Telluride Review: Emelie Mahdavian’s Documentary ‘Bitterbrush’

Reba McEntire has received well wishes from her fans following a scary encounter earlier in the week.MORE: Reba McEntire mourns devastating death with heartfelt tributeThe country singer revealed on Twitter that she had been evacuated along with her team after a staircase collapsed in an old building that they were viewing.She wrote: "While my team and I were in Atoka, OK yesterday checking out an old historical building, a staircase collapsed. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured.

Joel Rapp, who had writing or cowriting credits on 16 feature films and more than 250 classic sitcoms, died Wednesday at home. He was 87 and no cause of death was given by his family.

Everyone speaks in the same struggling-to-be-sensitive manner in C’mon C’mon, a film of intelligence and insight that nonetheless remains a low-key and sometimes frustrating study of big city short-fallers.

If an alien came to Earth and wanted to know what the deal is with all these big, wet things crisscrossing the land, then Jennifer Peedom’s new documentary “River” would surely be of assistance. Its seventy-four minutes float by with the hazy ambiance that compels critics to dust off the time-honored descriptor of “tone poem,” the camera content to gaze at the magnificence of the natural world.

Alexandre Moratto’s “7 Prisoners” opens on a happy family dinner in rural Brazil. Mateus (Christian Malheiros) is leaving home for a work opportunity in São Paulo.

How many films have been made on which the director never met the the majority of the actors? How often have performers had to operate the camera themselves rather than the cinematographer or operator or director? Any number of films have been made under great duress, but The Same Storm is a rare bird, a scripted feature made last July under Covid conditions in New York City on which the actors performed while isolated from anyone other than their fellow castmates.

Tomris Laffly Herding cattle is a woman’s work in Emelie Mahvadian’s meditative “Bitterbrush,” a picturesque documentary that embraces the sweeping tradition of the Western genre. The brawny job comes naturally to the nomadic Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, two close friends who are seasonal range riders for hire in the remote American West, cowgirling their way from one temporary job to the next, deep through the mountains and prairies of the Idaho terrain.

TELLURIDE – If you’re a cat lover, as I admittedly am, it almost goes without saying that a feline-themed film should pique your interest. And when it comes to a prestige biopic about influential artist Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Riseborough, and Toby Jones? Well, in theory, those elements should combine into a delectable portion of cinephile catnip.

Not to be confused with a similarly titled sci-fi suspense film that squeaked into release in July, this River, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, is a visually majestic, significantly airborne journey over a wide variety of rivers around the world. It is, on a moment-to-moment basis, stunning to behold, and there are ecological messages to be received by the receptive.

Directors mining their lives for a story is nothing new, but it’s always exciting to see that premise connect with viewers beyond its maker. Such were the audience reactions to Kenneth Branagh’s stirring revisit to the Belfast of his childhood: there were sobs, gasps, and so much laughter.

In the form-expanding documentaries of Robert Greene, the artifice of performance clears a path with higher emotional truth waiting at its summit. Still, the distance between the two has varied.

Swaddled in the vastness of the mountainous American West, two young women command the terrain and their own destinies in Emelie Mahdavian’s picturesque documentary “Bitterbrush.” The sturdy duo at the helm, Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, are, despite their youthful age, veteran hired farmhands heading on a four-month commitment in a remote area to herd cattle.

It was always going to be very difficult for documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin to equal their sweaty palms masterpiece Free Solo, but they come close enough with The Rescue.

TELLURIDE – Since it first debuted in 1897, Edmond Rostand’s original play “Cyrano de Bergerac” has been staged all over the world, adapted into numerous films, and seen its ingenious narrative used in almost every form of modern media. For a new version to triumph, it needs to equal or, hopefully, transcend what came before.

This week many people will head to the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York, to attend matches of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

Guy Lodge Film CriticAs a chef, Julia Child made no claims for herself as an innovator: Her mission was not to create new recipes, but to interpret and archive age-old French ones in ways the average American home cook could tackle without fear.

As its short declarative title implies, Janet Tobias and John Hoffman’s documentary “Fauci” is single-minded in its pursuit of exploring and humanizing the now (in)famous director of the National Institutes of Health.

Like a rock skimmed across the water’s surface until it slows and quickly sinks, Bitterbrush only portrays the obvious of what’s involved in being a cowpoke responsible for rounding up a herd of cows and calves across a vast territory and bringing them in. In the most mundane manner, we see what it takes for two young women to commit themselves to toiling day after day for a full season to get a big job done.

The multiple generations who grew up mesmerized by the underwater cinematic adventures of Jacques-Yves Cousteau will be able to learn a good deal more about the man’s life and work in Becoming Cousteau. Among the many gifts of Liz Garbus’ filled-to-the-gills documentary is the way it positions the French explorer as an initially unwitting pioneer of the environmentalist movement, which took shape in his literal wake.

Explorer, inventor, activist, and oceanographic popularizer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau introduced millions to the glories of the ocean through his popular movies.