Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, December 2: HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT

Kent Jones’ look at the meeting of cinematic minds had its world premiere at Cannes earlier this year. Fest berths followed at DOC NYC, Telluride, Deauvlle, Toronto, San Sebastian, London, Mill Valley, Tallgrass, Chicago, AFI Fest, Tallinn Black Nights, and Denver, among others.

Over the course of a week in 1962, French film critic turned filmmaker François Truffaut conducted an extensive interview with one of his cinematic idols, Alfred Hitchcock, with the stated aim to demonstrate that the so-called “Master of Suspense” was also the greatest filmmaker in the world, not just some cheap entertainer. The resultant book, published in 1966, which came to be known by the shorthand title HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT, made a compelling argument for the British director’s body of work, and has become a classic of film studies, and, as indicated by the participants in Kent Jones’ tribute here, a seminal text for some of today’s master filmmakers, from Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, and Richard Linklater, to Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. While offering just enough background on both Hitchcock and Truffaut’s lives and careers up to the point of their legendary interview, Jones generally keeps the focus, like Truffaut’s book does, on Hitchcock’s films. Not an adaptation, and thus not interested in covering each title in his oeuvre, the well-crafted documentary instead continues in the spirit of the book, offering a literate, enthusiastic appreciation of Hitchcock’s timeless classics and of his approach to filmmaking, to inspire a new generation to discover the work and to remind those already Hitch’s fans to revisit old favorites.

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, December 1: AMY

Asif Kapadia’s look at the short life and career of Amy Winehouse made its bow at Cannes this year. Since then, it has screened at DOC NYC, Edinburgh, New Zealand, Vancouver, Traverse City, Sydney, East End, Munich, Karlovy Vary, Jerusalem, Poland’s New Horizons, Sarajevo, and Biografilm, among several others.

Like his masterful feature documentary debut, SENNA, Kapadia expertly crafts his portrait of the superstar performer almost entirely through archival material, including previously unseen home movies and behind-the-scenes footage. Taking on a public figure who was obsessively covered in the mainstream media, the director offers a strikingly candid alternative perspective without sugar-coating Winehouse’s struggles with addiction and difficulty handling the pressures of celebrity. The result is an intensely human, moving reconsideration of a gifted young woman who mercilessly became dismissed as a hopeless trainwreck by tabloids and a public only too willing to indulge in schadenfreude.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, December 1: THE LOOK OF SILENCE

Joshua Oppenheimer’s followup to his acclaimed THE ACT OF KILLING premiered at Venice last year. The film has gone on to screen at DOC NYC, the New York Film Festival, Toronto, Human Rights Watch, True/False, Hamptons, San Francisco, SXSW, and Abu Dhabi, among other events. It now comes to VOD via iTunes.

I previously wrote about the doc upon its theatrical release here.

Coming to Netflix this Sunday, November 29: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS

Mark Hartley’s tribute to the legendary low-budget production house debuted at Melbourne last year. It went on to screen at Toronto, London, Haifa, Sitges, Mar del Plata, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Glasgow, Dublin, New Horizons, and Fantastic Fest, among others.

I previously wrote about the film here.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, November 27: JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE

Amy Berg’s portrait of Janis Joplin made its bow at Venice earlier this year. The film has gone on to screen at Toronto, DOC NYC, Deauville, Rio, London, Warsaw, and Poland’s American Film Festival, among others.

The third of Berg’s three documentaries within the span of a year, the Oscar-nominated director’s latest presents a deeply human look at a woman who, since her death at the age of 27, has become a music legend. Avoiding overblown pronouncements of the musician’s impact, something the film’s core audience – and even the casual viewer – already knows, the film instead carefully grounds its narrative in Joplin’s warm, self-effacing personality. Employing present-day musician Cat Power to voice Joplin’s personal writings, primarily letters to her significantly more conservative Texan parents, Berg is able to convey an immediate sense of the young woman’s oscillation between vulnerability and forthrightness, and her blossoming as she embraced music, and as the American counterculture in turn embraced her. While the audience knows that Joplin’s tragic end is inevitable, the film smartly downplays any sense of impending doom to instead revel in the moment, aided immeasurably by lively archival performances that demonstrate exactly why the performer remains beloved 45 years after her death.