Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to PBS’s Independent Lens today, Monday, November 9: STRAY DOG

Debra Granik’s candid profile of a biker premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival last year, where it won the best documentary award. The film went on to screen at the New York Film Festival, New Orleans, Zurich, Hamptons, BFI London, Indie Memphis, Stockholm, Zagreb Dox, Cleveland, Sarasota, Nashville, and Jeonju, among other events, and was released theatrically this Summer.

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

Coming to VOD today, Monday, November 9: HOMME LESS

Thomas Wirthensohn’s look at a man’s unexpected life premiered at Film Festival Kitzbuehel last year, where it won the best documentary award. It also picked up an award at DOC NYC, and has screened at DocAviv, Sarasota, and Hof, among other events. The doc now comes to VOD via iTunes.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to DVD today, Friday, November 6: MR DYNAMITE: THE RISE OF JAMES BROWN

Alex Gibney’s profile of the iconic performer screened as a work-in-progress at Tribeca last year. The finished film appeared at Camden, IDFA, Sydney, Melbourne, and Doc Aviv.

I previously wrote about the film upon its cable broadcast here.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, November 6: OF MEN AND WAR

Laurent Bécue-Renard’s candid portrait of veterans struggling with PTSD made its bow at Cannes last year. Since then, it has screened at IDFA, Göteborg, DocPoint, Documentary Fortnight, ZagrebDox, True/False, Full Frame, Visions du Réel, Documenta Madrid, San Francisco, DOXA, Sydney, AFI Docs, Human Rights Watch, and DOK.Fest Munich, among others.

Bécue-Renard’s second film in a planned trilogy dubbed “Genealogy of Wrath” takes an intimate, difficult look at war-scarred US vets who are receiving group therapy at The Pathway Home, a Northern Californian treatment center catering to service members. A carefully-measured work filmed over five years, which incorporates nine months of nearly daily recording sessions at Pathway, the doc captures the frustration, anger, and recurring trauma its subjects are facing after tours of duty in Iraq. Bécue-Renard confines his footage to the present-day, avoiding combat scenes that might typically be used to illustrate his subjects’ harrowing tales to instead force the viewer to focus on the men themselves, and to really hear from them the impact of their experiences, unmediated. Offering no false happy endings, the film instead presents the realities of combat and its aftermath, for both the soldiers and those in their lives.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, November 6: PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT

Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s portrait of an art world iconoclast had its world premiere at Tribeca this Spring. It went on to screen at Nantucket, AFI Docs, Provincetown, San Francisco Jewish, New Zealand, Melbourne, Adelaide, Vancouver, Chicago, and Stockholm, among others.

I previously wrote about the doc for the Nantucket program, saying:
Born into a noted family but intent on making her own mark, Peggy Guggenheim acquired a reputation as a bohemian by eschewing the proscriptive roles of her social status to explore her sexuality and to follow her passion: modern art. Guggenheim befriended emerging figures in the art world in the 1920s and 1930s and began acquiring and exhibiting their work. For a planned museum, she shrewdly amassed an impressive collection of works that would go on to be deemed masterpieces – and was able to save them from the ravages of World War II in the nick of time. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland paints a comprehensive portrait of a singular patron of the arts whose pioneering vision has left an indelible mark on art history.