Earth’s delicate balance is a theme that pervades the modern ecology movement, and the potential disruption of this balance is the prime factor behind the fear of global warming and overall climate change among professional biologists, amateur naturalists, and concerned citizens. Fantastic Fungi, an 80-minute documentary, attempts to contribute to the public discourse by presenting…
Nature documentaries have recently come into a league of their own. With a combination of incredible new technology and scientific research, they are more able than ever to present us with the marvels of the natural world — and consequently, confront us with the realities of our environmental impact on these marvels. In this landscape,…
John Chester (“Rock Prophecies”), a nature cinematographer, and his wife Molly, a private chef and food blogger, had always dreamed of buying a farm and moving out of their cramped Santa Monica apartment, yet there was always a reason to put it off. The catalyst that changed their life forever, however, was a black dog…
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…
Like last year’s “The 33,” which told of the survival and rescue of a group of Chileans trapped in a gold mine in 2010, Lionsgate’s Deepwater Horizon, produced by and starring Mark Wahlberg (“Ted 2”), along with John Malkovich, Kurt Russell and Kate Hudson, relates the horrifying experience of another true life disaster culled from…
Climate change’s main drivers coincide with the main drivers of economic growth. We cannot have both, it seems. We do not get to preserve the Earth if we get to develop our economic prosperity in it. This is a dichotomy in all its height, an ill-conceived binary that produces nothing but contradiction and conflict, a…
Night Moves, the latest film by Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff”), is a personal story about three young people attempting to impact a society in which they no longer feel a part. Frustrated by continually escalating threats to the environment and by the deafness shown by political leaders, Josh (Jesse Eisenberg, “Now You See Me”) an…
