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Dan Fienberg
Tomatometer-approved critic
http://www.laweekly.com
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Songs from the Hole (2024) |
A fresh and lyrical take on the genre. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 14, 2024
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Clemente (2024) |
Finds a solid middle ground between straight-up hagiography and a slightly less reverential adulation that will make younger viewers understand why such affection could be warranted. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 13, 2024
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Dickweed (2024) |
The documentary is imbalanced between its first and second halves and the second half is imbalanced between the perspective of an evasive on-camera subject and an absent secondary subject. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 11, 2024
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We Can Be Heroes (2024) |
We Can Be Heroes is a documentary that makes your heart swell and makes you instantly protective of its young subjects, except that for over 86 minutes you watch those subjects slay demons and reshape a dying universe. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 11, 2024
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MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024) |
The stakes were and are on the lower side, and the documentary hits softer as a result, but will still resonate with those of us who were “there.” - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 10, 2024
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Stormy (2024) |
This documentary could have been centered around Stormy Daniels today, and it would have been a better and more truthful movie. It wasn’t and it isn’t. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 09, 2024
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Porcelain War (2024) |
There’s a great deal of beauty in Porcelain War and there’s a potent artistry behind it, but I’ve never watched a documentary with so many running visual metaphors and so little faith that the audience will be able to grasp them. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 28, 2024
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Daughters (2024) |
Reservations aside, I still came away from Daughters emotionally wrung out like a damp washcloth and infuriated at a system of punishment that too often fails everybody. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 23, 2024
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A New Kind of Wilderness (2024) |
I spent 40 minutes watching A New Kind of Wilderness and wondering what the documentary was supposed to be, and the last 44 minutes being simply and persuasively moved... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 23, 2024
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A Different Man (2024) |
An amusing and thought-provoking face-off. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 22, 2024
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Union (2024) |
It’s a nuanced portrait of the challenges of leadership and a revealing celebration of the values of persistence, solidarity and free weed. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 22, 2024
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Love Machina (2024) |
It’s provocative enough to recognize a lot of the conversations we need to have now rather than after the robots have taken over, but not coherent enough to adequately have those conversations itself. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 21, 2024
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Ibelin (2024) |
Powerful as a story, but limited as a film. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 20, 2024
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Girls State (2024) |
An uneven but still crowdpleasing successor. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 19, 2024
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Uncropped (2023) |
By the end, I’d mostly shaken my feeling that Young would have been better off doing a documentary about alt-weeklies in which Hamilton was a featured participant, rather than the other way around. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Songs of Earth (2023) |
A delicate film, one that frequently feels like it benefits more from being experienced than analyzed or interrogated. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Nov 16, 2023
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Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023) |
It’s hard not to feel like Brooks got a tiny bit short-changed with merely a feature-length doc, one on which my primary complaint was, “Give me more.” But an Albert Brooks documentary with an inferiority complex? Appropriate! - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Sly (2023) |
The star proves to be a good enough explainer of his legacy that the documentary finds effective insight and poignancy — despite however much he’s an overly protective custodian of that legacy... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 17, 2023
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Flipside (2023) |
Taken in totality and with some reflection, it’s a borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 12, 2023
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The Contestant (2023) |
It’s a documentary about voyeurism that, in the absence of freshly delivered insight, just reintroduces and rehashes the voyeuristic impulse it’s largely condemning. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 12, 2023
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Copa 71 (2023) |
An uplifting and eye-opening love letter. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 08, 2023
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The Pigeon Tunnel (2023) |
Not peak Morris, but a solid portrait of a master storyteller. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 01, 2023
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American Symphony (2023) |
A sometimes joyful, sometimes somber celebration of spirit. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 01, 2023
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Thank You Very Much (2023) |
Fortunately, it’s easy to enjoy Thank You Very Much without being especially convinced... that any film, especially one this relatively conventional, might contribute meaningful answers. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Aug 31, 2023
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After the Bite (2023) |
It’s a serious-minded documentary in a genre that has strayed far from anything serious-minded. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jul 25, 2023
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The Saint of Second Chances (2023) |
Veeck is a crowdpleaser, and that’s the thing Neville and Malmberg are best at here. The Saint of Second Chances plays big and broad. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jun 20, 2023
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Milli Vanilli (2023) |
Maybe Korem’s primary objective is simply to make you think more about Milli Vanilli than you ever have before. In that, it’s a total success. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jun 13, 2023
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Rather (2023) |
Rather is fine. It’s not definitive. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jun 11, 2023
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Personality Crisis: One Night Only (2022) |
An intimate musical primer on an iconic artist. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Apr 13, 2023
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William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill (2023) |
Despite a fully generic title that falsely suggests a project broadly tailored around Shatner’s ingrained lack of formality, You Can Call Me Bill ends up feeling very much like a Philippe film. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 18, 2023
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The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution (2023) |
The film wants to separate the signal from the noise in the public discourse, but it’s so enamored with the sensory madness that it just becomes more cacophony. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Wild Life (2023) |
It’s still beautiful to look at, but I most enjoyed Wild Life as a complicated procedural about land use (don’t expect to see that blurbed on a poster any time soon). - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Being Mary Tyler Moore (2023) |
To watch Laura Petrie and Mary Richards (and Beth from Ordinary People) in action is to invariably come away with boundless respect. Adolphus and his documentary understand that. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 14, 2023
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A Disturbance in The Force (2023) |
When it isn’t poking fun at moments of iconic trash, it offers an insightful exploration of the production and context of the special. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 12, 2023
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Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (2023) |
Rock is a provocateur, darnit! Nothing in Selective Outrage raised my hackles. I didn’t even get a semi-hackle. My hackles were flaccid. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Mar 05, 2023
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Pamela, a Love Story (2023) |
A documentary that’s probably more low-key than audiences will want and exactly as low-key as its subject would prefer. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 27, 2023
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Beyond Utopia (2023) |
An intimate, real-life geopolitical thriller. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 25, 2023
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Going Varsity in Mariachi (2023) |
Going Varsity in Mariachi is quite good as it is, an endearingly wholesome and frequently vibrant feature. But almost every one of my reservations boils down to, “Needed more [insert lack here].” - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 24, 2023
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The Deepest Breath (2023) |
In the most literal sense, The Deepest Breath is a breathtaking documentary, one filled with eye-popping visuals, thrilling competitions and a deftly presented love story. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 22, 2023
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AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (2023) |
Especially in its homestretch, I felt like the film was awash in hastily defended conclusions and bad choices involving at least one key interview subject. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 22, 2023
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Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) |
Admirable and intimate... - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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Space: The Longest Goodbye (2023) |
Rushed, but mostly effective. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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Pelosi in the House (2022) |
Uneven, but full of moments of fascinating process and access. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Dec 14, 2022
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Year One: A Political Odyssey (2022) |
Despite participation from many bigwigs within the Biden team, Year One fails completely as any sort of chronological overview, which is how the documentary presents itself. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 18, 2022
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Werewolf by Night (2022) |
It’s a slight but fairly amusing thing, elevated above being a mere exercise in style by the lead performances from Gael Garcia Bernal and Laura Donnelly. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Nuclear Now (2022) |
If Nuclear galvanizes a handful of people and even convinces a few more around nuclear power issues, good for Stone. But the movie itself is barely a filmed TED Talk. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 13, 2022
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The Grab (2022) |
Its topic is unquestionably a crucial issue for our age and its approach to that topic both has journalistic rigor and represents a thoroughly admirable depiction of journalistic rigor at a moment at which we put too little value on such things. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 09, 2022
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Retrograde (2022) |
A beautifully photographed, generally apolitical glimpse of a tragedy. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 08, 2022
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Good Night Oppy (2022) |
It’s a glossy advertisement for NASA and JPL — I thought of Disney+’s recent ILM documentary/commercial Light & Magic more than a few times while watching — but it comes by its waves of emotion honestly. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 03, 2022
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A Compassionate Spy (2022) |
A Compassionate Spy borrows the look and feel of a historical espionage thriller and builds some momentum and moral complexity along the way, but it finds its real potency as a generational family drama. - Hollywood Reporter
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| Posted Sep 02, 2022
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