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“If I die, what a beautiful death; to die in the exercise of your passion.” - Philippe Petit

In his youth, Philippe Petit was drawn to climbing, fencing, and riding a unicycle. Balance was a gift, and motivation was endless. When he was 17, while waiting to see a dentist, he came across an article in the paper about two structures that were to be built in New York. The World Trade Center was to be the largest man-made structure, and within him developed a dream to conquer such a building in his own poetic way. Learning to walk a tightrope and gather close friends to help him reach his future goals, Petit set out to train, plan, and discipline himself to walk across a building that was yet to exist.

Nick Broomfield is a London-born director known for his minimalist approach with various subjects. His style is similar to the cinéma vérité techniques that many English filmmakers have adopted, allowing the eccentric or sometimes dangerous lifestyles of his subjects to overshadow any techniques used. His most popular works include Kurt & Courtney, Biggie and Tupac, and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

With Fetishes, Broomfield travels to Manhattan in order to interview and film the women and clients of Pandora's Box—an upscale S & M parlor of pleasure and bondage for those wishing to be dominated by a mistress. The documentary is separated into eight chapters: slaves, mistresses, rubber fetish, wrestling fetish, corporal punishment, masochism, infantilism, and socio-political fetishes.

"A guerrilla war is an intimate affair, fought not merely with weapons but fought in the minds of the men in the villages and in the hills, fought by the spirit and policy of those who run the local government."

--W.W. Rostow, address to the first graduating class at the U.S. Army Warfare School, Fort Bragg, June 1961 This documentary should be seen by everyone. In my opinion, it is one of the best documentaries to expose the roots behind the global economic crisis of 2008. It should be seen, analyzed, and discussed by as many people as possible. While I don’t agree with some of the conclusions made in the film—for example, minimizing the structural crisis inherent within capitalism while overemphasizing the lack of government financial regulations as a major source of the crisis—it convincingly demonstrates the real-life horror when the Milton Friedmans of the world take over: socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the rest. One only needs to look at Wisconsin right now to see this at work. Having won an Oscar for Best Documentary this year, Charles Ferguson’s film builds and yet departs from previous documentaries on the topic: Casino Jack and the United States of Money (directed by Alex Gibney, 2010) and Collapse (directed by Chris Smith, 2010). There is so much to say about Inside Job. However, for me, the most interesting part of the film is the section where Ferguson challenges some of the professors involved in the “inside job” that created the global financial meltdown at a cost over $20 trillion, resulted in millions losing their jobs, homes, etc. He interviews people like Professor Frederic Mishkin at Columbia Business School, and its Dean, Glenn Hubbard; Martin Feldstein, a Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and many more. (Larry Summers and Laura Tyson both declined t...

This film should seriously be a required viewing for everyone who wishes to adopt a child, or has a child with special needs. Though this belief seems to be shared among those who've seen it, I'd even recommend that children of all ages and backgrounds see it as well, especially those with only one parent. I say this because Karsh's directorial debut is able to show us the experience of adopting a child from both the parent's side, as well as the child's. The Tom family case is obviously unique because of the number of children and the range of their disabilities, but the hardships and joys of family life as a whole are universal. Children of single-parent homes can view this film and be given an example of what obstacles their parent must face, both for them and in terms of their own needs.

Susan Tom is a divorced single mother who, while raising her biological children with her former husband, began adopting children from all over the world. In total, her adopted brood tops off at 11. More mind-blowing than the fact that she is raising and caring for this many children alone is the fact that they all have mental and/or physical disabilities. Without a nurse or much help from foundations and social workers, she and her oldest daughters help maintain the house.

Though this documentary has a subject that is extremely compelling and brave, it was unfortunately poorly made. Somehow I don't believe that the fault was at the hands of the directors or producers, but simply the lack of cooperation and substantial footage. The fact that I still took away a lot of information and was able to truly sympathize with all the victims and their stories was enough to make me see the film as something well-worth everyone's time.

In April 2003, Vanity Fair printed their Hollywood Issue. Inside was a story titled, “It Happened One Night...at MGM,” which gave a detailed account of a massive cover up by MGM that has to do with the rape of Patricia Douglas. In 1937, MGM decided to organize a large convention for all of its sales employees and producers who, I should add, were all men. These conventions were seen as a sort of holiday among the participants, where lodging, food, entertainment, and a lot of alcohol were provided to ensure that everyone had a good time and felt that they were essential to the company. The entertainment for one of these conventions would come in the form of over one hundred female dancers, most of whom were under-aged girls. Before the big party of the convention happened, a casting call was made by MGM in which these girls were told that they would be dancing in a movie and needed to be fitted for cowgirl costumes, then report to a barn on Hal Roach's ranch. On the casting call list, one of these girls had her name in bold and underlined: Girl 27, Pat Douglas, who was 17 at the time. The movie the girls were supposed to be dancing in turned out to be a stag party for all of the MGM employees, one of whom was presumably made to feel as though he had one of the many girls all to himself. That man was producer David Ross and the girl he was pushed toward was Patricia Douglas.

You've always heard stories of stalkers and people who honestly believe that they are seriously destined to be with certain celebrities. In a sense, our culture has encouraged such activities. Since the beginning of the film industry and, in the last century with musicians, celebrities in the performing arts have been followed by paparazzi and fans with little escape from the public eye. In almost every grocer there are magazines filled with false or accurate news of some star. The biggest market seems to be teen magazines and their readers who can become more involved by sending in fan mail, etc. This kind of activity eventually fades and these young people stop being fixated. I Think We're Alone Now follows two individuals who became obsessed with a singer way past their youths, and despite their oddness, quite organically.

Tiffany Darwish, referred to as simply Tiffany, had a singing career in the '80s and was a pop icon, though her popularity fizzled out within a few years. Some of her songs still receive radio play and are known by just about everybody. The title of this documentary shares the name of perhaps her most popular song, a cover of Tommy James & The Shondells, and one that is of great importance to one of the subjects in the film.

This compelling documentary, narrated by Gabriel Byrne, uncovers the bittersweet consequences of our efforts as humans to try to avoid death for the longest time possible. It begins by explaining the phenomena on a more scientific level, touching on animal instincts to survive and pointing out that we are the only species that carries a "burden of anxiety" in terms of our own death. All other animals live only in present danger when confronted by their fears, and we do as well when directly threatened. But unlike other animals, we are aware that we will one day die. Not only do we take precautions avoiding death, but we perform various efforts to try and leave a lasting impression before we go.

Experimental social psychologists Sheldon Solomon and Jeff Greenberg are introduced in this documentary, along with several other professors of humanities, ranging from religion to psychoanalysis. Many of them have formed their ideas on "death denial" from the studies done by Ernest Becker, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who worked exclusively on the concept. With these investigations, they have tried to find a way to unravel the positive and negative effects of death denial. You’d be surprised to find out which areas they believe this denial reaches in our subconscious, and what it causes us to do.

This documentary, shot in a day and following the rambunctious pastimes of a young boy named Hapon, left me in the middle of two unsettling thoughts. Maybe they were impulses, and perhaps in a week I'll feel differently. I haven’t quite recovered from the moral confusion. The first thought was to reject the glorification of the slums and squatters in the Philippines that are documented here. The film follows Hapon and a large amount of children who sort of see him as an icon. The back of the DVD compares the film to seeing children playing at a car crash. Believe me, it's much worse. The beach they swim in is overflowing with garbage and debris; the toddlers roam the dusty streets without diapers and relieve themselves in alleyways. Hapon prances around with his distinguished Mohawk like a king, and yet his open sores have flies hovering over them. The film has no dialogue. It's set against punk music, shot in black and white, with the edgy quality of a skate film. And it shows confident children, satisfied with their play and overjoyed at the thought of someone wanting to document their existence. Hapon and his friends, while malnourished and left unattended, carry a familiar spirit. They are tiny anarchists who enjoy being enveloped in anarchy—no rules, no enforcement, and absolutely no parental control. My second thought following a short-lived disgust is that I'd envy this free-spirited childhood, were it not for the realization that I would have to be happy with the fact that I might not reach adulthood.

The adults are certainly not getting along any better, and like the children, they don't seem to care. They sit in shacks playing cards or sing karaoke in bars—some chagrined, but most very confident. Another jarring aspect of daily life in this city is the commingling of children and adults. There is a shot of a bar where a man is passed out at the counter, and next to an empty pitcher of malt-liquor is a bored toddler. Age seems to have no relevance at all, as minors and elders share the same fate. While the adults have their alcohol, the young children sit underneath a pier and huff chemicals out of plastic bags. The lack of culture was also startling. Like most other countries that have had a relationship with America, citizens of Manila are highly westernized. They have the donated hand-me-downs of the West, and those small "treasures" are seemingly enough. It gives the impression that one must be able to afford culture, or at the very least have the means to hang onto it. The shantytown is filled with American garbage, from bicycles and Mickey Mouse t-shirts and every other useless thing in between. You begin to wonder what the city used to look like, and how quickly it fell into despair.

I feel as though children are often approached by adults without respect and deprived of some very rewarding chances in life. Sound and Fury deals with the introduction of new technologies within deaf communities and the controversy it has sprouted. Two brothers, Chris and Peter, are dealing with a family crisis. Chris has healthy hearing, while his brother Peter was born deaf. Each is married with children. Peter and his wife Nita have a son and daughter who are deaf, and one of Chris's infant twin sons is also deaf. Chris and his wife Mari have decided to go through a surgical procedure to give their son a cochlear implant—a device that can restore hearing. Peter's daughter Heather becomes aware of the procedure and its advantages and asks her parents if she can also have the procedure performed.

The families have relatives and friends who are deaf and have come to see their deafness as a culture. For them, being deaf gives them a sense of community and a peaceful, dramatic way of communicating that others don't experience. But for those in the family, especially Heather's grandmother who is not deaf, the procedure can offer a world of endless possibilities for Heather. Peter and Nita, however, feel that their daughter is perfect the way she is and that changing her view of the world with sound might separate her from their community, and from them.

It’s hard to categorize the film I’m Still Here. Simply put, it plays as a documentary that illustrates a man in free fall. To suggest, however, that it is a true documentation of such only serves to perpetuate the myth (as well as the egos of its makers) behind the film itself. On the other hand, the suggestion of truth is what makes this film possible within the ether of today’s stagnant and highly unentertaining… well… entertainment. It’s pointless to over-analyze Casey Affleck’s directorial debut, as in doing so would only allow yourself to be hoodwinked by two very talented satirists who have set out to do just that: orchestrate an elaborate hoax intended to turn the mirror on the Hollywood machine and also shed light on America’s obsession with celebrity.

I’m Still Here is the fictional account of Joaquin Phoenix’s decent into madness. The film opens with Phoenix pacing around the front yard of his Hollywood Hills home while the city glimmers below. The stage is set as Phoenix declares, "I’m living in a self-imposed prison." What we see here within the first three or four minutes of the film is someone who is lost and is trying desperately to find his true identity. That identity comes in the form of J.P., the alter ego and hip-hop artist formerly known as the actor, Joaquin Phoenix.