Documentary Series Spotlight: Turner Classic Movies (TCM)’s THE POWER OF FILM

Back in January, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) premiered an all-new original documentary series, The Power of Film, which explores some of the most popular and memorable American films of all time. The six-part series was hosted and curated by renowned UCLA professor emeritus Howard Suber. He's the founding chair of UCLA’s Film and Television Producers …

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TCFF 2023 Documentary Review: A BINDING TRUTH (2023)

A Binding Truth is a story about two people who share the same last name – one black, one white – both from Charlotte, North Carolina in Mecklenburg County. When Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick and Hugh “De” Kirkpatrick encountered each other as high school classmates in 1965, neither thought much of anything about their shared name, …

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TCFF 2023 Documentary Reviews: ‘Still Working 9 to 5’ and ‘Greener Pastures’

In the interest of time, I'm going to be posting more than one review at a time during the film fest. Some might be shorter than others, depending on how much time I have on a given day. Still Working 9 To 5 Let me preface this review with the fact that I had not …

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Documentary Review: Portrait of the Queen (2023) – Tales about the most photographed woman on the planet from the lensmen who took them

There are countless documentaries and films that have been made about Queen Elizabeth II. But I was intrigued by Portrait of the Queen as it’s told from the perspective of the Queen’s photographers. Not to be confused with Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts released last year by Roger Michell. It’s exactly a year and a …

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Documentary Review: The Restless Hungarian (2023) – a filmmaker’s heartfelt journey to uncover the truth about his father’s secret

Documentaries are often a great way to get insights into worlds that are foreign to us, that’s why I was intrigued by the offer to view this documentary by Tom Wiedlinger. It’s both a historical as well as personal film about his enigmatic father, the acclaimed structural engineer Paul Wiedlinger who fled Europe just ahead …

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#MSPIFF42 Double Reviews: The Hamlet Syndrome (documentary) + Dancing Queen

We're now past the halfway point of MSPIFF and I've seen about nine movies so far… wish I had seen more of course but hey, I'll take whatever I can get as I'm juggling a 40-hour workweek. These two films couldn't be more different from one another, but both are definitely worth your while. The …

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Good Night Oppy Review – a heartfelt and uplifting doc about a robotic explorer

If Oppy were a human being, one would likely say 'what an overachiever!' So Oppy is an affectionate nickname for Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover built by NASA scientists. Oppy was originally expected to live for only 90 days but she ended up exploring Mars for nearly 15 years. When I first saw the poster, …

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