The Sparks Brothers (2021) | Directed by Edgar Wright

 4.5/5

Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers is an outstanding music documentary that is an absolute joy to watch. It gives a comprehensive overview of the life and career of Sparks and wisely shares enough of their music throughout so that anyone who isn’t familiar with their oeuvre doesn’t feel ostracized or unwelcome. In fact, it’s an incredibly generous film for anyone new to their music, and Wright has gathered an incredible assortment of interviews from fans, other musicians, producers, and the Mael brothers themselves to help provide context for the songs and albums. The use of archival material and found footage is phenomenal, and Wright proves to have a deft hand at structuring the material with interviews and just enough stylistic flourishes to match Sparks’ own style and personaes. It’s a fantastic, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining musical documentary.

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All Light, Everywhere (2021) | Directed by Theo Anthony

 5/5

Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere is an exquisite documentary exploring the nature of modern surveillance, consistently raising questions about the ethics of its own creation. Throughout the film, as we examine the history of cameras and the recorded image, as well as the ways in which this is inextricably bound up in the history of warfare and policing and weaponry, Anthony reveals the many fraught decisions a documentary filmmaker faces in crafting a film of this nature. He constantly interrogates the notion of objectivity and shows just how difficult it can be to completely remove bias from our policing and surveillance systems, especially when we put all our faith in cameras, in recording devices, in tools designed to give us a dispassionate and unbiased record of “the truth.” But the film constantly shows us the gaps in a recording device’s ability to capture reality – whether due to the technical limitations of aerial surveillance or the designed limitations of police body cams. And by continually stepping back to show us how the documentary crew sets up a shot, edits a sequence, or removes the breath from a voiceover recording, we’re continually reminded that the images we’re left with in any frame can only tell one part of a larger story. This is a fantastic work of expressionistic non-fiction filmmaking – an exhilarating viewing experience.

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Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma (2021) | Directed by Topaz Jones, Simon Davis, Jason Sondock

 5/5

Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma, directed by Topaz Jones, Simon Davis, and Jason Sondock, is a fantastic short documentary comprised of 26 vignettes blending surrealism, archival footage, sketch comedy, direct observation, and interview to craft a stunning portrait of contemporary Black experience. The film’s interviews with activists are essential and provide the necessary grounding for a work that so intentionally toggles between absurdity and profundity, comedy and despair, terror and joy. There isn’t a wasted moment here – this is an exceptional work of creative non-fiction and packs more into its 34 minutes than many films are able to do with three times the length. It’s an incredible and invigorating film.

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Black Power: A British Story of Resistance (2021) | Directed by George Amponsah

 4.5/5

George Amponsah’s Black Power: A British Story of Resistance is another exceptionally strong documentary in this series of films outlining the struggles of Black British citizens and immigrants fighting for their rights. This installment outlines the history of and explores the groups within Britain’s Black Power movement, and looking at both the internal and external forces that eventually led to its collapse. While inspired by the United States’ Black Power movement – and even though it certainly had ties to many of the groups and leaders – the film carefully illustrates the major differences and ways that the Black British community took the Black Power philosophy and made it their own. The powerful interviews with leaders and participants in the movement detail Britain’s long history of racism and discrimination, as well as the ways in which the various groups within the Black Power movement would overlap and work together. Like all of the films in this series, the use of archival material and found footage is exceptional, as are the musical selections that underscore the narrative. And it’s especially powerful to have the film draw such a clear through line between the Black Power movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s and today’s struggle for racial justice.

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The Rescue (2021) | Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin

 4.5/5

In Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s The Rescue, the documentary filmmakers take the techniques they honed and perfected in Free Solo and apply them to the much more compelling and emotionally resonant subject matter of the underwater cave rescue of the Thai soccer team. Even though most viewers will already know the narrative’s ultimate outcome, Vasarhelyi and Chin manage to create an almost unbearable tension through their deliberate pacing and careful recounting of the unique challenges faced in mounting this rescue. Stunningly crafted re-enactments are seamlessly combined with archival materials, and the computer graphics used to visualize the cave helps orient us to the space and gives a real sense of just how difficult the rescue really was. The interviews are all compelling, and it’s essential to get into the motivations that drive individuals to dive into caves during their leisure time – though as with Free Solo, Vasarhelyi and Chin only seem to be able to draw out surface-level reflections from their subjects. Still, it’s refreshing to see how frank and honest the film is about the divers’ reluctance to take on such a difficult rescue, and ultimately, why this group of volunteer divers were the only people in the world with the skill set to attempt such a daring and unprecedented rescue. It’s a remarkable and compelling film that is deeply moving.

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Zola (2020) | Directed by Janicza Bravo

 4.5/5

Janicza Bravo’s Zola is a delightful and exuberantly crafted study of perspective, performance, storytelling, and who has power in any given situation. Bravo treads a very delicate line with the film’s tone and the shifts needed to modulate in order to capture the ironic and playful detachment of the narrator’s voice from the original Twitter thread, while still making certain that we’re always aware of the potential for danger and violence lurking around every twist of the plot. It’s one of those rare films that doesn’t pathologize sex work, while still acknowledging the perils and struggles that those involved in that labor face. And while it’s all handled with a grace and subtlety you wouldn’t expect from a film that is this unapologetically boisterous, the film’s examination of shifting power dynamics based on race, class, and gender are all incredibly astute. Bravo’s use of 16mm is gorgeous, and the precise, heightened compositions echo the heightened and perfected self-images we’re all conditioned to compose for social media. The film’s sonic textures are just as important as its visuals, bringing social media to life on screen in fresh and unique ways. There so much to explore in this film – the narrative’s ties to The Odyssey, the parallels between both boyfriends left behind, the longing to return home – that you could easily spend multiple viewings diving into everything that Bravo’s doing with this extraordinary film.

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Annette (2021) | Directed by Leos Carax

 5/5

Leos Carax’s Annette may not be a film for everyone, but if you’re willing to give yourself over to its aesthetic eccentricities and darker edges, you’re in for a moving musical experience unlike any other. Not quite a traditional song-and-dance extravaganza – and really an opera either, even though every word is sung – the film is closer to a narrative concept album brought to life on celluloid. As such, there are sometimes storytelling leaps that occur between songs (or even within verses) that can make the story frustrating if you aren’t expecting a big screen version of an art rock album (with music, lyrics, and screenplay by Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks) or if this kind of narrative just isn’t your cup of tea. but if you’re willing to take the leap, there’s much to love here – the music, the performances, and especially the dissection of toxic masculinity. The story itself weaves dark, fable-like qualities into its exploration of performer and performance, audience and expectation, and the sometimes slippery and toxic nature of the relationship between artists, fame, and the public. Beyond some of the uncanny and unreal design elements in the film that heighten its reality, the use of puppetry to bring the titular character to life evokes questions about the ways in which each of the three principle characters use this child for their own ends – in much the same way that adults often coerce and manipulate the children in their lives, forcing them to play a multitude of roles throughout childhood. And yet, as dark and despairing as the film can seem, it nevertheless leaves us ruminating on whether it is possible to forgive those who wronged us, to seek it from those we have wronged, and what the cost is for us when we hold onto our anger.

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The Card Counter (2021) | Directed by Paul Schrader

 5/5

Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is another powerful, deeply moving film from the veteran filmmaker, continuing in his spare, quiet, introspective aesthetic. For all of its stillness and quiet, it’s an angry film, exploring our nation’s collective guilt – a country that has all but moved on from the grave moral bankruptcy of the Bush years and our post-9/11 willingness to overlook wartime atrocities in the name of our own feelings of personal safety and security. But in the midst of this anger, in the midst of this exploration of guilt, there are also questions of redemption and forgiveness. Is such a thing possible when we’ve perpetrated one of the worst crimes imaginable? When we as a society have allowed such crimes to occur in our name? Schrader uses the casino as a backdrop for these questions of guilt and redemption and forgiveness – a repetitive and soul-draining purgatory without the joy or life or vibrancy you’d find in most films that take place in the world of gambling. And the bleak, gray purgatory is contrasted by the extreme wide-angle hell of the shots he gives us of Abu Ghraib and the illuminated heaven we see in moments of connection – the potential for forgiveness in the touch of another human being. It’s an extraordinary film that gets better the more you analyze and explore the way Schrader’s visual techniques and aesthetics so thoroughly support the ideas he’s exploring – and it’s anchored by some great performances, especially from Oscar Isaac, who has never been better. It’s an exceptional film.

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Shiva Baby 2020 | Directed by Emma Seligman

 5/5

Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is a fantastic, gripping comedy about what it’s like to feel out-of-place in your mid-twenties and about the constantly shifting power dynamics within relationships. Seligman creates a claustrophobic atmosphere throughout the film and constantly ratchets up an unbearable amount of tension as the film progresses. Tight closeups on our protagonist’s face as she’s in conversation with people we don’t see, the unsteadiness of the handheld camerawork as the tension ramps up, and the horror movie score all work together to keep us on edge. Seligman understands that, as funny as young adulthood can be, it can also be comically horrific for young women navigating parental expectations, the norms of any tight knit community to which you might belong, predatory men, and the prospect of finding your way forward. It’s a sharp, funny, painfully honest about what it means to be a young woman today.

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Labyrinth of Cinema (2019) | Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

 5/5

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema is a gorgeous and deeply moving cinematic experience. It’s a collage of moments and moods, references to previous Japanese films, historical facts and little known incidents, emotional beats and character digressions that all add up to a profound meditation on war, violence, and the power of cinema. The film is densely layered and textured, peppered with literary and cinematic allusions, the screen filled with poetry and historical footnotes that intrude upon the frame – all of which collide in a dizzying time-travel musical fantasia. And yet, with all of the historical and meta-textual references, the film manages to maintain a sense of playfulness and joy, moving toward its powerfully emotional and moving finale. His final film, you can see Obayashi pouring his considerable passion and energy into each frame – and how important he sees the film’s themes and ideas. As the film explores different genres and periods of Japanese cinema, we’ve given the impression that war and nationalism are not just problems of the past, but that these are deeply ingrained problems that need to be addressed on a human level. This is exquisite filmmaking, a work that deserves close examination.