I’m rather bad at remembering much beyond what happened yesterday.  Recently, I was trying to remember that “really great mountain movie with the British guys.”  With a little Googling, my memory was jogged and I realized it was Touching the Void. For the heck of it, I did a little exercise and made a list of some of the other documentaries we’ve found very worthwhile.  Rather than overwhelm...

So here’s a fact: documentary films are not true to life. Yes, they are supposed to be nonfiction films, “documenting” the lives of the people who are their subjects.  But, in actuality, they are manipulations of the truth, based on the perspective, vision, and, in some cases, biases of the producer (see Michael Moore). Even those documentaries that clearly don’t have the Michael Moore slant...

A confession: activist causes sometimes make me uneasy.  Perhaps it’s because I feel guilty for not having my own cause that I fight for.  So I had some reservations before watching The Cove, a film about the efforts of a group to expose the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.  Watching cruelty inflicted upon animals is also never appealing. For those who might have the same doubts, fear not. ...