Like all sensible people, Justin Timberlake is a fan of Stop Making Sense. Like everyone who’s seen The Social Network (among other things), Jonathan Demme is a fan of Justin Timberlake. The stars thu…
Proficient cinematographer Tin Win Naing has been in the thick of recent unrest in Myanmar/Burma, filming the chaos in the streets during the Saffron Revolution and its aftermath. But those events are…
The recent turmoil in the Middle East has been tackled by some remarkably brave and resourceful native filmmakers, with documentaries such as ½ Revolution and The Square bringing visceral immediacy to…
As more people become aware of the global surveillance state, documentaries can take on the strength of political thrillers. Two years ago, Citizenfour both laid out the details of how governments wat…
Austerlitz is an hour and a half of static shots of people walking about a concentration camp. They listen to audio devices or tour guides. They chat with one another. They look at points of interest.…
Both governments and people alike assert nationalistic identity on remarkably arbitrary terms. Ukraine declares that it is its own state, then Russia claims the Crimean region for itself, then the Don…
When popular writers die, their unfinished work is often scavenged for publishable material, to historically mixed results. Sometimes the writing at the bottom of the drawer is left there for a reason…
Looking to do something different, Errol Morris has stowed the Interrotron and made a biographical documentary about one of his good friends. After years of incisive probes into troubled minds and com…
As a more lyrical take on material well-covered by two different versions of Cosmos and a thousand “I Fucking Love Science”-related internet memes, Voyage of Time is reasonably engaging. But as the cu…
A video travelogue with a poet’s grace, Ta’ang stands out in the new wave of timely documentaries concerning the situations of various refugee groups around the world. But while the word “refugee” mig…