Directed by Steve James Produced by Zak Piper, James and Garrett Basch Released by Magnolia Pictures USA. 118 min. Rated R Perhaps the most shocking thing about the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself is the revelation that Ebert became a full-time paid film critic at a major newspaper in the third largest city in the […]
Directed by Dan Krauss Produced by Krauss and Linda Davis Written by Kruass, Lawrence Lerew and Davis Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories USA. 79 min. Not rated As a result of the violence they witness, soldiers often walk a fine line between morality and sanity, a demarcation that’s been well fictionalized in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of […]
The Power of Art: Real or Fake Documentaries on artists are an annual presence at the Tribeca Film Festival, but the breadth of art this year is exceptional. Tomorrow We Disappear By the time directors Jimmy Goldblum and Adam Weber finally got around to finishing Salman Rushdie’s 1981 novel Midnight’s Children (just before I […]
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Rossato-Bennett Released by Bond 360 USA. 74 min. Not rated Just imagine the pitch: “It’s a documentary about geriatrics with advanced Alzheimer’s, many of whom have no family to visit them and are on the brink of death, listening to iPods for the first time.” No studio executive would […]
Directed by Jafar Panahi and Kambozia Partovi Edited, Written, and Produced by Panahi Released by Variance Films Farsi with English subtitles Iran. 106 min. Not Rated With Kambozia Partovi, Maryam Moghadam, Hadi Saeedi, and Panahi Closed Curtain starts out looking like an allegory in some future post-apocalyptic society. But the repression in Iran today emphatically […]
Directed by Joe Berlinger Produced by Berlinger and Caroline Suh Released by Magnolia Pictures USA. 107 min. Not Rated Have movies that glorify hit men getting away with murder inured us to the victims, their families, and the thwarted justice system? Let alone when real cases inspire notable films? Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) was […]
Produced & Directed by Riley Morton Released by First Run Features USA. 86 min. Not rated Evergreen: The Road to Legalization is an in-depth film documenting all of the difficulties and nuances activists faced on the road to passing I-502, a piece of legislation in Washington State legalizing small amounts of marijuana. It is a […]
Written & Directed by Andrew Rossi Produced by Josh Braun & Rossi Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films/Participant Media USA. 90 min. Rated PG-13 There are few things more enjoyable than to critique the American higher education system, and Ivory Tower is one of the most slickly produced and entertaining cracks at it yet. Here, colleges […]
Directed by Mike Myers Produced by Myers and Beth Aala Released by Radius/TWC and A & E IndieFilms USA. 84 min. Rated R If success is all about promotion, then the fact that this is the debut directing effort by comic actor Mike Myers is one part of the package. Amidst the constant name-dropping, testimonials, […]