TRIBECA20 REVIEW: Socks on Fire [2020]

It’s hard to get ahead of a forty-year hurt. The hope is that the sorrow of losing a loved one proves the extent of the pain we must suffer before we set about sifting through what’s left of that expired life. It’s why we throw parties after funerals to try and approach a sense of normalcy through a celebratory remembrance of yesterday’s good times together despite today’s tough truth making it possible. We take a deep breath, confront our grief, and await the will reading meant to put every duck…

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REVIEW: The Booksellers [2020]

They are a way of being fully human. One of documentarian D.W. Young‘s subjects makes a great point later on in his film The Booksellers during a section on auctions and how different book collectors are from art collectors. Whereas the latter deal in wealth (they’re buying a one-of-a-kind piece, taking it from the realm of public consumption, and counting it towards their worth as an investment), the former deals in stories. You don’t need to have that specific edition of The Great Gatsby in order to read it, but…

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TRIBECA20 REVIEW: Banksy Most Wanted [2020]

He’s someone who hits where it hurts. It’s always funny in a crisis like the current COVID-19 pandemic to see people screaming about how they don’t believe artists should receive financial relief. Unless they’ve been sitting on their lawn and staring at the sky these past two months, however, they’ve dealt very extensively with art on a daily basis. Maybe it’s entertainment like books, TV, movies, or music. Maybe it’s property such as homes, furniture, or interior design. And if we dig a bit further, we discover these people are…

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REVIEW: The Dog Doc [2020]

I had a lot of preconceived notions about it. Here’s the big question: Is your pet a living creature you treat as an equal in terms of deserving a high standard of living or a possession you know will have to be replaced once the factory-set sequence of repairs no longer work? There’s definitely some gray area there when it comes to finances (we’re probably more willing to bankrupt ourselves to save a family member than we are to save the family dog), but so many decisions truly are that…

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REVIEW: Slay the Dragon [2020]

The people did not want this. It’s been depressing to watch America fall so far since I have been able to vote. Every passing year has seen the issues grow partisan to the point of rendering debate impossible. We lean into screaming matches instead because neither side is willing to listen. They simply bide time until they can drive home their own parroted viewpoint as some sort of empirical fact despite it being nothing of the sort. People we’ve respected and trusted reveal themselves to be hypocrites and words used…

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REVIEW: Walk Run Cha-Cha [2019]

Motion creates emotion. By the time the Vietnam War was over, the area was officially communist. Because Chipaul Cao‘s mother was a successful businesswoman at the time, the government came and demanded she relinquish both her factory and home. That’s when the family knew they had to escape. Maybe there was a risk of failure, capture, or death by leaving, but staying put with nothing (and little chance of improvement) was hardly a better option. The only caveat Chipaul had was the reality that he would need to say goodbye…

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REVIEW: St. Louis Superman [2019]

I’ll tell you when you’re five. It’s horrible that tragedy is the cause, but seeing and hearing how Bruce Franks Jr. took up the call to government in order to instill the change his community needed to prevent future tragedies is nothing short of inspiring. This is what American government was always supposed to be: citizen leaders fulfilling their civic duty to represent their constituents. It wasn’t about full-time employment or selling off votes to lobbyists. There was supposed to be turnover as each community evolved and grew and therefore…

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REVIEW: Life Overtakes Me [2019]

We hadn’t told them. Directors John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson‘s documentary Life Overtakes Me is a call to action. Where many films revolving around ailments seek to provide answers, this one hopes for recognition and subsequent research necessary to find solutions. The reason is simple: nobody knows the underlying truths behind Resignation syndrome. All we know for certain is that it’s real, occurs at an extremely high rate in Sweden, and is growing internationally. The latter comes as no surprise considering our world has been growing more and more insular…

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REVIEW: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) [2019]

What is courage? Even when the Taliban was driven out of Afghanistan, young girls still weren’t guaranteed an education and those from strict families past the age of thirteen were generally not allowed to leave their homes. The reason: a patriarchal sense of “honor.” Parents can’t risk their daughters being kidnapped on their way to school because of how such an act would ruin their reputation. While sons are at university, someone has to earn a living to keep food on the table. Just because the Taliban wasn’t enforcing a…

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REVIEW: In the Absence [2019]

I should have told her to escape quickly. This is what happens when your government leaders are inept, indifferent, and opportunistic. This is what happens when people are given jobs well above their abilities and thus become expected to make decisions rather than follow them. Not only was everyone holding a seat of power in the South Korean Coast Guard unwilling to act as they reported situations to bosses in the hopes of passing the buck, those paid to be heroes when called upon weren’t experienced enough to fulfill that…

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SLAM20 REVIEW: Film About a Father Who [2021]

He doesn’t lie. He just doesn’t tell you what’s going on. While director Lynne Sachs admits her latest documentary Film About a Father Who could be superficially construed as a portrait (the title alludes to and the content revolves around her father Ira), she labels it a reckoning instead. With thirty-five years of footage shot across varied formats and devices to cull through and piece together, the result becomes less about providing a clear picture of who this man is and more about understanding the cost of his actions. Whether…

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