Reviews
From the Curator
Film — Field Notes from Mars
The woman who recorded the wind on another planet
Film — Field Notes from Mars
The woman who recorded the wind on another planet
I keep pushing Field Notes from Mars on people who say they "don't like documentaries." It's about an audio engineer who captured the sound of wind on Mars — and then, home again, couldn't stop listening. It's a film…
Read the reviewThe Archive
Film — The Hand-Off
The strange physics of trying not to win
The Hand-Off takes a premise that could've been a gimmick — a relay runner agrees to throw a race — and turns it into one of the tensest things we've got. The deal is made in the first five minutes. The rest is the…
Film — The Last Honey Farmer
He talks to the hives. They answer.
I put off The Last Honey Farmer for weeks — a documentary about beekeeping sounded like homework. It's the opposite. It's a year spent standing very still next to someone who knows exactly what he's doing, and knows…
Film — Night Currents
The body that isn't supposed to exist
Night Currents opens with a river guide finding a body on the last night of the season — someone the whole town has spent years pretending isn't real. It could've been a thriller. It's something better: a study of a…
Film — Sky Voyager
The stars are singing, and one knows your name
Sky Voyager is the kind of science fiction we don't get enough of — quiet, interior, more interested in voice and distance than spectacle. A solo pilot drifts into a region where the stars sing , and one of them…