Welcome back to the Cause Cinema Spotlight.
This week, we present spies, new yorkers and imperfections. We’ll start there, with a comedy.
Shortcomings
Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
Shortcomings is now in theaters.
Next up, a funny and culturally relevant Docuseries returns for season 3.
How To with John Wilson
Documentary filmmaker John Wilson embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery and cultural observation by covertly filming the lives of fellow New Yorkers while trying to share advice. John attempts to give advice while dealing with his own personal issues. The episodes, framed as tutorials and filmed mainly on the streets of New York City, cover topics from small talk to scaffolding. While each episode initially focuses on its title topic, in the course of his investigation, Wilson meets people and strikes up conversations that lead in unpredictable directions.
You can see How To with John Wilson on Max.
And finally, a nice companion piece to Oppenheimer, in a documentary.
A Compassionate Spy
Brilliant physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project while still a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no clue what he'll be working on. When he learns the true nature of the weapon being designed, he fears the post-war risk of a nuclear holocaust and begins to pass significant information to the Soviet Union.
You can see A Compassionate Spy on AppleTV, Amazon, GooglePlay or Vudu.
Sadly, we lost musician Sixto Rodriquez this week, the musician and subject of the Academy Award winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man (which you can see on AppleTV or Vudu). In case you missed it, we did a short video tribute to this film, along with the new release for Dreamin’ Wild, two movies about rediscovered artists.
And that’s a wrap for Cause Cinema Spotlight this week. Please share these stories with your friends.
Thank you.
Spies, New Yorkers & Shortcomings