Email Author Mark Holcomb

2012 Stories by Mark Holcomb

• Samsara

  published August 22, 2012

  Whether it strikes you as a profound, perspective-shifting spiritual travelogue, or the cinematic equivalent of a forgettable New Age music... More >>

• Searching for Sugar Man

  published July 25, 2012

  Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days,... More >>

• The Ranging Gaze of Deborah Stratman's Experimental Films

  published July 18, 2012

  Probing the elusive terrain where technology, disruptive phenomena, and the contradictory human impulses for order and chaos meet (and often... More >>

• Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: The Apocalypse Drag

  published June 20, 2012

  Apocalype movies are a venerable enough genre (and reliable enough as box office cash spigots) to support a few lightweight, funny-sad-romantic... More >>

• Kumaré

  published June 20, 2012

  Prepare to have your assumptions pitched out the window by this tense, surprisingly probing satirical documentary—not just about... More >>

• Men on the Bridge

  published June 20, 2012

  Raw yet respectful and tenderly observed, this feature-film/documentary hybrid from writer-director Asli Özge plops a trio of real-life... More >>

• The Last Ride

  published June 20, 2012

  Country music devotees will either love or hate this speculative account of the last three days in the life of Hank Williams, the... More >>

• The Girl From the Naked Eye

  published June 13, 2012

  In an 18-month span that has included the release of two superb action movies (The Raid: Redemption and Sleepless Night) and one and... More >>

• Patagonia Rising

  published June 6, 2012

  Another week, another travelogue-gorgeous eco-disaster documentary to induce despair over the fate of the planet, if not the will to help turn... More >>

• Corpo Celeste

  published June 6, 2012

  First-time writer-director Alice Rohrwacher's minutely observed, emotionally complex Corpo Celeste would be a treat in any season, but... More >>

• 5 Broken Cameras

  published May 30, 2012

  Startlingly intimate and direct, this first-person doc by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi requires multiple viewings for anyone eager to work out how... More >>

• Pink Ribbons, Inc.

  published May 30, 2012

  An exposé in the purest, most pissed-off sense, director Léa Pool’s Pink Ribbons, Inc. digs into the bizarre elision of... More >>

• Behold the Pot of Gold that is Beyond the Black Rainbow

  published May 16, 2012

  Achieving something far weirder and more resonant than the genre pastiche it initially seems to reach for, Beyond the Black Rainbow... More >>

• Sleepless Night

  published May 9, 2012

  Ingeniously simple yet deceptively intricate, this French police thriller abounds in post–Woo/Tarantino action tropes: the usual... More >>

• The Road

  published May 9, 2012

  Tiny budgets work wonders on ghost movies—it's what's not shown that truly frightens, as any first-year film-school mook should know.... More >>

• Payback

  published April 25, 2012

  With its novel approach and wider-than-usual scope, this riff on Margaret Atwood's 2008 book-length essay, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side... More >>

• Citizen Gangster

  published April 25, 2012

  Gently mining unknown history—to U.S. audiences anyway—this smooth biopic of Canada's most notorious post–World War II bank... More >>

• The Myth of the Happy Hooker Debunked in Blunt and Beautiful Whores' Glory

  published April 25, 2012

  As with meat processing and politics, the day-to-day drama, tedium, and heartbreak of prostitution have little to do with our spoon-fed... More >>

• Jean Gentil

  published April 18, 2012

  Although it's steeped in tragedies both personal and cultural, this contemplative, gorgeously shot documentary-fiction hybrid from... More >>

• Morgan Spurlock Makes the Case for Comic-Con in A Fan's Hope

  published April 11, 2012

  Far from the nerd-in-a-barrel bloodbath it could have been, this documentary follow-along at the 2010 edition of San Diego's annual comics and... More >>

• My Mars Bar Movie

  published April 11, 2012

  "A lot is going on, as usual, at Mars Bar . . ." So pronounces Anthology godfather Jonas Mekas in his years-in-the-making video document of the... More >>

• The Assault

  published April 4, 2012

  Taut, forceful, ritualistic, and all those other flattering adjectives applied to thrillers that actually thrill, this skyjacking docudrama... More >>

• Intruders

  published March 28, 2012

  Spanish horror movies have carved out a distinctive niche over the past few years with a surprisingly effective alchemy of... More >>

• Scenes of a Crime

  published March 28, 2012

  A nonfiction corrective to decades of cop-friendly pop-culture conditioning, this rigorously focused documentary looks hard at... More >>

• Wrath of the Titans

  published March 28, 2012

  Like many a franchise-killer, this big, flailing dud of a sequel to 2010's Clash of the Titans is more (retina-herniating CGI), less... More >>