Ernest Hardy

The Sons of Tennessee Williams Review

Ernest Hardy
Not until the final few minutes of Tim Wolff's The Sons of Tennessee Williams does the documentary come to life. As images of an over-the-top gay ball fill the screen, we hear the voice of an elderly gay man. He worries that gains made by the LGBT community during the......
Joanna

Polish Film Festival Preview

Ernest Hardy
The specter of World War II and its effects on the Polish psyche hang heavily over this year's Polish Film Festival, with several films set either just before or during the war. The questions raised by the likes of Jan Jakub Kolski's Venice and Feliks Falk's Joanna, about honor, betrayal,......
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Benda Bilili! Review

Ernest Hardy
When French filmmakers and music lovers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tuyalle landed in the Congo in 2004 with the intention of recording some local music, they had no idea that their dream would take five years, grow to include a documentary film, and be centered on four paraplegic......
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Where Soldiers Come From Review

Ernest Hardy
The strength of director Heather Courtney's documentary as it follows a group of young, small-town friends on their journey from aimlessness to war is that, in laying out "where soldiers come from," she adroitly maps out overlapping terrains: the material (brutal economic realities), the intangible (the mindset of her subjects),......
Boy meets boy: Tom Cullen and Chris New in Weekend

Weekend Director Andrew Haigh Interview

Ernest Hardy
Andrew Haigh's smart, engaging Weekend is filled with ideas and heart, humor and sadness. Unfolding over the course of a weekend in which handsome, melancholy lifeguard Russell (Tom Cullen) meets and falls for Glen (Chris New), a firebrand art student with prickly notions about marriage, family, sex and art, the......

Finding Joe Review

Ernest Hardy
There’s much to savor in director Patrick Takaya Solomon’s documentary Finding Joe, about the life – but mainly the work – of the late Joseph Campbell, iconic scholar of myths from around the world. (He coined Oprah’s favorite phrase, “Find your bliss.”) The film isn’t meant to be just an......

War of the Arrows Review

Ernest Hardy
Character development in writer-director Kim Han-Min’s thrilling War of the Arrows (Korea’s third highest grossing film this year) is economic, precise and efficient, grounding whirlwind action sequences in an emotional connection to the characters. A lavish epic based on the second Manchu invasion of Korea, the film centers on the......

@URFRENZ Review

Ernest Hardy
Writer-director Jeff Phillips’ critique of how social media shapes lives doesn’t have the scope of David Fincher’s Social Network, but in its own way it's just as ambitious. Based on the real life cyber-bulling of Megan Meier, the film maps the fallout when a high school rumor snowballs into a......
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Mozart's Sister Review

Ernest Hardy
In heavily outlining the tragedies and injustices that befell the musically gifted older sister of Wolfgang "Amadeus," writer-director René Féret underplays the most interesting elements in this story of Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart. Forced by their father to tour under hellish circumstances, young Wolfgang and Nannerl traverse Europe year-round, performing recitals for aristocrats who often......
Poetry of Resilience

Docuweeks 2011

Ernest Hardy
"I wish I had good news," says the poet Li-Young Lee in the documentary Poetry of Resilience. "You know, to say that spirit is resilient" — pause — "some days I feel that spirit is not so resilient." Though Lee's perspective is ultimately global, he's speaking first of the fallout......