The below dispatch looks strictly at the documentaries that played this year’s Tribeca Festival. Click here to read Peter Sobczynski’s recap of the festival’s narrative features. The prize for Best Feature in the Documentary Competition went to “Ascension,” an examination by Jessica Kingdon (who also won the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director) of contemporary China…

The African Diaspora International Film Festival – Chicago (ADIFF Chicago), in collaboration with Chicago based longtime partner FACETS Multimedia, is currently celebrating its 18th anniversary virtually with 14 narratives and documentaries from 13 countries, all Chicago premieres. The festival, which kicked off on June 14th and streams through this Thursday, June 24th, is made possible thanks to…

I didn’t have many notes on “F9,” the latest installment in the “Fast and Furious” series, but one near the top of the first page could stand in for the others: “Oh, sure, why not?”  That was in response to a moment showcased in trailers and ads, wherein street racer and thief turned globetrotting super-spy Dominic…

Edgar Wright’s career is full of high-energy tributes to the contents of his bookshelves, like zombie movies (“Shaun of the Dead”), action flicks (“Hot Fuzz”), giallo horror (his upcoming “Last Night in Soho”), and more. But the closest that Edgar Wright has come to making an out-and-out movie about creativity itself is “The Sparks Brothers,” his new…

[THIS PIECE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR “LONE STAR,” A FILM RELEASED IN 1996 THAT YOU REALLY SHOULD SEE.] Released 25 years ago this week, John Sayles’ “Lone Star” is the director’s best film and the most wide-ranging and sophisticated drama ever set in Texas. And it is the movie that best understands how Texans mythologize and lie about…