In Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s documentary about the cats of Istanbul, Turkey, one interviewee says that cats can be “cold and abrasive” and that a relationship with a cat is like “having a friendship with an alien.” Not having too many friendships with aliens lately, I cannot comment on that, but it is clear that, whether…
The unconventional marriage of playoff baseball fever and music artistry go hand-in-hand in Pearl Jam: Let’s Play Two, an excitable and sentimental documentary that chronicles Pearl Jam gleefully situated in the middle of the hysteria surrounding the Chicago Cubs 2016 dream season which saw the team overcome a century-old dry-spell and win the World Series….
In 1960, primatologist Jane Goodall, the 26-year-old secretary of paleontologist Louis Leakey, was chosen to conduct research in Africa for his study of the influence of apes on primitive man. Though she was not a scientist and never attended university, her open mind, love of animals, and the strong support she received from her mother…
Few documentary subjects are more enigmatic than the life and careers of The Beatles. Few subjects have been spotlighted and discussed to the extent of the band’s effect on world culture, with no shortage of films from 1964’s “A Hard Day’s Night” until the present day. Ben Lewis returns to a well-worn director’s chair to…
Subjects can be covered extensively from many angles and the character and attitude of a specific time or place can be lost in translation; luckily that this is not the case with 12th and Clairmount. The long hot summer of 1967 would culminate in 159 race riots across the United States, with Detroit, Michigan home…
There has not been a penetrating and provocative documentary in my recent memory that chronicles with such curiosity, the insight and intimacy into the musical process and romantic partnership disillusionment than Swedish director-writer-producer Kasper Collin’s compelling and resonating true crime documentary, I Called Him Morgan. Collin (“My Name Is Albert Ayler”) provides a winning, yet…
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is one of the most hotly debated and controversial ongoing crises in Western Asia for the past several decades, resulting in numerous affronts to human rights that have stained the last few generations of those who call the region home. While the differences of opinion over what is to be…
