Doc Corner: Is 'Crip Camp' an early Oscar frontrunner?

By Glenn Dunks

As if on cue to allow isolated audiences one hell of an emotional purge, James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham’s sublime Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is here. Seemingly built to make audiences burst into tears out of honest to goodness heart-melting positivity and righteous activist anger in equal measure (a delicate balance to say the least), it is perhaps for the first time since this pandemic began that I contemplated my own small place in this big world outside of COVID-19.

It’s big-hearted and impassioned; an unsurprising winner of Sundance’s audience award and an obvious frontrunner for the Academy Award.

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Doc Corner: The politics of 'Slay the Dragon'

By Glenn Dunks

I had expected 2020 to be jam-packed with political documentaries. We have already had Hulu’s four-part Hillary and in the lead-up America’s presidential election had assumed that nary a week would go without a documentary about some sort of politics examination, exploration or expose. Who knows what the rest of the year holds for us anymore in terms of release for the sort of niche, boutique non-fiction fare and whether they will make their way to audiences, but I am sure they will hold lessons and important interrogations nonetheless.

Case in point: Slay the Dragon. A feature-length documentary that is getting out somewhat ahead of the pack and which picks up where digitally-released short films like Crooked Lines and Suppressed: The Fight to Vote left off on the issue of gerrymandering and the efforts (by let’s be honest: Republican politicians) to manipulate the voting process...

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Doc Corner: 'Tiger King' is a Disturbing Mess

By Glenn Dunks

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is the undisputed king of the internet right now. A zeitgeist that has steamrolled over a society that has been stuck inside, isolated with little else to do but binge and over-indulge on anything that distracts the mind and the body. Scratch beneath the veneer of its sneering Christopher-Guest-goes-to-the-trailer-park milieu and Tiger King proves to be lazy at best, morally corrupt at worst. Expanded out to an over-confident seven episodes, directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin dig their series deeper into grimy, ethically dubious territory with little of that digging towards something substantial.

The story of Tiger King, though, is certainly interesting. How could it not be considering the ever-escalating crime saga of Joe Exotic, a private big cat zoo owner and operator whose life gravitates towards weird and weirder. He’s a true drama queen...

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Doc Corner: The Top 100 Documentaries of the Decade

By Glenn Dunks

For those paying attention—and no offence if you haven’t—I have been counting down my top 100 documentaries of the decade. Okay, so it’s technically 110. Shut up, I couldn’t help myself. Check out the list with snap comments for each title on Twitter, or the list is also on Letterboxd. But if you don’t want to make a single click then after the jump you'll get the whole list with chosen highlights and links to full reviews. And just in case you were wondering... number 101? Exit Through the Gift Shop.

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Doc Corner: Hulu's Four-Part 'Hillary'

By Glenn Dunks (who is currently counting down his top documentaries of the decade over on Twitter. Follow along or swing by next week for the conclusion!)

It’s remarkable, really. Hillary—Nanette Burstein’s four-part Hulu biography of the woman who needs only one name these days—is so much like its subject, it’s just uncanny. Ambitious and by most conceivable marks of quality a perfect candidate for greatness.

And yet.

One almost has to admire the chutzpah of Hulu releasing Hillary when they did. Like Taylor Swift uploading her back catalogue to streaming services on the same day Katy Perry had a new album out, it feels like some sort of joke, even if it was more likely simply a smart and shrewd way of getting eyeballs in a tough market by utilising the political attention of another wild democratic primary race as cross promotional advertising...

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