For most of Frederick Wiseman’s career, the master documentarian has focused on the lives and institutions of the United States. His films have painted…
Maestro When the 2018 remake of old Hollywood standby A Star is Born dropped, it marked the culmination of over a decade’s worth of…
Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros For most of Frederick Wiseman’s career, the master documentarian has focused on the lives and institutions of the United States. His…
A Couple reflects a shift in Wiseman’s work, his fascination in institutional minutia pivoting to more transcendentalist territory, to moving effect. Performance — itself…
Showing Up Despite the steady repetition of themes that define Kelly Reichardt’s filmography (alienation, class, gender, the American West), her output has remained surprisingly…
It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like none other in recent history. Significantly, by virtue of living through such times, it’s…
Unlike Wiseman’s typically nuanced, curious documentary treatments, City Hall doesn’t have much to offer beyond standard homage to contemporary liberalism. What Frederick Wiseman does,…
The fall festival season has looked far different this year, limited both in its ability to exhibit films and in the breadth of selection…
Mainstream Social media, as captured in cinema, is largely a trap. The past decade has demonstrated its allure among filmmakers, and it’s easy to…
Toxic masculinity had a year; scan the top three titles on this list and you’ll find three films about self-involved men belaboring the value…
Over half a century into Frederick Wiseman’s storied career, the legendary documentarian’s interest in systems — that is, how they function in relation to…
Our third dispatch from the Toronto International Film Festival (here’s the first and here’s the second) includes our takes on a few hold-overs from this year’s Cannes…
We have a lot planned for the fall film festival season—including multiple dispatches from the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. But…
There were times during this especially tumultuous year when it seemed as if the world at large was on the verge of collapsing. A…
What Frederick Wiseman is doing barely constitutes as documentary filmmaking anymore — there are no talking heads, no narration, all sound is diegetic, and…