Users Review: A Pensive, Tech-Wary Doc Where the Pictures Say More Than the Words
Stunning imagery but stunted philosophy mean this beautiful but meandering doc yields less than meets the eye.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Courtesy of Sundance Institute
We’ve all been alone inside our heads a lot recently, and the question “why am I having weird dreams” has reportedly surged as a Google search over the past year. Natalia Almada’s “Users,” which won the directing award for U.S. Documentary in Sundance, is perhaps best appreciated as one of those peculiarly vivid dreams. Like them, it is made of uncanny imagery and strange echoey mood. But also like them, it comes apart under the scrutiny of the more logical, waking mind, and dissipates quickly in daylight.
Homeroom Review: Doc Embeds Itself in Bay Area High School During Exceptional Year Homeroom Review: Doc Embeds Itself in Bay Area High School During Exceptional Year
Peter Nicks doc schools audiences on the vision and vitality of its young protagonists, seniors at Oakland High School during a turbulent year.
Lisa Kennedy, provided by
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“Homeroom” begins with a somewhat inchoate energy. In this regard, Peter Nicks’ engaging documentary about Oakland High School’s senior class of 2020 aptly mimics the start of a school year. Students haven’t yet found their rhythms. Everything feels a little amped. The kids seem to rush around reestablishing old bonds, forging new ones and, for the seniors on whom the film turns its gaze, facing more fully what’s to come.
At the Ready Review: Inside Look at a Texas High School s Extracurricular Law Enforcement Program At the Ready Review: Inside Look at a Texas High School s Extracurricular Law Enforcement Program
Crow observantly follows three Mexican-American El Paso teenagers as they navigate the idea of a future that might clash with their values and priorities.
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“Active Shooter at 12! Hostage negotiation at 1:30! Drug raid at 2:30,” hollers an authoritative voice in a sun-baked concrete yard. The retired police officer who announces this schedule at the start of “At the Ready,” Maisie Crow’s sobering documentary about a community of kids growing up on the Mexican border, isn’t at a professional police school or military facility. And yet, he addresses neat rows of individuals dressed in military gear all teenagers, attending an unusual extracurricular training program at El Paso’s Horizon High School, seeking eventual employ
Rebel Hearts Review: Sisters Do It for Themselves in a Doc That Pits Nuns Versus the Patriarchy lmtonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lmtonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Homeroom
An often powerful look at an unprecedented school year.
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Peter Nicks documentary traces a year of institutional struggle and COVID-caused disruption in the Oakland public school system.
Early in Peter Nicks
Homeroom, the documentary announces itself as a chronicle of Oakland High School s 2019-2020 year. This activates an ominous metaphorical ticking clock.
You don t need heavy-handed foreshadowing to know that the class of 2020 is the COVID Class, to realize that the prom the bright-faced teens are looking forward to will never happen, that the graduation they re aiming for will be virtual, that the production of
In the Heights scheduled to open on March 20 is never going to see its curtain raised.