Cinema

​Another Brick in the Wall: Lego doc could use a rebuild

August 12th, 2015

Is it possible to make a feature-length documentary chronicling the commercial success, historical context and popular appeal of Lego (stylized as LEGO) building toys without coming across as a corporate shill? Maybe, but the question remains unanswered by Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge in “A Lego Brickumentary,” a geeky, gushing love letter that often feels like an extended television advertisement.

Junge, who recently helmed the much better “Being Evel,” and Davidson have…

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​‘Golden Year’ films on Blu-ray, Part One: ‘Dodge City’

August 12th, 2015

The year 1939 was notable for many things, from the September outbreak of World War II in Europe, to the New York World’s Fair showcasing hopes for a peaceful and prosperous technology-based future, to the introduction of regular broadcast television for the American public, to the year’s unusually high percentage of enduringly popular classic films. The year’s film output includes the timeless and beloved “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind,” but over twenty 1939…

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​Three decades of F-M DIY/punk scene on screen

August 12th, 2015

Twin Cities-based filmmaker Micah Dahl is working on an ambitious, feature-length documentary covering three decades of the Fargo-Moorhead DIY/punk scene called “The Red River Runs Through It.”

Currently shooting and in the process of raising production money through crowdfunding (visit Indiegogo and search for “The Red River Runs Through It” to donate), Dahl has already collected interviews, concert footage, gig posters and other key archival material to help tell the story.…

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​Kapadia’s “Amy” considers late singer

August 5th, 2015

Employing the same skillful arrangement of archival resources that fueled his motorsports bio “Senna,” filmmaker Asif Kapadia assembles a heartfelt portrait of British soul-jazz-pop vocalist Amy Winehouse, the electrifying star who died at the age of 27 in 2011 of alcohol poisoning.

Appearing only a few years after Winehouse’s death, the movie is both snapshot and obituary, celebrating the achievements of a unique voice and lamenting the toll of drug abuse, bulimia and the…

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​Key Biker movies on Blu-ray

August 5th, 2015

The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is going on this week, providing a good excuse to review a couple of classic biker movies that came out on Blu-ray earlier this year, plus one that’s been out for some time.

Of course the most iconic and influential biker movie is Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969). Hopper co-wrote and co-starred with Peter Fonda in a free-spirited counterculture story of a motorcycle trip across the country to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, with plenty of…

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​The laughter and the tears of “Tig”

July 29th, 2015

Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York’s documentary “Tig” is a warmhearted paean to the gifted comic whose own health struggles and personal losses led to the now legendary August 3, 2012 show at L.A.’s Largo. Tig Notaro opened with a declaration of her breast cancer diagnosis and proceeded to deliver a confessional shot into the heart of darkness. In her essay on the events of that night, Kira Hesser wrote, “…for the first time in my life, as far as I can recall, I genuinely…

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​Journalism classic ‘The Front Page’ finally gets its due on Blu

July 29th, 2015

One of the most popular and most-remade films dealing with journalists, the media, politicians and their relationships with newsworthy issues, began its life as a 1928 Broadway play by two former reporters. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based the characters and events upon their own first-hand experiences at Chicago newspapers.

The 1931 screen version of “The Front Page” is an amazingly fluid and fast-paced adaptation of the famous darkly satiric stage show about jaded newspapermen…

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​What Happened, Miss Simone?Little Girl Blue: Documentary looks at the life of Nina Simone

July 22nd, 2015

Filmmaker Liz Garbus, Oscar nominee and 2002 Fargo Film Festival special guest, considers the icon in “What Happened, Miss Simone?” — an often thrilling and sometimes exasperating portrait of the singular singer/songwriter/activist/piano prodigy.

Executive-produced by Nina Simone’s only child, Lisa Simone Kelly, Garbus’ film accesses a wealth of personal correspondence, family photographs and archival artifacts along with more familiar audio and visual documentation of Simone…

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​Reappraising some 1950s teensploitation films

July 22nd, 2015

Summer is drive-in season, traditionally a time for movies aimed at teens and sensation-seeking adults. Several of notorious producer Albert Zugsmith’s films are now on Blu-ray. The most critically-acclaimed of them, Orson Welles’ masterful “Touch of Evil” (1958), got a U.S. Blu-ray release in April 2014 from Universal. Olive Films released three of Zugsmith’s next four films to Blu-ray within the past year. Like the output of his prolific contemporary Roger Corman, these…

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​Death and movies cozy up in “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”

July 15th, 2015

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of Jesse Andrews’ popular novel “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” presents delights and dilemmas as it negotiates (and doesn’t negotiate) the rough terrain of terminal illness, race, class and white male privilege via an irresistibly attractive package aimed squarely at the eye and ear of the cinephile. Like “The Wolfpack,” another movie in which imaginatively staged recreations of cult films are pasted together in DIY delirium, “Me and…

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