Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to theatres today, Friday, September 19: ART AND CRAFT

Directors Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman and co-director Mark Becker’s portrait of a notorious art counterfeiter bowed at Tribeca this year. It’s gone on to screen at Nantucket, Hot Docs, Montclair, Maryland, and San Francisco, among others.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to NYC’s Anthology Film Archives and to Cable VOD tomorrow, Friday, September 19: A LIFE IN DIRTY MOVIES

Wiktor Ericsson’s tribute to a legendary sexploitation director made its debut at Gothenburg last year. It went on to screen at DOC NYC, London, and the San Francisco Jewish film festivals, among others.

I previously wrote about the film for DOC NYC’s program, saying:
In the 1960s and ‘70s, Joe Sarno was a master of softcore porn, known as the Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street for his striking B&W photography and focus on women’s desire in films like Sin In The Suburbs, Young Playthings, and Confessions of a Young American Housewife. While his career faded as sexploitation gave way to hardcore, in recent years, his work has been rediscovered and celebrated, prompting the octogenarian auteur to return to filmmaking, with his supportive wife Peggy at his side.

Coming to VOD today, Tuesday, September 16: FIGHT CHURCH

Daniel Junge and Bryan Storkel’s film about pastors with a punch debuted at IFF Boston this Spring, where it won the best documentary award. Its festival circuit has also included Nashville, Maryland, Seattle, Woods Hole, Denver, Fantasia, Sidewalk, and Rome. It now comes to iTunes, Amazon, Google, DirecTV, Sony PlayStation, XBOX, Vudu, and other VOD platforms.

A growing number of American churches have turned to mixed martial arts as part of their mission to reach the masses. Junge and Storkel focus on several men of God who spend time in the ring when they’re not preaching to their flock. That they use a brutal sport that’s dedicated to inflicting pain to impart the teachings of a religion that typically emphasizes love and tolerance is a contradiction that’s not entirely lost on these pastors, though some engage in some dubious rationalization to justify their dual passions. While this intriguing dichotomy remains at the center of the film, the filmmakers never push back quite far enough, instead permitting subjects to spout very similar rhetoric unquestioned, making for an at times frustrating viewing experience. In contrast, two characters who engage with the issue in a more complex manner, the concerned wife of one of the pastors and a philosophical trainer, could have used further screentime. All that said, the film is by far the most compelling MMA-themed documentary to emerge in a subgenre that’s typically flooded with tired portraits of interchangeable fighters, and there’s real provocation in its exploration of the seductive indoctrination that results from blending religion and bloodsports – a scene of a kids’ match carries particular impact.

Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, September 15: TERROR AT THE MALL

Dan Reed’s harrowing account of last year’s massacre in Nairobi makes its official debut tonight, the third of three films the director has made on infamous terrorist attacks around the world.

The present film comes just under a year after the attack on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall. On September 21, 2013, four young Somali gunmen affiliated with Al-Shabaab strolled through the building, indiscriminately and inconsistently shooting patrons as a supposed act of revenge for some vaguely defined affront against Somalia and Islam. Effectively conveying a sense of raw danger and immediacy, Reed structures his film primarily through surviving security camera footage in various locations in the embattled complex, identifying various subjects in the grainy material who supplement his terse narration with interviews. As a result, the viewer is immersed in a shocking, nearly first-hand experience of panic, confusion, and fear that is hard to shake.

Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, September 16: CASTING BY

Tom Donahue’s appreciation of the casting director debuted in Toronto in 2012. Festival screenings followed at the New York Film Festival, Los Angeles, Sarasota, Montclair, Denver, Cleveland, Ashland, Provincetown, and RiverRun, among others. In addition to DVD, the doc now becomes available via iTunes.

I previously wrote about the film upon its initial release here.

Coming to VOD tomorrow, Friday, September 12: DICK: THE DOCUMENTARY

Brian Fender’s exploration of men’s relationships to their penises debuted at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival last year. IndiePix now releases the doc on VOD, with a DVD release planned for next year.

Placing an ad on Craigslist back in 2008, Fender solicited the participation of anonymous male subjects willing to expose their bodies for his camera. Using a simple, utilitarian camera set-up, framing the men from the neck down, the director appears as an offscreen interlocutor, posing a range of questions to engage them on the topic of their dicks and how they relate to them. Representing a cross-section of ages, races, sizes, and sexualities, the men take the opportunity afforded by anonymity and curiosity to open up about self-perception, early sexual experiences, and traumas, from sexual abuse to small penis jokes to prostate cancer. Despite clocking in at barely over 45 minutes, the project feels a bit overlong – even if the men are engaging, some anecdotes are excessive, and the basic set-up wears thin after awhile. That said, while there have been other documentaries that have explored the topic, this is still generally unexplored terrain, at least in comparison to media and writing that features women considering their own bodies, so Fender’s film is a welcome attempt to focus on an unnecessarily taboo topic.