Almost There: Jodie Foster in "Contact"

by Cláudio Alves

This past weekend, Jodie Foster threw a wrench into the Best Supporting Actress race, surprising pundits when she won the Golden Globe for The Mauritanian. Maybe we shouldn't have been so shocked; The Academy hasn't acknowledged Foster since her 1994 nomination for Nell, but the HFPA never stopped loving her (8 nominations, 3 wins, 1 lifetime achievement). Three years after her last Oscar nomination, she was back on the hunt for a Golden Globe. The movie was Robert Zemeckis' Contact and the role was one of the most challenging in the actress' long career…

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Review: "Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker"

by Cláudio Alves

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to." were the desperate words of an angry man. "The greatest teacher, failure is." was the philosophy of a wise master. Somewhere in between the two sentiments, those of Kylo Ren and Yoda, lies the ethos of Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi. There's no place for toxic nostalgia in that director's vision of the Star Wars universe, though a critical look at what came before is necessary or else we're bound to never grow. Independently of Episode VIII's other faults, one would think such a theme would be unanimously celebrated and generate little to no controversy. One would be mistaken. 

Johnson's Star Wars feature sparked a wave of antagonistic discourse that's still active two years after its release. While the perpetual litigation of that production's merits is no one's idea of a good time, it's crucial to consider its themes when analyzing the latest episode in the saga. If every film in a franchise is having a conversation with its brethren, The Rise of Skywalker represents a repudiation of The Last Jedi's core ideals. JJ Abrams' return to the saga is an open celebration of uncritical nostalgia. Indeed, it appears to have been conceived more as a cowed response to fans' complaints than as a satisfying narrative…

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Doc Corner: Tales of the City at DOC NYC

by Glenn Dunks

The massive DOC NYC festival begins this week in – would you believe it – New York City. The festival runs from November 9 - 16 and showcasing over 250 films and events. We’re going to look at some of the films screening there that will hopefully make their way to theatres and VOD over the next year. This edition of our weekly Doc Corner is devoted to three films about cities and the way people interact within and around them.

12th and Clairmont
It is inevitable that Brian Kaufman’s 12^th and Clairmount will be compared with Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit considering both focus on the 1967 riots of the city. But whereas Bigelow’s production zeroed in on just one incident of the five-day series of violent and destructive action on the streets of the city, Kaufman’s film examines a much larger canvas, covering the time before, during and after the city's people responded to the significently white police force's swarm of brutality.

It’s a tactic that proves essential to beginning to understand the events that one person in this often compelling documentary describes as “the days of madness in July”...

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