Mugabe and the White African raises all kinds of questions. If you are white, can you be African? Do white African farmers today owe black Africans anything because of the transgressions of European colonists from 100 years ago? If so, should there be a forced transfer of land ownership from whites to blacks if the land is then left uncultivated and barren? The film focuses on the land reform policies...

I'm sure it's the same in countries across the world, but I'm sometimes struck by what a diversity of cultures exists here in the U.S.  The immigrant populations certainly contribute to that, but I'm thinking of the differences from one geographic region to the next. While watching two documentaries recently, Buck and Rank, I kept thinking: "Wow, those cowboys look basically like me (white and Anglo,...

A documentary about a grown man playing with dolls in his back yard wouldn't seem, initially, like a very engaging film.  What makes it work, however, is the absolutely honesty and vulnerability of the film's subject, Mark Hogancamp. Mark was viciously attacked and beaten outside a bar in Kingston, NY in April 2000, and was in a coma for nine days afterwards.  The attack left him with extreme brain...

Romántico is sad, funny, visually beautiful, heart-wrenching, soulful, moving, and poignant.  And I almost didn't watch it.  The Netflix description is so inaccurate - "two Mariachi singers play for unappreciative audiences in San Francisco" - that I came very close to skipping over it. A truer description of the story line might say something about the unhappy quandary Carmelo Sanchez finds himself...

The Great Happiness Space is a documentary that is full of sad people.  It focuses on a Japanese host club, Cafe Rakkyo in Osaka, in which young, stressed-out and lonely women pay "host boys" to entertain them and escape from life. At first, this seems just a little pathetic and nothing more - why not spend your time looking for true love rather than paying to be entertained?  But before long we realize...

Some parents do know how to damage their kids, and Monika Hertwig and Sebastian Marroquin are sad examples.  Both were children of fathers who were not ideal role models, to put it lightly.  Monika’s father, Amon Goeth, was the sadistic commander of a German death camp during World War II.  Sebastian’s father was Pablo Escobar, the ruthless head of the Medellin drug cartel during the 80s and early...

Just about any film – documentary or fiction – is going to employ a technique or two in order to get us hooked.  One that rarely fails is the good versus evil dynamic: good guy and bad guy duke it out, and we root for the good guy.  Often there’s a hero(ine) who is central to the story.  Perhaps he’s the good guy battling the bad guy, or perhaps he’s just a person we root for because...

Here’s a sequel to an earlier post on documentaries worth seeing.  I came up with another ten. Grizzly Man – man living among bears in Alaska Spellbound – smart kids competing fiercely in a spelling bee Crumb – underground comic artist, Robert Crumb Murderball – quadriplegics competing in wheelchair rugby.  Intense! Rivers and Tides – the nature-installation artist Andy Goldsworthy. ...

I've never understood the appeal of car racing, and though I've been tempted to pass judgment on occasion, I always resist the temptation.  Afterall, I like baseball, and that's not much different than...cricket. So it was with high hopes that I decided to watch Dust to Glory.  Technically speaking, the documentary isn't about car racing.  It's really more about motorized racing - the film follows...

Restrepo is a documentary film that all non-military civilians ought to see.  We often hear commentary about the divide that exists between those serving and those who don’t; we civilians cannot understand the experience of soldiers serving in America’s recent wars, nor can they explain it.  A 90-minute film can’t fully depict the life of a soldier in Afghanistan, of course, but watching...