The Movie:

There have to be few bands whose success matched their volatility in such a short period of time as The Police. And like Eldon Tyrell said, the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and the English trio of drummer Stuart Copeland, guitarist Andy Summers and bassist/vocalist Sting burned so very brightly, with five albums selling more than 75 million copies. Two decades later, Summers wrote a memoir titled "One Train Later" which recounted his time in and out of the band, and in 2012 with the help of Nicolas Cage and Brett Morgen (the latter of The Kid Stays in The Picture lore) as producers, a documentary film titled Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police, emerged.

Using a mix of filmed concert and television footage, the voiceover that Summers provides discusses his...Read the entire review

While Oliver Stone has certainly demonstrated himself to be a skilled filmmaker, delivering bold and thought-provoking features on historical figures or even pictures that represented an element of a time period ("Wall Street" and its sequel.) However, "Looking for Fidel" demonstrates that Stone also has a strength as an interviewer, doing a reasonably good job trying to gain insight into his subject and some of the recent events in the country.

A documentary with an almost uneasy energy under it largely due to stylistic choices and handheld camerawork, "Looking for Fidel" is the follow-up to the little-seen documentary from Stone, "Commandante". The documentary was filmed shortly after the round-up of a series of dissidents and the execution of a group of hijackers. Throughout the documentary, Castro is interviewed, as are a series of prisoners and others.

Viewers will not likely take aw...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The cast list of Richard Martini's Cannes Man is intriguing--the front cover lists such draws as Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, John Malkovich, and Dennis Hopper. Ha ha, joke's on you. Fourth-billed Depp has the most screen time of the bunch (about five minutes, I'd guess); the others have a minute or two each. The film, a would-be The Player for the indie set, was mostly shot on the fly at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival; most of the scenes with actors you've heard of appear to have been organized and improvised on the spot. Harvey Weinstein is photographed through a long lens, telling an unrelated story to star Seymour Cassel, as voice-over narration puts words into the then-Miramax head's mouth. Surely I'm not the only person who will watch this scene and think of Read the entire review

Water Wars: when Drought, Flood and Greed Combine:
It doesn't matter which side of the fence you sit on for this one, friends, but if you tend to wander around on the Right Side of the yard, don't let the names Cinema Libre Studio or Earth Now! Films dissuade you from checking out this urgent documentary. However, if you like to believe in unicorns and happily ever after, you might consider turning your head. Though this short (55 minute) documentary takes a somewhat narrow focus to make its point, the ultimate message that humankind is running out of ways to manage its potable water in the face of an ever increasing population. It's a message that we all need to pay attention to, or else our children and grandchildren will be facing a very tough road indeed.

There are many issues at play concerning water usage on planet earth, and this documentary narrated by Martin Sheen (the sane father ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Oliver Stone is a skilled craftsman who has produced a steady stream of consistently entertaining pictures, but there's an element to his personality--arguably one of his own making--that makes him increasingly difficult to take seriously as a documentary filmmaker. There's no denying the visceral power and emotional punch of an admittedly brilliant narrative film like JFK, but even Stone admitted to its fabrications and flights of fancy, positioning the film (honestly, if somewhat troublingly) as a "counter-myth" to the "official myth" of the Warren Commission report. No matter where you stand on the creation of "counter-myth" in fiction or docudrama (and this reviewer, for one, is basically fine with it), your reputation as that sort of fabricator can be something of a liability when attempting to e...Read the entire review

Oliver Stone is no stranger to controversy. The politically minded filmmaker has always jumped into hot topics with both feet, and he's taken his lumps for doing it. Four years before Michael Moore snuck into Cuba to film parts of Sicko, Stone had gone there to interview Fidel Castro for his documentary Commandante. Stone's new essay film, South of the Border, is an extension of that previous effort. This time, he went down to South America to talk to the liberal leaders who are seen as part of a new movement to unite the continent and lessen any co-dependent relationships with their neighbors to the North.

Stone begins building South of the Border off a portrait of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. After a failed coup and jail time in the 1990s,...Read the entire review

The Movie:
French director Jean-Jacques Beineix's eloquent drama IP5 takes its time revealing layers of characterization and detail, all at a leisurely pace. The payoff is worth it, however, and the luxurious, thoughtful ride along the way is quite rewarding.

The film involves the unlikely comradeship of three people, thrown together by circumstance. Tony (Olivier Martinez) is a Parisian graffiti artist in his teens, who has befriended young rapper Jockey (Sekkou Sall). Through a series of odd misadventures, Tony is forced by a group of skinheads to deliver a consignment of concrete dwarfs in another city. He brings Jockey along for company. Since he has recently become smitten with comely young nurse Gloria (Geraldine Pailhas), Tony decides midway through the trip to abandon the dwarf delivery and head to Toulouse, where Gloria has told him she'll be. (It is entirely possible that s...Read the entire review

As it is with most things, the best intentions are often foiled by the unpredictability of day-to-day life. As an American, despite the best intentions to stay informed on all types of movies, it can be hard to remain up-to-date on international cinema, especially anything dating back farther than 2000. Betty Blue has a reasonably strong reputation; the film won a Golden Space Needle in 1992 at the Seattle International Film Festival, and when it screens in the city, which is close to where I live, it usually gets a bit of attention. A good portion of the movie's reputation comes from the film's sexuality, but having seen it now, what's more striking is how free the movie feels, completely unrestrained by the needs of plot or story.

Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a handyman in a small shanty town out in the middle of nowhere. Out of the blue, Zorg meets a beautiful young woman named Betty (Béa...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Mortal Transfer is a sort of darkly humorous French neo-noir meditation on the purpose of psychoanalysis. If that sounds a bit obscure, it is. Mortal Transfer is an obscurantist film, but it is also one that is subtle, funny and engaging. While not for all tastes, it has plenty to offer the more discerning viewer.

The film revolves around Michel, played by Jean-Hugues Anglade, best known to American audiences probably for his performance as Nikita's boyfriend Marco in La Femme Nikita. Michel is a psychiatrist, who is dragged into a web of intrigue by a particularly disturbed client, the beautiful Olga, played by Helene de Fougerolles. Olga has a stormy marriage with gangster Max Kubler (Yves Renier). She refuses to have sex with him, but derives great pleasure from the beatings he delivers, mostly at her incessant prompting. She flirts with Michel, and ...Read the entire review

Moon in the Gutter (1983) is one of those wobbly curio's in a directors biography. For Jean-Jacques Beineix, the film is sandwiched between his well received debut Diva (1981) and what is regarded as his masterpiece Betty Blue (1986). It is fair to call The Moon in the Gutter a sophomore slump because it was an expensive project from a fresh, promising director that met a lukewarm to absolutely cold reaction, the kind of overly ambitious work that caused critics to huff and put the studio behind it in the red.

Dockworker Gerard (Gérard Depardieu) is haunted by the death of his sister, who was raped and immediately committed suicide. He pays nightly visits to the blood-stained alleyway where she was found and keeps his ears out for clues into who could have caused her death. His father and brother have dealt with the death by descending into drunken-sullenness and drunken...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Perhaps it was foolish to expect a film with the subtitle "The Island of the Pachyderms" to be anything but muddled nonsense. Perhaps it was too much to expect characters to react to the world around them and behave coherently from scene to scene. Perhaps I was simply supposed to embrace some sort of enchanted force while watching Jean-Jacque Beineix's IP5, but when characters aren't awed by the magic in front of them, it's hard for it to translate through the screen.

The title (whose Pachyderm subtitle is conspicuously missing from Cinema Libre's new DVD) refers to the tag-name of a graffiti artist and thief named Tony (Olivier Martinez), who lives in an unfashionable neighborhood of Paris and spends his days spray-painting elaborate designs on walls. He's taken under his wings a plucky poor boy named Jojo (Olivier Martinez), I guess to teach him how to be an ass.

I w...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The Bengali Night (La Nuit Bengali) is based on the novel, "Bengal Nights" by theologian Mircea Eliade and is a thinly veiled document of his affair with the Bengali poetess Maitreyi Devi. As an artsy French venture, the film aspires to be a Merchant Ivory production filtered through Satyajit Ray's sensibilities. It's unfortunate then, that it is sunk by its annoyingly self-important nature, clunky screenplay and paper-thin characters.

As the film opens, we meet Allan (Hugh Grant) who has been working as an engineer in Calcutta, India for two years. When he's not busy building bridges and hospitals, he lives the life of an expatriate with his girlfriend, Guertie (Anne Brochet), and friends, Norinne (Elisabeth Perceval) and Harold (Pierre-Loup Rajot). A visit from his journalist friend, Lucien (John Hurt), prompts a house call to Allan's employer, Narendra Sen (Soumitra ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Somewhere on the movie genre spectrum, there's a line that separates the grand epic from the particularly long road movie. The version integrale of Roselyne and the Lions falls on the road movie side of that line. It is the story of a young couple who set out to become lion tamers in the circus, but delivers a frustratingly tame experience everywhere but the lion cage.

A new Cinema Libre DVD presents the film in a nearly three-hour-long director's cut that restores Jean-Jacques Beineix's original intent. Beineix, best known for Diva (1981) and Betty Blue (1986), shows off his gift for visually immersive scenes and grand gestures. Where he falters is in crafting his characters, who lack the spark of the young dreamers they're supposed to be. I haven't seen the theatrical cut of the film, so I can't compare the two versions, but the problem lie...Read the entire review

Sometimes people do a movie because it sounds easy, and even filmmakers need to pay the bills and put food on the table. Oftentimes these projects have a bit of cleverness in the log line, an idea or two that might have gone a long way in a better movie, but for the most part, these films can't quite overcome the stench of mild disinterest. Kissing Cousins is the opposite of those films; it's clear that for at least most of the cast and crew, making the film was a positive experience and they contributed enthusiastically. Yet that dash of cleverness becomes more of a detraction than an addition, because the film ends up standing in the shadows of other, more inspired productions. Not that I'm looking to bash the film, mind you, but aside from a few flashes of inspiration, it's nothing you haven't seen before.

When we first meet Amir (Samrat Chakrabarti), he's at work...dumping someone. Not som...Read the entire review

Apart from Betty Blue and Diva, two films made more than twenty years ago, the work of contemporary French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix is little known and unavailable on DVD in North America. Cinema Libre Studio intends to rectify this with six DVD releases of Beineix's work between now and November, culminating in a complete box set on December 1. Entitled The Jean-Jacques Beineix Collection: Locked in Syndrome, or alternatively, The Jean-Jacques Beineix Collection: Documentaries and Short, the first release includes the titular 27-minute documentary, along with two other odds and ends from Beineix's oeuvre - the 77-minute documentary Otaku (1994) and the 16-minute fictional short Mr. Michel's Dog (1977).

On December 8, 1995, 43-year-old French author and fashion magazine editor Jean-Dominque Bauby suffered a massive stroke. He was rendered completely ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Honestly reviewing political films can be a tricky business, because it can be difficult to separate one's ideology from what is on the screen; often, we respond to the message and not the messenger. So let me get this out of the way before plunging into Deflating the Elephant: Framed Messages Behind Conservative Dialogue, because if I don't, it will be the elephant in the room (har har): I'm a proud progressive who would be hard-pressed to find one word in Deflating the Elephant that I disagree with. And by the fifteen-minute mark, even I was ready to switch it off.

The central conceit--that over the last thirty-some years, conservatives have managed to reframe the issues, change meanings, and push ideas and agendas primarily through their use of language--is an intriguing one, and many of the topics covered (economic trends, foreign policy, values...Read the entire review

The latest entry into the crowded field of peak oil documentaries on DVD is Sprawling from Grace (2008) by filmmaker David Edwards. If you've already seen After the Peak: the End of Cheap Oil (2007), A Crude Awakening (2006), The End of Suburbia (2004), Escape from Suburbia (2006), The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (2005), Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature (2005), or What a Way to Go: Life at the End of the Empire (2007), you may wonder what Sprawling from Grace offers that's new. Unfortunately, the answer is not much.

Sprawling from Grace starts with the basic explanation of the peak oil hypothesis: our capacity to extract usable oil can be represented as a bell curve. As we move along the bell curve, oil extraction increases to meet demand. However, at some point the apex of the bell curve will be reached, and extraction ra...Read the entire review

If you wax nostalgic for the old late-night TV hosts who dressed up like ghouls or vamps and wisecracked about that night's horror quickie during the commercial breaks, then American Scary is for you. The first feature-length documentary from director John E. Hudgens and writer/producer Sandy Clark whose prior collaborations have been short Star Wars spoofs, American Scary digs up a cavalcade of horror hosts to reminisce about the gory days (that's the end of the puns, promise).

Horror hosting was born May 1, 1954 when Maila Nurmi (1922-2008) appeared as the camp-vamp Vampira on KABC-TV in L.A. Three years later horror hosting exploded nationwide when Universal bundled 52 of its horror flicks for TV. Horror hosts padded the time to fill the programming block, eased young viewers' fright, and provided a welcomed distraction for the adults.

Horror hosting reached its peak ...Read the entire review

Whatever "American Shopper" is, it's pretty damn clever.

The film threw me for a definite loop, and I'm still not sure I have it all straight. After watching this quirky documentary about an enterprising young man and the handful of colorful locals he rounds up to participate in his completely made-up sport of "aisling" - essentially, it's creative, choreographed shopping - I checked online to see what else I could find out about the film and its subjects. That's where I discovered the whole thing's a scam, one of the most convincing mockumentaries ever churned out on the indie scene.

Except! It's convincing because it's not a mockumentary, but the real deal. Well, sort of. Filmmakers Tamas Bojtor and Sybil Dessau have concocted what they're calling a "hybrid" movie, in which they take real people, inject into their lives an actor (everyone involved knows he's an actor), and then see what...Read the entire review

The Film:
Before it was even known as hip-hop, the street culture that emerged from the streets of the Bronx was primarily represented to the outside world in the form of graffiti and b-boying. This was back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when most of the world didn't even know what rapping or scratching was. With the emergence of rap as the preeminent representative of hip-hop, the two earliest introductions to the culture, graffiti and b-boying (more popularly known as breakdancing), soon faded from the spotlight. But that doesn't mean either went away, especially breaking, which has continued to thrive and grown into something far more pure than rap, which has been corrupted by corporations that turned the culture of hip-hop into a global commodity.

There have been a handful of great documentaries about b-boys, most notable The Freshest Kids, which traces the history of the b...Read the entire review

The Movie
A bare-bones, competently done independent motion picture, Raising Flagg is the story of a man who needs to be awoken in more ways than one. A charming little comedy starring Alan Arkin, it might be just too mundane for some viewers. The film deserves a better DVD release than the one I saw, so let's hope it wasn't the commercial one.

Arkin plays Flagg Purdy, a crotchety old man in a small northwestern town. The town's handyman, he's also the most opinionated person there. Flagg's family has been using the water from his old friend Gus's (Austin Pendleton) well for a long time, and when Gus lets sheep graze near the well, Flagg sues him to prevent their urine from getting into the water. He wins the case, but the town rejects him as a troublemaker, and his career as the town handyman dries up. When he comes to understand that no one wants to be around him anymore, he ...Read the entire review

The Film:
Charlotte Sometimes, the feature film debut of director Eric Byler, was one of the most impressive movies of 2002. A beautifully realized character study that was as deftly acted as it was written and directed, Charlotte Sometimes hinted at the possible arrival of an incredibly talented filmmaker on the independent landscape. With eager anticipation I have awaited Byler's follow-up, hoping that the raw humanity and attention to character-driven narrative that drove his first film was not a one-time fluke. And with the arrival of Tre, one of two movies he made in 2006, Byler has delivered a worthy companion to his debut dysfunctional human drama.

On paper, Tre sounds like countless other independent films--a quartet of twenty-something friends living together under one roof contemplate their directionless lives while becoming embroiled in a game of sexu...Read the entire review

Silence Is Deadly: Living With Hepatitis C:

Hepatitis comes with a huge stigma. It's one of those diseases that just sounds bad to the ear, and unnecessarily carries shameful weight. No one says they're ashamed to have cancer, but people will keep their hepatitis status secret from even their own families. With Silence Is Deadly, filmmaker Kindra Ruocco hopes to remove the stigma, increase awareness, and begin a process of healing for hepatitis C sufferers.

While documentaries on blood-borne diseases aren't high on most viewers' lists, Ruocco's effective and emotional effort should be checked out not only by those who are at risk, but anyone who wants to come to a better understanding about what it means to have a disease. It is estimated that as many as 5 million Americans (or perhaps double that) have or will contract hepatitis C in just a few years. A potentially fatal liver disease,...Read the entire review

The Movie

Admirable for its breadth but less so for its decidedly off-balance politics, director Kevin Keating's Giuliani Time is an incredibly passionate piece of propaganda, ostensibly engaging in a clear-eyed assessment of former New York City mayor and Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani's ascent into the national spotlight but devolves into so much character assassination. As many others have noted in their reviews, it's a film maverick documentarian Michael Moore could be proud of.

The film's largest handicap is, of course, that Giuliani, at no time, turns up to defend himself or explain any of his actions, an enormous list of which are covered during the film's generous 130-minute run time. Keating has no problem trotting one source after another for often scathing interview segments, although through file footage and archival recordings, Giuliani does ...Read the entire review

Good documentaries educate viewers about interesting subjects, or they offer deeper insights into human nature. Often they do both. Todd Ahlberg's Meth (2006) does neither.

Meth is composed of interviews with 12 urban, white, gay, American men about their experiences using methamphetamine. Ahlberg relies on frequent cuts between interviewees to establish the commonality of their stories. Most of the men originally came into contact with meth through the gay club party scene known as circuit parties. All started by snorting it, moved on to smoking it, and then graduated to shooting it intravenously.

All the men describe the feelings of euphoria and confidence that meth provides. It dramatically heightens sexual pleasures, and eliminates pain and doubt, they explain. Prevalent at circuit parties, orgies, hookups and elsewhere within the gay party scene, meth use appear...Read the entire review

Zack Winestine's first-person documentary about caravanning 500 miles by bicycle to protest an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank summit in Prague begins inauspiciously with three minutes of shaky digital video of a couch being set alight during a protest in the streets of Quebec City. The video is shot from a considerable distance, conveys very little in the way of drama or information, and has nothing to do with Winestine's travel to Prague. Thankfully, the majority of the Quebec City footage is reserved for the extras.

In September 2000, American filmmaker Zack Winestine flew to Hannover, Germany to join fifty self-stylized anarchists in a bicycle caravan to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, to protest against an IMF and World Bank summit. The caravan would function without money or leaders. Food, and presumably fuel for the support vehicles, would be donated or scaveng...Read the entire review

The Film:
Based on comments made during the audio commentary for The Hole Story, I suspect that writer-director Alex Karpovsky might take issue with calling his film a mocumentary. I suppose in some cinematic circles there is a negative connotation to labeling a film "mocumentary," and indeed, the genre has been maligned, due in no small part to filmmakers attempting to craft fake documentaries, only to fail miserably. The fact of the matter is that true mocumentaries--films that appear to be documentaries, and are often perceived to be real, but are categorically not true--are very near impossible to pull off. So, while Karpovsky might not like The Hole Story being called a mocumentary, that's exactly what it is--and a brilliant one at that.

Karpovsky stars as Alex Karpovsky, a thinly veiled and slightly caricature-ish interpretation of himself as a filmmaker. Alex has trav...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
The story of a not-so-average American family

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Good documentaries, unique stories
Likes: Things that are stranger than fiction
Dislikes: Broken families
Hates: Selfish parents

The Movie
Note: In March of 2014, seven years after this review was posted, commenter Lucas Servera noted that this is a "review that treats the subject of this documentary with undeserved disrespect and contempt." I re-read it, and there are definitely parts that come off as harsh, and which I would not write today, when the topics of sexuality and transgender identity have become more mainstream and better understood. I won't edit the review itself, as I don't want to try to change hist...Read the entire review

The Film:
Without the recognizable actors to catch the interest of potential audiences, or the multi-million dollar advertising campaigns afforded by the big studios of Hollywood, there is a horrific fate that awaits most independent films. That fate is the curse of a film going relatively unnoticed and unseen--languishing in obscurity for a variety of reasons that are not a reflection of cinematic quality, but more of a reflection of the entertainment industry's inability to think outside the box and the audience's hunger for predictable mediocrity. But it is films like Conventioneers, which run the risk of being marginalized and obscured that, once "discovered," restore a bit of faith in the art and craft of cinema.

Set during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, Conventioneers is an unconventional love story that uses partisan politics as a backdrop to...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Buena Vista Social Club introduced the world to a host of insanely talented, mostly extremely elderly Cuban musicians who had perfected their art despite a lifetime of hardship and lack of (international) recognition. Some might accuse producer Wim Wenders of going to the same well again for this purported follow-up, but Musica Cubana is a different beast altogether which must be divorced from its more illustrious forebearer to be fully appreciated.

This DVD release brings together both feature films with the Musica Cubana title which were released internationally starting in 2004 but which only recently made it to the shores of the United States. While the "main" film is a somewhat uneasy mixture of (one assumes) fictionalized re-enactments of how BVSC featured player Pio Leiva came to front a band of younger generation Cuban musicians (in a major sexist m...Read the entire review

The Movie:

It's been a few years since I've been to New York City (the hotel I stayed at on the West side near the river was $99 a night in 2003; it is now often as much as $280 a night), but certainly have very fond memories of the trip. I actually spent very little time in Times Square (which I found rather beautiful early in the morning when the sun was coming up and few were around, not as much in the middle of the day) and would just walk around the city for 9-10 hours a day. The city was wonderful and certainly had changed a lot since I had visited as a little kid.

Many credit Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for the clean-up and some ("Family Guy", etc.) have used joked about the tactics that the former Mayor used to turn the city into what it is today. Director Kevin Keating (a former cinematographer for such acclaimed documentaries as "When We Were Kings" and "Harlan County, USA")'s...Read the entire review

A scathing account of the notorious political career of Peru's president from 1990 to 2002, The Fall of Fujimori shows a seemingly sincere man's reign of corruption and scandal, violence and murder. Using terrific news video and once-in-a-lifetime interviews including a telling session with Fujimori himself, Ellen Perry's documentary is a frightening portrait of power run wild.