Crude Makes Compelling Case Against Big Oil

Morgan Spurlock helms documentary on advertising

(NEWSER) - Morgan Spurlock, the guy behind Super Size Me, calls his latest documentary—an exploration of our ad-obsessed culture—The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. And critics seem to agree:

• Spurlock “has this habit of making documentaries that come hidden in the Trojan horse of silly and then stab at your conscience,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone . “As ever, he makes you laugh till it hurts.”

Documentary follows four infants in four countries

(NEWSER) - Critics are generally won over by Babies, a documentary that follows four infants' first years in San Francisco, Mongolia, Tokyo, and Namibia. Some samples:

• Wesley Morris, Boston Globe : "As an advertisement for the wonders of figuring out how to be alive, the movie is an engaging proposition."
• Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times : "The 'awww' without the 'shock' definitely makes Babies a very huggable movie experience, just not a primer on parenthood."

'Quasi-documentary' blends fact, fiction

(NEWSER) - One's enjoyment of Paper Heart, a hard-to-pin-down fictional love story wrapped inside a real-life documentary about love, “will hinge almost entirely” on how the viewer feels about writer and star Charlyne Yi, writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. Yi and co-star Michael Cera have been linked romantically in real life. Reviews are mixed:

• “Enjoying this wondrous wisp of a something is easy, describing it is hard,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “Luckily, Charlyne Yi is an enchantress. I'd follow her anywhere.”

Doc realizes the horrors of dysfunctional family life

(NEWSER) - If you’re looking for a fright at the movies, skip Friday the 13th and hunker down with Must Read After My Death. Using archived audiotapes and home movies, the documentary chronicles the tumultuous suburban marriage of the filmmaker’s grandparents, who “lived on the unmapped border between Revolutionary Road and clinical madness,” Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal. More»

After lousy 'Blindness' opening, Bashir shakes up festival

(NEWSER) - Now that's more like it. After a typically lousy opening—allegorical disaster Blindness—the Cannes Film Festival shook things up yesterday with Waltz with Bashir, a ferocious animated documentary from Israel recounting the 1982 massacre at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It’s “stunning,” writes Manhola Dargis in the New York Times, “at once a furious act of conscience and a lament.” More»