Doc Corner: 'Life, Animated' Lacks Complexities of Modern Disney

Roger Ross Williams’ Life, Animated is an emotional 90 minutes of a heart-warming story that will likely give your tear ducts a good workout. It’s also not a particularly good movie. This is a frustratingly directed film that details the life of Owen Suskind, a young man whose early predilection for Disney animated movies allowed him to revert out of his shell and prosper into young adulthood. Williams has adapted the non-fiction book by Owen’s father, Ron – a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist – who, alongside his wife Cornelia, feature prominently throughout telling in wondrous detail of the miracles that have come their way since discovering Owen’s passion with a viewing of The Little Mermaid...

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Doc Corner: 'Mavis!' and 'We Are X' Spotlight the Music

Every year there are so many documentaries about musicians that it sometimes feels as if we will surely run out. We of course all know that will never be the case, and in this landscape of film distribution, documentaries like these are the easiest sells so it’s hard to blame the makers. In 2016 alone we’ve see films about The Beatles, Nick Cave, Oasis, Frank Zappa, and the late Sharon Jones. Jim Jarmusch has released Gimme Danger about Iggy Pop and The Stooges and there has even been yet another Rolling Stones doc called The Rolling Stones Ole Ole Ole!: A Trip Across Latin America that I never knew existed.

This week we’re looking at two more that are on this year’s Oscar eligibility long-list and which focus on polar-opposite worlds of music: rhythm and blues icon Mavis Staple and Japanese hard-rock phenomenon X.

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Doc Corner: China Comes Into Focus in Documentaries

by Glenn Dunks

Two weeks ago (I had to take a week off to help put on an award show!) when discussing Zhang Zanbo’s The Road, I mentioned the rise of documentaries not just by Chinese filmmakers, but about China in general. A fascinating convergence in the rise of China as a global and controversial super-power with the rise of documentary filmmaking as a populist artform. It seems appropriate then to look at a recent trio of documentaries that focus on China and that each tackle a compelling and important subject: women’s sexual rights, animal poaching, and the destruction of the Earth...

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Doc Corner: From the Chiffon Jungle to the Great Outdoors at DOC NYC

Last week we looked at a group of films among the mammoth collection of titles playing Doc NYC. The festival continues and so we're looking at a few more films, taking a sort of cinematic road trip from the big city, down the highway to the Rocky Mountains and then back again.

The “chiffon jungle” is what the subject of Otis Mass’ debut film, The Incomparable Rose Hartman, a fashion and pop culture photographer whose images are as iconic as they are striking, labels her home of New York City. A place where fashion is as integral to daily life as breath is to life. Feel to free disagree, but as the first person to understand the appeal of the decadent backstage of celebrity life and master it into something truly artful, Hartman soon built a reputation that put her subjects at ease and made her none synonymous with New York’s cultural scene in a more extravagant way than the likes of Bill Cunningham. Whether she was photographing the models backstage and on the runways of  Donna Karen, Caroline Herrera or Halston, or capturing the more candid, celebratory side of celebrities like Jerry Hall, Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, Liza Minnelli and Cher at Studio 54, her work is justifiably as iconic as it is extraordinary...

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Doc Corner: Slenderman, David Lynch and More at Doc NYC

By Glenn Dunks

Doc NYC begins this week in (where else?) New York City. This year's festival, running from November 10th to November 17th, features 110 feature titles (now on sale), 44% of which are from women directors proving that #52FilmsByWomen is perfectly achievable if you're a fan of non-fiction.

After the jump notes on four new titles including a horror movie ready documentary and a look at David Lynch's creativity offscreen...

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