Film
Jack Kerouac once said that “On the Road” “was really a story about 2 Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God,” but the spiritual element of his journey is completely lacking in the film.
In his book “Ferocious Reality,” Eric Ames offers an insightful, well organized, and readable study of Werner Herzog’s documentary work that explores the director’s earliest films as well as his most recent ones.
With his biopic “Orchestra of Exiles,” director Josh Aronson has done an at times awkward, but important, cut and paste job of history and biography.
Sophisticates may recoil at the deliberate symbolism and guileless self-assurance of “Life of Pi.” But this is a fable of storytelling, faith, spirituality, and coming of age whose sympathies are clear and strong, couched in visuals of such extraordinary artistry that the experience of watching it is intoxicating.
A collection of short films and a documentary at The Boston Jewish Film Festival serves up plenty of decision, determination, devotion and delight.
It can be a long wait for the end of the world, even though it lies only a week away, to wit, from the beginning to the end of the Israeli film “We Are Not Alone.”
Teams of string coaches were deployed to make this quartet of actors look like they knew what they are doing with their instruments, but no critic has noticed how completely unrelated the motions of their left hands — finger placement and vibrato — are to the music that is played, with the exception of Christopher Walken, who looks like he is playing his cello correctly and producing real music.
Two impressive documentaries deal with the trials and tribulations of old age and the history of dance in Israel.
Visual Art Commentary: Silence Is Complicity — Why Museums Must Use Their Voice to Defend Democracy