Docs x 2: Finders Keepers (2015) and Winter on Fire (2015)

by Tony Dayoub

Two wildly different documentaries worth your time go into wide release today. One is Winter on Fire, a sober chronicle of the early days of the unrest in the Ukraine that bows exclusively on Netflix today. But first, let's take a look at the gonzo, stranger-than-fiction story recounted by the far more intimate Finders Keepers, now playing in theaters (including Atlanta's Landmark Midtown Art Cinema) nationwide and available on iTunes and On Demand.

Movie Review: I Am Ali (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


Going in, documentary I Am Ali has two strikes against it. It tries to distill the entire life of boxing's best known heavyweight champion into a film with a scant 111-minute running time, and it depends too much on his closest friends and family to do so. On the plus side, it is the first film to revolve so heavily on personal recordings of interactions with his family made by Muhammad Ali himself. The result is a substantially whitewashed account of the life of the Greatest. At best, I Am Ali is a primer for the few that a long line of documentaries about this extremely well documented sports and Civil Rights figure has thus far eluded. At worst, I Am Ali is a forgettable CliffsNotes-style profile that hits many of the landmark moments in Ali's life while avoiding the dissenting points of view concerning his controversial stances on the Vietnam war and the Black Muslim movement.

NYFF52 Reviews: Tales of the Grim Sleeper (2014) and Iris (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Two of the best documentaries playing at the 52nd New York Film Festival couldn't be more different except that they are each by titans of their field, the creepy Tales of the Grim Sleeper by Nick Broomfield and the ebullient Iris by Albert Maysles.

Movie Review: Code Black (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Early in the documentary Code Black there is this graphic and harrowing shot above. More than a dozen emergency medics and nurses work on a shooting victim as the director, narrator and the film's principal subject, Ryan McGarry explains, "If you're an outsider, this looks like total chaos. But I see unity in that chaos. There's a team here coming together to save someone's life." It's a flabbergasting statement to say the least. But as Code Black unfolds we learn that this is no ordinary emergency room. It's C-Booth, a cramped, very public space in LA County Hospital that has the dual distinction of being the nation's very first emergency room and its busiest. McGarry started documenting his time there as a first-year resident, way before he ever decided to turn the footage into a film. What he turned in, though, is polished bordering on slick, a sharp contrast to the frequently catastrophic roughness the doctors at C-Booth encounter daily.

Movie Reviews: Farmland (2014) and Fed Up (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

On a weekend crowded with new releases there are two food-related documentaries currently making the rounds worth noting. One is essential viewing; the other, not so much.

Movie Review: Jodorowsky's Dune (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Among the most fascinating movies never made is the one that lends a new documentary its title, Jodorowsky's Dune. Alejandro Jodorowsky is the passionate Chilean filmmaker behind surreal cult movies El Topo and The Holy Mountain. As his admirers grew, especially within the cinematic and pop cultural elite, Jodorowsky expressed his desire to make a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's complex, sci-fi epic Dune his next project. Jodo, as his friends called him, wanted his Dune to move the medium forward with the same verve Kubrick's 2001 did. But he intended it to more explicitly alter a viewer's state of consciousness, in effect doing Kubrick one better by offering a moviegoer the same effects as LSD without the need to take the hallucinogen.

Movie Reviews: Kids for Cash (2014) and The Wind Rises (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

A first glance at Oscar weekend's new theatrical releases might be misleading. Though most of the movies look like they lack any kind of heft—whether we're talking about substance or even just plain, old entertainment value—here are two films worth your time.

Movie Review: Inequality for All (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Whether it's Fox News or MSNBC, if you watch cable news, you've seen Robert Reich before. The 4'10" economics expert is a frequent guest pundit on political talk shows. Currently a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and famed for his tenure as Bill Clinton's labor secretary, Reich also comes across as a bit of a showman in Inequality for All. This is not entirely a bad thing as the new documentary demonstrates. Sometimes it takes someone with a sense of the theatrical to explain our fractured economy in a way the layman can understand.

Movie Review: The Short Game (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Opening today in Atlanta (at AMC Phipps Plaza 14 and AMC Barrett Commons), The Short Game is a documentary about child golf champions. Of interest to more than sports fans, Josh Greenbaum's film presents us with close to ten kids from all around the world who in many cases seem better equipped to handle the pressure of competition than their parents or even, maybe, you. The first half is spent getting to know each golfer, their "daddy caddies" (the parent who helps them set up for the next shot), and their particular strengths and weaknesses. Most notable among the players: the surprisingly well adjusted Allan Kournikova, 7-year-old brother of, yes, that other famous Kournikova; 7-year-old Alexa Pano, reigning female world champion for her age who's even beat some 13-year-olds in competition; 8-year-old Amari Avery, a rising star with a bit of a temper when things don't go her way and nicknamed Tigress because her ethnic background is similar to that of Tiger Woods; 8-year-old Zama Nxasana, who's traveling all the way from South Africa for his next shot at bringing a trophy home; and 8-year-old Sky Sudberry, a diminutive Texan who never gets too caught up in the ups and downs of chasing down her dreams.

Movie Review: Hating Breitbart (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Masquerading as a fair and balanced documentary, Hating Breitbart is actually a tribute to the late Andrew Breitbart, self-anointed provocateur of the right. Designed to expand the myth about the professional conservative troll rather than examine what's behind it, Andrew Marcus's ostensible exposé is aimed straight at the collective heart of the same partisan audience that refuses to buy into any reportage that isn't accompanied by the imprimatur of Fox News. And like that network's segments, Hating Breitbart is cut together in a deceptive way that only seems to inform while really just proselytizing.

Happy "Mammas" Day!

by Tony Dayoub

Isabella Rossellini's third installment of Green Porno, titled "Mammas," debuts on the Sundance Channel this Sunday, appropriately enough. Disturbing facts about a plethora of mothers found in nature are doled out quite humorously (and suggestively) by the sexy actress who writes, directs and stars in each episode. A number of the shorts are up here, and they're well worth a glance.

NYFF50 Sidebars: Cinéastes/Cinema of Our Time & On the Arts

by Tony Dayoub

The NYFF continues this week with an extensive slate that includes a couple of interesting sidebars. The first I had a chance to catch a couple of screenings for is Cinéastes/Cinema of Our Time. It's a revival of a pair of documentary series produced for French television by André S. Labarthe in which notable film directors, both contemporary and classic, are interviewed for quite a longer and more in-depth session than audiences raised in the DVD-featurette-age might be accustomed to.

NYFF50: Cinema Reflected

by Tony Dayoub

One of the small rewards of having attended one of the earlier weeks of festival press screenings this year is that I've had the opportunity to sample a great deal more of the NYFF Sidebar entries than I usually do. Among the sidebars that should hold more interest for cinephiles should be the one titled Cinema Reflected, showcasing "illuminating documentaries and essay films about movies and the men and women who make them." Though I had issues with both of the entries I watched, Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out and Liv and Ingmar, I must keep reminding myself that these are not part of the festival main slate. So, at some level, they are diverting enough to merit a couple of showings at Lincoln Center.

Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

This weekend, if you want to see a movie about popular indigenous music, skip the ridiculous Rock of Ages. Instead, find out if Ice-T's new hip-hop documentary, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap is playing in your local theater. Something from Nothing at once demystifies and mythifies its subject, padding its inquiry into the process of rapping (or more precisely, emceeing) with legendary tales of how some of the most notable names in hip-hop began their careers.

NYFF11 Movie Review: Pina

by Tony Dayoub

The weightlessness, violence, inertia and, yes, humor of dance all express themselves in Wim Wenders's exhilarating 3D dance documentary, Pina. You may be tired of hearing it from me, but I can't help it if the New York Festival keeps raising the bar. Pina is yet another candidate for best film of 2011. And the reason is plain: Wenders imbues an already kinetic subject with the kind of immediacy and depth that makes it transcend its stage roots to become gloriously cinematic.

NYFF11 Movie Review: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

by Tony Dayoub

I wouldn't call myself a hardcore George Harrison fan. But, as I get older, when anyone asks me the oft-repeated "Who is your favorite Beatle?" question, my response has increasingly been George. His passing touched me more than that of any star I can remember, and what I knew of the man or his work was relatively little. Perhaps it is because of out of the four, Harrison seemed to lead the most aspirational — and inspirational — life. His growing disdain for all of the empty trappings of fame was at odds with the fact that it was celebrity which facilitated the spiritual journey upon which he embarked. With equal parts of wonder and world-weary cynicism informing his every move, Harrison was a living paradox, as the title of this HBO documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, alludes to. Still Harrison's lifestyle was one worth emulating, so it is no surprise that director Martin Scorsese, a man who himself has grappled with the dichotomy of the metaphysical versus the worldly, would be drawn to telling his story in this new HBO documentary.

DVD Review: Square Grouper (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

When I was growing up in South Florida in the '70s and '80s, it seemed like—whether that person was on the law enforcement side, the criminal side, or often times straddling both—everyone knew someone who knew someone in the drug game. So I was familiar with the cocaine-fueled drug wars that played out on our streets, even if much of what I knew was a combination of hearsay, myth, and actual reportage. In 2006's mesmerizing Cocaine Cowboys and its 2008 sequel, documentarian Billy Corben exhaustively covered the story, talking to former dealers, smugglers, and cops about the reality behind the tales perpetuated by movies like Miami Vice and Scarface. Stories about Miami's marijuana trade were relatively less well-known. Corben remedies that with his pot triptych, Square Grouper. Though South Floridians are familiar with the titular term, most others who know it at all probably heard it in Cocaine Cowboys, where it was first uttered by smuggler Mickey Munday. There he used the street slang to describe bales of reefer found at sea after smugglers abandoned them while evading the law.

NYFF10 Movie Reviews: Inside Job (2010) and Boxing Gym

by Tony Dayoub

Two vastly different documentaries impressed me at yesterday's press screenings. Each in their own way, Inside Job and Boxing Gym take subjects we already think we know about and make them more accessible to the viewer, and isn't that what the best of such films do?

Two from Criterion: Louie Bluie (1985) and The Secret of the Grain (La graine et le mulet) (2007)

by Tony Dayoub

Bowing on DVD Tuesday are two documentaries by director Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World). One of them is Crumb (1994), the widely seen movie about well known underground artist Robert Crumb and his gonzo family. The other (sporting a cover by Crumb) is Zwigoff's first film, Louie Bluie, a one-hour look at unsung blues musician Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, a real pleasure to watch. I can count on one hand the number of times I've watched a film all the way through then immediately watched it again, and viewing this doc is one of those times.

Seventies Cinema Revival: Le Mans (1971)

by Tony Dayoub

This is my contribution to the Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon hosted by Jason Bellamy at The Cooler.

What's amazing about Le Mans, a film which was branded as McQueen's Folly even as it was being made, is how well it still holds up today. Racing films always seem so full of cinematic potential, speed being the most attractive factor. Yet with rare exception does it ever pan out. I'm speaking strictly from a cinephilic perspective since I am not qualified to render even the most basic opinion about auto racing or even cars (so this is your opportunity to take me to task in the comments section if you have a stronger argument). But contemporary auto racing films like Days of Thunder (1990), Driven (2001), even Pixar's Cars (2006) seem to place a priority on artificially raising tension through camera placement; if one's point-of-view resides amongst the vehicles jockeying for position, then one should get the feel for what it's like to be a driver in one of these competitions. It's just a bunch of horseshit, if you ask me.