Winner of the Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival is this insightful and powerful documentary about China’s most popular and yet controversial artist Ai Weiwei. Making waves at nearly every festival in the circuit (read our own Andrew Crump’s glowing review of it), his story really is one that needs to be heard. The trailer for the “theatrical release” can be found on the Apple website (read: no embed code yet) and it gives you a good idea of Ai Weiwei’s struggles, but to compliment it, we also recommend you can also take a look at the spotlight trailer, with intro and commentary from director Alison Klayman, for the film while it…
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“The CineMagic 8-Ball” – In Theaters 5/4/12
When so many movies are released each weekend and trailers often seem better than the movie itself, what should one do? In this precarious situation, we consult the The CineMagic 8-Ball (TM) to help us see through the nebulous marketing haze. Doing so just might save us all a disheartening trip to the cinema and spare us unnecessarily springing for $7 popcorn. See what the 8-Ball says about this week’s releases… Annd since everyone in the world is probably planning to see The Avengers, here are some alternatives if you didn’t pre-order your tickets and can’t get into Joss Whedon’s comic book blockbuster this weekend. ——————————————————————————————————————————————- THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL British retirees travel to India…
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G-S-T Review…Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee is a heartwarming documentary filmed by the dedicated crew of Disneynature, an independent film label of The Walt Disney Company. The film was co-produced by Disneynature and the Jane Goodall Institute, directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield and narrated by Tim Allen. It is the fourth original film from Disneynature. The film was shot over three years in the tropical jungles of the Ivory Coast and Uganda. During the filming process the unimaginable happens…Oscar loses his mother and is eventually “adopted” by a fully-grown male chimpanzee. Most people would see the trailer or poster for this movie and skip right over it. It’s unfortunate, because this really is…
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Documentary ‘Bully’ Will Be Released Unrated (and Unedited)
The Weinstein Company’s powerful and much criticized documentary Bully will be hitting select theaters this weekend. Over the last few weeks there had been much debate (and controversy) due to the rating of this particular doc. As the titles suggests, it deals with bullying; a problem in schools that is abundant enough to deem it an epidemic. Yet for as much as the doc does to bring the problem to light, the MPAA just can’t get past the two F-bombs in it which automatically label it with an R-rating regardless of the overall content. Public and critical disagreement with the MPAA is nothing new but if there’s one man who will go toe-to-toe with them…
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Off the Netflix Queue…'The Cove'
Seems like every year a documentary film comes out telling us how messed up the world is and how everything we’re doing is wrong or is going to kill us. Although the subject matter of The Cove is far from preachy, its message is really a shocking call to action. World famous (and later infamous) dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry’s work on the 1964 TV hit “Flipper” inspired future generations of dolphin lovers. However the more in demand dolphins became, the more their capture is considered a cold hard money game. Yet, The Cove’s intent was not to focus solely on the “Dolphin Trade” (which in itself is a problem worthy…