When I lived in Australia well over a decade ago, the Australian government would take the “boat people” – refugees coming illegally by boat to Northern Australia, Western Australian Queensland and some Australian islands – who made it ashore and throw them in jails in the middle of nowhere in the Outback. The boat people …
Tag: Documentary
Metal Evolution (2011)
Metal Evolution is an in depth examination of metal by the man most associated with covering metal on film – though I have yet to see either of his movies.
Best of Enemies (2015, Robert Gordon, Morgan Neville)
When I was younger, I used to long for the days when US news shows were just the news, and when talk shows had actual intellectuals on, on occasion, to debate. I remember once seeing a clip many years ago where Gore Vidal – whom I have a love/hate relationship with – and Norman Mailer …
Better This World (2011, Kelly Duane, Katie Galloway)
This is an important film that is really, really worth your time. What starts off seemingly as a portrait of some well-intentioned youths that got into some bad shit – and feels, perhaps, like an apology for such behaviour – soon reveals itself to be the story of something so much worse. Though it’s weird …
Best Worst Movie (2009, Michael Stephenson)
This documentary is ostensibly about Troll 2, which some consider the worst movie ever made – at one point Troll 2 had a 0% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was once the worst movie on IMDB. At this point I should mention I have never seen Troll 2. Surprised, aren’t you? I should. But I …
Making a Murderer (2015, Moira Demos, Laura Ricciardi)
This is a documentary in the grand tradition of The Thin Blue Line, Paradise Lost and Brother’s Keeper, but with the time-span of something like Hoop Dreams or American Promise. And, as a 10-episode TV show, it adds nearly unprecedented depth to its subject, comparable only to a Ken Burns documentary series, or Shoah. SPOILER …
The Battle of Chile (1975, 1976, 1979, Patricio Guzman)
This is a remarkable 3-part documentary (cinema verite style) that exhaustively covers the political crisis that led to the 1973 coup in Chile and the aftermath. And when I say ‘covers’ I mean it’s an eyewitness account that was smuggled out of Chile. It has to stand as one of the film landmarks of the …
Battle for Brooklyn (2011 Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley)
I have always had problems with the concept of eminent domain, or at least ever since I flirted with anarchism in my early 20s and developed my civil libertarianism. I don’t like the idea that government can decide to take the property of individuals because of some vague concept of “greater good.” But, that being …
Bananas!* (2009, Fredrik Gertten)
This is a maddening, frustrating and outrage-sparking documentary about Dole’s (nee Standard Fruit Company) use of a banned pesticide in Nicaragua (and Costa Rica and Honduras) and how it deeply affected the lives of workers on plantations. There are great things about this movie, including the depiction of actual courtroom arguments, and the clear evidence …
The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014, Chapman Way, Maclain Way)
This is a sub-30 for 30 quality sports documentary (or low end 30 for 30) that makes up for its lack of film quality with the incredible story of the Portland Mavericks, possibly the most popular single A team of all time and the only independent baseball team of its era.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010, Andrei Ujica)
This film attempts to paint a portrait of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu simply by assembling and editing together excerpts from something like 1,000 hours of official footage. Because of the way it is assembled – just this footage, no talking heads, no narration, no obvious message – what you make of this movie appears …
Are All Men Pedophiles? (2013, Jan-Willem Breue)
Putting aside the sensationalist title, there are a lot of interesting things that are discussed in this film, that might make for an interesting documentary. For example: the evolutionary imperative for males to seek out younger females in order to insure procreation. (And there are numerous others.) But this is not that movie.
TIFF 2015: The Return of the Atom (2015, Jussi Eerola, Mika Taanila)
This is an episodic and pretentious documentary about Finland’s newest nuclear power plant that manages to somehow both be hysterical – not “hysterical” as in “funny” but hysterical as in “insane” – and, somehow, extremely boring.
Altman (2014, Robert Mann)
Calling this a documentary would be something of a misnomer, it’s more of a love letter. The film is not much concerned with who Altman was as a person, it is rather concerned with who he was as an Artist and what his Art means to both the film industry and his family. And it …
Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who (2007, Paul Crowder, Murray Lerner, Parris Patton)
This is a fawning, awkward fluff piece of one of the greatest bands to come out of the British Invasion. I love The Who – there was probably a time in my life when they were my favourite band – but this film feels like the Official Version, something vetted by Daltrey and Townshend so …
Speed Sisters (2015, Amber Fares)
This is an entertaining and captivating documentary about the Palestinian women’s car racing team, who supply their own cars, who race against men (and each other) and who practice in empty parking lots and on local streets.
War of Lies (2014, Mathias Bittner)
Let’s get this out of the way: This is a student film. The director freely admitted last night that he made this as his graduation “project” for film school. When he said that before the movie, my expectations lowered considerably. I am always wary of first time directors. And there are definitely signs that this …
Killer Legends (2014, Joshua Zeman)
I remember sort of enjoying Cropsey, finding it kind of frustratingly made, but compelling enough to give it a pretty decent rating. I didn’t write a review, so I have no idea exactly what I liked/disliked about it. But watching this film, which could be called Cropsey II, I worry I was far too generous.
The Age of Stupid (2009, Franny Armstrong)
Somewhere in this movie there are the makings of a great “message” documentary about climate change. With some more money and a different “director” – if it was indeed directed by one person – maybe this could be the movie they wanted it to be, the movie some critics apparently thought they saw. But this …
20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)
This is an interesting and affecting, if oddly structured, documentary about what it’s like to be a backup singer. I say oddly structured because it starts out seemingly to be a history of the backing vocalist in rock music, but then it turns out to be the personal stories of a few of the pioneering …
The Universe: Cosmology Quest (2004, Randall Meyers)
Full disclosure: I never once took physics in high school and I certainly never took physics after that. My math background is so far in my past that I cannot rely on it. So you have to take everything I have to say about the physics of this film with a giant grain of salt. …
Virunga (2014, Orlando von Einsiedel)
This is an important film that is only slightly marred by it’s clunky approach but is nevertheless essential viewing and an important document, not just of one of the innumerable conflicts between conservation and natural resource development, but also of the bravery required to to do the “right thing” in the face of overwhelming pressure …
The Act of Killing (2012, Joshua Openheimer, Anonymous, Christine, Cynne)
Western religion, philosophy and even early psychology tells us that the world is made up of good and bad people, and their goodness and badness is based on some a priori concept of good and bad. Of course, this flies in the face of our daily experiences: people we label “bad” do good things (which …
Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013, Frank Pavich)
This is a fascinating movie about one of the most important films to never get made. (If you think that’s hyperbole, you learn at the end that it probably isn’t.)
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014, Ken Burns)
This is a very detailed and in depth documentary that attempts to link Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt not so much as a political dynasty but as men bent on the same mission.
Room 237 (2012, Rodney Ascher)
This is a fascinating and alternatively infuriating and hilarious film – depending on your mood, I would think. It’s a film that exposes the problems with the “Close Reading” of texts (books, film, other forms of art) without directly telling you that it’s problematic. (This is, in my mind, one of the film’s virtues). The …
The 50 Year Argument (2014, Martin Scorsese, David Tedeschi)
Scorsese and Tedeschi’s film about the New York Review of Books is not a documentary about the magazine so much as it is a love letter to it. (To be fair, in the subsequent conversation, Scorsese said he wasn’t interested in “conventional” documentaries – that is documentaries as journalism. Rather he wants to make Cinema.) …
Natural Resistance (2014, Jonathan Nossiter)
I thoroughly enjoyed Mondo Vino and so I guess I was looking for more of the same. Well this is a very different film (as well it should be).
Hot Coffee (2011, Susan Saladoff)
Full disclosure: I was once a drinker of the “frivolous law suits” koolaid and, if I am not mistaken, I may have even mentioned in my first book that I thought judges should make decisions on “non economic” damages in civil suits.
Jazz (2001, Ken Burns)
Jazz is a noble attempt to be the defining documentary about jazz, “America’s art music” and one of the greatest things to happen in human history, in my humble opinion.