Documentary Reviews | Picturenose

Cinema Movie Review: Room 237 (2012)

May

2013

Room with a view Conspiracy theories and opinions run amok in Rodney Ascher’s documentary, Room 237 (2012). In great detail, Ascher interviews nine contributors who have spent years analyzing and deciphering Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining (1980). From people who simply try to piece together the illusionary hotel’s surroundings to messages Kubrick may have been ...

Cinema Movie Review: The Imposter (2012) 3

Apr

2013

Beyond belief Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes a person’s desperation can cause them to avoid the truth. Bart Layton‘s The Imposter (2012) is such a crazy turn of events that if it were originally turned into a film and had ‘based on a true story’ slapped on its end credits, the audience ...

DVD Movie Review: Sharkwater (2006)

Feb

2013

Would the real killer please stand up? We received this as a review copy from our friends at Paradiso a long time ago – years ago, in fact. Why did it take so long to review, then? If I’m honest, it’s the subject. It caught my eye as I am a huge fan of natural ...

Movie Review: Les invisibles (2012) 1

Dec

2012

Gay and wide open In this magnificent documentary, Sébastien Lifshitz asks eight people to tell us about their lives. None of them is an art director, fashion designer, actor or journalist. None of them lives in Paris’s gay Marais nor haunts its exclusive gyms to maintain the fit body of a guy in his thirties. ...

Valentino’s Ghost (2012)

May

2012

Sheik, rattle and roll This article, by Gerald Loftus, first appeared in TALIM Director’s Blog . You have to be dedicated, or perhaps suffering jet lag, to get up to watch Michael Singh’s excellent documentary at 08:00 on a Sunday morning. The time was a function of the setting – this was the annual conference of ...

Freedom Riders (2010)

Apr

2012

Riders on the storm Gerald Loftus talks about the award-winning documentary Freedom Riders by Stanley Nelson.

10 Best Music Documentaries 12

Dec

2011

The music’s all that matters In association with MokumGroupie.com, Picturenose’s Colin presents his take on the finest films on music to grace the silver screen. Buena Vista Social Club (1999) Ry Cooder, who has played just about everything with just about everyone goes back to the roots of music for this wonderful outing to Cuba, ...

When We Were Kings (1996)

Sep

2011

Just a knockout I am very grateful to my friend and New Europe colleague Andy Carling for many things, but the most recent of these would have to be his recommendation that I sit down and enjoy an evening with Messrs Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Leon Gast, who is the director of the quite ...

Pina (2011)

May

2011

Lady of the Dance The documentary Dancing Dreams (2010) by Rainer Hoffmann and Anne Linsel recently graced our screens, with its depiction of young dancers and the beautiful choreography of Pina Bausch. In 1955, at the age of 14, Bausch entered the Folkwangschule in Essen, there to be taught by Germany’s perhaps most influential choreographer, Kurt ...

Witch Hunt (2008)

Dec

2010

Innocent victims Sean Penn is a brilliant actor, has proved to be a skilled director and now, also, a great producer. He also narrates the story presented in the documentary Witch Hunt (2008) that he produced, which was directed by Don Hardy Jr and Dana Nachman – a story of Bakersfield, a small town in ...

Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)

Jan

2010

Killing the car industry’s best hope… Gerald Loftus returns with a look at a documentary that’s sure to get you revved up. Who Killed the Electric Car? wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times when the film was released in 2006, is ‘a murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to ...