Nearly a year after the failed Fyre Festival experiment, Hulu has announced they will be releasing a docuseries surrounding the event and its continuing fallout. The promise of world renown acts combined with the beauty of the Exumas was ...
One night in 1993 Lorena Bobbitt's husband came home, raped her, then went to sleep. In the ultimate act of defiant revenge, Lorena grabbed a knife and--while he was still asleep--cut off his manhood. As if that wasn't enough, she got in he...
If The Wolf of Wall Street taught us anything, it's that wanting to get everything in the world plus everything else is really healthy, and we need to look up to the people who destroy others in order to achieve these goals. Or at least tha...
A documentary about teenagers using Instagram is probably not at the top of your must-see films list, even if you yourself are a teenager. Disclaimer: I am not a teenager. However, I do use Instagram. Almost entirely to take pictures of wha...
Before outlining the merits of The Dawn Wall, of which there are many, I urge you to pursue seeing this on the big screen. Yosemite is of in itself an experience more real and immersive than most. Viewing two men attempt to climb its 3,000 ...
I'm not sure you can understate what Mr. Rogers meant for generations of children. The man was prolific not just in educating, but in understanding children and the power of the growing medium that was television. The new documentary Won't ...
When I sat down to watch Ramen Heads, based on the trailer and synopsis, I was anticipating a documentary on a famous ramen chef and his technique and philosophy akin to Jiro Dreams of Sushi. What I got was...half that. It mostly focus...
In many ways a two-man collaboration between filmmaker Jeremy Workman and subject Matt Green, The World Before Your Feet is an understated documentary that details Green's efforts to walk every street in New York City's five boroughs. ...
In an apparent race to develop the most unwatchable series on television, TLC has just announced it will be bringing Dr. Pimple Popper to series. God help us all. After airing a one-hour special following Dr. Sandra Lee as she made lumps on...
Demon House is a movie that if I never spent late nights watching trash TV, I would assume is some found footage no-budget horror trying in the most threadbare way to appear real. That is somehow not the case, as we're supposed to believe t...
Amazon has announced that it will be renewing its hybrid series for a second season, which will start production in April. Lore, based on the podcast by Aaron Mahnke, is a series that uses narration along with archival footage and animation...
The list of comedians who cut their teeth in '80s New York is impressive as it is exhaustive. The likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Larry David, Andy Kaufman, Ray Romano, and many, many more put in work at the Catch A Rising Star co...
I think it's fair for me to say that the world is filled with vitriol and animosity right now. Everywhere you look there are people angry about everything, politics, celebrities, social media, video games, a well made but somewhat flawed...
The B-Side is an atypical Errol Morris documentary. He doesn't use the Interrotron at all, his tool that allows interviewees to stare directly into the camera. Instead, the camera's just off to the side. The score is delicate rather than a ...
Steve James may be incapable of directing a bad documentary. His films includes Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, and Life Itself. With Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, James continues his record as one of America's most reliable non-fiction...
It's been 25 years since the LA riots, and there are a number of films coming out that revisit this harrowing moment in the country's history. The most high-profile might be Let It Fall: LA from 1982-1992 from John Ridley, screenwriter of 1...
Before sitting down to watch Gilbert, I was afraid the documentary would take away from Gilbert Gottfried's mystique. I always loved his impersonations and appearances on Howard Stern, and his dirty jokes have such craft behind them, elevat...
There's a familiar narrative about the self-destructive artist, or maybe it's one that we want to see borne out in real life and in narratives about artists as characters. The brilliant artist is ignored but persists in their craft, achieve...
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson is an engrossing watch that works on different levels and through different modes. At the outset, it seems like the documentary will take the form of an obsessive detective story/murder mystery. Victo...
Given how the Republican Party speaks of Ronald Reagan, he feels more like some cowboy legend than an American president. This speaks to Reagan's image consciousness as a politician, with a carefully cultivated persona that fed into the ide...
Almost everyone could benefit from a little bit of therapy, especially therapists themselves. I often wonder what sorts of anxieties therapists have to deal with after they've finished dealing with clients for the day. Empathy and patience ...
Flames offers an intriguing premise. Part documentary and part art movie, co-directors Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell document their relationship as it falls apart. We start with the two of them in the best part of any relationship, w...
David Lynch: The Art Life hits a sweet spot in terms of its release date. Lynch's feature-length debut Eraserhead has just turned 40 years old, and the new season of Twin Peaks starts in May. There's bound to be a resurgence of all thi...
I have fond memories of the first couple Tony Hawk games, particularly the first three Tony Hawk's Pro Skater entries for PS1. Sure, the Tony Hawk franchise has seen lots of downs the last couple of years, but the fond feelings for those fi...
Louis Theroux won me over many years ago with the show Weird Weekends. In each episode, Theroux embedded himself in a subculture and use his extreme mild-mannered niceness to disarm his subjects. He'd hang out with porn stars, demolition dr...
It's been 10 years since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's seminal climate change documentary directed by Davis Guggenheim. While there have been major strides at addressing climate change and pollution worldwide, it might be ...
The Slender Man stabbing in 2014 was disturbing to say the least. Two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin stabbed another girl 19 times in order to appease the Slender Man, a fictional modern day bogeyman born on the internet and seen ...
13TH feels like a culmination of Ava DuVernay's career to this point. The documentary brings together the racial and social history of Selma, her years of work as a documentarian, her stint as a journalist, and even her undergraduate degree...
Weiner is an appropriate film to review on Election Day, and not just because it's one of the best political documentaries of the last 10 years. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner potentially put the 2016 election in jeopardy last week. Whil...
DOC NYC kicks off this Thursday, November 10th and runs until November 17th. DOC NYC is the largest documentary and non-fiction film festival in the United States. More than 250 events and films are scheduled for the next week, with more th...
The first thing I noticed about Peter Dunning, the subject of the documentary Peter and the Farm, was his injured hand. It's gnarled and he's missing fingers, and at 68 years old he's managed to function with just a thumb and two digits as ...
Iggy Pop and Jim Jarmusch sound like an unlikely pairing. One's the primal frontman of proto-punk legends The Stooges, the other's a mellow, measured indie auteur. But maybe there's something magnetic about their respective brands of Midwes...
That time of year is almost upon New York. I'm talking about DOC NYC, America's largest documentary/non-fiction film festival. Now in its seventh year, DOC NYC 2016 will run from November 10-17, with screenings taking place at the IFC Cente...
Sometimes I'll see a movie and that makes me shake my head and say, "Okay, yeah, I get it". These sorts of movies are ones that I can understand at a formal, metaphorical, or thematic level, and yet even though I understand the choice that ...
It can be kind of exhausting getting a dozen (or more) emails a day about movie X, Y, and Z. Do I want to see this? Do I want to learn more about this? And I'm sure I've turned down a lot of great movies because the sales pitch just didn't ...
Rats are the worst. Like, seriously guys, the worst. There's this vacant building next to my apartment that's rife with them and the city seems helpless about controlling the problem. We may disagree about a lot of things, but most of us ca...
O.J.: Made in America is the crowning achievement of ESPN's 30 for 30 documentaries. Director Ezra Edelman's five-part, seven-and-a-half hour film is an imposing masterpiece, one which delves into the details of the O.J. Simpson murder tria...
Netflix is putting out everything these days, from Bill Nye talks shows to Mythbusters build team shows to Christopher Guest mockumentaries about sports mascots. Now they've acquired the brand new, critically acclaimed Werner Herzog documen...
Action icon Jackie Chan and influential documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (Titticut Follies, High School) will both receive honorary Oscars from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Honorary Oscars will also be given to es...
Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Seth Meyers' Documentary Now! is a loving in-joke of a show for fans of non-fiction film. The first season of the IFC show spoofed seminal documentaries like Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line, the Maysles' Grey ...
