'Fire of Love' and 'Good Night, Oppy' lead the Critics Choice Documentary Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Seven years ago documentaries got their own division of Critics Choice Awards with multiple categories and thus departed the main show where they were restricted to just one. For the seventh anniversary edition the box office hit Fire of Love (read Glenn's review) about married volcanologists and the space exploration doc Good Night Oppy (for which we just led a Q&A at Middleburg) lead the nominations in 17 categories. The ceremony will be held on November 13th at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan.

UPDATED 11/14/22 What follows is the full list of nominees AND WINNERS with links going to reviews if we've done them. Thanks to Glenn's expert "Doc Corner" column and various festival peeks, we've reviewed quite a few of them...

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: The female rockers of 'Nothing Compares' and 'Sirens'

By Glenn Dunks

Showtime's Sinéad O'Connor documentary, Nothing Compares, much like the artist herself, is at its best when it is prickly and confronting the hard truths of the world. It is less interesting when conforming to now well-worn standards of this sub-genre, distilling information like a Wikipedia profile. The Irish singer, known for a shaved head and distinctively accented vocals, has had a hard life of struggle and sorrow amid mega-selling hit singles and critically acclaimed albums. In short, she's perfect fodder for a documentary. Director Kathryn Ferguson and editor Mick Mahon find their strongest rhythms when observing the singer’s career through the prism of her homeland and the pull-and-tug of Catholicism, which lingers over her music like a haunting spectre...

Click to read more ...

NYFF: The Human Body tenderized in 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica'

by Jason Adams

Do you ever find yourself zoning out to one of those surgery shows they sometimes have on basic cable? Titles like Botched or Plastic Surgery: Before and After where they stick their reality-show cameras into people’s literal guts and poke around? Yeah me neither. A lurid dramatization like the series Nip/Tuck I could handle, but the real stuff’s always been a bridge too far. But then I’ve always had that line drawn in the sand when it came to Horror Movies as well – I’ll watch all sorts of gruesomeness as long as I know it’s fake but you’d have to tie me down to get me to watch one of those Faces of Death videos. 

So why then did I find myself so lulled into hypnotic contemplation by directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s surreal-ish surgery documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica (meaning “Of the Structure of the Human Body” and named after the legendary 1555 anatomical texts) at the New York Film Festival this week?

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: Patricio Guzmán’s 'My Imaginary Country'

By Glenn Dunks

The spectre of director Patricio Guzmán’s career lingers over his latest, My Imaginary Country. It would be hard not to considering he is the most prominent and prolific documenter of modern Chile. But in this case it feels different. It isn’t just a case of the viewer bringing their knowledge of the director’s work into a latest. Rather, the new work is reflecting those films going back fifty years.

For you see, Guzmán has made a name for himself detailing the horrors of the Pinochet dictatorship. Most prominently across two of the most impressive film trilogies you will ever see (The Battle of Chile parts one to three, and the run of Nostalgia for the Light, The Pearl Button and Cordillera of Dreams). He didn’t expect this beloved homeland to fall once again to civil war, which is what it appeared was happening in 2019...

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: Riotsville, U.S.A.

By Glenn Dunks

Sierra Pettengill’s Riotsville, U.S.A. begins so strongly. It makes a striking first impression with the usage of an old government film taken of a fake town built on a military base that is being used to train soldiers on how to handle a riot. The entire film, we are informed in an opening title card, will be told using such archival government footage as well as television news coverage. This particular footage is from the 1960s as protest and activism began to take hold of the public, particularly those in predominantly African American communities. In one of the more depressing sights, black soldiers are regularly shown in such footage throughout portraying such (so called) rioters; asked to loot and threaten. The humiliation they must have felt is palpable...

Click to read more ...