I cast a level 3 chill out spell to cool the nerd jets. Hear me, brethren, Slay the Dragon is not that sort of film. It has very little to do with dragons, and nothing to do with slaying. To be clear, not a single soul is slain through...
For many readers across North America, going to Blockbuster on a Friday night was a normal pastime. Whether it was to rent the latest and greatest or an old favorite Blockbuster was here for us way before Netflix was. With the rise of stea...
Actor John Boyega (known for his turn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy) has signed a deal with streaming giant Netflix to produce and create films centered on East and West Africa. Working with Boyega's company UpperRoom Productions, Netflix...
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness ought to be a title which conjures images that are impossible to live up to, yet somehow this trailer for Netflix's latest dive into true crime creates a Ren and Stimpy-style bizarro spectacle I coul...
Antiquarian books. It gets the blood boiling, that phrase. Now add some ‘rare’ to the equation. Molten magma. Is this the thought that got director D.W. Young invested in creating a film about booksellers—the women and men...
Shudder has the lock on one of the most compelling horror docu-series of recent memory with Cursed Films, an exploration of the stories that surround some of the most dangerous and tragic moments from the production of horror classics.
Biopics, like anything else, can be hit or miss. Having an interesting subject is no guarantee either. Interesting people can be victimized by bad direction, hack writing, and poor editing just like anything else. When it comes to The Times...
The landscape of Sundance has changed dramatically over the past years thanks to the emerging world of streaming. The Netflixs, Amazons, and Hulus have allowed for so many opportunities for indies to be seen and shared across the world.&nbs...
Another year of cinema has passed, which means it's time for our second annual Golden Cages awards, the only end-of-the-year awards program featuring everyone's favorite actor as a screaming statuette! Over the next two weeks leading up to ...
'Tis the season--to be awarded! With the 2020 Academy Awards coming this Sunday (I realized this two nights ago and could have sworn they were, like, several weeks from now) it's time to make yourself acquainted with the nominees, big and t...
As I look back on the last year in film, I feel like I still have a lot of catching up to do. I didn’t see nearly as many movies in 2019 as I did in 2018, so there’s no way I could do a top 50 movies list. Yet even though I&rsqu...
Varda by Agnès, the final film by Agnès Varda, starts as a filmed masterclass. Varda sits before a rapt crowd and begins speaking of her work, her worldview, her creative approach, and her life. For an artist, life and work ar...
Netflix will be making some edits to its documentary series The Devil Next Door following complaints from the Polish prime minister. A series focused on Ivan the Terrible, a notorious Ukrainian concentration camp guard known for killing tho...
I guess we've reached a point in modern pop-culture where reality TV and comedy have intertwined with each other. Netflix is currently gearing up to launch its reality documentary series I'm With The Band and I could swear to god this is j...
A few months back, USA Networks announced it had ordered a run of episodes based on the biographical novel Masters of Doom. A book chronicling the development of 1993 mega-hit Doom and the fallout behind the scenes at id Software, we didn't...
My brother and I loved The Amazing Johnathan growing up. The stand-up comedian/magician specialized in oddball sleight of hand and strange props, and we’d often imitate the bit where he sticks a straw into his ear, pulls it out his mo...
C What’s Good is the monthly follow-up piece to our C What’s On round-up of the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming. Leaping off of the hard work done by our own Hubert Vigilla, I hope to select a few favorit...
Every three years since 1973, there’s a worldwide yacht race. Now known as the Volvo Ocean Race, it was originally called the Whitbread Round the World Race. The grueling ordeal takes about nine months to complete, divided into multip...
5B seems like a very interesting documentary. It's about the nurses who first cared for AIDS patients in the 80s when the epidemic was its height. That's a big, brave thing to do considering the misinformation that abounded about the d...
Canadian-born Muslim Tarek Mounib had lived most of his life with a cultural double-identity. One day, he suddenly had the idea to offer any willing participants in the US a free trip to Egypt and to film the experience, aiming to help ...
We all know that famed astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. We also know his famous words, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Now we'll get a better understanding of what the man behind the...
The power of documentaries, in my opinion, is the ability to provide audiences with an honest examination of a topic. Sometimes viewers may be aware of the subject matter being discussed in a documentary, but most of the time viewers are ab...
Film is a visual medium, yet if you remove or tweak the sound elements, the film seems less cinematic. Think about 2001: A Space Odyssey without the classical music cues, or a different T-Rex roar in Jurassic Park, or if the ambient sound i...
I don’t understand football. I’ve never understood America’s obsession with it and how people will dedicate their lives to following a sports team throw a ball around a field where each player makes hundreds of millions of...
The 24-hour news cycle is ubiquitous yet ephemeral. Cable news networks have so much time to fill, but apart from select shows, the broadcasts are typically aired and forgotten, the footage rarely saved for posterity. That’s what make...
Disney, owner of everything, has just announced the streaming service it essentially bought Fox to create--and it will include everything ever. The amount of content Disney will have on offer is staggering and brings the fight straight to N...
The Travel Channel is snapping up our horror icons one-by-one and enlisting them for spooky documentary shows, and oh how I wish I still had cable. What package do you even need to get the Travel Channel? Probably an expensive one. Followin...
I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to attend a select theatrical screening of the Israeli film Trip of Compassion, both from a psychological point of view and as a critic attempting to make objective sense of the deep humanitaria...
America’s national pastime was in a tight spot in the late nineties. Coming off a strike during the 1994-95 season, attendance and viewership were low and Major League Baseball was concerned. Then, like a couple of caped avengers swoo...
Here comes a chasing-the-trend twofer! Discovery Channel chief David Zaslav has announced that the documentary programing network will be launching its own streaming service (of course) and that they've teamed with the BBC to bring its Natu...
Johnny Cash’s impact on music is undeniable. With his stern voice and lyrics reflecting blue-collar life, Cash found a way to blend folk into country, country into pop, and pop into rock. The man felt as comfortable singing in&nb...
The 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, a one-time actor of some repute, died on June 5, 2004. Not surprisingly, the event dominated the news cycle for some days afterward. It also cut short a story that out of Granby, ...
At some point in our lives, we’ve aspired to be our heroes. I can’t tell you how many times while playing backyard baseball I’d turn my hat backward and take a long, swooping swing a la Ken Griffey Jr. But no matter how ma...
Some people’s mothers are made for TV, might be the takeaway from Casey Pinkston and Luke Dick’s docu-dramedy Red Dog. Much like the infamous Twitter feed-turned-books-turned-Shatner-sitcom Shit My Dad Says proved...
There’s a moment when you first see a work of art that you consider the individual behind it: how did they even conceive of this project, let alone execute it? What was their inspiration? What was their thought process, by Jove! Somet...
Who Let the Dogs Out is an hour-long documentary, and yet it feels just as powerful as any longer counterpart. Well, powerful isn't the right word. There's nothing powerful about one man's obsessive dive into the history of one-hit-won...
I’ve spoken highly of all the films I’ve been fortunate enough to see over the course of the last five days at SXSW, and The River and the Wall was definitely among them. It has -- repeat, has -- to be seen on the big scre...
For Sama is the story of the Syrian uprising and civil war, told through the point of view of Waad al Kateab. Her motivation for making the film is her daughter, Sama — a beautiful wide-eyed girl who has been born at such a tumultuo...
Woodsrider, a documentary from Uncork’d Entertainment bills itself as a “season of adventure and self-discovery.” This is true, in so far as I, through the self-discovery of watching have learned to another degree, more or...
“If I talk about it, it gets better” That’s what Conrad Roy III said about his social anxiety. Speaking to his computer in a self-prescribed therapy session, Roy laid his feelings bare. At the age of 18, he had deep suicid...
