The mandate at Oakland's Highland Hospital, as one doctor says during Pete Nicks's attentive vérité portrait of the place, is to admit people "just as much for their social conditions as for their medical ones." And as the same guy wearily acknowledges, "The ER's not the place to manage someone's overall health." But Nicks hasn't set out to decry a faulty and dehumanizing health care system. He'd rather just see how a safety net hospital cares for its unfortunate abundance of mostly uninsured patients. He has the presence of mind to reveal how humanizing the place actually is. Punctuated only with discreet flourishes of music and time-lapse, Nicks's style feels more retro than novel: the fly on the wall during a day in the life. And... More >>>