Profiling the efforts of a courageous nun to change the way her faith discussed a crucial issue, Sister Rose's Passion was produced at least in part as a response to the then-upcoming Mel Gibson film The Passion of The Christ. That's because Sister Rose Thering has been associated with the conflict between the story of Christ's crucifixion and the relationship between Christians and Jews since she wrote her dissertation in 1961.

While researching the treatment of Jews in Catholic textbooks she discovered a lot of hateful generalization and historically unfounded anti-Semitism. Her dissertation received a lot of publicity in the Catholic community and, despite some pretty heavy reactions, eventually found its way into Vatican doctrine, spurring the 1965 papal reforms that officially refuted the practice of blaming all Jews for Christ's death.

Unfortunately the documentary it...Read the entire review

Actors in highly visible, highly stylized roles get typecast quickly and never escape their most famous roles. But that's not for lack of trying. Leonard Nimoy will never be anything other than Spock to most of the world but in 1981 he wrote, directed and starred in a one man stage play about painter Vincent Van Gogh. Playing Vincent's brother Theo, Nimoy read the artist's letters and expressed the undying admiration of one brother for another (also famously explored in Robert Altman's Vincent & Theo. Thanfully this performance was captured on video and is now out on DVD along with a couple of interesting special features.

Nimoy, fresh from the first Star Trek feature film, was clearly moved by Vincent's story. Starting out as a preacher in a coal mine, Vincent was never one to follow a predictable path. His passion an...Read the entire review

Occupational competitive reality shows often suffer from a list of negatives. Donald Trump's The Apprentice was endearing in its first season thanks to an interesting cast and a fresh concept. But subsequent seasons have become unwatchable as the fun is replaced with droning corporate robo-speak and detestable contestants whose only goal is to become the kind of money worshipping slimeballs you could never feel good about rooting for. Other occupational contests like Hell's Kitchen or American Inventor hide the non-visual basis of their shows behind overbearing personalities or overwrought melodrama. And most of the musical/performance shows suffer from terrible taste and tacky production. (Rockstar: INXS was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that won't be replicated by the upcoming Supernova version.)

So it...Read the entire review

Good documentaries don't need to be overflowing with stylish embellishments or slick editing, especially when they cover subject matter raw enough that it can get the blood boiling on its own merits. Taking the shocking and upsetting Paradise Lost series as inspiration, the documentary Reckless Indifference (exclusively available from online rental service Netflix) details a 1995 murder in California and the blatantly unfair trial that followed. While director William Gazecki obviously didn't have the budget that HBO afforded Paradise Lost and didn't cover the trial while it occurred, he does use the resources available to him (video and audio tapes of interviews with the accused, courtroom footage, and original interviews with many of the family and community members) to craft a very engaging portrait of this complete breakdown of justice.

Like the events of Paradise Lo...Read the entire review

The history of sneakers as a part of hip hop culture doesn't sound like too rich of a subject, and for all its impressive flair and energy the documentary Just For Kicks isn't able to fully turn it into one. That's a shame since the film itself is a fun watch, filled with interesting characters and cinematic flourishes that ultimately ends up pretty forgettable.

Starting along with the early breakdancing and hip hop pioneers of the late Seventies, sneaker street evolution grew organically, based on what was most comfortable to move in and what would make the sharpest impression. Since sneakers were marketed almost entirely to athletes this slowly building groundswell of interest was the kind of accidental culture-building that happens beyond the scope of advertising.

Old school breakers and MCs (like members of the Cold Crush Brothers) talk about how they lived their sneaker fanta...Read the entire review

Politics can be an ugly beast. While national elections have grabbed headlines lately local elections have wasted no time matching them for spitefulness. The 2002 mayoral election in Newark was a particularly heated battle that not only pitted two fierce competitors against one another but found two completely different political ideals duking it out for power.

Marshall Curry's Street Fight follows the Newark race with notable depth and bravery. He gets under the skin of what makes this ugly election so important and pulls no punches getting to the truth. He mostly follows challenger Cory Booker as he tries to unseat incumbent Sharpe James, Newark's mayor for several decades. Booker, a political outsider with an Ivy League education, has a serious uphill battle against James, on old fashioned politician who gains his support by throwing parties for his constituents and appealing to their s...Read the entire review

Smoldering with anger, confusion, regret and chaos, the FX original series Rescue Me has delved deep into the muddled human psyche over the course of two short seasons. (Review of season 1, Season three begins later this month.) The brainchild of star Denis Leary and co-creator Peter Tolan, Rescue Me is not the ER of firefighters. Taking the extra freedom of cable as license to work in courser language and material, the show's scripts run rampant with shocking twists and deviant behavior. And while it sometimes feels overstuffed with ideas (sometimes to a ludicrous degree) there is a tremendous amount of disturbing and moving character and story development.

Focusing largely on the life of vetera...Read the entire review

Low budget indie flicks that explore the wacky world of Hollywood are a dime a dozen. In order to really stand out they need some special extra factor and Ellie Parker has it in Naomi Watts, the Ring and King Kong star who delivers a bold, brave performance as the title character. Watts' Parker is a woman at a crossroads, both in terms of her career and her personal life. The film's great first sequence shows Ellie driving from one audition to another, switching gears and attitude based on the role for which she's auditioning. She starts out reading a melodramatic southern belle monolog for an arty thick-rimmed glasses-wearing director, then pulls off a deft outfit and make-up change while driving to the next audition, all the while rehearsing hilarious dialog that sounds like an outtake from Raging Bull.

This tour de force opening shows Watts to be an extremely ve...Read the entire review

Stand up comedy can be a hit-or-miss experience and it doesn't always age well or translate to TV viewing. I was really looking forward to On Location with Redd Foxx since I've loved Sanford and Son since I was a kid and have read of Foxx's influence on generations of comedians since. Taped for HBO's "On Location" series in 1978 at the Silverbird Hotel in Las Vegas, this 45 minute-long program is short on truly funny material. Starting with a hilariously dated HBO opening, the program never really gets going. It's possible that this just isn't Foxx in his prime as far as stand up goes (since he was busy with Sanford at the time), but overall it's disappointing.

He starts out by saying "I swear to God and three other white people you're gonna enjoy me," but then doesn't really approach challenging material. He does strange bits on what the world would be like if you had ears ...Read the entire review

HBO's Soldiers in the Army of God is a well-known 2000 documentary on the most extreme brand of pro-life activists. Consisting largely of interviews with some of the least-balanced, most psychotic crusaders against women's choice, the film is a chilling look at the lengths some will go to push their agendas.

Produced during a time when doctors at family planning clinics had to routinely keep any eye out for bombs or snipers, Soldiers in the Army of God does an excellent job of showing how casual and mundane the face of violence can be. Subjects like Paul Hill, Neal Horsley and Bob Lokey look pretty much like any bland dullard you might meet in a Denny's or Waffle House. But the moment these fellas open their mouths they spew paranoia, delusion and hate. Hill serves as the perfect roadmap for how someone can lose their grip on reality and end up ruining many lives. A father and husb...Read the entire review

When The Black Crowes' album "Shake Your Money Maker" came out in 1990 they were as much an anomaly in the rock world as Nirvana would be the next year. But after their debut and its masterful follow-up "The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" they sort of slipped out of the limelight, releasing a few more albums and then disappearing completely. I'm not sure what has driven their recent resurgence (maybe it's lead singer Chris Robinson's surprising marriage to Kate Hudson) but they've resurfaced as a reliable touring band, collaborating with Jimmy Page, playing huge sold out shows and garnering the kind of legitimate credibility usually reserved for bands that didn't utterly disappear for a decade.

It makes sense that their live show is what's put them back on the map since, as the live DVD Freak N' Roll into the Fog makes amply clear, they are absolutely rock solid. Tearing throug...Read the entire review

In the volatile, complex conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people there is no clear truth or solution. If any filmmaking team was capable of cutting through the rhetoric and glimpsing the raw emotions that fuel the fire it was the folks behind 2001's excellent Taliban documentary Beneath the Veil (which became required viewing after 9/11). However, word that they were filming a piece on the children of the occupied Gaza Strip who grew up surrounded by violence and anger (eventually to be followed by a piece on Israeli children) was soon followed by news of the death of the film's cinematographer and director, daredevil cameraman James Miller. Filming at night in the Gaza Strip, Miller was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier under shadowy pretenses (the soldier claimed self-defense, the filmmakers said there was no danger.) Rather than allow the incomplete footage to gather dust...Read the entire review

Things change over time, often for the worse, many would argue. Businesses that once were personal and local consolidate and become cold, corporate, and cookie-cutter. Barberland takes a look at classic barbershops and how they reflected the culture of their times. While it doesn't become didactic or preachy, it definitely sends the message that the old barber shops are a dying breed. And even though Ice Cube's Barbershop movies have reminded viewers of the camaraderie found by the old revolving barber's pole, there are fewer true barbershops than ever.

At one hour long, Barberland is probably the perfect length. This is an interesting topic and the film manages to discuss a few diverse aspects of it, but it doesn't reach too far. There's no Ken Burns grandiosity here, just a simple, modest look at a specific part of American culture. The film points out some interesting ...Read the entire review

This month Warner Brothers is releasing a trio of great films from the 1970s under the banner "Controversial Classics, Vol. 2 - The Power of Media" (available collectively as a boxed set), but the name of the series is slightly misleading: The first two films included (Network and All the President's Men, which I reviewed last week) are razor-sharp observations (one fictional, the other all too real) on the role of the media during a decade of political and social turmoil. The third film in the set however, Dog Day Afternoon, is far more than a critique of the media. In fact, it's a magnifi...Read the entire review

DVD has been able to resurrect a lot of beloved TV shows in innovative and interesting ways. Many were welcomed back with open arms and the enthusiasm that viewers feel for warmly remembered favorites. The television variety show is a genre that pretty much no longer exists, barring Nick and Jessica's moronic attempt to revive and spoof it at the same time (and we all saw how well that worked out) and bringing back a C-rate variety show like the one hosted by the masters of muzak Captain and Tennille is enough to hope the well has run dry. Captain and Tennille: The Ultimate Collection is three discs of episodes from their 1976-1977 variety show (each disc contains three or four episodes) and it showcases some very bad humor, lousy acting and dated performances.

I understand why variety shows were fun in the 70s: With no VCRs catching your favorite TV stars outside of the realm of their...Read the entire review

The gossip-obsessed public has led to a lot of celebrity career rollercoasters lately but not many have been as turbulent as that of the Pride of Nutley, NJ, Martha Stewart. She charted a steady rise to superstardom as the queen of domestic styling through shrewd business moves and a killer work ethic, only to be busted for a minor stock dealing and sent to the clink basically in what amounted to a celebrity foxhunt. This caused her stock to plummet and her name be minimized in the media and furnishing mega-brand that she created. Then, on the eve or her release from prison she announced two high-profile new TV shows, aided by mega-producer Mark Burnett. Then, probably thanks to media overexposure, both shows tanked.

That's why it's nice to see the new line of Martha Stewart DVDs culled from her older shows, which seem almost quaint thanks to the monstrous gossip mongering that came later. <...Read the entire review

Among the many excellent films about politics, All the President's Men stands out. Its urgency and passion put the viewer directly into one of the crucial moments in modern American history, a loss-of-innocence time when the political landscape shifted irreparably and that caused shockwaves strongly felt ever since. All the President's Men is inextricably tied to the fascinating story that it depicts and it's stunning how timely the film is today.

If anyone doesn't know the story of All the President's Men, it centers around two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) who fight for the opportunity to investigate a bungled break-in at the national Democratic headquarters in the Watergate office complex. The burglars, dressed in business suits, don't fit the usual breaking-and-entering profile and the reporters suspect th...Read the entire review

I've written about Survivor before and how much I love the show. In my review of the Survivor All-Stars season, however, I talked about some of the moments where the producers betrayed the purity of a show where there are few real rules. For the first six seasons of the show there were few times when the integrity of the game could be questioned: All players knew was that they needed to "Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast" their tribemates and opponents, while maintaining some weird web of interpersonal relationships that would allow them to hopefully win the game. In the game's heavily touted seventh outing, Survivor: The Pearl Islands the producers finally snapped the rules in a way that the show hasn't really recovered from since. They set the game up in a way that took those three alliterative objectives (which the show pro...Read the entire review

Chain gangs provide one of the most striking and memorable images in law enforcement: A thin line of prisoners stretched out on the horizon, shackled together, working on the sides of rural roads. But while this form of punishment is known best as part of the antiquated post-slavery era, it was reinstated in some states within the last decade. The 1999 film American Chain Gang takes a look at this concept from a variety of viewpoints but, at under an hour, doesn't really give itself enough time to delve far enough into a complex subject.

Filmmaker Xackery Irving was obviously committed to portraying the different sides of this controversial subject and his footage shows a level of commitment that's impressive. Ths film includes a lot of footage out in the field with a couple of chain gangs, including an all-female crew in Arizona and a hardened chain gang in Alabama. Interviews with inmate...Read the entire review

Cited as the first film ever made by a black African filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl (1965) is an hour-long feature that uses simple black-and-white imagery and narration to explore class and race marginalization. Black Girl is the story of Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a young Senegalese woman from Dakar who travels to France to work as nanny to a white family. Although she expects to spend time taking care of the children, she also hopes to learn about France and explore this different country. Instead she basically finds herself shut in a small apartment cooking and cleaning for her mistress with no children to care for, no pay and no freedom. Her hopeful mood (the film begins with her smiling as she arrives via ship) turns dour and she loses the will to continue working or even speaking.

The film isn't subtle in its storytelling style, but it makes up for its blun...Read the entire review

The weirdly nebulous war in which we've been engaged for the past few years has inspired a long list of documentaries that seek to shed light on why we're fighting and what the repercussions of fighting are. Voices in Wartime takes a slightly different approach, looking at war as an emotional concept that is often difficult to describe in words. Voices in Wartime looks at the history of war through the words of poets who have sought to describe the immediacy of the battlefield or the devastation of civilians through symbolic imagery and lyrical words. As Lt. Gen William Lennow, Superintendant at West Point, says in the film "Poetry gives you the only way that you can deliver all of those feelings simultaneously." And Voices in Wartime combines a tapestry of often disturbingly unedited war footage with some very powerful words.

The film divides its time between poets who...Read the entire review

Phil Morrison's Junebug is inspired by the way urban and rural cultures regard each other, but unlike most movies that take a look at those two cultures it doesn't use broad caricature and condescension. If anything, Morrison and screenwriter Angus Maclachlan pay special attention to the humanity in each of the characters. No simplistic rednecks or soulless city slickers here.

And that makes sense because Junebug is all about how one group learns to see the other. Fittingly, the main thrust of the story comes when Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), a Chicago art dealer specializing in "outsider" art, travels to North Carolina to try to sign a painter to her gallery. As a dealer in this kind of unstudied, somewhat raw art, Madeleine has made a career out of looking at the work of rural artists living outside her urbane world from a distance: She sincerely loves the art, but there is als...Read the entire review

Recent films from provocateur filmmakers like Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl, Romance), Vincent Gallo (Brown Bunny), and Larry Clarke (Bully) have used real, explicitly detailed sexual acts in grotesque, unappealing ways, almost as a dare to audiences. Those filmmakers seem to be saying "Go ahead, see if you can find this erotic, you perverts!" Pretentious and showy, this burgeoning sub-genre of real sex films blurs the line between pornography and art, but doesn't pay off with anything in terms of character or drama that most audiences can connect with.

Michael Winterbottom has never seen a film genre that he didn't want to direct, from the period drama Jude to the modern strife of Welcome to Sarajevo to the high-energy rock rave-up 24 Hour Party People, Winterbottom seems to be attracted to telling any kind off story as long as it has real huma...Read the entire review

Recent years have been filled with films that use a skewed perspective to give audiences a sense of a character's mental illness. But Richard Ledes' A Hole In One tries to get deep into the psychology of his off-kilter characters by splintering his narrative into a confusing mess of scenes, anecdotes and tangents that leaves his film pretty near unwatchable.

There's no drive or force pushing the film through: It just meanders aimlessly through the lives of several characters and touches on a host of seemingly random themes and subjects. Violence, lobotomies and family dysfunction are fodder for Ledes' garbled script. The dialog is affected, the 50s-era sets cheap, and the acting inconsistent. Every scene just wanders around until it's time for the next.

In addition to his inability to craft a script that tells a story, Ledes also seems incapable of communicating some sort of consi...Read the entire review

Royston Tan's 15 is the kind of stream-of-thought character study beloved of American filmmakers like Gus Van Zandt and Larry Clarke, except that since these kids live in the strictly structured city-state of Singapore, famous for its caning of youths for offenses like vandalism and for outlawing chewing gum, the sense of desperation and danger that hangs over the characters that informs every scene is extra complex. The dour, depressed lives of the five main characters would weigh down another film to the point that it would become unwatchable but Tan has a huge array of tricks up his sleeve that makes 15 provocative and engaging.

The film isn't gimmicky, but it is heavily stylized. Tan uses the usual independent filmmaker's bag of tricks, like jump-cuts, characters speaking directly into the camera, fractured timelines, and crazy transitions. But he also fills the screen with t...Read the entire review

Slam poetry is a mixture of prose and performance, with many poets seemingly adopting the same staggered rhythms, rising tones and obtuse subject matter. But the world of slam poetry is actually as varied as any other art form, which is something made very clear by the surprisingly spry documentary Slam Nation. Shot at the 1996 National Poetry Slam competition in Portland, Slam Nation (which was originally released in 1998) really shows poets who run the gamut from intellectual and political to crowd-pleasing and country.

Some of the poets seem to have stepped out of a Christopher Guest mockumentary with their ideas of how to shape their work with the sole intention of winning, rather than expressing something personal. It's almost hard to believe that anyone would approach a poetry slam like it's a junior miss pageant, but Slam Nation shows that particular attitude with ...Read the entire review

It's hard to imagine that there was a time in the recent past when the apartheid social policy in South Africa wasn't well understood. But towards the end of the 1980s a number of media events brought the racist South African regime's unjust actions to mainstream American audiences, including Little Steven's all star "Sun City" record (the best mega-celeb cause track in the "We Are The World" era), as well as the 1987 film Cry Freedom and 1989's A Dry White Season. While both films were affecting and did a fine job of making the unjust nature of apartheid vividly real, they both suffered from a common problem with Hollywood films on racially charged topics: Focusing too much on a white protagonist's point of view. This can be seen in lots of films on race, from Mississippi Burning to Glory.

A Dry White Season does take this conceit, however, and use it to its...Read the entire review

Sometimes a coming-of-age story doesn't project just what it is about the main character's story that's so gripping that it needed to be told. America Brown is a film like that which, though filled with some subtle, believable performances, feels like it's running just below a boil throughout.

It begins with a clear homage to Midnight Cowboy, with Texas high school football star Ricky (Ryan Kwanten) riding a bus into New York City dressed in his rodeo finest. But unlike the boisterous Joe Buck in the earlier, kinkier film, Ricky is morose and somber. Through flashbacks we sense that he's running away from something although the script holds onto details and backstory for much of the film. Ricky hunts down John (CSI's Hill Harper), a former star player from his high school turned Catholic priest, in Brooklyn but it's not entirely clear what he hopes to learn: Does he want...Read the entire review

Sometimes people look at me funny when I proclaim my love for the NBC sitcom "The Golden Girls." But of all TV shows "Golden Girls" may have done the best job of taking an unlikely scenario and turning it into something truly special. That's because it took subject matter that no other show would ever touch - four women basically in their twilight years living together in a house in Florida - and infused it with vivid characters, incisive humor, and sometimes shockingly bold dialog. Of course none of it would have worked if the four main characters had been played by bland or timid actresses. As it happened, the show's producers assembled one of the strongest ensemble casts to ever grace the small screen. Between the four of them, Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty were nominated for 22 Emmys just for their work on this series.

Lifetime (home of endless syndicated "Golde...Read the entire review

It's no secret that our world is full of problems today. Foreign and domestic, war-wrought and economic, involving poverty and corruption, dictators and chaos. But there's a problem of gross injustice right here in our own country that's of such a massive scale that it involves every single American. And yet, it seems like almost no one can see it.

Peaceable Kingdom is about some of the few who do see it and have devoted their lives to doing something about it. The problem is factory farming and how it has changed the way we treat animals. Most people's eyes just glaze over when you start to talk about the way we treat farm animals, but to the folks at Farm Sanctuary, the rescue organization that is the subject of Peaceable Kindgom, the reality of factory farming is something that everyone should be aware of. And it's hard to argue with that viewpoint. People eat meat but they're...Read the entire review

Dizzy Gillespie looms large over the history of jazz as both one of the giants of the art form but also as one of the most accessible musicians. He's as important to the development of American music as the Thelonious Monks and John Coltranes of the world, but he also projected a friendliness and warmth, helped along by his cartoonishly flexible cheeks and terrific sense of humor. The 1988 documentary A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba is a great place to start for those curious about this vivacious performer. Documenting Dizzy's trip to Castro's island, the film allows the trumpeter's own personality and complex views on politics, history and music inform the style of the film.

In addition to helping create bebop jazz with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie (who was equally winning in A Great Day in Harlem) pion...Read the entire review

The Witness tells the story of Eddie Lama andhow he went from Brooklyn-born construction contractor to animal rights crusader.Part biography, part advocacy piece, the 45 minute film seeks to put a down-to-earth faceon a philosophy that is too often portrayed in the media as the domain of extremists andideologues. While Eddie is a terrific spokesperson for his cause, the film doesn'tsucceed at all of its goals.

Eddie grew up in a typical Brooklyn neighborhood forhis era, surrounded by tough guys and their families. The idea of empathizing withanimals was foreign to him as his parents never had pets and looked down on the idea.Eddie recalls seeing kids chasing stray cats down alleys with "intent to do harm,"although he never hurt any animals himself. He seems thankful for this fact; Isense that the guilt he would carry if he had would be too much for him to bear.

His connection to a...Read the entire review

There have never been any other performers in rock history quite like Jimi Hendrix. His onstage personality andstyle were completely engaging and fully integrated with his incredible musicianship, from his innovativeguitar-playing and resounding voice to his masterful songwriting and his ability to elevate otherpeople's songs in his own style. Like the very best rock documentaries, Jimi Hendrix, producedjust a couple of years after the legendary performer'suntimely death in 1970, features interviews withcountless family members, collaborators, friends,lovers, and contemporaries, but most importantly it'sheavily loaded with music.

Many of the performances inthe film come from Hendrix's 1967 Monterey set, butclips from other festivals, like Woodstock and Isleof Wright are featured as well. While hearing reminiscences from those closest to Hendrix helps round out hispersonality somewhat,...Read the entire review

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is best known for films like A Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us, quiet meditations that often use wordless observation and casts of children to offer slices of humanity. It may have seemed a perfect fit for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to offer Kiarostami the opportunity to travel to Uganda with the purpose of documenting the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO), a huge undertaking in the face of the tremendous impact of poverty, civil war, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. With 1.6 million children in Uganda having lost one or both parents, the coming problems faced by these orphans are almost beyond comprehension. And the temptation to make a maudlin, plainly-emotional documentary would be there.

But that's not Kiarostami's style, for better or worse. The resulting film, ABC Africa, is a visual exp...Read the entire review

Hip-hop documentaries come out all the time and arefilled with cliched platitudes about coming up thehard way, making a dollar out of fifteen cents, and stuff likethat. But hip-hop is really a business more thananything else these days, with bling-bling replacing stock optionsas an entrepreneurial goal. It's a business, however,that has been infiltrated by a wide variety of people fromevery conceivable economic and social background.Maxie Collier's documentary Paper Chasers seeks to look at theindustry at every level, but focusing on the stepsthat eager young entrepreneurs-in-training take to make it big.In the process, the filmmaker makes his ownbehind-the-scenes film and a personal statement on his own dreams aswell. (Full disclosure: In 1997 I was an assistantdirector on Collier's first feature film Hacks as well asDetention, an earlier film that he produced. Ihad no involvem...Read the entire review