Dock Ellis and The LSD No-No is a short animated film by Brooklyn illustrator James Blagden: ‘In June of 1970, Dock Phillip Ellis Jr., a major league pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, threw a no-hitter while high on acid and Benzedrine. Featuring a narration by Dock himself, The LSD No-No is the telling of this legendary tale, straight from the horse’s mouth’.

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A documentary about one of the world’s most famous fashion designers? Hmm. Not a film I’d ever choose to see, but sometimes we do what we don’t want to in order to make friends happy. It’s called compromise apparently, and the experience reminded me that any material, if well structured and presented, can make a decent film. The filmmakers follow the over-tanned Valentino Garavani and his long-term lover and business partner Giancarlo Giammetti.

They bicker like an old married couple, trading bitchy comments and eye rolls, however they also share some wonderfully tender moments. In the background, the business has recently been sold and there’s constant speculation that Valentino will soon be forcibly retired. It’s also fascinating for the behind-the-scenes look at how designs come to be dresses, how fashion shows are put together and the way the industry operates, including the extreme bitchiness and opulence.

Larry David plays a slight variation on his Curb Your Enthusiasm incarnation, spouting some of the most articulate rants on humanity in Woody Allen’s new comedy. I enjoyed last year’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but this is definitely better. It’s a spectacularly executed comedy farce, with the action constantly escalating along the way, adhering to the old comedy formula of putting the characters through hell for big laughs. Boris Yellnikoff, played by David, attempts and fails to kill himself. This leads to him marrying a young girl, and while the plot spirals into absurdity, it’s so much fun, there’s no point caring. The sweet ending wraps everything into a nice, neat and sweat package. While I’m usually a fan of gritty reality, sometimes it’s refreshing to experience a ‘happily ever after’.

Take my word for it, there’s really no better place to see the new Chris Rock documentary Good Hair than in a midtown Manhattan cinema at 7.45pm on a Friday night. Why? Because the atmosphere in the theatre was just about as entertaining as what was taking place on the giant screen in front of us.

Good Hair, an hilarious [hair-larious?] look at the trials and tribulations of the eternal quest for straight hair, as pursued a large proportion of America’s black community, was greeted with hollers of agreement, hand-clapping, and voracious cheering at various points, which was more than fitting fun cast of characters that Rock assembled for it, including Ice T and the girls out of Salt n Pepa, all of whom put my thirty second mess-up of my hair each morning to absolute shame.

Cosmonaut is a feature film project by Riot Cinema Collective and the first participatory film in Spanish cinema to date. The project uses the Internet collaboratively under free Creative Commons licences and, with the help of viewers, aims to create alternative finance, creation and distribution platforms for independent films. By inviting viewers to be a part of the production process of the film and give them access to all content created, Cosmonaut intends to engage the audience and jointly develop a closer and more transparent relationship.

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The key to making a compelling documentary is stumbling upon characters within it who ultimately prove to be more interesting and memorable than the storyline itself. King Of Kong had it. Word Play had it. And Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie has it, too. In spades. Featuring a couple of weather-beaten, eccentric buddies in a perennial hunt for the elusive Sasquatch, this indie flick is more about the mentality that drives a smalltown quest for fame and recognition, the occasionally prickly intricacies of friendship, and the unerring belief in a dream that may never eventuate, than it is about roping in the beast. Though that would have been nice to see, too. Engaging, entertaining and endearing, this is one of the better documentaries I’ve seen.

This beautiful documentary charts the journey of a loggerhead turtle from its traumatic hatching on a Floridian beach and its frantic scramble to make it to the sea, to its battles with the currents as it makes its way on its genetically programmed path of discovery through the temperamental oceans. Partly fictionalized to allow for the many years over which the ‘journey’ takes place, the cinematography is stunning and the storyline engrossing, making this one of the standout screenings at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

More timeless than current’. But I recently finished a long and complicated novel about Hollywood in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and am just now buckling down to write a short nonfiction book about this film, part of a series for Soft Skull Press. A little peremptorily written off as a mere ‘entertainment’, and also overshadowed by the in-fact-not-quite-as-good Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, this is a pretty dazzling effort: a coded Watergate-conspiracy narrative, a comment on the perils and pleasures of being fooled that’s also twice as much fun to watch as you remember. Which was pretty fun to begin with.

I recently watched Deep Red [above], Suspiria, and Demons. Every movie has a different feel to it, but it 
is all good, which is what amazes me about Argento: the scope in style that he mastered. Detroit has a zombie walk. Zombies walk around, bands play creepy music, it rules. I like festivals, I like when people have their own festivals. I like day parties at festivals, or just about any day. It’s almost a picnic and show in one. I like small shows where your friends are at. Where people know you. Where faces are happy to see you.

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Directed by Jordan Scott, the daughter of Ridley Scott, and starring the sensual Eva Green, Cracks is an unsettling, yet tragically beautiful movie set in the lush surrounds of the English countryside and featuring a Lord of the Flies-ish storyline in which a group of English boarding school students turn on a new Spanish-born classmate when they feel threatened by her evident exotic-ness and worldliness. With a dark subtext in which boundaries between teacher and student and the students themselves are increasingly blurred, and beguiling cinematography, this film, which I saw at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, provides plenty of talking points, not the least of being the stunning performance of Green as the teacher whose fantasises about a life that she had never had the opportunity to live ultimately lead to a calamitous outcome.

Whilst in Toronto last weekend for the International Film Festival, I caught a screening of Dorian Gray, the superbly realised adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic which first appeared nearly 100 years ago in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine and now stars the unheralded Ben Barnes and the meticulously brilliant Colin Firth. Directed by Oliver Parker, the film is a dark, dangerous, yet stunningly shot expose on the trappings of beauty and the inherent temptations that its combination with youth and curiosity can bring. The costume design, in particular, is wonderful, not just for the aspirational seduction of the draping and the romanticisim of the accessories, but for its shaping of an alluring but frightening world where darkness and light go hand in hand and the descent into madness is both sudden and expected. This is a compelling film, though not without its flaws. Mind you, the best of them rarely are.

One very angry and unstoppable man wages war against drugs and malt liquor. A take-off of the old blaxploitation films, this is parody at its best, with many knowing nods to camera and hilarious moments involving clichés taken to their extremes. There’s the Asian kung-fu master, pimps and orphans hooked on heroin. It all begins with Black Dynamite being spurned on his quest for blood after his brother’s brutal murder, and then pushed further for the love of a good woman. There are hoes and guns, along with catchphrases and great one-liners. See it.

Does Israel use the Holocaust as an excuse for their continued issues with the Palestine people? According to this film, yes. Are people who criticise Israel’s foreign policy often unfairly labelled anti-Semitic? Again, yes according to this brilliant documentary made by an Israeli-Jew. Instead of passing judgment himself, filmmaker Yoav Shamir is smart enough to put himself and his camera in the right places, surrounded by the right people, and let the people damn themselves.

The American-based league against anti-Semitism is shown up for the over-officious waste of time and money that it is, while a typical tour group of Israeli students heading to Auschwitz are basically brainwashed by group leaders and minders. It’s a fascinating documentary, exposing how an unmentionable atrocity has been manipulated for control and political gain, while at the same time it has a brilliant sense for the absurd.

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I love everything Cory McAbee creates, from the music he performed as front-man with the fabled band, The Billy Nayer Show, to his cult classic film, The American Astronaut. Stingray Sam, premiering September 15th, is a great addition to his oeuvre.  Already receiving rave reviews from the critics, this musical space-western mini series is, according to Cory, ‘designed for small screens and perfect for screens of all sizes’. Having seen the film this past spring, I would have to agree. It doesn’t hurt that his daughter, the lovely Willa Vy McAbee, stole my heart with her rugged, yet angelic, first performance. Oh, don’t blink, and you might even catch a split second of yours truly gracing the silver screen.

A less clever but much blacker version of Yes Minister, this political comedy farce does excel when it comes to insults. The communication director in the British Government reels off some of the best combinations of expletives I’ve heard in quite a while, and later in the film is equalled by American foes. In terms of content, In The Loop tells of a rush to war in the Middle East and how easily a UN resolution can be manipulated on the back of manipulated information. In a blur of meetings and arguments, educated opinions or arguments are rare and only seem to happen in passing, and this movie presents a terrifying vision of politics. I much prefer The West Wing and its clever, hard-working politicians. Considering the stupidity of Bush and co, however, this piece is probably much closer to the mark.

Director Doug Pray (Surfwise, Scratch, HYPE!) has released a new documentary about advertising and inspiration which ‘reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry’. Art & Copy is a must see for anyone even remotely interested in the advertising industry. It features some great insights into the thoughts of the people responsible for Just Do It, I Love NY, Where’s the Beef? Got Milk, Think Different, and many other brilliant campaigns.

The Japanese slaughter thousands of dolphins every year, and if you’ve even been to Sea World and clapped and smiled at the dolphin show, you’re adding to the problem. Seriously. Dolphins. Slaughtered. WTF? So there’s this cove in the small fishing village of Taiji in Japan, and every day during dolphin season, they round up a few hundred dolphins. The dolphin trainers from water parks around the world then arrive and pick out what they’re after, paying over $100,000 for each animal. The rest are then slaughtered and sold to Japanese consumers.

The dolphins in captivity are so depressed they need to remain doped up on tranquilisers and anti-depressants just so they don’t kill themselves. And why they don’t just let the other dolphins go? Apparently dolphin is a delicacy, but it is full of mercury and doesn’t taste great so needs to be sold as whale for anyone to eat it. The lengths the filmmakers go in order to infiltrate the cove and the slaughter are fascinating and extraordinarily affecting, and then the way the Japanese pro-whaling movement is exposed makes for some great comic-tragic moments. A wonderfully assembled and moving documentary.

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Matt Stone and Trey Parker are my heroes. They have proven time and time again their genius and I bow humbly before it and absorb it for all its worth. South Park has been around for twelve years now but is constantly fresh and pushes the limits of just about everything. It’s living proof of what can be accomplished with purity of vision and commitment.

Isn’t Mike Tyson that psychotic ex-heavyweight champion who speaks with a slight lisp and looks like he’d struggle to finish a ten-piece jigsaw? Yes, he is. So doesn’t a film where he tells his own story, in his words, sound like it’d be about as coherent as a dog trying to bark out the instructions on how to build a space shuttle? It did to me, but if you’re going to pass judgement on a film you do need to see it first. Which I did, and Tyson is superb. Iron Mike is a natural storyteller, probably helped by some clever editing. But best of all, he is brutally honest throughout.

This is documentary filmmaking at its finest, as the director doesn’t pass judgment on the subject, and presents such an honest portrayal of Tyson that the viewer is left to decide for themselves. If you’re still worried about the quality, this picture is worth seeing for the moments when Tyson pays out on people he doesn’t like, including a brilliant and cutting tirade against former manager Don King.

I didn’t see this film when it first came out because I thought it was just another churned out by Seth Rogen. Luckily, he’s only the lead actor, and this picture is actually written and directed by Kevin Smith of Clerks and Chasing Amy fame. Smith’s favorite actors appear throughout, along with his wicked sense of very wrong humor and snappy dialogue.

It’s a much better film than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and is considerably better than anything Rogen has done, even though it’s basically a romantic comedy. If you’re still not convinced, you need to see this film to work out what a ‘Dutch rudder’ involves because I’m not going to tell you. And don’t Google it. That’ll ruin the surprise.