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...
I was in the wrong damn theater. Despite having checked with the SXSW volunteer at the door I was in the wrong theater. The realization hit me the moment they started introducing the film. Dramatic and powerful didn't sound like words you'd...
Filmed over the course of nine years in Yellow Knife, Canada, Salvage is a straight forward presentation of a difficult documentary, which is something, considering its runtime is under an hour. Director Amy Elliott was motivated ...
Welcome one and all to Flixist's new end of the year awards program, the Golden Cages! With Hollywood becoming increasingly out of touch with what the people like, we at Flixist have taken it upon ourselves to deliver the fair, balance...
The Sundance Film Festival can bring so many things. So many feelings, so many lessons, and so much knowledge. The knowledge part is most prevalent in the deep slate of documentaries the festival offers each year. Many of the greatest docum...
Capernaum made me think that we’re so privileged in the West: there are so many cultures in the world that haven’t had the safety and security -- on a national, local and personal level -- that many of us have experienced. ...
The Fyre Festival was billed as a massive luxury music fest, sort of like Coachella for even bigger trust fund jerks. Organized by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule, attendees were promised white sands, crystalline waters, extravagant accommodati...
Undoubtedly there have been a whole host of brilliant films in 2018 - and several completely terrible ones which I wish I could scratch out of my memory forever yet continue to haunt my dreams. I'm looking at you, Wonder Wheel (more li...
Coinciding with the centenary of the Great War, I think it’s safe to say that this documentary is a once in a lifetime achievement, and Peter Jackson does not disappoint. The result of hundreds of hours of research in conjunction wi...
A few months back, my friend and I went to see a collection of war footage accompanied live by a BBC musician, and I don’t exaggerate: the effect was magical. With dynamic sound effects and voiceovers, the images were brought to lif...
It’s been a great year for climbing films. Where The Dawn Wall left off, with climbing megastars Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson free climbing the previously unclimbed route of El Capitan in Yosemite, Free Solo c...
