Ben Russell and Ben Rivers take an academic approach to filmmaking, which makes their collaborative effort, "A Spell To Ward Off the Darkness," either one of the most intellectually engaging films of the year or an experience full of cramps, fidgeting, and eye-rolling, depending on who's talking. In any case, this is a film that should, at the very least, make one appreciate the all-encompassing breadth of cinema, and, at most, provoke deeper thought of transcendental existence in correlation with nature and The Idea of Man. If words like "sublime," "transcendence," and "ethnography" make you recoil in frustration, what Russell and Rivers are trying to get at here won't interest you in the slightest, and you'll be cramping, fidgeting, and rolling your eyes. But we're squarely camped on the other side of that fence. "A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness" doesn't only have the greatest title of any film this year, it's also the year's...
