Three Identical Strangers

The thing I often struggle with in watching documentaries, no matter how good they are, is that they are by nature subjective. With carefully timed revelations controlled by the director, I frequently feel manipulated by the end, which hugely reduces my enjoyment of the film as a whole. With Three Identical Strangers though, director Tim …

Manchester Film Festival: Day 1

This year's MANIFF looks a little different - it's a young festival (2017 is its third year) and so this is to be expected. This time around, there seem to be fewer films and only one venue. I don't know if there have been simply fewer submissions, or if it was a conscious decision to …

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

Werner Herzog investigates the Internet and I haven't a clue what the first half hour was about but that was fine because Herzog was narrating. This series of interviews looks at a different aspect of the internet's impact on society - from hacking to the colonisation of Mars to addiction. Several of them actually deserved …

Jag är Ingrid – Ingrid Bergmann in Her Own Words

I'm not sure why I went to see this - I tend to avoid my favourite actors on chat shows, in interviews or just being themselves because I'm so often disappointed, and the myth has been shattered. I'd rather just see their work on the screen, which is why I like them in the first …

Tickled

I had gathered that this film started off as one thing and ended up as another. But I wasn't prepared for the direction it ended up taking. Investigative journalist David Farrier was familiar to me from the series Short Poppies, which had been on Netflix. Tickled begins with Farrier following up a story on 'Competitive Endurance …

El botón de nácar – The Pearl Button

Director Patricio Guzmán made one of my favourite films of 2012 - Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia for the Light), in which he examined murky aspects of Chile's history. El botón de nácar does the same thing, but over a much broader timespan of subjugation and dictatorship. This time, instead of the desert holding the secrets, it's …

No Limits – Impossible is Just a Word

If you take this at face value, then Alex Zanardi is nothing short of a iron-willed saint. A former F1 driver who lost both legs after an accident, who went on to become Paralympic and World para-cycling Champion, he is now embarking on his next challenge - being part of a 3 man driving team …

Vince Giordano – There’s A Future in the Past

For anyone even remotely interested in jazz music of the first half of the 20th century, this will be an interesting watch. According to Manchester Film Festival's website, 'Vince Giordano is responsible for the period music in Todd Haynes’ “Carol”, Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator”, Robert DeNiro’s “The Good Shepherd”, Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cotton Club”, …

All Rise

  Mildly interesting documentary that would have whiled away 90 minutes in the background on Netflix. Each year, law students form all over the world face each other in a moot court to argue the case for an imaginary nation embroiled in an international dispute with its imaginary neighbour. This film follows a selection of students …

Martin Sheen presents – The World is My Country

A still-in-the-editing stage screening of a film featuring a wonderfully inspirational character whose story should not be forgotten. Garry Davis used The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to proclaim himself a citizen of the world, not of any one nation. His position is that if there are no individual countries and we are all citizens of …