A 3D cave painting documentary leads off this week's film picks, which also include a couple of silent film-related programs, international kids' movies, and an appearance (tonight!) by artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel at the Hirshhorn. more ›

It's difficult to enter into Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans expecting a comedy. That's despite a title more ridiculous and unwieldy than even a CSI spin-off would accept, and a trailer that features star Nicolas Cage waxing rhapsodic on his lucky crack pipe, and instructing some henchmen to shoot a dead body again, because the victim's "soul is still dancing." This has to be meant for laughs, right? The lingering expectation of a gritty drama lies mostly in this film's status as an ostensible remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult favorite, the Harvey Keitel tour-de-force Bad Lieutenant, and in Herzog's reputation for dark and sober dramas about outsized obsessive personalities. more ›

No roads may lead to Antarctica, but all longitude lines do. It's these lines that the continent's few residents have followed, from wherever they started, to their shared terminus at the bottom of the planet, stepping, as one resident puts it, "off the edge of the map." Werner Herzog has made a career out of films based on characters on the margins. Some are real, some are imagined, but nearly all of them are obsessives with tenuous grips on sanity and singular fascinations with often fantastical quests. It is inevitable, then, that Herzog's career would end up taking him to a continent where nearly every inhabitant is the potential star of a Herzog film. Where every character has quite intentionally gone to the margins and then over it. more ›

Is there anything new that can be added to the debate over the legality and morality of abortion at this point? Finding anyone without a pretty firm opinion is difficult enough. Finding fresh perspectives on an issue this divisive, studied, thought through, and argued over is even rarer. Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, a documentary 17 years in the making, doesn't necessarily present any new information. But it collects all those varying perspectives and passionate... more ›

Chaos, hostility, and murder. The three items that Werner Herzog believes are the common denominators of the universe, according to the narration of his 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man. And the subject of his own obsession, expressed again and again in the choking jungles and obsessives heroes of his films. In Rescue Dawn, Herzog stabs at yet another heart of darkness, another soul driven to desperation in pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal. In this case,... more ›

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they... more ›

FRIDAY: more ›

We're going to be the first ones to call it: the SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival is all grows up. Yeah, you heard us. As of this year, it's a real-deal film festival, the kind of event any filmmaker who knows anything would be thrilled to participate in. And we're not just blowing smoke. The lineup of more than 100 films and special events between today and Sunday isn't just impressive, it's overwhelming. With all due respect to FilmFestDC, its programmers kinda dropped the ball this year, and despite their wider range, the documentary-only SILVERDOCS has grown to be so robust, it could take FilmFestDC in a street fight anyday. Granted, a good deal of it has to do with luck; It certainly doesn't hurt the festival's growing reputation that feature-length documentaries are about 1000 time more saleable than they were 4 years ago (hat tip, Michael Moore). When Werner Herzog showed up to SILVERDOCS in person last year with his film Grizzly Man, we knew something was up. But when Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch come by just to shoot the shit, well, that my friends is what you call a destination film festival. Right here in our own back yard. Hallelujah. Amen. more ›

It would be incorrect, albeit tempting, to say that documentary film rode the wave of "reality" obsession to its current level of popularity. If anything, documentary has succeeded, as both a critics’ darling and a profitmaker, despite the reality television craze. People enjoy reality shows because their own voyeurism happily confirms that the narrative arcs of scripted television are present in "real" life, as well. The documentary’s success as a genre, though, thrives on its... more ›