Tag: Documentary

What the world needs now is a strong female role model to look up to. Someone who is breaking grounds, doing what she wants, and kicking ass all at the same time.

What the world needs now is Aisholpan Nurgaiv. AKA The Eagle Huntress. AKA our new rallying cry.

The Eagle Huntress takes us to Mongolia, in the smaller villages and in the mountains, where natives have lived there for thousands of years. And that is where the great tradition of hunting foxes with trained eagles has been thriving for a very long time.

These proud and noble hunters are few and far in between, normally passing on the skills from father to son. Not everyone can hunt with eagles. It takes time, patience, and of course, being taught. Most people are farmers, or regular hunters, or people with real goddamn jobs.

And Aisholpah is the oldest child in her family, where her father, Rys Nurgaiv, is an eagle hunter. She has always been fascinated by the eagles and has helped raise a few with her dad. But now she is coming of age, she is 13, and she wants an Eagle of her own. She wants to train it, to hunt with it, and to enter competitions with it.

Spoilers

But of course, in her part of the world, everyone is very conservative. The “village elders” in there are shown to be very against the idea of a GIRL becoming a Hunter. Women are weak and frail. Women need to be farming and cooking. Women cannot handle the eagle or handle the cold. And all of that. They were all shown to be quite angry basically. It is great that Aisholpan lives in such a progressive for the area family.

And yeah, they say screw you. Aisholpan gets her own baby eagle with the help of her dad. She trains the eagle. She goes to competitions. And she goes on hunts with it. Not just women power. Power in goddamn general.

The documentary is narrated by Daisy Ridley, who is also the executive producer, and putting her Star Wars fame to good use right away.

I was awed by some of the scenes, wondering how they could get such great shots in the cold wintry mountains of Mongolia. Eagles taking flight, fighting with foxes. And shit, when she stole the eagle babies? That was downright terrifying and exciting all at the same time.

This documentary does what documentaries really need to start doing again. Telling a great story around the world for people to learn from and for us to get inspired by. If Aisholpan can fight the patriarchy all on her own, what can you do in your own first world home? If Aisholpan can achieve her dreams at such a young age, then why are you still on Reddit?

Go out and do awesome things. It is what Aisholpan would want of you.

And as of this movie, one of my goals is to get one of those super sweet fox pelt outfits that the hunters get. So goddamn sexy, if not warm.

I almost spent money to see Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. I almost drove up to a theater this summer to see it. I figured it would be a review I needed on my website, or at least needed before the Election.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew it was by Dinesh D’Souza, who made America: Imagine The World Without Her. A very biased and terrible documentary that was so grotesque with its misinformation and style that it made my Worst Films of 2014 list. It was so strange to see a documentary that turned into a hit piece against Clinton in 2014.

Because this year having one makes a lot more sense. Needless to say, I went into this documentary with very low expectations and ready to hate it given my experience. Since the last one turned out to just be a big anti-Clinton thing, I didn’t know what this one would even say given his attacks two years ago.

I mean, he couldn’t just make something that said the exact same thing for 100+ minutes right?

You’d be surprised

A lot of this documentary is actually a dramatization about D’Souza’s life. Why? Because he wants to be famous and doesn’t care a lot about this shit. That is my guess. It starts with him going to prison for campaign fraud reasons. He says he went to prison for attacking Obama in a documentary, but doesn’t disagree that what he did is technically illegal. Instead, blaming the president.

In prison he gets to teach English to immigrants. And then he talks to inmates about why they are in jail, including someone who did prison fraud. Again, all of this is reenactment of prison, not actual footage or anything, so who knows what he wanted to make up about it.

About 40 minutes of the documentary are about him in prison, talking to people, and finding out the history of the democratic party. One of his biggest issues is Andrew Jackson, who did bad things to Native American, and calls him a champion for the Democratic Party. Except, you know, most liberal-esque people seem to hate him for the exact same reasons and no one calls him a champion.

Then the documentary says that the big switch after the civil rights movements was a lie. Even though yes, clearly policy has changed. I guess the biggest point about this is that despite current policy of a party in terms of social rights, D’Souza says it doesn’t count, because of Civil Rights votes and Jackson. Yeah.

And then some attacks of Clinton, emails and her foundation. The end. After a grossly patriotic ending, with flags and choruses and an orchestra. He wants them to know he cannot vote because of his crime. Even though the party he is pissed at is the one trying to make it so he can vote. Go figure.

I am an independent voter and I hate shit like this on both sides equally. But for whatever reason D’Souza keeps making bad documentaries, with lies, mostly reenactments, and a lot of hatred. So I will hate it right back.

Lately I feel I have seen a lot of social rights documentaries, including the blight of the black man or woman in America. It has definitely grown in recent years, from learning of prison/arrest rates, to news reports, to the war on drugs, to civil rights, to modern slavery. Heck, I just did O.J.: Made In America.

So initially I didn’t want to see 13th. I figured it would just be more of the same of other recent documentaries, or a more detailed Last Week Tonight With John Oliver segment. But the reason I finally picked it up is because it was nominated for a Spirit award for Best Documentary and likely also for the Oscars.

Thankfully it is one of the many Netflix documentaries, and while watching it I felt like I was hit over the head, in a good way. It is only around 100 minutes long, but I could not look away. I wanted to play phone games or write while I watched, but it was impossible. And once I found out it was directed by Ava DuVernay it all made sense.

And this isn’t even the most powerful imagery the film has.

DuVernay recently directed Selma and a few other smaller things, but 13th elevates her to a whole knew level. I have never seen such a modern, information packed documentary like this one. It is so dense and factual, with archival footage, expert testimony, law wording, and more. It is basically impossible to argue against it (if you felt like arguing). It started with the 13th amendment getting into a law, jim crow laws, the modern civil rights era and how that led to the war on drugs and the sudden increases in mass incarceration of black men.

Not only that, but it seemed to do it all in the first thirty minutes.

It became modern quickly, including why Bill Clinton signed the bill that increased prison rates even further, the entire political climate of the time, up to the Black Lives Matter movement (that totally started this year). Fuck, it is relevant and informative.

13th is just a documentary that everyone in their life should see. They should go in with an open mind, free of distractions, and be ready to change some of their perceptions of the American dream and reality. On that note, I didn’t think that DuVernay should have been nominated for Best Director for Selma. But I sort of feel it is warranted for this documentary. 13th is so good, I can’t even spend more time talking about it. Just go see it, please.

Zero Days is an ominous sounding title. Fuck! When did the countdown start? Why am I already at zero?

Something about the title makes it feel like a count down versus the beginning of a count, which is interesting enough on its own. It just screams out negativity.

It turns out the term zero days refers to a malware attack on a computer. It is an unknown type of attack, that affects the entity as soon as it could possibly be known. There is no time to prepare before the attack begins, and you have to just start dealing with it while trying to fix it at the same time. It is technically rare, as most forms of attack are known and can be dealt with before the attack begins.

But what if you have a program on your computer with multiple zero days attached to it? That would be unheard of. And the documentary starts with a talk about Stuxnet, a malware discovered a few years ago with four zero day fronts on it, all around the world.

Unfortunately no, it doesn’t take on human forms and take over that way.

Long story short, Stuxnet was a form of cyberwarfare. The first one ever discovered, but probably not the first one implemented. And it was made in the US and Israel, to target the Iranian nuclear program, and sort of blow it all up from inside with their own tech.

Cool right?!

Given this, the documentary is also about cyberwarfare in general, the history of Iranian nuclear power and US-Iran relations, how other forms of warfare were implemented and so on. It isn’t just on the one very powerful and very specific malware.

And you know what? Zero Days felt like it was all over the place. The beginning was instantly very tech heavy and honestly, I got lost right away. It got better eventually. We got some very powerful testimonies from people who made Stuxnet, from people in the government programs and more. That part of Zero Days is fascinating.

When I say it is all over the place, it is all technically related, it just feels like several different mini documentaries put together almost. It has some good parts, but some parts that just feel above my complete comprehension. So with that, I have to knock it down a bit.

When I heard that American Crime Story was announced, I assumed I would just ignore it. It seemed like it just wanted to sound similar to American Horror Story and who cares after that. Well, I am glad I watched Season 1, The People vs O.J. Simpson, because it was phenomenial television, I learned a lot, and I am happy to see it won so many awards.

And my watching of ACS was just one of the reasons I was trying to ignore O.J.: Made In America. One, why would I watch a documentary series that I just saw play out with actors? It would feel repetitive. Two, I haven’t watched really any of the 30 for 30 movies, let alone a special that lasted almost 8 hours. Three, I have too many movies to watch, and a few shows, so this would take the place of almost four films. Gah!

And then I found out that despite it being in my eyes a TV series, it fits all the criteria for Oscars documentary. It premiered at Sundance (all of it!), it was in theaters in NY and LA (all of it!), and fuck, it will probably be nominated, so I probably just need to bite the damn bullet, and watch this documentary. Of course I decided to do it over five days, allowing myself to just do one at a time, but it was still a major time commitment, and as you can see, I still didn’t even give it a 4 out of 4!

Can’t win ’em all OJ.

With a documentary I still cannot say a whole lot. With this “series” we get to see more than ACS gave us, which was just from murder to end of a trial. A whole hour and a half were focused on O.J. Simpson during his college and NFL career. WHY he became a big name. The next 90 minutes focused on his post NFL career, into acting, commercials, and being a celebrity, along with meeting his wife Nicole and the abuse in their relationship.

Parts 3 and 4 deal mostly with the trial, the death, the lead up, the bigger events, and the final part deals with the results, the after math, another civil law suit, and the events that actually eventually put OJ in jail.

A wild and long ride if anything, and hell, I did learn a lot. The first two parts became the most important for me, given what I knew about the trials from pop culture and current events. The whole thing was mostly laid against racism in LA at the time, to show how the communities reacted and felt about the police at the time and WHY he was acquitted in the end. Hell, we got testimony from a few of the jury members too, a nice behind the scenes look.

But the last fifth took a huge toll on my patience. It seemed to drag. And yeah, I didn’t know that he was in jail now or why he was arrested, but the build up to that moment took so long and felt so damn confusing. I had very little idea what was actually happening, as it was being told from so many different point of views.

This is an extremely in depth (obviously) and important documentary, and can teach you a lot about the world dealing with just one case. But maybe it was too long. Maybe it wasn’t even long enough, and that would explain my confusion at the end. Regardless, it is worth the time for those who want to put the time in. And getting to see comments from Marcia Clark was also a fantastic add on.

Did you read my review of Detropia? No? Of course not. And don’t worry, it wasn’t the best review.

Because when I wrote that review, my heart wasn’t into it. Into the film or the writing. It just was there. I watched it a month ago, saddened, because I was hoping to see a new documentary that caught my eye instead. Audrie & Daisy. Just something I found by googling new documentaries on Netflix, except I was a month early. Argh, but the topic was interesting to me!

What is the topic? Well, sexual assault of course!

Oh, erm. Technically not the topic to get very excited for, but given certain documentaries recently like The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War, they tend to hit hard and be really well made.

Audrie & Daisy is a documentary trying to slow it down a bit. We aren’t going to talk about a dozen different stories, just mainly two stories. Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman, two girls who were both in high school with unfortunately very different results.

One again, a documentary where I have to basically just use the poster/cover because everything else would be boring.

I won’t tell you the details, but yes, things don’t end well. Like, at all. First of course there is rape involved. Not really a good start to any story. Alcohol was involved, they were both underage and consent could not be given in their conditions, but people took advantage of them.

They also decided to not just hide their case either. They went public about it, to the cops, and their lives were practically ruined because of it. Online harassment, friends harassment, people calling them names in school because the boys involved were athletes. The police not believing them, working slowly, or not giving correct results maybe because a boy is related to a politician. You know, the usual terrible stuff.

And guess what? This documentary will make you feel bad and make you feel angry. Angry at a whole lot of people, but also angry that women everywhere have to put up with this sort of stuff if they want to bring up transgressions against them.

Again, keeping it vague so you can find out the whole story, but it is worth a watch and the details will piss you off. Even when people serve time, it isn’t enough and too late.

My only issue with the documentary as a whole is that by making it about two people, yes we got very good details on their case and yes we got how they were “related,” but it feels like it is just missing more. More statistics, more talk with people who are experts, just something. I need more than people just talking about terrible events and offering temporary solutions to make it a truly great documentary.

But it is worthy of a watch, and being straight on Netflix, everyone will have an opportunity to see it before awards season.

Werner Herzog is kind of a big deal.

If you aren’t familiar with his name, you have probably heard of some of his work. He directed Grizzly Man, Into The Abyss, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, among many many many documentaries. He has been around for awhile and puts out some high quality work.

So I was ecstatic to be given a screening of his latest documentary. And half of my excitement came from the name itself. Lo And Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. Shit that is powerful. I don’t even know what it is about but I was right there with him.

It turns out this is Herzog’s attempt to tackle this crazy newfangled thing called “The Internet” and no, not the inner netting used to line swim trunks for a comforting snugness. No, the regular Internet we all use and love to read reviews on this website.

Of course he starts quickly with how the internet came about and thus, how our movie title came about. Apparently the first message sent from a computer to another computer was in fact, Lo and Behold, a great message for what they knew at the time meant something great.

But history schmistory, where are we at now?

Monks on twitter, yeah, that makes sense.

And without going into extreme detail, we then get to look at people who have revolutionized the simplicity of the internet and gone on to do great things. The people who are attempting to do better things. The people who are changing the world every day.

But also the negative aspects of the internet, sort of how fast a photo can spread, but not the lame way kids try to do it. In regards to graphic dead photos, because dead people have no rights (yay America!)!

And honestly, this is not the type of documentary one can really talk that much about. They are just stories about the extremes and future of the internet. Honestly, based on the description, I thought this documentary would be something completely different. I thought it would involve how small village communities in Asia and Africa had become connected, and how the internet is changing everything.

It covers some of that, but not in as much sexy detail as I would have liked. And sure, some of these people and stories I have already heard, as a denizen of the internet myself. And eventually I might have paid a bit less attention, but only for a bit, as they jump around enough to new topics to keep my interest.

This is a pretty good documentary and highlights a lot of aspects of the internet that people probably don’t know. Is it as good as his other works? No, of course not. But it is still high quality and worthy of at least one viewing.

For those avid readers of Gorgon Reviews, you might think this documentary sounds familiar. Well, first of all, thank you to the three of you. Second of all, you are thinking about Schooled: The Price of College Sports, which was about the exploitation of college athletes for profit.

This is The Business of Amateurs, which is about the exploitation of college athletes for profit and other reasons!

Now obviously this is a subject I am already immensely passionate about it. I have gotten into arguments about it in real life. I have even read a book on the subject, which is a big commitment for me. There is no good reason for people to be brought to colleges, controlled 100% of their time, make the college millions, while not earning a livable wage, getting educated, or being able to have other jobs or use their success for their gain.

And yeah, The Business of Amateurs is another documentary about the subject. But like I said, it is different. It is more than just the moral reasons why people shouldn’t be exploited that way. They go into some science. And the documentary is written, directed, and narrated by Bob DeMars, a former college football player, so it is also a bit more personal.

Looking closely at the cover, I found myself a little bit moved.

Remember the movie Concussion? The film that was supposed to shake the NFL and bring the truth, but was extremely watered down, if not well acted? Well, this documentary goes a lot into health as well.

We have players who are not making money, who have to practice daily for hours, play in games, hitting their head over and over again. The majority of them are not going to the NFL, will not be making big bucks, and they are potentially setting themselves up for brain damage, depression, and a young death.

Couple that with scholarships that can be taken away if you are injured, and you got a system that cares not at all for the athletes that show up. They drop you as soon as you are hurt, and won’t help you when you have bigger problems in the future for work you did for them.

But I don’t want to get too specific into all of the details.

This documentary has a lot of interesting information and I don’t want to go over all of it. I clearly loved it, but it had some minor issues. It is very clearly an amateur film (about amateurs!), some scenes aren’t well polished, some just scream out indie. This is only important in that other scenes are very well, so the disconnect is felt as it goes back and forth.

Additionally, the documentary doesn’t talk about sports outside of Football and Basketball, the big money earners. We get to hear about how some real life athletes outside of the top two are affected after their education, but they don’t go into how those programs are funded and how they could survive if the players earned some damn income relative to the income they bring in. It was more noticeable thanks to going to the NCAA museum where they showed many sports, but again, didn’t really talk about them.

Either way, this is another documentary, and many more people, explaining why the current system is fucked up, and maybe, eventually, more people will realize it.

I didn’t want to watch Detropia. I wanted to watch a different documentary that sounded depressing and sad and anger inducing, but it wasn’t available. So Detropia was my number two documentary choice, because based on the subject, sure, it is a bit depressing. Fingers crossed I get the other documentary by the end of this year.

Detropia is a Detroit + Dystopia (or Utopia, both work, but let’s go with the D theme). That is because Detroit got royally fucked. With the economic crash (which you can learn a lot more with the movie The Big Short), in 2007 and 2008, a lot of shit started to hit the fan. One of those fan hits came from the auto industry which was a big part of the Detroit economy. But don’t worry! Much like the bank industries, a bailout was received from the company to save the auto industry and the economy.

Except there was a few stipulations. Like, changing the minimum wage for upcoming hires despite the union and laying off a lot of workers. And when a lot of people become unemployed, a lot of bills go unpaid. When a lot of mortgages go unpaid (also part of this crisis), people move and leave areas. Detroit lost a lot of people, off the top of my head, maybe half of their populations.

Buildings were abandoned and the city became bankrupt. And shit, things just got worse.

Apparently these asshats from The Purge movies showed up.

The documentary ends up examining just a few different lives. A guy who owns a struggling night club hang out spot, just down the road from an auto plant. A guy who is the local president of the auto workers union. And a girl who is a video blogger or something. We also get highlights of a few performance artists, and people who moved to the city just to do bigger art projects. There are also some town hall meetings and discussion about what to do about the failing city, struggling neighborhoods and lack of funds.

And you know what else? There is no narrator. There are no flashes to experts to explain details. There is the occasional text on the screen, but other than that, the story of Detropia is just about people. People telling their real stories and showing their real struggles.

It is definitely a fascinating and current subject to highlight, but at the same time, I wanted more. I want to know a lot more people affected, those people struggling to survive, those who had to leave, those in the government, who knows.

The documentary highlights a shitty thing happening, but it doesn’t try to provide answers, predict the future or anything. It just seems like an incomplete film. (Yes, Detroit is still in shambles so that part isn’t conclusive. And no, documentaries do not have to fix their issues). It just seemed like a strange ending and didn’t leave me with a lot to take from it.

At most, this could serve as a stepping off point for those who literally know nothing about Detroit’s current struggles. But it doesn’t go over all of the cities struggles. For instance, the Detroit Red Wings were unable to sign Stamkos, will they ever get an elite goal scorer ever again?

I haven’t talked a long time about the last spirit awards. You know, the independent film awards that takes place the day before the Oscars? Where most of the winners are actually movies up for Oscars as well?

I tried to watch a lot of them, but after the awards, yeah, I cared less. But I really wanted to see (T)error, one of the films up for Best Documentary. Title wise, it looked interesting, but I just had no way of seeing it. Thankfully, end of June Netflix added it to its roster. And yes, it took me a whole month still to watch and review it, but that is because I was hit with an influx of documentaries in theaters that sent me screeners.

Needless to say, when I finally made time to watch it, I was very excited. I didn’t even try to write another review during it. Hell, I didn’t even multi task and watch the Olympics during it. Just me and a documentary, full screen, subtitles up just in case, ready.

And also, just to be clear, about 20 minutes into it, I thought about stopping it for the night and reading instead. But I will get into that with more detail later.

Just what is (T)error about? Well the filmmakers were friends with Saeed Torres, and eventually, they found out that one of his jobs was actually as an FBI informant. He was a Muslim in real life and was very devout, but he also infiltrated specific Muslim sects in America when they needed him, to get information on suspected terrorists. Well, Saeed was thinking about finally stopping this job, he was tired of it. So sure, he let them film his perceived last “mission” and he didn’t tell the FBI he was going to do it.

This isn’t the face of terrorism, this is just a troll on the internet. Come on, FBI.

The man above is Khalifah al-Akili, American born, raised Protestant, and later turned Muslim and got really into it. Sure, he might have gotten a bit to into the Jihad side of it. He had a lot of books on guerrilla warfare, military tactics, and more, but was he a terrorist? Was he going to attack America?

That is what Saeed, or Shariff (his undercover name) had to find out. That meant moving into his community, going to his mosque, befriending him, and yeah, eventually finding out how serious he was about the whole thing. While the FBI prodded Saeed along, making him ask more and more invasive questions while also making harsher and more direct suggestions to Khalifah.

And well, I won’t go into any more of it. Because things started to get really crazy. Or upsetting. And shocking. And it went to 11 and at that point, yes, then I could no longer look away.

Like I suggested early, the documentary started off slow. And yes, it was one of my biggest issues with it and enough to knock it a point down the rating. It started out excited, but got bored with the early aspects of him heading to find Khalifah, with his past history, etc. But god damn did it get really good. Like, really really good. Like, more people should see this damn documentary.

We got shady government actions and more folks. If you are one of the people who binged Making a Murderer, you would love this documentary as well. It goes places I didn’t think possible, while maintaining its credibility as non involved documentary people. Sort of.

And yet, I almost stopped it earlier on to go read.