We could write something really meaningful about documentaries and how they impacted the decade, changed our lives, made us cry, made us angry, gave us a call to action, or shined a light on something we otherwise might not know about. We could talk about the portraits of people we adored, people we lost, or chronicles of injustice or venality or obscure spotlights on little-known subjects. And we’ll do that, eventually, but right now, it’s Friday, and we just want to sleep and drink and possibly never wake up, so please enjoy our Best Documentaries of The Decade feature, this placeholder we may or may not update when we’re feeling alive, and our genuine thanks and appreciation for all your reading, sharing, clicking, etc.

Continue reading The Best Documentaries Of The Decade [2010s] at The Playlist.

Writer/director Lulu Wang has simply pulled off a miracle of moviemaking with “The Farewell.” Capturing a completely honest portrait of Asian American immigrant family life through a caring battle of cultural discourse, her film weighs Eastern hospitality and tradition against Western self-sufficiency. Her film is at once joyously celebratory and authentically melancholy, painting a specific and respectfully elegant, yet sometimes deliberately unflattering and nuanced, observance of race, family, and communication.

Continue reading Dismantling The Myth Of The Model Minority: 10 Asian American Films To See Before ‘The Farewell’ at The Playlist.

The Playlist has never met a year we couldn’t exhaust with the endless examination, analysis, and decoding; it’s not that we love lists, it’s just in many banner years of cinema, there’s so much to pour over. 2018 was a stellar year for film and there were amazing movies to shout out, performances, new directors, breakout actors and actresses, documentaries, all kinds of new exciting talents and we genuinely can’t stop talking about them, honestly.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2018 You Didn’t See at The Playlist.

In what has become a rewarding Christmas tradition, the last couple of weeks have been spent, in between shopping, cooking, arguing, eating, boozing and crying jags, catching up on some of the non-fiction releases from the past year. In recent times, the increase in quality documentary filmmaking — more about an increase in availability and profile, perhaps, but a borderline Cambrian explosion nonetheless — has been an incredible bounty, but also a bit of a daunting prospect.

Continue reading The 20 Best Documentaries Of 2018 at The Playlist.

On this episode of The Playlist Podcast, I’m joined by Editor-in-Chief Rodrigo Perez and Managing Editor Charles Barfield, to discuss the 20 Breakthrough Directors of 2018, though it cannot be stressed enough that our topic at hand today was a collective pick from many members of our staff to which we are merely the mouthpiece for. We continue our extensive year-end coverage with our director’s conversation.

READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2019

It’s been talked about at-length how strong the year in film was for 2018, but maybe not as much about how some of the best, most-acclaimed films of the year were from either first-time directors or filmmakers with few directorial credits who made a huge splash with a recent release.

Continue reading The 20 Breakthrough Directors of 2018 [Podcast] at The Playlist.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlist for the 2019 Documentary Feature Oscar and other related categories, and fans in the documentary branches should be relatively pleased. 15 films made it to the shortlist round including most of the favored and critically-acclaimed movies: Focus Features‘ Mr.Rogers film, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” the highest-grossing docu of 2018 so far, National Geographic‘s “Free Solo,” Magnolia‘s Ruth Bader Ginsberg portrait “RBG,” “Minding the Gap,” “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” “Three Identical Strangers” and more.

Continue reading ‘Free Solo,’ ‘RBG’ & ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’ Top The Oscar Documentary Feature Shortlist at The Playlist.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their year-end awards today and the big winner was “Roma” which took the Best Picture prize.  This is the second major win for “Roma” after taking the New York Film Critics Circle honor less than two weeks ago. Debra Granik earned some much-deserved kudos with a Best Director win for “Leave No Trace” while the expected winner, Alfonso Cuarón, took second.  

Continue reading ‘Roma’ Wins Best Picture From The Los Angeles Film Critics Association at The Playlist.

There’s a reason why you may not have heard of filmmaker and novelist Sandi Tan until this year, upon the release of her brilliant Netflix documentary “Shirkers.” In 1992, Tan and her friends Jasmine Kin Kia Ng and Sophia Siddique Harvey sought out to make an experimental, surrealistic, art house film titled “Shirkers,” with their film teacher, mentor, and friend Georges Cardona.

Continue reading ‘Shirkers’: Sandi Tan Talks Her Brilliant New Doc And Her Love Of Tim Burton & Leos Carax [Interview] at The Playlist.

In August we wrote, “Ultimately, “‘Shirkers‘ is a film that should be experienced more than explained. That sounds like a cop out, but it’s an inspiring documentary about the process of filmmaking, the love of outsider art, but also a cautionary tale about trust and shadiness in the filmmaking world.”

READ MORE: ‘Shirkers’ Is A Love Letter To Renegade Filmmaking And The Ghosts Of The Past [Review]

A film, that was thought to never see the light of day, has now been brought to life through a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award.

Continue reading ‘Shirkers’ Trailer: Sundance World Cinema Documentary Award Winner Is Coming To Netflix at The Playlist.

Making a film is incredibly difficult. For most, it’s a labor of love and not a financially viable endeavor, which is exactly what “Shirkers” was to Sandi Tan. Growing up in Singapore and loving things that were seen as taboo (punk music, strange world cinema, coordinating with her cousin in Florida to bootleg a copy of “Blue Velvet”), she wrote her own avant-garde screenplay at age nineteen about a serial killer named “S,” who she would play.

Continue reading ‘Shirkers’ Is A Love Letter To Renegade Filmmaking And The Ghosts Of The Past [North Bend Film Fest Review] at The Playlist.