic for those blissful…