documentary
Beyond Utopia review - harrowing escape stories vividly captured with live footageTuesday, 31 October 2023
If Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia doesn’t make you cry, you’re a hard nut to crack. The film records the fortunes of defectors fleeing North Korea, a hell hole that is more like a prison camp than a country.The phone rings with news that a family... Read more... |
Baato review - Nepalese mountain folk await big changes with excitement and anxietySunday, 30 July 2023
It doesn’t do to be in a hurry in Nepal. In Baato, directors Kate Stryker and Lucas Millard follow Mikma and her family as they travel 300 kilometres from their mountain village in Eastern Nepal to the town of Terai. It takes the best part of a week... Read more... |
Shabu review - documentary-drama about youngsters in RotterdamFriday, 07 July 2023
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first... Read more... |
Hello, Bookstore review - a documentary with shelf lifeWednesday, 28 June 2023
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His... Read more... |
Mad About the Boy review - entertaining cradle-to-grave Noel Coward documentaryThursday, 01 June 2023
Devoted fans may not learn anything that new about Noel Coward from Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Mad About the Boy, but they will doubtless see some new things. And those who know “the Master” only from his early plays, hardy perennials these... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Conquest of EverestTuesday, 30 May 2023
Studio Canal’s restored print of the 1953 documentary The Conquest of Everest is so sharp, so clear that initially it’s hard to believe that we’re not watching a studio reconstruction. Skies, snowscapes and sunlit uplands glow; it’s only in the... Read more... |
Moon Is the Oldest TV review - a fitting tribute to a visionary modern artistSaturday, 20 May 2023
Who created the term “electronic superhighway”? First described a system of linked communication that would become the internet? Envisioned a multichannel TV system where viewers chose for themselves what to tune into? Watch Amanda Kim’s excellent... Read more... |
Brainwashed review - the toxic impact of the 'male gaze' in filmWednesday, 10 May 2023
The phrase “male gaze” was coined by the British film theorist Laura Mulvey in 1975 and has become a standard tool for analysing a film’s gendered content. What director Nina Menkes has set out to show in Brainwashed is that the techniques that... Read more... |
Loving Highsmith review - documentary focused on the writer's lighter sideThursday, 13 April 2023
Since her death in 1995, Patricia Highsmith has prompted three biographies, screeds of often conflicting psychological analysis and now this documentary from the Swiss-born Eva Vitija. We hear the director say at the outset that by reading her then-... Read more... |
Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy, Sky Documentaries review - a macabre slice of motor racing mythologySaturday, 01 April 2023
Netflix’s hit show Drive to Survive has proved that F1 can grab ratings, but Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy (Sky Documentaries) is a more esoteric offering.It’s a story from the annals of early-Eighties Formula One, in which filmmakers... Read more... |
MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, Netflix review - a field day for conspiracy theoristsFriday, 10 March 2023
For fans of conspiracy theories, this three-part examination of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is irresistible, though the continuing anguish of friends and relatives of the 239 people aboard the flight makes for some painful... Read more... |
Grenfell: System Failure, Playground Theatre review - if this doesn't make you angry, nothing willSaturday, 25 February 2023
It’s been five years since 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in West London. Five years and no arrests, as countless placards and posters around the neighbourhood point out.The Grenfell Tower Inquiry into how the tragedy occurred – why it... Read more... |
