Posts tagged with "Film"

Rise of the Mammals
HHMI Tangled Bank Studios

Film

A new film offers a glimpse into the Cenozoic ascension of mammals

24 October, 2019

We live in the Age of Mammals, yet warm-blooded beasts are still overshadowed by dinosaurs. Even when considering the last great shake-up to life’s story, when an enormous asteroid triggered a mass extinction that decimated dinosaurs and gave mammals a shot at terrestrial expansion, we are often more focused on the terrible lizards lost than… Read More
Human Nature
Adam Bolt, director

Film

Slick visuals and compelling interviews render gene editing intelligible to nonexperts

20 August, 2019

If you could cure a child suffering from sickle cell anemia, would you? This is the question at the center of Human Nature, a new documentary directed by Adam Bolt about the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. The documentary is visually stunning, thought-provoking, informative, and tightly focused on human health—which means that there are… Read More
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Michael Dogherty, director

Film

Godzilla’s extraordinary growth over time mirrors an increase in Anthropocene angst

28 May, 2019

It would be a mistake to dismiss Godzilla: King of the Monsters as mindless pap or escapist fantasy. It is the 35th film in a series stretching to 1954, easily the longest in world cinema history. This fact alone invites scholarly attention, for icons are always a reflection of their times, and few have enjoyed… Read More
Bedlam
Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, director

Film

Bedlam

18 March, 2019

The public health statistics presented in Bedlam, the new film by director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, are horrifying: 350,000 people with mental illness sleep on U.S. streets each night, the nation’s three largest prisons are its three largest psychiatric facilities, and half the people killed in confrontations with police are mentally ill. The causes explored in… Read More
The Great Hack
Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim, directors

Film

The Great Hack

18 March, 2019

Under what circumstances should your personal information on social media be shared, and who should be the gatekeeper? These are among the most important questions facing society and are the focus of The Great Hack, Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim’s documentary about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm founded by… Read More
Apollo 11
Todd Douglas Miller, director

Film

Apollo 11

18 March, 2019

Apollo 11 distills a trove of recently discovered archival materials to provide an unprecedented view of the first-ever attempt to send humans to the Moon and bring them back again. More than 300 reels of large-format film were converted by using a one-of-a-kind digital scanner, and ~11,000 hours of audiotape, featuring the audio feed of… Read More
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Chiwetel Ejiofor, director

Film

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

18 March, 2019

Most of us take electricity and running water for granted, but in rural Malawi, electricity is still a rarity, and water often comes from buckets hauled by hand out of wells. The new film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is inspired by the true story of William Kamkwamba’s remarkable ingenuity… Read More
I Am Mother
Grant Sputore, director

Film

I Am Mother

18 March, 2019

I Am Mother envisions a near future in which an intelligent machine controls the fate of the human species after a major extinction event. The droid “Mother” presides over a repopulation facility housing 63,000 human embryos in a state of arrested development. It has a soothing female voice (Rose Byrne), but its mechanical facial expressions… Read More
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
Alex Gibney, director

Film

The Inventor

18 March, 2019

“I don’t have many secrets,” says Elizabeth Holmes at the outset of The Inventor, which tells the story of the rise and fall of her company, Theranos. In 2003 at the age of 19, Holmes set out to transform the health care industry, promising a technology that could conduct a large number of tests by… Read More
Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements
Irene Taylor Brodsky, director

Film

Moonlight Sonata

18 March, 2019

Director Irene Taylor Brodsky’s award-winning 2007 documentary Hear and Now told the story of her deaf parents’ decision to get cochlear implants late in life. Her new film, Moonlight Sonata, contrasts her father’s lifelong experience of deafness with that of her son Jonas. Deaf since birth, Brodsky’s father, Paul Taylor, was taught to speak by… Read More