A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Adam Curtis, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Episode 2: The Uses and Abuses of Vegetational Concepts)” (2011) Second episode in his documentary trilogy…
D I Yashin, “Experiments in the Revival of Organisms” (1940) A curious short documentary from 1940 about a series of experiments on reviving dead or inanimate…
Alix Lambert, “The Mark of Caïn” (2000) Ostensibly a film about the declining custom of tattooing in Russian prisons, its history and how it serves as…
Errol Morris, “Tabloid” (2010) Errol Morris’s documentaries fall into two camps: a serious one (“Fog of War”) and one of portraits of eccentric individuals dominated by…
Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist, “WikiRebels” (2010) Made for Sveriges Television AB (SVT), this documentary traces the rise of Wikileaks, the global non-profit media organisation that…
Adam Curtis, “The Way of All Flesh” (1997) As told in this fascinating documentary, the story of Henrietta Lacks – or rather, that of her cancer…
Adam Curtis “The Living Dead (Episode 2: You have used Me as a Fish long enough)” (1995) Curtis sure doesn’t do things by halves and his “The…
Adam Curtis, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Episode 1: Love and Power)” (2011) A curious and challenging visual essay, the first in a…
British Films, French and French-language Films
Werner Herzog, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (2010) In 1994, three speleologists discovered and explored a cave in southern France and found prehistoric paintings apparently dating back…
Carl Byker, “The Meth Epidemic” (2011) Having seen and reviewed “Winter’s Bone” last year, I was intrigued to find out more about the methamphetamine addiction epidemic…