Category Archives: Documentary

Carbon Arc Cinema: The Fall 2019 Season (Part Two)

October 21, 2019 flawintheiris

The Carbon Arc season is in full swing, with films already screened including The Last Black Man In San Francisco, and a mini comedy fest, Wild Nights With Emily, The Art of Self-Defence, and Tel Aviv on Fire. (For the preview of those films, and their trailers, go here. For a review of The Art of…Read More

Fahrenheit 11/9 review — Moore of the same

September 27, 2018 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Michael Moore | 128 min As a centrist Canadian-Dane, I'd make a radical Yank, and so frequently find myself in Michael Moore's political wheelhouse. I'm concerned about many of the same things he's concerned about, and I tend to agree with him on the ways these socio-political problems need to be…Read More

Three Identical Strangers review — Doc dives deep into nature vs nurture

July 25, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Tim Wardle | 96 min It's a story beggaring belief: in 1980, three 19-year-olds who didn't know each other, David Kellman, Robert Shafran, and Eddie Galland, discovered that they are triplets, separated at birth. Cue an All-American story of minor celebrity, as these three New Yorkers head out on the town, toasted by…Read More

Won’t You Be My Neighbour review — A man with something to teach us

June 29, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Morgan Neville | 94 min I wasn't an acolyte—as a child I'd absorbed Sesame Street, The Friendly Giant, Mr Dressup, even Captain Kangaroo, but somehow never visited Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. So, watching this documentary on the life and work of Fred Rogers, I didn't quite believe it at first, his inherent goodness. Despite his protestations,…Read More

Human Flow review — Refugee documentary stuns in scope and scale

November 9, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Ai Weiwei | 140 min Children's faces: That's what you'll take away from Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei's documentary Human Flow, which hops from place to place to give us a look at the struggle and suffering of thousands of migrants. Some of this is simply images of people walking, trudging, through…Read More

#AIFF2017 Opening Gala: Long Time Running review

September 15, 2017 flawintheiris

The gala red carpet premiere of the Atlantic International Film Festival took place at the Rebecca Cohn on Thursday evening, a lovely venue, especially for the music-filled launch film chosen: Long Time Running, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier's documentary of the Tragically Hip's 2016 tour. I still had a twinge of regret we weren't…Read More

Stop Making Sense and the Concert Film/Music Documentary

July 4, 2016 flawintheiris

This week Cineplex is screening Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, the legendary concert film of a Talking Heads performance, shot when the band was touring in support of their 1983 recording Speaking In Tongues. The film is amongst my small collection of concert documents, and I'd suggest it's pretty much essential for anyone interested in popular…Read More

Carbon Arc Reviews: The Winter/Spring 2016 Season

May 12, 2016 flawintheiris

Regular readers will know that for most of the past year I've been working at Halifax's Independent Cinema, Carbon Arc. At the beginning of 2016, I took on the role of Writer-in-Residence, writing on the site blog about the films we were watching and describing audience reactions. Reaching out to a growing community of cinephiles. At…Read More

10 Great Movies for Canadian Film Day

April 28, 2015 flawintheiris

It's National Canadian Film Day. This is a great initiative to encourage more people to watch and value Canadian movies. It's important, especially now when our politicians are looking to disembowel the industries that create these stories. If we want them, we have to fight for them. We have to shout about how they're important…Read More