I Believe in Unicorns
Davina (Natalia Dyer) is a young teen with a vivid interior life. She slips into a bittersweet journey of emotional and sexual discovery with a dangerously attractive older boy in the latest film by director Leah Meyerhoff (Twitch). I Believe in Unicorns is visually enchanting, with imaginative use of claymation and other animation, along with home videos of many textures. It depicts a compelling seesaw between the delights of fantasy and the harder surfaces of reality.
Take Me to the River
The Mississippi River was once a lifeline of American music and Memphis was at the heart. Take Me to the River documents producer Martin Shore’s project to bring together old and young musicians from Memphis to talk and jam in a recording studio. Booker T. is paired off with rapper Al Kapone and Snoop Dogg turns up in the same house as Mavis Staples, while the North Mississippi Allstars act as the backing band.
The Fourth War
In this 1990 film, Roy Scheider plays Jack Knowles, commander of a U.S. base on the Czech border at the Cold War’s tail-end. Outraged when he observes the brutality of border guards against defectors trying to flee to the West, Knowles slips across the frontier and embarks on an unauthorized guerilla campaign. Opposing him is another warrior without a war, his Soviet counterpart (Jurgen Prochnow). Once-great director John Frankenheimer filmed The Fourth War with rat-a-tat efficiency.
A Ballerina’s Tale
In 2015, Misty Copeland became the first black principal dancer at a major ballet company. Despite the tone of this documentary, this isn’t especially shocking given ballet’s European origins and the paucity of top spots for professional ballerinas. The talented Copeland suffered no overt racism on the her way up, but wrestled with unfortunate post-Balanchine expectations over body type and the loneliness of crossing the color line in what once was a “whites only” field.
