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Long Time Running

September 25, 2017Addison Wylie0 Comments

A documentary about The Tragically Hip’s Man Machine Poem Tour needed to be made.  After all, it was a pivotal imprint in modern Canadian culture as the entire nation collectively considered the band’s timeless legacy and paid respects to terminally ill musician Gord Downie.  Finding filmmakers to handle such sensitive subject matter would be an intimidating order, yet Jennifer Baichwal (Watermark) and Nicholas de Pencier (cinematographer on The Ghosts in Our Machine) rise to the occasion and exceed…

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Reviews

All Eyez on Me

September 4, 2017Addison Wylie0 Comments

Benny Boom, the music video director/indie filmmaker behind Next Day Air and 48 Hours to Live, has been given a chance to swim in a larger pond with the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me.  On paper, this should work.  Boom’s been working upwards to larger projects, and the source material is certainly in his wheelhouse.

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The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith

August 2, 2017Shahbaz Khayambashi1 Comment

The documentary form of filmmaking has been around since the very beginning of the moving image.  In well over a century, it has been transformed in a variety of ways, leading to some of the most innovative cinema.  This is exactly why it is always so frustrating when someone takes an interesting individual or event and makes a documentary that takes nothing from this history, instead opting to utilize the same old cookie-cutter style of…

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Score: A Film Music Documentary

May 31, 2017Mark Barber0 Comments

There’s not much to say about Matt Schrader’s ever imaginatively titled Score: A Film Music Documentary.  A documentary made in praise of the Hollywood elite composers (who, to be fair, deserve the praise), Score has the presentation quality of a TV special or DVD bonus feature with no original thoughts about its subject.

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Kasper Collin Production AB / Courtesy of the Afro-American Newspaper Archives and Research Center

I Called Him Morgan

April 7, 2017Addison Wylie0 Comments

Pardon me it this sounds silly, but I Called Him Morgan – a music documentary about jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan – has too much music.  The music itself isn’t bad, but director/producer Kasper Collin has included so much of it that the tunes actually engulf the rest of this otherwise adequate film.

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Exit: Music

February 8, 2017Shahbaz Khayambashi0 Comments

Nazis plundering art has been a subject of much consideration and curiosity ever since the objects began to be recovered.  Plenty of focus has been placed on paintings that were lost and found in this way, and the reasons for it are plain to be seen: the paintings have famous, long-deceased names attached and, due to their singular status, they can only be experienced by a limited number of people and can be valued at…

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Reviews

Gimme Danger

November 7, 2016Shahbaz Khayambashi0 Comments

Gimme Danger is by no means a groundbreaking documentary.  It’s by-the-book filmmaking, full of talking heads and archival footage, and very much reminiscent of the punk rock films of Don Letts.  The Letts comment, of course, is not a negative at all.  Don Letts is a great person to emulate when searching for cinematic punk rock aesthetics.

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Reviews

The Violin Teacher

October 28, 2016Addison Wylie0 Comments

The Violin Teacher is a conflicting feature.  The music is beautiful and the message is inspiring, but the story’s pace constantly swings back and forth from tight captivation to a sluggish crawl.  Sérgio Machado’s film is both the most uplifting film I’ve seen lately, and the most boring.

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