Doc Corner: On the Ice with 'The Russian Five'

By Glenn Dunks

Ice hockey is not a sport I tend to pay any attention to. As an Australian, it’s barely on my radar outside of the movies. And even then, my mind only goes to the fab Canadian film Goon and Michael Ontkean’s jockstrap in Slapshot as worth the time (despite being of the generation, I was never much of a Mighty Ducks devotee). Still, I know a good story when I see one and like other documentaries about pro sports I could not give any less of a hoot about – titles like Senna and When We Were Kings, for instance – this new passionately-realized debut feature from director Joshua Riehl got me involved in its sport, its personalities and its man-made mythos.

And how! As a noted non-cryer at the movies, I can say I shed several tears by the end of The Russian Five and Its story of stubborn devotion, emotional anguish, and underdog triumph.

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Doc Corner: 'The River and the Wall'

By Glenn Dunks

The effects of the current administration on the psyche and the soul of American life have been well-documented in cinema. Documentaries about how Donald Trump has torn at the fabric of the country are almost a dime a dozen. Many have been great, and there will be many more until the day filmed entertainments cease to exist. It is a part of our cinematic lives now.

Less common as a subject is the effect the current administration is having on the land itself. That's surprising considering Trump and his cabinet are doing everything within their power to not just continue environmental genocide but speed it up. The soil and the water and the earth that surrounds us are at the heart of the evocative new documentary The River and the Wall...

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Doc Corner: Beyonce's 'Homecoming'

By Glenn Dunks

Reviewing a concert film can be tricky. The lines between what is merely a good concert with good music can become blurred with what is a good film. A concert film can quite easily be one and not the other (I will save you the examples), but to decipher what is what is an equation that it is all too easy to flub the maths on.

In the case of Beyoncé’s Homecoming, the numbers are a bit easier to put together as the film is more up front about its craft – tricky use of editing (those yellow/pink switches!!), the use of retro cinematography filters (Coachella ain’t Woodstock), scripted narration and so on. However, even when trying to filter out the rhetoric that often comes along as baggage with her, it’s easy to see that Homecoming belongs among the list of great concert documentaries.

It’s a joyous and exciting collage of sound and image from a moment in cultural history, a captivating two hours and 17 minutes.

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Doc Corner: 'Hail Satan?'

By Glenn Dunks

How long do you think it took director Penny Lane to choose between putting a ? or an ! in the title of her latest delight of a documentary. Her follow-up to the equally wonderful Nuts! (another one where either punctuation mark would work), Hail Satan? left me wanting to convert from the cosy world of agnosticism to the Satanic Temple, which I suppose is as glowing a recommendation as one could get for a film directly about the Satanic Temple.

I was first introduced to Lane through Our Nixon, a relatively staid and standard assemblage of home movies that held little suggestion that Lane would quickly become one of the most interesting purveyors of absurd American life working today.

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Doc Corner: The Compelling 'Roll Red Roll'

By Glenn Dunks

“She is so raped right now… this is the funniest thing ever.”

That’s one of the callous lines that opens Nancy Schwarzman’s debut feature documentary, Roll Red Roll. Played against misty images of an otherwise seemingly peaceful hamlet, the opening minute is not the last time we will hear those words, spoken as they were by a male high schooler as a young girl lay drunken and unconscious on the floor of his friend’s rec room. The words return later, this time in video form, as the boy in question laughs and smiles, his face radiating with some sort of queasy pride for his friends, two fellow high schooler students who would eventually be found guilty of rape.

It’s important to not beat around the bush here – after all, Schwarzman’s film doesn’t...

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