Category Archives: Releases

Coming to DVD this Friday, January 19:
EVERY 40 YEARS

Directors:
Eric Goldrich and Ben Friedberg

Premiere:
Santa Barbara 2017

About:
A folk rock trio that once achieved some success reunites after four decades.

Together with Friedberg, Goldrich profiles his father, Steve, and his bandmates in the group Gunhill Road, who are remembered as one-hit wonders for “Back When My Hair Was Short,” a Billboard charting song, but had a few other minor successes in the 1970s before they disbanded. They and past collaborators, family, and fans detail Gunhill Road’s emergence and what went wrong, including running afoul of bad record deals. An event that pays tribute to their former manager at the Bitter End gives an excuse for a reunion about 40 years after their heyday, shown in the final scenes here, and paves the way for a new album. While clearly a labor of love for the filmmakers, they struggle to find enough material to sustain even an hour-long doc, and what’s here is really only of interest to the band’s small fanbase.

Coming to theatres this Friday, January 19:
POW WOW

Director:
Robinson Devor

Premiere:
Locarno 2016

Select Festivals:
New Orleans, CPH:DOX, Art of the Real, Mar del Plata, Seattle

About:
Life in the Coachella Valley.

Described as an ethnographic study, Devor ambles around the Inland Empire Colorado Desert terrain best known for Palm Springs and the Coachella spring music festival, briefly training his camera on a wide range of inhabitants, from country club reveler to Las Vegas comedians, Native Americans to elderly transplants. Through this survey, a not altogether coherent thread runs, covering the contested history of the region and the story of Willie Boy, a Native boy who managed to outrun a mounted posse in 1908. While at times breathtakingly shot, the intriguing and thoughtful project never quite manages to come together in a wholly satisfying way, making it more of a strange curio than a fully successful film.

Coming to DVD this Friday, January 19:
ZUZANA: MUSIC IS LIFE

Directors:
Peter Getzels and Harriet Gordon Getzels

Premiere:
Full Frame 2017

Select Festivals:
DocUtah, Jewish fests in Los Angeles, London, and Washington DC

About:
A survivor of the Holocaust and Communist persecution becomes a pioneer in classical music.

In the Getzels’ portrait, the now-90-year-old Zuzana Ruzickova relates the story of her eventful life, and the central role music has played within it. Growing up Jewish in Czechoslovakia, she survived three concentration camps as a teenager only to return to her homeland under Communist rule, where antisemitism and persecution continued. Despite this, she found both a refuge and a way to excel through music – Ruzickova became the first person to record the complete works of Bach on focused on the harpsichord, re-popularizing he instrument in her country in the process. After the fall of Communism, she worked with her husband to expand musical education in the Czech Republic. While Ruzickova is an impressive figure, the film feels overlong, sometimes detailing elements that are overly familiar and losing its focus on its most distinguishing feature – her music.

Coming to DVD/VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 16:
WHAT LIES UPSTREAM

Director:
Cullen Hoback

Premiere:
Slamdance 2017

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Seattle, AFI Docs, Traverse City, Dallas, Sonoma, Ashland

About:
The filmmaker investigates the coverup behind drinking water contamination in West Virginia.

I previously wrote about the doc here.

Coming to PBS’s American Experience and to DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, January 16:
THE SECRET OF TUXEDO PARK

Director:
Rob Rapley

Premiere:
American Experience (January 2018)

About:
The little-known story of the Wall Street tycoon-turned-scientific benefactor who helped win WWII.

Tuxedo Park, an unassuming village 40 miles north of New York City, served as the site of a cutting edge laboratory during the 1930s and ’40s, overseen by Alfred Loomis. After making his fortune on Wall Street, and cagily avoiding the crash of 1929, the wealthy gentleman scientist opened his mansion, known as Tower House, to pioneering thinkers in science and engineering from home and abroad, defying the isolationism of the time. As war erupted in Europe, and convinced that America inevitably would be drawn into the conflict, Loomis began developing game-changing technology to combat the Axis’ seemingly unstoppable war machine. Working in secret, Loomis and his team would perfect short wave radar technology in his Rad Lab, as revealed in Rapley’s informative, if conventional, biographical profile. While the dramatic introduction of atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would steal radar’s thunder – and the notoriously press-adverse Loomis was content to remain unheralded – the technology he developed was said to have won the war, while the atomic bomb merely ended it.