REVIEW: Sweetgrass [2009]

“How can dogs like me if people don’t?” My first thought when John Ahern, Pat Connolly, and the rest of Lawrence Allested’s ranchers took off for the Montanan Absaroka-Beartooth mountains was: “There has to be a better way.” I know such a statement can be construed as demeaning to a way of life that existed since the nineteenth century for many Norwegian-Americans with grazing permits roaming the American West, but it’s less a response to the people as much as the endeavor’s extreme arduousness. You can’t help but respect these…

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REVIEW: Leviathan [2013]

“It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud.” To no one’s surprise, the end of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel‘s documentary Leviathan does not contain the usual “no animals were harmed during the making of this film” since the piece itself is literally the harrowingly horrific depiction of North Atlantic sea creatures’ deaths. Whether decapitated fish being filleted and thrown in bins, sting rays de-winged before mid-sections are tossed aside, or a haul of clams/oysters cracked open before their empty shells can…

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