With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
45 Years (Andrew Haigh)
Andrew Haigh’s third feature as a director, 45 Years, is an excellent companion piece to its 2011 predecessor, Weekend. The latter examined the inception of a potential relationship between two men over the course of a weekend, whereas its successor considers the opposite extreme. Again sticking to a tight timeframe, the film chronicles the six days leading up to a couple’s 45th wedding anniversary. Though highly accomplished, Weekend nevertheless suffered from a tendency towards commenting on itself as a gay issues film, which at times overrode the otherwise compelling realism. Despite treating material arguably even more underrepresented in cinema – senior relationships...
45 Years (Andrew Haigh)
Andrew Haigh’s third feature as a director, 45 Years, is an excellent companion piece to its 2011 predecessor, Weekend. The latter examined the inception of a potential relationship between two men over the course of a weekend, whereas its successor considers the opposite extreme. Again sticking to a tight timeframe, the film chronicles the six days leading up to a couple’s 45th wedding anniversary. Though highly accomplished, Weekend nevertheless suffered from a tendency towards commenting on itself as a gay issues film, which at times overrode the otherwise compelling realism. Despite treating material arguably even more underrepresented in cinema – senior relationships...
- 4/17/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
These days, when someone sets out to make a documentary, they typically have a pretty clear idea of what they’re expecting to find. Not Brett Story, who approaches “The Hottest August” like some kind of anthropologist from the future, interviewing New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds, as if any one of them might hold the key to what happened to the planet. Does Story know something we don’t? Has global warming reached such a point that our survival hangs in the balance, where each and every person she encounters is potentially both the victim and the culprit in the great whodunit of our species’ extinction?
Most climate change documentaries approach the issue from a place of hysteria, overwhelming audiences with statistics and doom-and-gloom scenarios, whereas Story attempts to reframe the subject from a different perspective. Her idea — at once rigorously serious in intent and playfully open-minded in...
Most climate change documentaries approach the issue from a place of hysteria, overwhelming audiences with statistics and doom-and-gloom scenarios, whereas Story attempts to reframe the subject from a different perspective. Her idea — at once rigorously serious in intent and playfully open-minded in...
- 12/22/2019
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
All too often a nonfiction film’s cinematic possibilities deflate in post-production, where the pressure, both internal and external, to make something formulaic becomes intense. The irony, of course, is that it is in the editing that an ambitious nonfiction film’s possibilities can be discovered, or even created. Here are two shining examples of editors steering remarkable films and filmmakers to find their full potential.
Nels Bangerter
Editing documentaries is a singular process quite distinct from its application in narrative features. Non-fiction storytelling often requires culling from hours of footage, weaving together material from disparate times and places, connecting one moment to another even if they were never planned out that way. Over the past decade, Nels Bangerter has emerged as an exemplar of that craft.
Bangerter’s credits extend far beyond the limited realm of talking heads: The 2012 Oscar-nominated short “Buzkashi Boys” assembles a coming-of-age story about two...
Nels Bangerter
Editing documentaries is a singular process quite distinct from its application in narrative features. Non-fiction storytelling often requires culling from hours of footage, weaving together material from disparate times and places, connecting one moment to another even if they were never planned out that way. Over the past decade, Nels Bangerter has emerged as an exemplar of that craft.
Bangerter’s credits extend far beyond the limited realm of talking heads: The 2012 Oscar-nominated short “Buzkashi Boys” assembles a coming-of-age story about two...
- 12/3/2019
- by Chris O'Falt and Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
In 2016, Brett Story made a documentary about the state of penitentiaries in the U.S. without ever shooting inside one. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes offered a snapshot of the American incarceration system through a dozen of thematically and formally distinct vignettes. They were not portraits of prisons, but of the people and spaces orbiting around them. There were female inmates who’d fought wildfires in California, a man who made a business out of people struggling to send life’s necessities to their loved ones behind bars, and a group of women waiting for a bus to ship them to visit relatives held captive. The whole project was, as Story would later put it, a reaction to conventional prison documentaries and their pernicious tendency to put inmates on display, “as if there were no other way of making the prison or its captive subjects visible, and as if visibility...
- 11/13/2019
- MUBI
Two years ago, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 159 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others, on December 16.
All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.
Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...
All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.
Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...
- 11/12/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
Two years ago, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 159 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others, on December 16.
All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.
Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...
All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.
Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...
- 11/12/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
A total of 159 documentary features have qualified in the Oscars’ Best Documentary Feature category, the Academy announced on Tuesday.
Last year, 166 documentaries qualified. In 2017, a record 170 made the cut.
All of the films are now available to members of the Documentary Branch to stream on the Academy’s secure members website. The films have been placed there over the last six months, with 23 added to the site in June, 24 in July, 26 in August, 19 in September and 62 in October and only five in November.
Also Read: 'Maiden' Star Tracy Edwards Kept Her Story 'Messy' to Serve the Next Generation of Women Athletes (Video)
Each member is randomly assigned 20% of the films as mandatory viewing but is free to see any additional films beyond those that are assigned. A preliminary round of voting will produce a 15-film shortlist, with a second-round narrowing those 15 to the five nominees.
This year is...
Last year, 166 documentaries qualified. In 2017, a record 170 made the cut.
All of the films are now available to members of the Documentary Branch to stream on the Academy’s secure members website. The films have been placed there over the last six months, with 23 added to the site in June, 24 in July, 26 in August, 19 in September and 62 in October and only five in November.
Also Read: 'Maiden' Star Tracy Edwards Kept Her Story 'Messy' to Serve the Next Generation of Women Athletes (Video)
Each member is randomly assigned 20% of the films as mandatory viewing but is free to see any additional films beyond those that are assigned. A preliminary round of voting will produce a 15-film shortlist, with a second-round narrowing those 15 to the five nominees.
This year is...
- 11/12/2019
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The year is winding down, which means many of our most-anticipated films and festival favorites will finally be arriving in theaters. Featuring biopics that break the mold, first and final features by female directors with distinct visions, crime dramas of varying scales, and much more, check out our monthly highlights below.
15. Ford v. Ferrari (James Mangold; Nov. 15)
After spending much of the past decade enmeshed in the world of superheroes, director James Mangold’s next film finds him going back half-a-century to capture a key moment in automotive history. Christopher Schobert said in our Tiff review, “James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari is, in a word, sturdy. It’s the kind of airtight drama that could never be called groundbreaking or even original. But it offers ample pleasures in performance—from stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale—and design. While it could be a bit nastier, this is unquestionably intense grade-a Hollywood entertainment.
15. Ford v. Ferrari (James Mangold; Nov. 15)
After spending much of the past decade enmeshed in the world of superheroes, director James Mangold’s next film finds him going back half-a-century to capture a key moment in automotive history. Christopher Schobert said in our Tiff review, “James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari is, in a word, sturdy. It’s the kind of airtight drama that could never be called groundbreaking or even original. But it offers ample pleasures in performance—from stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale—and design. While it could be a bit nastier, this is unquestionably intense grade-a Hollywood entertainment.
- 10/29/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Much of the buzz at this year’s SXSW Film Festival originated with the starry, studio-driven Headliners category, where Jordan Peele’s “Us” and work-in-progress action-comedy “Stuber” played to enthusiastic audiences. Night after night for nearly the entire nine-day festival, SXSW unveiled such high-profile titles to enthusiastic audiences at Paramount Theater — a major coup for an event that’s proven to Hollywood marketing strategists that it can serve as an ideal launchpad for horror (“A Quiet Place”), action (“Atomic Blonde”), and comedies (“Sausage Party”).
SXSW had a record nine Headliners this year, plus a handful of high-impact political docs, including “Running With Beto” and “Knock Down the House” (the latter one of a dozen films selected to play Austin so soon after Sundance). But such movies make up less than 10% of a festival that’s still first and foremost about discovering and sharing outside-the-box new independent films: SXSW boasts more...
SXSW had a record nine Headliners this year, plus a handful of high-impact political docs, including “Running With Beto” and “Knock Down the House” (the latter one of a dozen films selected to play Austin so soon after Sundance). But such movies make up less than 10% of a festival that’s still first and foremost about discovering and sharing outside-the-box new independent films: SXSW boasts more...
- 3/17/2019
- by Peter Debruge, Joe Leydon and Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
The world of documentary filmmaking is as diverse as that of its fiction sibling, although what’s regularly shown on television or in larger theater chains may lead you to believe otherwise. While fiction is seemingly freer to imagine different stories and forms, the culturally dominant approach to nonfiction cinema hardly suggests its possible dynamism. Since documentaries are often hamstrung by notions ironically imported from mainstream fiction filmmaking—character arcs, straight-forward storytelling, satisfying conclusions—the kind of nonfiction movies that achieve broader cultural interest tend to be neatly packaged delivery vehicles for information one could easily glean much more quickly from an article. This approach while most visible is hardly the norm, and the world is far too messy and filmmakers far too adroit at being inspired by this terrific confusion to be limited to the commercial standards of truth-telling. After all, while the truth is a necessary component of living,...
- 3/13/2019
- MUBI
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