The first documentary that Netflix might slot into their science fiction category, director Michael Madsen’s Into Eternity is an eerily fascinating look at the planet’s most unique construction project. Known as Onkalo — “hiding place” in Finnish — this massive work in the north of Finland, which began construction in the last century and won’t be completed until the next one, is a series of concrete-reinforced underground tunnels meant to store the country’s nuclear waste. And it’s designed to last until the waste is harmless — a full 100,000 years. Say it again — ... Read More
Bhutto Soap Opera Makes for a Compelling Film
December 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The events surrounding Benazir Bhutto's life play out like some particularly lurid, R-rated action flick. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the charismatic father and Pakistani prime minister, is overthrown by a rival, jailed and executed (the rival, Gen. Zia Ul Haq, later dies in a mysterious plane explosion). One of Benazir's brothers is poisoned, killer unknown. Another brother is murdered in a confrontation with police, allegedly without provocation. Bhutto's husband is accused of corruption, jailed for years, but never convicted of any crime. Bhutto herself is in and out of jail, in and out of exile, ... Read More
‘Bag It’ DVD Packaged With Message in Mind
October 21, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
So you make this movie about the evils of disposable plastic, see, and it comes time to distribute the DVD. So you've got a plastic disc tucked inside a plastic case with a veneer of shrink-wrap as an aperitif. Nice way to get the message across. Recognizing the hypocrisy such packaging might suggest, the makers of the new documentary Bag It looked for containers and distributors that would honor the spirit of the film. Eventually, director Suzan Beraza says, her company, Reel Thing Films, found an appropriate DVD tray made of starch, cellulose and water, and produced by the Dutch ... Read More
Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining Hits ‘Deep Down’
October 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In the opening minutes of their documentary Deep Down, filmmakers Sally Rubin and Jen Gilomen take us down a winding back road in eastern Kentucky. It's fall, and the leaves are changing, adding to the idyllic beauty of the mountainous surroundings. But around one bend is a rectangular sign bearing an ominous message: "Blasting Schedule." It might as well add, "Enjoy the view while it lasts." For this is coal country, and in recent years the industry has come to realize the quickest, cheapest way to extract the precious commodity is to simply blast away. Why bother with digging a dirty, ... Read More
‘A Film Unfinished’ Focuses on Nazi Documentary
August 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
No matter what crime, perversity or act of madness the Nazis committed, there's always a new one to be uncovered. Case in point is A Film Unfinished, a documentary currently opening around the country in which filmmaker Yael Hersonski deconstructs 60 minutes of unedited propaganda footage shot by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. On the surface, the scenes in the unfinished film, snippets of which were used for years as generic footage in Holocaust-related documentaries, look like the real deal: mass street sequences, people unconcernedly passing by the bodies of those who have ... Read More
It’s the End of the World as We Blow It
July 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The film Countdown to Zero might be one of the most frightening movies ever made, and it doesn’t feature a single vampire, zombie, biological mutant or alien slime thing. Just a bunch of talking heads discussing the possibility of nuclear terrorism, war or accident. Scary. Very, very scary. The film, which opens July 23 in New York and Washington, followed by a national rollout, is both a condensed history of nuclear weaponry and a sober analysis of contemporary nuclear issues. Produced by Lawrence Bender, the same man behind Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary’s ... Read More
Sebastian Junger Brings AfPak to Big Screen
June 24, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Journalist Sebastian Junger says he's "not going to spend another year with a unit at a remote outpost getting shot at," and after seeing Restrepo, which opens June 25 in New York and Los Angeles, you can understand why. The film, which Junger co-directed with Tim Hetherington, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival and is a companion piece to War, Junger's best-selling book about being embedded for more than a year with the soldiers of Second Platoon, Battle Company in Afghanistan's distant and incredibly dangerous Korengal Valley. Shot on ... Read More
Celebrating Earth Day with ‘DIRT! The Movie’
April 21, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
We think that diamonds are very important, gold is very important, all these minerals are very important," says Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate who helped women in her country plant more than 40 million trees. "We call them precious minerals. ... But that part of these minerals that is on top, like it is the skin of the Earth, that is the most precious of the commons." Resplendent in a yellow dress and head wrap, Maathai is the moral center of DIRT! The Movie, a kaleidoscopic celebration of the saviors of the soil, from the plains of Africa to the sidewalks of The Bronx. ... Read More
‘Harlan’ Documentary Examines Nazi-Era Film Director
March 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
If Jud Suss — Rise and Fall, recently shown at the Berlin Film Festival, takes the story of the most notorious anti-Semitic film ever made and paints it in melodramatic terms, then Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss, a documentary currently opening around the country, is its historical antidote. Directed by Felix Moeller, the film is the mesmerizing story of Veit Harlan, the most famous director of the Nazi era, whose rabidly anti-Jewish 1940 film Jew Suss was not only a huge European hit, but was required viewing for all S.S. soldiers and has left a legacy that his children and ... Read More
The End of Impunity?
June 19, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Two years into the new century, humanity took what may be a momentous leap forward, and most of us missed it entirely. While the United States was licking its wounds in the wake of 9/11 and gearing up for the Iraq War, the International Criminal Court opened its offices and began pursuing its bold agenda: to prosecute war atrocities and other crimes against humanity in places where the local authorities are unwilling or unable to do so. Unlike the short-lived tribunals following World War II and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia (which served as important templates), the ICC was ... Read More
