The Film:
When I was a kid, more than anything, I wanted to be a superhero. This desire was fueled by syndicated reruns of Batman starring Adam West, and my inability to comprehend that what I saw on television wasn't necessarily real. But then I turned five, and reality set in, and I knew that not only was I not going to be a superhero, I probably wasn't going to be bionic either (which only left me the possibility of being a kung fu master). I know that many other people wanted to be superheroes as well--inspired by the same comic books and television shows and movies that sparked my imagination. And most people let the bitter pill of reality shatter their childhood dreams and squash their hopes of someday putting on a costume to right the wrongs perpetrated by evildoers on the innocent and weak. But then there are those who were not deterred by common sense, laws against vigilantism...Read the entire review

The Kids Grow Up:
Personal Documentary maker Doug Block runs into a serious problem with his latest familial examination. Though almost entirely behind the camera, the director is symbolically front and center throughout the movie, which is where the trouble starts. While opinions about personality generally shouldn't affect one's reading of a movie, (in the best cases) if you virtually cast your real self as a leading character, it's hard to avoid attracting that type of attention. Inevitably, you'll find yourself either liking or disliking Block. His painfully revealing work guarantees it, in fact, and I'm betting the majority of viewers won't be taking a shine to the intrusive, manipulative director. Not one bit.

Block, an inveterate family-movies kind of guy, chooses the metaphorical eve of his daughter's departure for college to examine what it means to let your kids grow up and move o...Read the entire review

Almost anyone who was around in 1994 has probably heard of Liebeck vs. McDonald's, the case that gives the documentary Hot Coffee its title. A customer named Susan Liebeck sued McDonald's after spilling a cup of coffee in her lap, claiming the coffee was too hot. Those who've heard the story probably have a picture of the whole in their heads, and that picture may make the case sound like a sham, but in under 90 minutes, director Susan Saladoff deftly and clearly paints a picture of a legal system manipulated and twisted by corporations to cut off the rights of the American citizen.

The truth about Ms. Liebeck's case: a picture's worth a thousand words, and the distressing photos of her injuries might turn a few heads. More complications arise in the form of the jury, which awarded Ms. Libeck $2.7 million in damages (intended to reflect roughly 2 days worth of McDonald's coffee sales, as a way...Read the entire review

REVIEW
The documentary The Human Experience sure seems like a fine idea on paper, with its small group of twenty-somethings out to explore what it means to be, well. human. With their own personal life baggage to contend with they attempt to reach out to see how others live, which includes spending time as homeless people in New York City in winter, traveling to an unwanted children's home in Peru and visiting a leper colony in Ghana. Along the way there is much deep pontificating about the human spirit, delivered by an assortment of experts ranging from an activist to an actor to a theologian to a doctor to an artist. Through a quartet of "experiences" this is all meant to answer the eternal question of "who am I?", but instead all it seems to offer is vagaries wrapped in sometimes compelling visuals.

The core of the film is the Azize brothers (Clifford and Jeffery), who are me...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

BLAST! is a documentary about a super special telescope that a bunch of scientists send into the upper atmosphere using a giant balloon. I'm not kidding. It's like Werner Herzog's Up. The title is in all caps because it stands for Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope. Submillimeter. In other words, it looks for radiation signatures so small, they can't be detected from earthbound telescopes. This light can mostly be seen via dust motes that get heated by the distant stars, creating a reflection the BLAST team hopes to use to map the universe and get us closer to its origins, peering back billions of years.

It's a lot to wrap your head around, no doubt, but BLAST! does a good job of making this far-out astrophysi...Read the entire review

Ray Kurzweil is one of modern history's great thinkers and inventors, whether or not you buy what's being sold. He's already outlived his father by almost a decade...and if that weren't enough, he's planning to live forever. In the meantime, Kurzweil hopes to one day "resurrect" his father using artificial intelligence and DNA extracted from his gravesite. He takes roughly 150 supplements a day (cut from 250 just a few years ago) and insists that technology has grown---and will continue to grow---at an exponential rate, paving the way for massive achievements that may be only decades away. Despite his bold (and in many ways, frightening) claims, Kurzweil's demeanor is relaxed, reassuring and optimistic. In short, he leans heavily against the thought of a dystopian future.

In any case, Kurzweil h...Read the entire review

The Movie:

D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Dont Look Back (and it is Dont and not Don't) is an interesting and revealing look at a young Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK but there's a fair bit more to this film than just simple concert footage and backstage clips of the musician dealing with managers and fans. This time around the camera almost seems to get inside Dylan's head as he deals with tour snags, creative issues, and his own increasingly bad attitude. While Dylan may, by modern standards, come across as an aging sixties icon with an unintelligible mumble, here he's very definitely got a fire inside of him and it doesn't seem to take too much to set him off. The film doesn't shy away from instances where he loses his temper and there's some rather revealing footage of tearing into reporters and tour managers and even band members. We also witness his incre...Read the entire review

THE FILM

The lottery is a powerful thing. For some, it's a method of achieving a better life, flush with enough cash to permit the indulgence of any imaginable dream. For a few of the winners, the jackpot is a burden, distancing them from the life they once knew, forcing them to pull back on loved ones and the public at large. "Lucky" surveys lottery tales of winning and losing, observing the emotional strain and social discomfort that goes along with the gamble. For some, money doesn't even begin to cover some of their troubles.

Quang is a Vietnamese immigrant working at a meat processing plant in Nebraska who, along with a group of his co-workers, invested in a winning lottery ticket; Verna is a older woman who spends up to $100 dollars a day on lottery tickets, but has yet to hit the big one; Robert is a mathematician who struck lottery gold, looking to use his winni...Read the entire review

Review:

"Bee Movie", the animated effort from Jerry Seinfeld that had him starring as an animated bee had the cheery plot point of the bees giving up making honey because they were feeling exploited by the humans. As a result, the flowers didn't get pollinated and it's bad news for humans. While "Bee Movie" eventually wrapped itself up with a happy ending, the real-life "Bee Movie" isn't looking quite so cheery. In reality, bees have been suffering from what has been deemed "colony collapse disorder", a mysterious issue that's not yet entirely understood, although there have been a number of theories presented as to why this has been happening. As a result, crops have suffered and plans have begun to be made, such as construction of "bee roads" (plantings of bee-friendly flower patches) in Europe.

"The Colony", who...Read the entire review

See that? That's hospitality. Southern hospitality, I mean. George Hardy hails from a sleepy little town in Alabama that could've been nicked straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting...the type of place where anyone new in town would be greeted with a fresh-baked apple pie and a big, cheery grin...where everybody who drives by waves hello as you're out watering your front lawn...y'know, where everybody knows your name. When George asks how you're doing with that unmistakeably Southern accent of his, you can tell that he's not just being polite: he genuinely wants to know. Everyone in town likes the guy -- heck, even his ex-wife has nothing but the nicest things to say about him -- but after a couple minutes of these beaming testimonials, they all start to smirk about George's little secret. See, a couple decades back, George was in a movie...and not just any movie, either: ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The new documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution is coming to DVD at a perfect time. With the United States once again caught in political turmoil, and with much of that turmoil being racially motivated (whether folks want to admit it or not), there is no better opportunity to dust off the story of the Civil Rights movement and remind people of the terrible toll racism took on our country mere decades ago. Granted, I'd much prefer that Soundtrack for a Revolution would be more about nostalgia for a triumphant period of time long since passed, with problems that seem so barbaric and antiquated we couldn't even possibly fathom how relationships between human beings ever got so bad, but that's not the world we live in, is it?

The film cove...Read the entire review

The Movie
On my frequent walks through the neighborhood, I pass through a park on my way to the gym. And almost without fail, I am distracted--and turned into a giant mound of love mush--by one of two Bernese Mountain Dogs that frequent the area. I smile, I squeal, I pet, I talk in a baby voice...a disgusting display, but one I'm proud to embrace given the pure joy pooches provoke in me. And don't tell my two friends in DC that the main reason I like to go to their home is to hug and squeeze their lovable St. Bernard, whose floppy ears, wet s...Read the entire review