Today in Toronto, between a Chinese documentary called “Once Upon a Time Proletarian” and a Thai anthology called “Sawasdee Bangkok,” I ran into David Wilson, the co-director of the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Mo. Started in 2004, that early…

The documentary “Art & Copy,” screening tonight through Sunday at Webster University, profiles some real-life counterparts to the martini-swilling, cigarette-smoking, swank-dressing advertising executives in “Mad Men” and “Bewitched.”

Among them are the copywriters and graphic designers who sold us such iconic…

Talk about bad timing. Michael Moore is set to release his latest documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” just as America has closed the book on the movie’s villain–U.S. president #43–and turned its attention to health care. That was the subject…

About a dozen years ago, I crossed paths with documentarian Harrod Blank in the desert north of Reno, Nev., where he was making his second film about wildly decorated “art cars,” many of which convene there every September for the…

Robert McNamara died this week. The former head of Ford Motors and the World Bank was the defense secretary under presidents Kennedy and Johnson–and thus the architect of the Vietnam War.

More than 50,000 brave Americans died in the that conflict, and in the…

At the website of National Public Radio, a review of a new documentary about closeted gay politicians was edited to remove the names of the prominent men who are outed in the movie. According to IndieWire, NPR editors cited their…

Know Your Mushrooms ** 1/2 (NR; 1:14): Most people could only name two things that mushrooms are good for: feeding your face or feeding your head. The documentary “Know Your Mushrooms,” screening this weekend at Webster University, delves into the…

Yesterday I previewed “Every Little Step,” a crowd-pleasing documentary about the recent Broadway revival of “A Chorus Line,” for the Key Sunday Cinema Club, a weekly coming-attractions get-together at the Plaza Frontenac Cinemas. The weekend film-buff group doesn’t watch a…

Opening Friday, “Anvil: The Story of Anvil,” is one of my favorite movies of the year, a too-good-to-be-true documentary about a heavy-metal band attempting a comeback after the members hit 50.  It’s every bit as poignant as that YouTube video…

FLicKeR *** (NR;  1:15): Long before movies brought pictures to life, transcendentalists tripped out to flickering fires. In the early 1960s, Canadian-born artist Bryon Gysin developed a device he called the Dreamachine that used flickering light to stimulate the subconscious.…