• Anvil! The Story of Anvil

    I know I’m late to the par­ty, but what a fun doc­u­men­tary! I wish I could catch their show at the TLA next weekend. Anvil! The Sto­ry of Anvil remind­ed me a bit of Amer­i­can Splen­dor, except Har­vey Pekar’s ten­den­cy to accen­tu­ate the neg­a­tive aspects of pub­lic­i­ty are 180 degrees out of phase with Lips’…

  • Geeta Dayal’s Another Green World

    I think I speak for every­one when I say that Gee­ta’s take on Bri­an Eno’s Anoth­er Green World for the 33 1/3 series was hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed. I can think of few titles in the series that gen­er­at­ed as much excite­ment from the time her pitch was accept­ed to pub­li­ca­tion. Those who wait­ed will be rich­ly…

  • The Exiles

    Kent MacKen­zie’s film The Exiles is like watch­ing Ger­many Year Zero set in L.A. The film tells the sto­ry of a hand­ful of Native Amer­i­cans who’ve moved to Los Ange­les. Like Charles Bur­net­t’s Killer of Sheep, also released by Mile­stone Films, it shows anoth­er Los Ange­les, stripped of the glitz and glamor. Think Cas­savetes’ Shad­ows…

  • Food Inc.

    Want a sure­fire way to bum your­self out on New Year’s Eve? Watch Food Inc. I’ve scaled back the num­ber of mind-numb­ing­ly depress­ing doc­u­men­taries I’ve watched in the past few years. Too many of them tread the same ter­ri­to­ry, preach to the choir, and fall far short of inform­ing the broad­er pub­lic of the issues…

  • The Baader Meinhof Complex

    This was an absolute­ly spell­bind­ing film. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the par­al­lels between the splin­ter fac­tions in both Amer­i­ca and Ger­many. How the Weath­er­men and the Baad­er Mein­hof Group became self-appoint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a so-called rad­i­cal left is a strange epi­logue to the advances made world­wide dur­ing the Sixties.  The Baad­er Mein­hof Com­plex does a…