The Widowmaker tackles the issue of heart disease in America, and raises awareness of coronary calcium scans while tracing the history of heart stents. More Americans die from heart attacks than from cancer each year, so it's clearly a serious problem that demands attention and further exploration. Fortunately, director Patrick Forbes knows how to inform you through well-balanced interviews and to engage you emotionally through human interest stories. He hooks you in by opening the doc with a terrifying, frantic 911 call from someone who's loved one is having experiencing a heart attack. Throughout the doc, you'll learn about how the heart stent was invented, and how it helps to treat weak blood vessels. When it comes to the coronary calcium scans, a procedure that detects early signs of heart disease, that's where the doc becomes even more fascinating because Forbes includes interviews with some doctors who are for it and some who are against it. Those who are for it have a sound argument for why many other doctors opposite it: coronary calcium scans aren't profitable enough compared to stents. The Widowmaker is ultimately eye-opening, vital and refreshingly well-balanced. By the time Forbes bookends the film with another frantic 911 call, it will already have changed the way you look at heart attacks forever. Oxford Films opens The Widowmaker at the Quad Cinema. The doc My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn follows director Nicholas Winding Refn during the production phase of Only God Forgives. Some of it is insightful and amusing or both, i.e. when Refn compares violent action scenes to sex, but mostly director Liv Corfixen, Refn's wife, shows the day-to-day struggles of her filmmaker husband with missed opportunities to gather more revealing insights about him. Perhaps the doc could have used more distance from its subject because there are too many moments that, while intimate, make you feel like you're watching someone's home videos. Everyone has a different life behind the curtain than they do in front of the curtain, so at least you get to see what Refn is like as a human being behind that curtain as he interacts with his kids and wife. It's hard to deny that Refn is a brilliant, talented filmmaker, though, and that fact still remains by the time the film ends after an hour. Corfixen doesn't ask enough provocative, profound questions, so you're ultimately left with a peak behind the curtain that has more potatoes than meat. Radius-TWC opens My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

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Eastern Boys
Directed by Robin Campillo