A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
French and French-language Films
Abel Gance and Eugène Deslaw, “Autour de La Fin du Monde” (1930) I had heard that there was a French science fiction film “La Fin du…
Ian MacNaughton, “Out of the Trees” (1975) Huge surprise when I was surfing Youtube.com one day: a pilot for an abandoned TV show written by former…
Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) This film purports to document the hunt for World Public Enemy No 1, the Saudi national Osama bin Laden, and…
Juan Antonio Bayona, “The Impossible / Lo Impossible” (2012) Someone should have told Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts before they signed up to this film the…
Prairie Public Television, “The Bank of North Dakota” (2005) In an age in which large private banks have a stranglehold over governments and economies, and by…
Italian and Italian-language Films
Michele Botticelli, “At the Mountains of Madness” (2011) With the release of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” in 2012 and Guillermo del Toro’s resumption of the movie project…
Lindsay Harris and Stuart Leach, “Unearthed” (2011) On the edge of the known universe, a mining spacecraft The Ezekiel discovers an uncharted barren planet that may…
German and German-language Films, North American Films
Ryan Nagata, “1945A” (2010) Carl Erik Rinsch, “The Gift” (2010) Kaleb Lechowski, “R-Ha” (2012) These films have a few things in common: they’re very short science…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Nada Roude, “In the Footsteps of the Ancestors – Muslims Down Under” (2009) A little known timeline of Australian history extends further back than 1788 when…
Australian and New Zealand Films
Jacob Hickey, “Dirty Business: How Mining made Australia (Episode 3)” (2012) Final and best episode in a three-part series, this documentary examines the mostly unhappy relationship…