Bobby Fischer Against the World (review)
Garbus’s portrait of Bobby Fischer as a lonely child and a monomanical young chess player becomes a portrait of his times as well…
documentary
Donor Unknown (review)
The kids are all right. They just want to meet their dad. Last year’s fictional family comedy about sperm-donor kids and this-right-here documentary — as cheery and bittersweet and lovely-melancholy as can be — are surely the first indications of a wave of cultural angst over the rise in sperm-donation as a thing…
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (review)
Werner Herzog has achieved something extraordinary with his intimate look at what he calls “one of the greatest discoveries in this history of human culture”…
Pushing the Elephant (review)
This simple, stunning portrait of the strength and commitment of Rose Mapendo — survivor of ethnic cleansing and humanitarian worker — is no dry discourse on the tough, demanding work of humanitarianism. It is a deeply moving look at the real toll such work has had on one woman’s life…
His & Hers (review)
From a girl-infant’s cries as her father puts her down to the laments of elderly women who’ve outlived their husbands, here are 70 women talking about the men in their lives with the kind of casual frankness, bald honesty, and total love that typically gets bypassed on film in favor of empty rom-com fantasies.
Lord of the Dance 3D movie review: see it if you’re Michael Flatley, skip it if you’re anyone else
The global phenomenon dance show is like what might happen if Albus Dumbledore used some powerful illegal magic to meld Busby Berkeley, pagan ritual, Cirque du Soleil, and Irish folk dancing… on ice!
A Woman Like That (review)
Forget movies about art as you’ve seen them before. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod takes a compellingly intimate tack in her look at the convention-busting 17th-century artist Artemisia Gentileschi, creating an extraordinary synthesis that is part art appreciation, part personal diary…
Orgasm, Inc. (review)
This hilarious first documentary feature from award-winning filmmaker Liz Canner looks at how the age-old question of “Why can’t a woman be like a man?” now has a medical diagnosis — female sexual dysfunction — and a pill to cure it. Or not…
I’m Still Here (review)
Real or put-on, this is a disaster, a bratty, self-indulgent demand to be paid attention to, complete with the expectation that it will be paid attention to, because celebrity simply really is that irresistible no matter what it’s doing…
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (review)
This documentary look at a year in the life of the 75-year-old comedienne is a sad, startling exploration of the vagaries of fame, the insecurities of celebrity, and the realities behind the typical “but it’s just a joke” excuses that prop up cheap, vulgar humor.
