“The American Meme" offers a chilling glimpse into the lives of social-media influencers, tracking their paths to online celebrity, their attempts to keep it, and their fear of losing it"
"The documentary about Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, beating Spike Jonze’s 'Beastie Boys Story', Michelle Obama documentary 'Becoming', 'Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time', and 'The Great Hack',"
"In addition to tracing a slow-building mutual respect and love, Bull offers a clear-eyed, condescension-free portrait of American struggle, fleshed out with authentic detail and imbued with a deeply lived-in sense of fading hopes and day-to-day economic precariousness."
"Human Capital is an intriguing and robust hybrid. It’s a mix of indie movie drama and the kind of crowd-pleasing ‘families/couples with secrets’ dramas that littered movie theaters in the late 80s and early 90s and starred the likes of Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio."
"Ridley is simply extraordinary, and she and MacKay give us a younger, lustier Ophelia and Hamlet than we usually get on the big screen. She’s a girl angling to survive and to make her way through a complicated system that is designed to destroy the likes of her, and this Ophelia is nobody’s fool. It’s a tragedy that has played out countless times, but it feels fresh and powerful in this telling."
"What We Started is a gorgeous explosion of sound and color. The lightshows are never-ending. The beat pounds away like a jackhammer. It’s almost like having a rave in your living room – without having to stand in line first, or worrying about where you parked your car afterward."
"Champs is as much about boxing as it is about the triumph, and failure, of the so-called American Dream. The Mike Tyson-produced documentary from first-time director Bert Marcus explores our very unique brand of patriotic idealism through the prism of a sport that gave us greats like Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali, a sport that can oftentimes be as awe-inspiring as it is brutal."
"Produced by Bert Marcus and actor and activist Adrian Grenier, 'How to Make Money Selling Drugs' hawks decadent possibility—underscoring its allure for those who come from places of struggle—before settling into a historically grounded, wide-reaching critique of America's disastrous drug war, with an emphasis on its racist and classist policies."
"The curiosity attracted by a “Teenage Paparazzo” as driven as any adult snapper yields a tricky helmer-subject relationship, celebrities discussing celebrity, and sophisticated musings on the ever-escalating American obsession with fame in Adrian Grenier’s excellent feature."
