Reviews

Culture, Reviews

Review: The Whale

arrived at the theater a little early. There were good seats left at the front, and the crowd – an older, calmer population than I am used to – was chatting and milling about contentedly. I expected this to be a routine assignment: show up, watch a movie, write a digestible review. What I didn’t know then, as I settled […]

Culture, Reviews

Review: Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

Big Boys Gone Bananas!* documents the year-long battle between film director Fredrik Gertten and the crushing public relations and legal force of Dole Food Company. “If you have mighty enemies, then you need many friends,” said Gertten when introduced to the audience. He founded and heads a four-person film production company in Malmö, Sweden. Dole oversees 36,000 full-time employees worldwide […]

Culture, Reviews

Review: The Last Mountain

The Last Mountain, Bill Haney’s piercing new documentary about coal mining in the Appalachians, features enough explosions to make Michael Bay blush. In shot after shot, violent plumes of rubble erupt skyward from the side of denuded mountains, leaving malevolent clouds of dark ash lingering behind to coat the inside of West Virginians’ lungs. The explosive montages are brutal and […]

Culture, Reviews

Review: Eating Alabama

shaggy haired man perches in a little wooden shack, camouflaged head to toe, arms cradling a rifle and eyes watching for deer. Trepidatiously, he loads a shell and while his voiceover announces unassumingly, “I’ve never done this before.” And so begins Eating Alabama, which follows Andrew Beck Grace and his wife, Rashmi, as they return to their childhood locale in […]