By: Addison Wylie Kahlil Joseph’s Arcade Fire docu-mishmash titled The Reflektor Tapes is like a fever dream with great music that has gotten too carried away with itself. I imagine if I listened to the band’s discography and then crashed after a hard day’s work, I would start to visualize this film’s lurid activity. The Reflektor Tapes is one of these examples where you can’t stop fans from flocking to this thing, and newcomers will…
By: Addison Wylie The music in Mavis! wins us over in a flash. I wouldn’t be surprised if filmmaker Jessica Edwards was actually tempted early on to make a straight concert film instead of a biographical documentary. Mavis! is much more than the gospel music that enraptured listeners; including musicians Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, Bob Dylan, and recent collaborator Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco). The film is about Mavis Staples, the legendary singer behind a voice that…
By: Anthony King GOING IN: It’s time to head to Germany for the biggest, loudest, and probably craziest heavy metal festival on the planet; a three day festival where you’re free to release that inner metal freak, and scream or growl all day and night to your heart’s content. Every year, the small village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein Germany hosts the Wacken Open Air festival featuring heavy metal bands from Lamb of God to Alice Cooper….
By: Addison Wylie If you haven’t heard of African journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, he’s doing a good job hiding his identity. Few have seen him face-to-face, but this is because his safety and his flourishing career depends on staying incognito. Even in Ryan Mullins’ documentary Chameleon, Anas’ face is either blurred out or obscured for good reason. Anas’ groundbreaking investigative journalism mixes elements of crime-fighting. Using his ability to illustrate a story and set up…
By: Shannon Page Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz (I am Divine, Vito) and based on the memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, Tab Hunter Confidential explores the life and career of matinee idol Tab Hunter. After he was discovered by a movie agent, Hunter became, as fellow actor George Takei so aptly states in the film, the “embodiment of youthful American masculinity”. With his blond hair, blue eyes, and natural charm, Hunter…
By: Shannon Page Sibling filmmakers Ravi and Geeta Patel’s Meet the Patels is a feel-good documentary/romantic comedy hybrid that achieves everything that it sets out to do. The film, which began as a home video of a trip that the Patel family took to India, follows Ravi’s journey to find the woman of his dreams while navigating the expectations of his Indian-American family as well as his own connection to his cultural and heritage. It…
By: Mark Barber The Creeping Garden – a documentary about the professional and amateur fascination with slime mould in the scientific community – is a film without an argument; a particularly troublesome direction to take with the documentary genre. The film begins misleadingly with archival news footage detailing the discovery of an unknown, slimy substance found in Texas, suggesting that the direction the film will be a generic blend between documentary and horror; similar to two…
By: Addison Wylie We’ve all seen some variation of “crazy” in supermarket tabloids and on afternoon television programming, but Finders Keepers looks past what some would define as “too wild to be true” and finds the humanity behind the headlines. That’s not to say the story this documentary follows isn’t wacky – it absolutely is. In what could only be described as fate, John Wood and Shannon Whisnant were brought together after Whisnant found Wood’s…
By: Addison Wylie At this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Monty Python: The Meaning of Life captured the British comedians rehearsing for their final hurrah as they recounted cherished memories. Katja von Garnier’s concert doc Forever and a Day about German rock band Scorpions treads similar ground, but also made me feel the exact way the Pythons did – indifferent but not enough for me to completely disregard it. Forever and a Day is…
By: Addison Wylie Tig is refreshingly sensible. Then again, I guess that’s what happens when skilled documentarians Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York chronicle the ups and downs of a naturally funny and practical comedian. Tig Notaro worked very hard to earn stand-up credibility. Once her career found momentum, her dry wit opened the door for more opportunities. On the set of Lake Bell’s indie sleeper In A World…, Notaro found herself in weak health. Little did…