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Dawn Wall–They Persisted (The Only Wall to Consider?)

Dawn Wall was last year's SXSW Audience Award documentary winner. Free climber Tommy Caldwell and his climbing partner, Kevin Jorgeson, attempt to scale the unscalable 3000 ft. Dawn Wall, a vertical granite face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Dawn Wall is much more than a documentary about climbing

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Won’t You Be My Neighbor? — The Golden Rule

There’s a lot to like about producer/director Morgan Neville’s moving,  2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?  Neville (who also created 20 Feet from Stardom – see my August 19, 2018 review) interviews just about everyone who knew Fred Rogers– his wife and two sons, his longtime cast and crew on the pioneering PBS series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood  (1968 to 2001).  Some baby-boomers, their children and their grandchildren grew up on the soothing words of Mister Rogers:    So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day/Since we’re together we might as well say/Would...

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True Detective Season 3–Whodunit…or Not?

For armchair sleuths, the latest season of True Detective will probably not fit neatly into the category of cops-and-killers genre, buddy-cop, film noir, or police procedural.  Surprisingly,True Detective’s latest season has elements of all four. True Detective Season 3 Set in the Ozarks in the ‘80s (with virulent Jim Crow traditions), the ‘90s, and the recent past (probably 2015 or 2016),  True Detectives focuses on one haunted Vietnam War veteran,  detective Wayne Hays (Mahershala Ali), as he investigates the disappearance of a little girl, and the death of her...

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Velvet Buzzsaw–Art Can Be Dangerous

In this grisly art-world satire, Velvet Buzzsaw opens with a renowned art critic, Morf Vandewalt (the sensational Jake Gyllenhaal), in his designer sunglasses, turning his pompous, gimlet eye on artwork at the highly hyped Art Basel Miami show. Pontificating about what he considers worthy or unworthy, Morf has the power to punish or reward. Everything starts conventionally with the cocktail circuit of groveling artists’ representatives, but  soon it turns grisly.  Velvet Buzzsaw relishes in satirizing the pompous art-world,  blending horror  inside an artist’s...

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IndigNation–Jim Carrey’s Political Cartoons

  Squeeze. Mueller. Squeeze Every time I think I know what Jim Carrey will do next as a comedian the actor throws me off balance. Think of his new HBO series Kidding. But most of all, his evolution as a no-holds-barred political artist just blows me away. I recently was privileged to see more than 80 of his sketches at the Maccarone Gallery in Los Angeles, “IndigNation: Political Cartoons by Jim Carrey, 2016–2018.” This Canadian actor is fearless in attacking the dysfunction of Trump’s presidency. The intensity of his aversion for Trump is felt pulsating through the 8 1/2 x...

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