Doc Corner: 'Gunda'

By Glenn Dunks

I’m not going to lie. There are times in Viktor Kosakovskiy’s buzzy new barnyard documentary, Gunda, that feel a bit like a colossal piss-take. Literally if you’re talking about that one extended scene of piglet urination. But between that, the one-legged chicken, the continued attention to the titular pig’s shaking udder, and its shiny black and white photography, the entire enterprise often feels like the punchline of an extended arthouse joke about what people perceive documentaries and international cinema to be.

That isn’t to say it isn’t impressive. It is, frequently. Especially from a purely logistical standpoint as Kosakovskiy and Egil Håskjold Larsen’s camera fluidly encircles and follows its animal subjects with access that often defies belief...

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Doc Corner: Werner Herzog's 'Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin'

by Glenn Dunks

Is it a coincidence that I watched Werner Herzog’s Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin on the same day as Nomadland? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe it was more just serendipitous that I turned my screener of Herzog’s film off just before leaving the house to go and see Chloé Zhao’s Oscar favourite. Maybe I am just feeling emotional about the very idea of being out in nature and enmeshed in a broader human existence, but both left me quite affected.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this double feature left me with the desire to walk home under the glowing blue sky with earth and tar and grass and cement under my feet...

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Doc Corner: The other Khashoggi film of 2020, 'The Dissident'

By Glenn Dunks — No column next week as I will be taking a week off for rest and relaxation over the Christmas season.

Not for the first time this year, the story of Jamal Khashoggi has been told in a documentary that tries—excessively, exhaustively—to be as thrill-a-minute as a Hollywood blockbuster. I wasn’t a fan of it last time and I’m not a fan of it this time, either. Bryan Fogel’s The Dissident is better than that earlier title, Rick Rowley’s Kingdom of Silence; it’s better than his 2018 Oscar winner, Icarus, too, but that isn’t saying much.

What is it about Khashoggi that makes filmmakers think they’re directing an episode of Homeland? Is it simply the key settings of Saudi Arabia and Turkey that inspires such busy and scattered movies?

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Oscar Chart Updates: Animated & Documentary Feature

by Nathaniel R

The Oscar charts overhaul is upon us. Let's discuss each category. First up a two-fer, Animated Feature and Documentary Feature. In both instances we don't have full eligibility lists yet but we know some of the titles that have qualified or will qualify.

ANIMATED FEATURE
We currently know of 15 features that are eligible or that plan to be. Since the threshold is only 16 films to create a full five-wide nominee field, we've decided to change our previous three-only prediction. (We'd love those odds if we were animated producers. It's so crazy easy to get nominated, statistically speaking, unlike other categories where hundreds of competitors vie for 5 slots. As we've said multiple times if the same percentage rules applied to Best Picture each year we'd have like 80-90 Best Picture nominees each year. Teehee.)

The contest is shaping up to be a battle royale between Pixar's Christmas entry Soul and the wondrously individualistic Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers...

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Cinema Eye doc nominations

by Nathaniel R

"Time" keeps racking up the honors

The Cinema Eye Honors are now in their 14th year and considered an influential prize for documentary films. Prison sentence justice movie Time leads the nominations with six but two competitors for the top prize, Romania's political corruption doc Collective (Romania's Oscar submission) and Norway's farm doc Gunda aren't far behind with four nominations. 

Outstanding Nonfiction Feature
“Boys State”
“Collective”
“Dick Johnson is Dead”
“Gunda”
“Time”

The full list of nominations and links to our reviews are after the jump...

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