There’s plenty to be said for Gasland, the Oscar-nominated, 2010 documentary from Josh Fox, who grew up and currently lives on the Marcellus Shale, “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas” in Pennsylvania. In fact, his land is so valuable that he was offered 100,000 an acre by a handful of companies seeking the “ocean of natural gas” […]
Thanks to True Hollywood Story and Behind the Music, watching music-centered biopics and documentaries is often akin to watching Titanic in that you are relegated to waiting for the boat to crash into an iceberg of ego and slowly sink as the mates argue over which dinghy to take. The formula for these shows is simple: take two people who meet in […]
There is something compelling about Man on Wire, the 2008 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, that would have not been as such had it been released closer to the time of Philipe Petit’s daring walk between the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Certainly, his astounding athleticism would stand out, as would […]
Horrific events force us to channel the resulting anger into a visible, tangible object, one that visibly articulates our rage and anger by its existence, at times, regardless of whether or not the object of our antipathy is directly related to its cause. A case in point would be Johnny Frank Garrett, a Texas man accused of […]
Admittedly, when No Impact Man: The Documentary first popped up on Netflix, my first instinct was to watch it with the sole purpose of tearing it apart. Why? I’m not really sure. Perhaps I wanted to expose Colin Beaven as an advantageous entrepreneur whose desire to become an activist for a year better served his need to […]
A writer for a movie site should probably relish watching the Academy Award nominations and prepare for the witty banter that comes from surprise winners and lovable losers who just can’t seem to take the ten-pound, gilded man home; however, for the last few years, disillusion has outweighed the entertainment value of the awards, and awards seem […]
“We’re not ready for this … This is the middle of nowhere … This is a shithole … I felt like we were fish in a barrel … What are we doing?” is the chorus that introduces us to the Korengal Valley, the deadliest area in Afghanistan in 2007 and also noted as the most violent place […]
In 1994’s Hoop Dreams, we followed Arthur Agee and William Gates as they struggled to break free of their impoverished communities and broken pasts, seeking the opportunity to become professional basketball players. In the same spirit, Pressure Cooker follows three culinary art students at Frankford High School, an institution replete with metal detectors, thumbprint scanners, and students […]
In the third act of the Paul Rudd, Sean William Scott vehicle, Role Models, Danny and Wheeler (Rudd and Scott) accompany Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to a medieval role play in order to overthrow King Argotron (Ken Jeong) and take control of his kingdom, winning the hand of Maiden Esplen (Alexandra Stamler). And initially, I saw this as […]
Jan09
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters — Perhaps You Could Have This Record for a Few Quarters More
In 1982, a mustachioed, mulletted kid set the high-score record on one of the Golden Age of Arcade Games’ Donkey Kong; in addition, this prestidigitation prodigy also achieved a record high score in Donkey Kong Jr. and was the first player to ever record a perfect game in Pac Man, wherein the player kills all enemies and […]