Director: Jason Reid, Watched:  Online, Rating:  4/5.     The most popular documentary in Seattle right now tells the story of greedy capitalists lying to the American public while pocketing millions of dollars with corporate help and then cowardly retreating behind the walls of their empires to leave in their wake a hurt, wounded, and ignored citizenry. No I’m not talking about Capitalism: A Love Story, I’m talking about a locally made labor of love called Sonicsgate, the sad story of the hijacking of the Seattle Sonics by a lying bunch of faux cowboys from Oklahoma. Director Jason Reid and his filmmaking [...]

Director: Michael Moore, Watched in:  Theater, Rating:  4/5.     Have you wondered why you hardly ever run into people who’ve moved to the United States from Canada or Europe, especially France and England?  Americans are always moving there, but why don’t they move here to take advantage of our low taxes, our rugged individualism, our health insurance?  Michael Moore tells us why in his latest documentary, Sicko, an utterly depressing piece of agit prop that not only condemns the privatized health care business in the US but also finds something rotten at the very core of the country. How is it [...]

Director:  Errol Morris, Watched in:   Theater Rating:  2/5.   With Standard Operating Procedure, investigative stylist Errol Morris dissects the Abu Ghraib prison scandal by forcing us to look, over and over and over again, at the photographs that brought the scandal to the world’s attention. He also digs out several other snapshots, much more graphic, revealing, and repellent than the ones we saw in the mainstream press. He intersperses these photos with several talking head interviews of soldiers and investigators involved in the mess and with highly cinematic recreations or imaginings of the events. These exotically lit and elaborately art directed [...]

Director:  Robinson Devor, Watched on:  DVD, Rating:  1.5/5.     Zoo is based on the infamous Enumclaw horse sex case of July, 2005, where a man died in the hospital from a perforated colon after he was, um, penetrated by a stallion. The movie combines voice-over interviews with actors and staged scenes. I admire films that push the boundaries between documentary and fiction; especially docs that can tell a story or enhance the reality of it subject matter by avoiding the usual menu of talking heads, news footage, and blandly shot and edited digital video. Too many documentaries these days are simply [...]

Approaching the Elephant Director/ Amanda Rose Wilder Watched at True/False Film Festival Rating 4.5/5 Approaching the Elephant, a striking, DIY documentary by director Amanda Rose Wilder, chronicles the inaugural year of an experimental elementary school in New Jersey, Wilder, working alone, adopts the style of direct cinema filmmakers such as Albert Maysles (Salesman) and D.A Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back). Wilder avoids narration, talking heads, soundtrack music, or any manipulative point-of-view, planting herself in the classroom as the virtual personification of a fly-on-the-wall. The classic technique, which can more often than not tumble slowly down the hallways of tedium, requires–when done [...]

About A Son Director/AJ Schnack Watched on iTunes Rating 4.5/5   This is the other Kurt Cobain documentary, the one released in 2007 and now being ignored in the wake of the so-called “authorized” doc, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. For my money, About a Son is the far superior film. Directed by AJ Schnack, the entire movie rests on audio interviews with Cobain recorded by journalist Michael Azerrad for his book “Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana,” and supported by a vivid tapestry of iconic, Northwest imagery. From Aberdeen to Olympia to Seattle, Schnack and his cinematographer Wyatt Troll weave together gorgeous [...]

Watermark Director/ Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky Watched in Theater Rating 3.5/5  The report known as the National Climate Assessment predicts a near future of massive drought, raging wildfires, torrential rains and heavy flooding. In other words, we’re fucked. But rather than taking a desperate approach to our impending doom, the ruminative new documentary Watermark details our implicit connection to water, the lifeblood of the planet, in a series of dreamy, contemplative vignettes. Directed by Canadians Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, an environmental photographer who collaborated with Baichwal on the stunning 2006 picture, Manufactured Landscapes, the film meanders across the globe, dropping [...]

Finding Vivian Maier Director/ John Maloof Watched on Netflix Rating 3/5   Finding Vivian Maier is an often fascinating film of anthropology, an investigative peek down the rabbit hole of one eccentric and very private woman’s life. Vivian Maier worked as a nanny for several wealthy Chicago families. She was, by most accounts, responsible, dutiful, imperious, harsh and intrepid. She took her young charges on outings throughout the rougher corners of the city, bringing along the usual accouterments of the nanny trade: strollers, diapers, baby bottles and snacks. She also carried a Rolleiflex camera, a boxy big cousin to the old Brownie [...]

Anita Director/ Frieda Lee Mock Watched in Theater Rating 3.5/5 Where were you in October 1991? I know where my daughter was. She was asleep in her car seat while my wife and I sat in our SUV during a weekend vacation, ears glued to NPR’s live coverage of Anita Hill’s testimony during the confirmation hearing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “Anita-who?,” my daughter asked me, 23 years later. “Clarence Thomas? Him?” she said, when recalling a few articles she may have researched about the Hill-Thomas episode while in college. If nothing else, the documentary, Anita, will thrust [...]