Over a year after the premiere of The Hunting Ground, this documentary’s insight into the darker side of American college culture is doubly relevant. Kirby Dick’s film reveals not only the regularity of rapes on campus, but how institutions value their own survival over the wellbeing of their students. With shocking clarity, The Hunting Ground…
One of the best things about attending film festivals – such as this year’s Sydney Film Festival – is the opportunity to explore the breadth of documentaries on display. It’s a stark contrast to the genre’s sparse representation in mainstream cinemas. The conventional critical wisdom would be to suggest that multiplex audiences tend to avoid…
Tickled presents a dilemma to those reviewing it. Specifically, how do you talk about the film without getting into spoilers, without tipping your hand to its many surprises? You can discuss the documentary’s premise – a continuation of Kiwi journalist David Farrier’s investigation into the mysterious world of “competitive tickling” – but to get into…
I’m a city boy at heart, but I’ve spent much of my formative years in country towns big and small. In Ararat – a Victorian town best known for being ‘the fattest town in Australia’ – I had friends and family on farms down the road. Toowoomba, where I spent my late school years, was…
Cartel Land was one of 2015’s most successful documentaries, earning a cavalcade of critical praise and even an Oscar nomination. It’s not hard to see why; Matthew Heineman’s film combines a contentious contemporary issue – Mexico’s fraught, cartel-dominated ‘drug war’ and tensions along the U.S.A./Mexico border – with kinetic, ‘can-you-fucking-believe-they-got-that-shot’ cinematography. It’s the kind of…
I’m eternally thankful that the title of Jerry Rothwell’s Greenpeace documentary, How to Change the World, is an ironic one. Structured around a series of Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter’s ‘rules’ (from “Plant a Mind Bomb” to “Let the Power Go”), Rothwell is more interested in deconstructing the failures of Greenpeace than lionising its successes (though…
Do I Sound Gay? is documentary by way of dinner party conversation. This largely light-hearted consideration of the stereotypically ‘gay voice’ hews closer to a chat between friends than investigative journalism. Which is fine! For about 45 minutes, the film’s frivolity is what keeps it appealing; director and ‘subject’ David Thorpe – who undergoes speech…
Crystal Moselle must’ve had an easy time pitching her first feature-length documentary, The Wolfpack, to financiers and film festivals alike. A chance encounter on the streets of New York saw her ensconced in the lives of the Angulo family; a family of six brothers (and one largely-unseen sister) raised – so the publicity materials tell…
Filmed in Supermarionation is a modest documentary about the production companies responsible for – amongst other series forgotten to anyone who isn’t old and British – Thunderbirds. Talking heads recount from the ramshackle early days of the studio (involving flagrantly terrible puppetry from amateurs who knew no better) all the way up to post-Thunderbirds series…
Recently I’ve realised that I’m drawn to documentaries that are recognisant of their own failure – that is, the failure of the documentary as a factual medium. Which means that Listen to Me, Marlon, a biographical doco on Marlon Brando told largely through his own hitherto-unheard personal recordings, answering machine messages and the like, was…
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