This is an excellent documentary about the power of music in the lives of inner city youth.
5/5
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The Campbell Review |
Crescendo!: The Power of Music is an American documentary focused on a worldwide music education program, El Sistema, as it expands to the United States. The film focuses on three youth orchestras; one in Harlem New York and two in West Philadelphia. This is an excellent documentary about the power of music in the lives of inner city youth. 5/5
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Borealis is an enjoyable Canadian road dramedy about a gambling addict, single-father (Jonas Chernick) who takes his teenage, pot smoking daughter (Joey King) from Winnipeg to Churchill to see the Northern Lights before she goes completely blind. Of course Jonah, the father, owes money and so he's also on the lam with two gangsters (Kevin Pollack and Cle Bennett) hot on his tail. This is a delightful little Canadian film. King delivers as the daughter who is rapidly losing her vision. Chernick wrote and produced the film. This is the 5th collaboration between Chernick and director Sean Garrity. Ultimately, the film could have dispensed with the gambling debt/mob sub plot but truly, Pollack and Bennett are really enjoyable as Tubby and Brick. Give it a whirl. Support Canadian cinema. 4/5 Beware the Slenderman is a very intense new documentary from HBO. It was was shot over the course of 18 months after a 12 year old girl was stabbed 19 times by her two classmates who were trying to please Slenderman. This film is terrifying. Not because "Slenderman" is scary, he's really just your average modern day boogie man; he's basic folklore. He's the Pied Piper... This film is terrifying because 1- teenage girls are just about the scariest creatures out there and 2- mental illness. This film gets 'real' very quickly. Beware the Slenderman follows the year long court case in which in would be determined if the two accused 12 year olds would be tried as adults or children. So, watching this as the mother of a teen girl I was simultaneously reminded I'm already somewhat living in a horror movie and that I would hate to see anything bad happen to my daughter or worse, because of her. Terror, indeed. Secondly, as a person with mental illness this documentary terrified me because of how we treat and deal with mental illness and criminality. This film sorta punched me in the guts in a way I was not expecting...at all. 5/5 Sonita is a very powerful documentary about a teenage girl living illegally as an Afghan refugee in Iran who is facing being sold into marriage. Instead, she breaks the law (women cannot sing) and she becomes a Hip Hop artist. Sonita's bravery is astonishing. I'm a big fan of Iranian cinema and this is no different. I'm a fan. This is an excellent documentary. Show your sons and daughters. 5/5 Dope is Dope. I very much enjoyed this clever little coming-of-age dramedy. It's a breath of fresh air. It's fun! Dope is about a self-proclaimed geek, Malcolm, and his two geeky friends who are high school seniors in Inglewood California. The trio ends up being tricked into moving a package of MDMA for a drug dealer. Hijinks ensue. 5/5 Crazy Moon is a mid-80s NFB/Canadian Teen Romantic Comedy starring a very young Kiefer Sutherland. This movie is pretty charming and I remember loving it as a kid when it first made its rounds on TV. Crazy Moon is about Brooks, an offbeat young guy from a rich family who has his eccentricities--such as dressing from the 1930s and only listening to big band jazz, riding his motorcycle with a mannequin in the side car, and photographing dog shit (read: he's manic depressive)--who meets and falls in love with a deaf girl Anne. Anne is played by a young Vanessa Vaugh who is actually deaf. Other than seeing Crazy Moon on Canadian TV it's been pretty hard to find, I was delighted to catch it on the Sundance channel. Copies are now readily via Amazon and through the NFB itself. I'm not saying this is an earth shattering film, but it is a very charming Harold-and-Maudesque coming-of-age romantic comedy. 3.5/5 This is one of the best films I have ever seen. No, seriously. It is for real one of the best films I have ever seen. Mes Petits Amoureuses is a French coming-of-age film from the early 1970s. Young Daniel lives with his grandmother, until his mother and her new boyfriend come to visit and he goes to live with them for a year. His mother doesn't want to pay for school books, so she sends Daniel to work instead. He dabbles at a bike repair shop, but mostly he wanders around, smoking cigarettes on park benches, and watching people make out--I don't know if that sells the film at all, but it was astonishingly perfect. Mostly Daniel is fascinated by and driven to understand the mystery of girls. Jean Eustache only made two feature films in his brief career. The Mother and the Whore is widely considered his masterpiece, and while I give both 5/5 I'm more inclined to re-watch and re-watch Mes Petits...again and again... 5/5 The Wolfpack is a hands down, no-doubt about it, must see movie. Do it now. Wow. Locked away for 14 years, on the 16th floor of a Lower East Side housing project, 6 boys, their sister, mother and father live as their own tribe. With virtually no contact with the outside world except for being allowed to watch movies all day every day, the boys painstakingly transcribe every word, build elaborate sets, costumes, and props, and recreate their favorite movies to pass the time in their apartment. When one son decides to go for a walk around the neighborhood the dynamic begins to shift and slowly the family begins to leave the apartment and experience many firsts; going to the movies, eating in a restaurant, going to the beach, and so on. This is an American documentary that follows this family over 5 years as they expand their boundaries and slowly experience the outside world. This is riveting, exhilarating, incredible, fun, and ultimately very moving. I don't think there has been such a charming, honest, and bizarre view of family dysfunction since Grey Gardens. Oh, and these boys. Wow. I connected with this film not only as an unbridled cinephile, but also in the way the boys learn about the world through movies, in turn viewing thousands of movies partly due to unorthodox circumstances that resulted in staying home all day an awful lot as a kid. Wow. Wow. Wow. 5/5 Dancing Arabs is the newest film by Eran Ricklis. This is a coming-of-age dramedy about a Palestinian Israeli boy who is given the opportunity to attend Jerusalem's most prestigious boarding school and has trouble fitting in but befriends a classmate with muscular dystrophy and who, over the course of three years, develops a secret relationship with a Jewish girl, Naomi. This is a delightful coming-of-age film that is lighthearted and enjoyable. Nothing too political or heavy here. I'm a Riklis fan and have to recommend The Syrian Bride. 3.5/5 Mommy made me scream and shout out loud because I was so excited and it was so exhilarating! Mommy is the most recent film from Xavier Dolan--Quebec's wunderkind. I highly recommend his other films, particularly Les amours imaginaires and J'ai tué ma mère. Mommy is a film about mothers (and I really dig movies about mothers). It's quite an unusual film, in theme, narrative, and aesthetic. It was shot and is presented in 1x1 aspect ratio--that is a square that appears to be a vertical rectangle when projected on-screen. I was worried this would be gimmicky and hard to watch, rather it was used expertly and hugely effectively. The aspect ratio helps convey a heavy sense of claustrophobia that is suffocating and oppressive, underscoring the tumultuous, violent, and chaotic relationship between mother and son. Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement, and Antoine-Olivier Pilon are perfection here. 5/5 |
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