Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride; Mo; Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee

“The documentary itself functions like a drama, opening with a flash-forward to the near-present, where some atrocity has taken place. What is it? Threaded between the regular, seasonal intrigues is a bigger arc, hinted at via increasingly frequent references to the Maasai culling lions. A tale develops about the malign expansion of humanity and, somewhere in the dusty shadows, about the dead hand of modernity. ”
Jack Seale, The Guardian 

“The footage was also noticeably unsparing, a reminder of how wildlife programmes now tend to shy away from the actual kill. The film-makers were forced to remain helpless onlookers as a pair of aggressive males threatened “single mum” Bibi’s cubs. But a much greater sense of helplessness pervaded the film as a whole, as it became clear that the 2015 poisoning was far from isolated.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“This was essentially a neatly structured archive anthology with updated interviews; but what gave it real bite, resonance and poignancy were those moments when the producers faced harsh reality head-on…BBC disquisitions about men despoiling animal habitats have become a familiar coda to most of their wildlife programmes these days. Here it was a key part of the story, and full marks to the producers for weighing the competing arguments.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“It was impossible to watch this documentary without sharing Simon’s sadness and fury. With an estimated 20,000 lions left in the African wild, the film’s message could not be more urgent.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

”It produces a detailed, gorgeously textured, warm and moving story of one man’s life, bringing us closer to understanding a little bit more of everyone’s. It’s a story told via a gallimaufry of languages, cultures and creeds (including those of the native, fiddle-playing Texan olive farmers he spends time working for), united by the hustle and by humour. It is very, very funny.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian 

“There are plenty of lush shots of the beaches and the jungle, scored with swelling strings and pan flutes. McAfee intones that “the justice of the jungle is the justice of Darwinism”, and it all gets a little bit Diet Werner Herzog. We’re often reminded in reverent terms how cool and important this documentary is, as participants lazily contemplate the act of film-making…The project is a sad waste of director Charlie Russell, who has previously done such a terrific job telling difficult, personality-driven stories such as the insightful Chris Packham: Asperger’s and Me or the heart-rending Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die. But while these documentaries rely on the decency, candour and personality of their subjects, Russell flounders in the great vacuity of McAfee and then tries to peddle him as an enigma. There are periods where it does feel that he intends to draw out his subject’s humanity.”
Daniel Brooks, The Telegraph