If nothing else, The Dating Game is a welcome reminder that I’ll be eternally grateful for meeting my wife before the advent of dating apps. Violet Du Feng’s documentary may take place in China, but the issues present feel universally relevant. The film follows Hao, one of China’s leading “dating experts” as he tries to coach a group of young men into finding a match by any means necessary. Though, as the documentary quickly reveals, he’s far from knowledgeable in the ways of love, and much less in understanding women and what they want. His advice tends to boil down to buying new wardrobes, looking cool via profile photos to add to a dating profile, and boasting about life accomplishments and experiences, whether they’re true or not. This leads to some of the cringiest comedy of the year, especially once the clueless men are wrangled into meeting women in the real world with next to no preparation.
Besides the small group of men, Du Feng eventually expands to show the larger cultural attitude towards dating in modern China. One fascinating segment shows a large gathering of middle-aged parents in a park, so desperate to find matches for their children, that they essentially LARP as dating profiles on their behalf. Also crucial is the opening statement that, after China’s end of the One Child policy, the country was left with an imbalance of men and women. But one of The Dating Game‘s most surprising developments comes as Du Feng spends time during Hao’s personal life to show that not only is he married, but his wife is also a dating coach with a much different approach to her female clients. Though this avenue provides some fascinating dramatic developments, one almost wishes the entirety of the film was centered around their relationship. Regardless, The Dating Game is an engrossing reflection of modern dating culture, toxic masculinity, and the eternal quest for companionship.
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Life on the open range has been romanticized throughout cinematic history in the Western genre, but Land With No Rider shows the harsh realities that modern ranchers face. Director Tamar Lando zeroes in on a group of cattle farmers in New Mexico as they eke out a simple existence trying to survive in spite of all the hardships faced amongst modern independent farmers. The biggest challenge lies in climate change, and the lack of viable vegetation for their cows to eat.
Much like the existence it depicts, Land With No Rider treads along at a leisurely pace, often to its own detriment. Of course, this shouldn’t discount the harrowing material seen, but the film could use some additional speed to get through its (admittedly brief) runtime. Farmers inarguably play a critical role in the stability of the country, yet they’re frequently overlooked or oversimplified. Lando’s film is gorgeously lensed, taking full advantage of the New Mexican expanse, and showing every crag in its aging subjects’ faces. It’s hard to find too many faults with the film overall, but one can’t help but wish it moved at a more urgent clip to match its subject matter.
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I first watched Natchez in June as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, but it’s stuck in my memory in the intervening months as a vital and visceral look at America’s past and present. The antebellum south has always felt like it comes from another plane of existence entirely with its outlandish traditions and personalities. Susannah Herbert’s documentary feels less like a history lesson and more like a tour through how those traditions and personalities reckon with the titular Mississippi town’s dark history.
Like most southern cities in the pre-Civil War era, Natchez relied heavily on the slave trade and slave labor, and many large plantations still stand today. This is the backbone of Herbert’s film, as she follows a select number of individuals who rely on telling the town’s history through their own perspectives. There’s one charismatic, Black tour guide who makes no attempt to sugar coat the painful experiences of so many Black men, women, and children who made their way through Natchez. Many of the film’s most difficult moments come as fellow residents confront him through thinly-veiled racial means to let him know they don’t approve of the stories he tells or how he depicts the town. On the other side, there’s the White tour guides, who mostly show off the plantations and simply gloss over – or, in at least one case, defend and ridicule – the presence of slaves. The result is an often shocking, yet sad reality of modern America and certain groups’ views on race, and one of the year’s best documentaries.
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