Email Author Mark Holcomb

2011 Stories by Mark Holcomb

• Sex Is Comedy, Kind of, in Autoerotic

  published July 20, 2011

  Good sex comedies know that there’s nothing funnier than the seriousness people attach to fucking. Autoerotic, Joe Swanberg and... More >>

• Born Again, Then Turned Against in Mega-Church Satire Salvation Boulevard

  published July 13, 2011

  A shopworn barrel overstocked with slow-moving fish—mega-churches, the Grateful Dead, Mexican crime lords, preening clerics and their... More >>

• Dark Days: A Decade Later, Back Down Into the Subway Tunnels

  published June 29, 2011

  Returning briefly to theaters (or a theater, anyway) prior to a deluxe anniversary DVD release later this month, Marc Singer’s... More >>

• Small Town Murder Songs: Doing Justice to the Cop Movie

  published June 29, 2011

  Boldly succinct yet confident enough to take its time, Toronto writer-director Ed Gass-Donnelly’s follow-up to 2007’s This... More >>

• Now the Turtle Gets Its Turn in The Incredible Journey

  published June 22, 2011

  A throwback to the blithely anthropomorphic Disney wildlife docs of yore, only devoid of their endearing cornball humor, TV-nature-show vet... More >>

• Man and His Horse in the Beautifully Observed Buck

  published June 15, 2011

  The documentary Audience Award winner at this year’s Sundance festival, Buck follows itinerant horse trainer Buck Brannaman as he... More >>

• Bad News From the Bees in Queen of the Sun

  published June 8, 2011

  Eco-disaster docs tend to follow a rote formula, with the key ingredient being a deluge of depressing yet unsurprising data. But few are as... More >>

• Dirty Coal: The Last Mountain on an Industry Run Amok

  published June 1, 2011

  A grueling barrage of geologic plunder, union busting, sociopathic official indifference (hey, why not put a toxic-sludge lake next to... More >>

• The Aftershocks of a School Shooting in Beautiful Boy

  published June 1, 2011

  One of two current films dealing with the familial fallout of a teenager’s school shooting spree (Lynne Ramsay’s similarly themed... More >>

• The Vampire Movie Rebels (a Little) in We Are the Night

  published May 25, 2011

  Lightweight and accordingly fast-moving, this vampire romp from Germany hews closer to the debauched sophistication of The Hunger than... More >>

• Lost City: Two Docs--Lost Bohemia and Florent--Remind Us of What Was

  published May 18, 2011

  The cost of our city’s contradictory dedication to both bohemianism and unchecked greed is exposed in two new docs. David Sigal’s... More >>

• Sympathy for Misfits in Hesher

  published May 11, 2011

  Spencer Susser’s initially rousing Hesher introduces an engimatic stranger into a fractured family with equivocally redemptive... More >>

• Hey, Boo: A Cinematic Mash Note to Harper Lee and her Mockingbird

  published May 11, 2011

  Self-satisfied boomer nostalgia is To Kill a Mockingbird’s albatross. Somehow, continuing to love Harper Lee’s novel (or... More >>

• True to Its Title, and Nothing More, Hobo With a Shotgun

  published May 4, 2011

  Pick a reason to balk at this spot-on, garishly threadbare paean to ’80s no-budget sleaze: It apes a genre that was already creaky when... More >>

• There Be Historical Inaccuracies and Lame Storytelling in There Be Dragons

  published May 4, 2011

  Any stir caused by this stilted historical melodrama is more likely to be over its controversial real-life protagonist than its cinematic... More >>

• When Kansas Came to Town: Portrait of Crop Artist Stan Herd in Earthwork

  published April 27, 2011

  It’s clear early on that Earthwork, a meandering yet absorbing dramatic account of Kansas “crop artist” Stan Herd’s... More >>

• From Russia With Laugh Track: Phil Rosenthal Takes His Show on the Road in Exporting Raymond

  published April 27, 2011

  Network television’s subsistence on pre-chewed food is exploited and gently mocked in this quickie documentary from Phil Rosenthal,... More >>

• Morgan Spurlock Sells Out in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

  published April 20, 2011

  As agreeable as it is insidious, Morgan Spurlock’s latest exposé of corporate control via immersive humiliation is his best, most... More >>

• Double the Misery: Twins Dig Into Their Mother's Dark Past in Incendies

  published April 20, 2011

  This latest blast of unwavering miserablism from Denis Villeneuve, Oscar-nominated and everything, reaches for something deeper than mere... More >>

• What Were They Smoking? The Business of Dope Smuggling in Square Grouper

  published April 13, 2011

  Like some episodic, alternate-universe travelogue, Billy Corben’s follow-up to Cocaine Cowboys explores Florida’s... More >>

• At War With the Danes and On the Frontline in Armadillo

  published April 13, 2011

  “Welcome to ‘Nam,” jokes a soldier knee-deep in rice-paddy muck early in this austere war doc, which tracks a NATO-attached... More >>

• The Elephant in the Living Room: A Benignly Prosaic Exposé of Exotic Animals

  published April 6, 2011

  Love is messy, unfathomable, and occasionally lethal, as this low-budget, benignly prosaic exposé of the trade in non-domesticated... More >>

• Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead: Weighed Down With Doc Cliches

  published March 30, 2011

  Virtually every documentary cliché from the past decade finds its way into this account of director Joe Cross’s weight-loss... More >>

• Bressonian Austerity + Truck-Stop Hookers in I Travel...

  published March 23, 2011

  Road movies don’t get any purer than I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You, a visual reverie that is... More >>

• A Near-Buddhist Reflection on the NYT Photographer in Bill Cunningham New York

  published March 16, 2011

  No passion for fashion is required to enjoy this absorbing portrait of legendary New York Times “On the Street” photographer... More >>