Faces Places
It’s a delightfully mapped out documentary of—for once—a happy story. Thirty-something guerilla muralist JR teams up with 80-something French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda; he’s a longtime fan and she discovered him in a photography book. Together they travel France in his wacky-painted van, visiting places tourists seldom see and producing photomurals of the inhabitants on the sides of buildings. Deservedly nominated at this year’s Oscars for Best Documentary, Faces Places is an affecting record of the power of art to touch lives.
Shop for this title on Amazon:
“The Outer Limits: Season One”
Following in the wake of “Twilight Zone,” “The Outer Limits” (1963-1965) brought another dose of weirdness into the largely staid, predictable format of network television. The Blu-ray package of season one includes 32 hour-long episodes, many of them about science gone wrong, filmed in black and white with a varying cast that included Martin Landau and Robert Duvall. Although hurriedly shot and tightly budgeted, “The Outer Limits” often featured imaginative special effects when rendering its monsters.
Shop for this title on Amazon:
Pastor Paul
Benjamin is a nerdy white visitor in Ghana seeking the mathematical laws governing rhythm. Lured into playing the ghost in a local film production of Hamlet, a Pentecostal spirit possesses him. And life only grows weirder as he persists in his journey. Directed and starring Jules David Bartkowski, Pastor Paul unfolds in a place where animism and Protestantism converge in a heated atmosphere of strangeness and is also a revealing travelogue of food, music and poverty.
Shop for this title on Amazon:
Frank Serpico
In Serpico (1973), Al Pacino played a NYPD cop who exposed endemic corruption in his department. Antonio D’Ambrosio’s documentary introduces the real Frank Serpico: wiry, streetwise and looking very much like an aged Pacino. Some facts of his life remain disputed—was his attempted murder a set-up?—but Serpico uncovered a system where corruption was the rule and honest law enforcement severely discouraged. Serpico’s story shows how whistleblowers allied with a free press can force change.
Shop for this title on Amazon:
