This is a stellar tell-most study. It would be nice if the reporting and editing here got some awards love.

Naturally the recollections and footage alike are disquieting and sometimes harrowing. But the arc of the slow, mostly fruitless attempts at progress and real rehabilitation is so gripping that this is a quite easy watch for me.

There's material for more hours, I'm sure, but the firm two hours makes it leave packing a punch given what's contained in the…

Attica is a gut wrenching examination of the uprising at Attica Prison and the massacre committed by law enforcement. It only happened fifty years ago.

I don’t normally give trigger warnings but the last half hour of this is horrific. It’s hell on earth. It reminded me of footage I’ve seen from the concentration camps from World War II. Yet this happened here in the supposed land of the free. It didn’t happen during a war or in formerly confederate…

This documentary is an absolute delight. Her story is already pretty interesting and they do a great job of covering most of the important details in what felt like a very comprehensive package (I knew very little about Julia going into this). It was also great (and extremely hunger-inducing) how they intercut modern footage using extreme closeups of delicious looking food from her recipes in slow motion with the older footage.

The real surprise here was how unexpectedly funny Julia…

I loved Free Solo so much it basically reinvigorated my interest in documentaries, so it's no surprise that I loved The Rescue, in which directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin deliver 114 minutes of PURE STRESS as they chronicle the Thai cave rescue from 2018. Unlike Free Solo and Meru, however, they weren't shooting the action as it occurred, but a treasure trove of footage from inside the cave combined with skillfully integrated reenactments—by the real-life participants—presumably shot by…

DOC NYC Virtual Screening.
Vasarhelyi and Chin are a perfect match for the subject. Every bit as thrilling and personal as their previous efforts on a cliff's edge. I imagine it will play even better as the story fades from our collective memory. Reenactments and animation serve the story well as tension mounts. A web of interviews effectively showcase an intimate circle of expert cave divers without overshadowing the enormous, seemingly impossible task at hand. I expect to see their…