documentary
The filmmaker is annoyingly passive and star-struck, as the documentary’s subject, Ricky Jay, speaks to his chosen agenda: a wish to tell stories about his mentors and favorite magicians.
Read MoreWhat about Bert Stern, the artist? He deserves credit for bringing fashion photography into the modernist moment in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Read MoreThis documentary plays like a didactic high school civics lesson. I agree totally with its politics while abhorring its unimaginative political correctness.
Read MoreIsrael has genuine enemies without, to be sure. But “The Gatekeepers” leaves the impression that it has no less mortal an enemy within.
Read MoreA hedonist and humanist, admired filmmaker Ricky Leacock was curious about everyone, including the rich and famous, especially if he could show them sans their celebrity masks.
Read MoreThis unique and carefully constructed impressionistic narrative encourages viewers to free-associate, assess, and imagine the romantic relationship through the filter of their own memories and experiences.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreWith his biopic “Orchestra of Exiles,” director Josh Aronson has done an at times awkward, but important, cut and paste job of history and biography.
Read MoreMusician Patty Schemel’s slow climb to sobriety and wellness serves as the gripping backbone of the documentary “Hit So Hard,” to the point that it is difficult to believe that someone thumped so severely lived to tell her story.
Read More“Portrait of Wally” makes for a wonderfully engaging documentary about art and postwar intrigue with stakes on both a personal and global scale.
Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else