Category Archives: Documentary

Alan Pakula: Going For Truth (2019) review — Remembering a genius storyteller

May 14, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Matthew Miele | 98 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Digital and VOD This is the kind of documentary about an artist so respected, revered, and so missed that every one of the actors who appears here who worked with him opens up in a way you don't see very often in our public-relation curated…Read More

Still: A Michael J Fox Movie review — Canadian actor’s heroic journey

May 12, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Davis Guggenheim | 95 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Apple TV+ If you watched TV in the 1980s, you knew Michael J Fox, and if you went to the movies in the 1980s, you knew Michael J Fox. He was up there with Eddie Murphy, Madonna, Tom Cruise, and Michael Jackson — the white…Read More

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story review — Another witness to Boomer myth

April 14, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, and Stuart Samuels | 97 min | ▲▲▲△△ I've got to own up to a bit of a bias against this material: I've had it up to here with Boomer rock 'n' roll mythologizing. It's still thriving in 2023. This very week we got the news that Timothée Chalamet…Read More

Geographies of Solitude review — Sable Island paradise

March 22, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Jacquelyn Mills | 103 min | ▲▲▲▲▲ | CBC Gem We barely hear a voice for the first 10 minutes of this documentary. Instead, we get the pleasure of images and sounds from Sable Island, the almost mythical crescent sandbar off the coast of Nova Scotia, home to seals and horses and Zoe…Read More

A House Made of Splinters review — Ukrainian children’s last chance

February 25, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont | 87 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | CBC Gem We're in Lysychansk, in Eastern Ukraine, in the days before the war with Russia. This is a way-station of sorts for kids whose parents are homeless or struggling with addictions. Children can spend nine months in this community home until their fostering…Read More

Navalny review — The power of Putin’s nemesis

February 22, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Daniel Roher | 98 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | Crave A wildly entertaining doc about the Russian lawyer, activist, and politician Alexei Navalny, who in the summer of 2020 was poisoned with Novichok, the nerve agent preferred by agents of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The film serves as a detailed portrait of Navalny during…Read More

The Fire of Love review — A volcanic life

February 21, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Sara Dosa | Written by Dosa, Shane Boris, Erin Casper, and Jocelyne Chaput | 98 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Disney+/National Geographic This Oscar-nominated documentary tells the story of a pair of French vulcanologists, Katia and Maurice Krafft, a couple who met in 1966 and spent their lives together, travelling the world to study…Read More

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed review — Addiction, activism, and art

February 18, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Laura Poitras | 122 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | VOD and Digital It's not every day you see a documentary that does as good a job as this one balancing a dual narrative over the course of two hours. A fellow cinepanion said she'd happily spend a few more hours with the characters here,…Read More

All That Breathes review — Hope for wildlife in Delhi

February 16, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Shaunak Sen | 97 min | ▲▲▲▲▲ | Crave/HBO A version of this review first appeared from the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival in September 2022. New Delhi is one of the world’s largest cities. Its denizens — human and animal alike — have to live with its overpopulation, dirty air and water.…Read More

Let There Be Drums! review — Not quite my tempo

February 8, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Justin Kreutzmann | Written by Kreutzmann and Kevin Lincoln | 93 min | ▲▲△△△ | VOD and Digital As a longtime rock music fan I couldn't help but enjoy swaths of Let There Be Drums. The presence of fascinating players like The Police's Stewart Copeland, The Doors' John Densmore, Red Hot Chili Peppers'…Read More