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Must-Stream: Snag Films’ troubling doc ‘Lost for Life’

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Whatever you think about life without parole for minors who murder — and you may not have even considered the issue — Joshua Rofe’s engaging documentary Lost For Life will challenge your preconceptions. If first met the director at the Middleburg Film Festival last October.

Immediately after watching the film last October I wrote: “One notable nonfiction feature was Snag Films’ “Lost for Life.” Director Joshua Rofé has created a tight, extremely well-researched documentary that addresses juvenile offenders with a record of heinous crimes sentenced to life without parole — hence they are lost, for life. The movie allows the audience to have an internal debate about the justice of this irrevocable sentence for juvenile offenders. But its power lies in the director’s ability to get up close and pull the truth from his subjects, like one man now in his twenties who killed a fellow high school student with almost no motive and no previous indications of violent behavior. The result is a movie that is both shocking and revealing about the American justice system and the children in our midst.”

Currently available via iTunes, here’s the most recent trailer released by Snag Films:

NYFF13: Trailer for “The Dog”

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On Monday, I’m going to see “The Dog,” a documentary about the real man behind the Al Pacino classic, “Dog Day Afternoon.” While at TIFF, I got the chance to meet the filmmakers Allison Berg and Francois Keraudren. I even sat next to them wearing 3-D glasses at “Gravity.” Their doc was years in the making and I’m looking forward to the less varnished truth about John Wojtowicz who attempted to rob a bank to bankroll his lover’s sex-reassignment surgery:

Critic’s Pick: ‘Blackfish’

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Serial Killer Whale

Serial Killer Whale

This is the golden age of documentaries. Exhibit A: Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s eye-opening, edge-of-your-seat feature. “Blackfish” has it all: an oversized villain, chilling attack footage, corporate malfeasance, and girls in bikinis. Add in a righteous save-the-whales cause, and it becomes the perfect nonfiction movie cocktail.

The doc that SeaWorld would rather you ignore opens today week in Shamu’s home town, San Diego, as it widens out of New York and Los Angeles. It’s the story of the killer whale Tilikum, a thirty-something, six-ton Orca, ripped from his mother’s side, tossed into tanks smaller than Olympic Swimming pools, and bred like livestock.

It gets worse: the massive captive animal has killed multiple humans, at least twice, possibly three times, while in captivity at one of America’s most famous, family friendly theme parks.

[RELATED: ‘Blackfish’: The Stunning New Doc about SeaWorld’s Orcas

Sometimes the violence even occurred with an audience, like that of 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld in Orlando as recently as 2010. “Blackfish,” another name for Orca, rolls the tape. The shocking footage, that’s all the more compelling because it’s not “Sharknado,” derives from an Occupation and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) investigation that found SeaWorld liable for two safety violations directly related to Brancheau’s death.

In a season of cartoon superheroes at the box office, “Blackfish” tells a real-life tale of a complex super-villain. And what makes it all the more horrifying is the degree to which we unwittingly conspired to create the monster. He was a captive animal – and many of us voluntarily became a captive audience to his recurring humiliation. If you’ve ever sat in the audience at SeaWorld’s main attraction and waited for the big splash and the jolly fin wave, with a Shamu plush toy in one hand and your kids’ sticky palm in the other, then you’ll be both appalled and intrigued at how this violence could have happened and, as the film tells it, been hushed up, and how our tourist dollars have underwritten the whole affair.

Bottom Line: A shattering documentary about a serial killer whale.

Watch the video:

Critics Pick: ‘Stories We Tell’

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Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters

Watching “Stories We Tell” feels like sharing a comfy couch beside a close friend — who happens to be an amazing storyteller with a show-stopping secret. In her third film as a writer-director (“Away From Her,” “Take This Waltz”), the Canadian actress Sarah Polley, 34, uses nonfiction to unknot her shocking family history. Because her parents, Michael and Diane Polley, were theater people, the revelations also played out on a public stage. [Read more…]