Ever wonder what it means to be a pelican in the 21st Century? Judy Irving’s first documentary feature since the sublime Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003) finds her still bird watching. It came to pass that Irving’s childhood fascination with California Brown Pelicans dovetailed into this vivid documentary sketch of what happened to one particular distendable-billed creature, nicknamed Gigi, taken into police custody for disrupting traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. The most dramatically compelling footage is the cell phone coverage of the initial rescue. There’s a lot to be learned about our winged friends — who knew pelicans are aphonic? — but where Parrots was fortunate enough to have happened upon an unlikely romance to give it structure, too much of Pelican plays like a routine National Geographic doc. (2014) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.