Tag: Documentary

With The Look of Silence, I will have completed all of the nominated documentaries for the 2016 Academy Awards!

This was the hardest one to find to watch and prepare for. Thankfully, Amazon Prime eventually had it available to rent.

If you didn’t see a month ago, I reviewed The Act of Killing, nominated a few years ago for best documentary (and losing to a music based Twenty Feet From Stardom). The Look of Silence is basically a sequel to that documentary. Yes, apparently documentaries can have sequels.

If you saw The Act of Killing, you will have learned that 50 years ago, there was a genocide in Indonesia. The people rebelled and the military took over, and all of the communists were killed. Communists are of course a loose term, and many thousands of people were slaughtered or raped. The people who did the killing became rich and are still the people leading the country politically today. And those people, for the most part, are PROUD of their acts.

It was really fucked up overall, and totally should have won that year.

So the director is back, with the sequel, to continue the story, but in a new way. (Which is good, no one likes the same fucking movie).

Look how fucking bored that guy is, watching the same movie twice.

Last time we talked with the killers, and for the most part, they showed no remorse. This time, our main character is Adi Rukun (seen above). He wasn’t born when the killing was taken place, but his brother Ramli was alive. He was also killed in a brutal fashion, despite just being a child and clearly not a communist. Because they felt like it. Adi is now an adult and has known about his brother’s death before, but thanks to Joshua Oppenheimer (the director), he has detailed information on exactly how and why his brother died. How so? From the killers, who explained the whole thing, and it was even written down in a book.

Now, Adi and his family are obviously not okay with any of this, but there is basically nothing they can do. Adi is an optometrist, and I guess they use that as a way for him to confront both the killers of his family, and people who killed in general. Offering them free glasses to help the vision and stuff.

So this time, outside of more backstory and information, a lot of it is just Adi talking to these people, asking hard questions and confronting them on their past. It is brutal. It is intense. And people don’t take these accusations kindly, and especially get pissed off at their past being brought up. They’d rather just forget the whole thing.

This documentary was fantastic. These are real people, a real genocide, and talking very uncomfortably about it all. This is the stuff that creates great drama, and it is on a subject people in the West know very little about.

Fuck, it was hard to make my eyes look away.

And I am annoyed, because most likely Amy will win Best Documentary. But I have put this film and Winter on Fire above it, because they were fan-fucking-tastic and important. I liked Amy, sure, but these documentaries feel so much more important. And I will be extremely disappointed if Oppenheimer loses a second time to a music bio documentary.

Oooh, something about Ukraine. In Ukrainian!

I didn’t know what to expect about Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom. If I had to guess, maybe about how Russia was fucking it over? Technically, that happens all the time, so it wasn’t so specific. But I meant when Russia came and took Crimea from Ukraine, like, last year or whenever.

But no! It takes before that!

You see, Ukraine has a lot of problems since its independence in 1991. But damn it, they were a free country. They just had some kinks to work out. Their eventual goal would be to join the EU, which is why in 2013 they voted in a President Viktor Yanukovych. He ran on a campaign to get them into the EU.

Unfortunately, the President in November of 2013 refused to sign the agreements that he promised. Partially due to Russia, who was laying down some harsh trade restrictions against Ukraine, because Russia is a dick. Either way, public opinion on him quickly turned. That night, hundreds of college aged Ukrainians in Kiev went to the Maidan Nezalezhnosti central square. They peacefully protested and demanded that the government sign the agreements and start them on their journey to join the EU.

And then the police got involved. Most notably the Berkut, which is like the police special forces there who work for the government. They attacked the peaceful protesters because the President told them to, which really caused everything to escalate.

I assume you remember the documentary had fire in the title?

From there, the protest moved to a cathedral where they could block the gates from the police and seek sanctuary. Word got out of the protests and more came. Food was donated, clothes, medical supplies. Doctors donated their time to help those hurt. And then they went back to the square.

Needless to say, the police kept trying to fuck things up. The same night UK/US delegates came to Ukraine to try and find a peaceful resolution, the Berkut launched a late night sneak attack to wipe everyone out of the area, which now had barricades and a lot of set up.

And of course, eventually the protesters fought back. They marched peacefully to the Parliament, and of course were fucked over, which started an almost war between the two sides. The protesters weren’t just college students by now. They were kids. They were old people. They were average blue collar workers. There were just a shit ton of police/Berkut and hired Thugs to try and fight the spirit out of the protesters.

Needless to say, I won’t describe it any more, but the protest lasted almost 100 days, with a lot of violence, death, and hopelessness. This documentary has footage throughout their protest, taken and compiled to show the story of how some youths decided to hold a revolution. After all, these kids were born in a free Ukraine, and they refused to let their freedom go.

The documentary is not for the faint of heart. There is a shit ton of footage of police brutality, people getting critically injured, and I am guessing I saw people get killed as well. It was so powerful and hard to look away. Which is good, since it was subtitled, and looking away would be detrimental to your viewing experience.

After this, I only have one more documentary that was nominated for Best Doc, but as of now, this is my favorite documentary of 2015 and I sure hope it wins.

Seriously though. What Happened, Miss Simone?

You used to be there, now you aren’t! That is why Maya Angelou asked this question in a poem.

Honestly though, before this documentary, I don’t think I ever heard of Nina Simone. The only reason I decided to watch this one was because it was one of the few documentaries nominated that I had not already seen. And a Netflix original at that. I honestly swore I was done with these sorts of documentaries for 2015.

You know the type. Musical biographical documentaries. 2015 was full of them, and I think there was a three or four week span on this website where the documentary in question was about a famous celebrity or musician. I am sick of them.

Nina Simone was black and a classically trained pianist. She was trained by two rich white women who took a fancy on her, despite the quite segregated times. She also began to sing over music eventually, despite that not being true to her training. And hey, then she played jazz. She had a soulful voice and America fell in love with her. She was in fact the first black pianist to play at Carnegie Hall, one of her life long dreams.

And then things started to change.

Her hair grew as expansive as her talent!

What Happened, Miss Simone? is of course a documentary about her life. It lets us know about the birth of her daughter, spousal abuse, over working, switching from Jazz to political/protest music, her super involvement in the Civil Rights, her leaving of America, more abuse, and the end of her life with music and touring. A pretty broad spectrum. If it was a real movie about her life, then it would probably only be about 1 random year of her life during the civil rights instead of all this other stuff!

There were some good moments sure. When the abuse and political songs started. We had interviews from her daughter and could hear stories of Simone hanging out with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and more. It was also interwoven through live performances of some of her songs, back in the day. We are talking old school video recordings. They were neat.

If I had any real issues with the documentary, it just took me a long time to get into it. The early parts of her life and first 20-30 minutes seemed to drag for me. The other strange point is that the documentary did a good job of highlighting all the struggles in her life. All the bad things that happened to her and her depression. But, given the title and how they worded it, including letting her abuser talk in the documentary, it seemed to just make her a giant victim in the whole documentary.

I think it should have done a better job of celebrating her life and showing how strong she was to get through things. Instead it focused on her weak times not her strong times. Maybe that makes a more intriguing story, but to me it doesn’t do a lot of justice to someone who was actually really important for the civil rights.

I guess I am surprised this documentary was chosen as a nominee over a few many others I have seen this year. Oh well, on to the next one!

Now that I have a new baby, my wife and I are trying to figure out what her future will be. You know, will she be good at sports or school? Will she be a gymnast or a singer? Will she like bugs or kitties? You know, the normal things. Because if a parent can do anything, it is force their own ideas and beliefs onto their baby and shape them how they want, right? I think that is right.

So I definitely wanted to see the documentary Trophy Kids. I figured it would teach me how to make my child into a future super star. That way she can earn millions of dollars doing sports stuff (Even though no women outside of like 5 make millions I think) and I can retire early because of it. That sure would be swell.

But of course that is not what this documentary is about. Hell, it isn’t about athletes who were Trophy Kids or Trophy Kids currently in training. Nope, it is about the parents. It is about the lengths they will go to for their child to succeed. And by lengths, I mean how dickish, angry, and abusive will these adults be to their kids in order for them to be scared into doing things correctly.

After all, yelling at your kid five feet away from them, in the stands, and on the side line will totally improve their performance. It is easy to listen to your parents shrieking voices with all the other sports distractions around you.

In Trophy Kids, we examine several different sports and aged kids, and how all their parents are more or less the same.

There is no crying in baseball, but there is crying in golf.

The one parent who is slightly different from the rest was a very religious mom with twin boys, who was training them to be future Doubles Tennis champions. She talked a lot about Jesus and their path, and they were all freakishly nice. That one wasn’t too bad I guess.

Everyone else? A guy who divorced his wife and forced their kid to move with him in high school to focus on his football training. After all, his wife is making him too feminine. Pictured above is a dad with a golf prodigy daughter who could put and hit at 3 years old. She doesn’t like him as her caddy.

And the other main story is dealing with two dads who have sons in high school basketball. Since their youth, they have had personal trainers, height training, and of course actual basketball training. Basically a full time job. And their dads get to go and yell a lot during high school match ups and get coaches fired. Thanks dads!

The documentary starts off a bit slow but ramps up after a halfway mark. Hell, if they could have just spread out a lot more of the intensity, this might have ended up as a 4 for me. There is one extremely powerful scene with the football dad in a car ride. It starts off simple and then suddenly everything is switched to 11, and suddenly, child abuse. It was surprisingly how long that scene in particular was and how messed up in the head the dad actually ended up being.

But really, shit, I just feel bad for the kids. They all want to do good and live up to their parents expectations, but of course the expectations always get raised and they are never satisfied. It is sad for them and when we get to see where a few of them place after the fact, it is just sad. Damn documentaries, making me feel emotions.

History is fucked up. There are so many fucky things that occured, learning about them all in school would probably inflect serious depression on the youth of the world and not lead to a happy future.

But that doesn’t mean we can ignore history. We have to take things that are relevant and have strict meaning to our world today. No one should care about a big village wiped out 2,000 years ago in Spain. That is not something relatable. But genocides over the last 50-100 years probably should qualify as important events to learn about. After all, if we ignore them, then the people who committed these genocides would live out their lives knowing they could do it again and never be punished. The Holocaust sucked, but the world is bigger than central Europe.

Military coups everywhere and lots of dictators and mass killings, especially during the cold war. You know, the one without the war? Tons of people died.

Like in Indonesia, in 1965-1966, where a failed military coup occurred, and then what was left over allowed fear to run the country. So street gangsters were able to form death squads that killed almost a million people. Which people? Communist people! And they also extorted Chinese people out of money to protect their shops. It was a bad year with a lot of blood shed and a lot of fucks not given.

In The Act of Killing, the director of this film goes to modern day Indonesia, to talk to these people who helped commit the atrocities.

Thankfully they loved to talk about it.

A documentary from these men’s point of view is already an almost insane idea. But the men involved are bragging about what they did, for the most part feeling no remorse and feeling like the heroes of their own life story.

But no, the director wanted them to not just tell their story, but to show their story. He provided material for them to make a movie about the killings, how it happened, how they interpreted it, so they can show modern people about their past.

So intertwined between their stories we have these people choosing actors, acting out scenes, describing torture, you name it. It was such a strange juxtaposition but it helped perfectly capture just how warped their own realities were, along with their own justifications for the murders.

The Act of Killing is powerful, and it is a surprise it did not win Best Documentary its year at the Oscars. I eventually did see the winner, Twenty Feet From Stardom, and it cannot compare to the same level of significance, both socially or historically.

I didn’t ever plan on watching this documentary because subtitles and I felt lazy. I eventually did so because a companion documentary came out last year, The Look Of Silence, and I before I get my reviewer claws on it I need to do my appropriate research. And hey, this documentary was phenomenal. It feels like a must watch and it is already three years old.

It is a law older than time itself. If you find it, you can keep it. If you lose it, you can weep it. Possession is 9/10 of the law. Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

These rules get even more set in stone once an item is purchased. Obviously if you find it and buy it before someone else, it is definitely yours.

So Finders Keepers is a documentary that takes that concept to its most extreme. If you are American, you are familiar with Storage Wars and other shit reality TV. People who don’t pay their rent on their storage units can have it taken away from them and the contents sold to the highest bidder. Sometimes it is individual items, sometimes it is the whole unit, and you usually don’t have time to inspect.

If someone spent $50 and inside one of the boxes was $1,000 it would be a sweet buy. If it had a unique rare item they could sell, it would be a sweet buy. IF it had naked pictures of their own mother, it would be the worst money ever spent.

Well, Shannon Whisnant bought a grill. He loves buying things cheaply and reselling them for a profit. So he figured he could clean it up and make some nice bank. Instead, Whisnant finds a severed human foot.

Yeah! A real human foot! Clearly he would go back and return it and find the owner and talk about how awkward it was. But Whisnant wants to make money. So he calls the police, sure, but he wants the news to know too. And he can charge people money to see the foot, earn that sweet cash. But the cops confiscate it, not sure what to do. Fucking pigs man.

Fucking America though, right?

The foot belongs to John Wood, who lost it in an airplane crash. His dad was taking his family for a spin when they had to crash land, killing his dad and obviously losing his foot. Well, Wood wanted to be buried a full skeleton, so he was able to smuggle his leg out of the hospital.

Don’t worry, it isn’t completely gross. It was preserved in some way. But Wood was a druggie and after a big series of changes, he found himself not paying for the storage unit and he lost the leg.

This was apparently a big media frenzy, with both sides arguing for the leg. Whisnant clearly had solid ground to stand on, while the specifics of body parts in this way has never been put down in law before, so one can easily see why Wood should get it back.

And in the end, what I really learned from this documentary, that tells of their story throughout the whole time line, the resolution, and aftermath, is that Judge Mathis is fucking awesome. Yes, some reality show arbitration is used, but the Judge goes above and beyond in his ruling and makes me think he is awesome.

I am left thinking that Wood and Whisnant might be jerks, while also happy/sad what happened to them, but that Mathis is a bro in the best way.

The documentary itself is funny and sad. I am a bit confused as to why I had never heard of any of this happening, especially when I used to live in North Carolina where the foot was found. Maybe it was only a big deal in the western part of the state and not actually national news. But the story is a good one without a simple conclusion.

One of the more unique documentaries in a year full of bio-docs, and with a very reasonable running time of under 90 minutes.

Drugs are bad, mmkay. They put people in jail, they cost billions of dollars, they can lead to death via shootouts and they fund terrorist organizations. Sure, they can harm your body, but who cares about that? That shouldn’t be an issue.

In fact, if they were made legal, a lot of issues would go away. Shootouts will go down, jails would be emptied, they wouldn’t cost as much, and it wouldn’t help terrorist organizations. If the US just changed their mind and made it all government sanctioned, it would help a lot of crime ridden areas of the world.

Like Mexico. A lot of drugs are grown or manufactured there and brought over the border to be sold in America. They can use this money for weapons and political power, meaning drug cartels control large areas, both physically and through bribes. And that is what Cartel Land is about. Groups of people using force to win back their homes from the evils that threaten it.

And this man even has a doctorate.

The trick here is I said groups of people. We have a group in Michoacán, led by Dr. Jose Mireles, a small town doctor, who made a group named Autodefensas. They are just groups of locals who want to get the cartel, a group who calls themselves the Templars, out! They are all volunteers, still holding their normal jobs and lifestyles, but they also have shifts to keep perimeter checks after they forced the group out. Even better, they then take their work ethic and guns, go to nearby cities and villages, get the cartel out, and help the citizens set up their own Autodefensas group.

Then they leave. They aren’t looking to take over the whole area and rule it over their own corrupt national government.

On the other side of the coin and border, we also have Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran in Arizona who sees illegal immigrants crossing the border all the time. He helped set up a small paramilitary group to patrol the border and stop being from bringing drugs across the border. Both groups don’t like the drug war and what it is doing to their countries. And both are hated by various groups and government officials.

The best part of Cartel Land is how much access the documentary director had. He had to go to Mexico to work with Mireles and his Autodefensas, see them gain control back in an area, teach others, still live their lives with families, and also face extreme pressures from the Mexican government to stop.

Cartel Land is also mostly unbiased, letting the people tell their own stories and not offering judgments or concerns. It was a stark and real look at current affairs in Arizona and Mexico and is useful to help understand the plights of average citizens.

Another week, another documentary nominated for awards. I love this time of the year, by the way.

Meru was nominated for a Spirit award, and it only has four letters in the name. These are fun facts you may have already known!

Meru is part of the Indian Himalayas, but it is not Everest. It doesn’t have to be tallest for it to be important. Meru is a peak that was nicknamed “Shark’s Fin” for every reason you might guess. And it was also notable for having no confirmed climbs to the top. Sure people have tried, but it is an incredibly intense peak. It involves ice climbing, rock that shifts around when you move, hundreds of feet of steep vertical stuff. You name it.

It is a rock climbers dream and nightmare at the same time. Meru is a documentary filmed by three dudes who decided they would be the first to tackle it.

Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk.

Now it should be noted these aren’t just three random assholes. No, these guys are all very professional mountain climbers, some of the best in the world, and they are super serious. Some of them have wives and a family. Some of them can be pretty free spirited.

But in 2008 they decided to work together and take on Meru.

This is one of the biggest “NOPES” I could imagine after climbing a giant spider.

And they don’t make it to the peak. Shit sucks. But they recorded the attempt and it goes into the documentary. They brought their own cameras to do it all of course, because no fourth guy who isn’t a climber but good at holding cameras could even attempt to make it. After that they took a couple years to do other things, but they knew they’d try again in 2011 before it was too late.

I won’t talk more about their second attempt (and if they were the first to climb to the top). But I will talk about how the documentary goes over their own personal struggles before the second attempt.

Namely, one of them getting injured while snowboarding, with incredible head injuries, and only having about five months to recover before going back up. And another being covered by a giant avalanche and somehow getting out of it unscathed. Yeah, he is probably a super hero ala Unbreakable, I agree.

Either way, this is a good indie documentary in terms of people trying to do the unthinkable. The fact that they were able to put all their film together to piece together something remotely watchable is a testament to their drive, since none of them are professional filmmakers.

At the same time, it feels like it is just a bunch of people trying to climb a dangerous peak and glimpses into their climb. Is it impressive? Yes. But I am not a mountain enthusiast, so I still only found it slightly entertaining.

Back in the 1960’s there were just three networks. NBC. CBS. And way way below them, ABC. Sure it was third place, but it was shit with shit television.

They didn’t like being shit so they were doing their best to get their name on the map. And in 1968, the Republican and Democratic Conventions were all big news. TV and politics! How zany! NBC and CBS had lots of coverage of the Conventions planned for their programs, and ABC was kind of just standing off to the side trying to get into the same room.

So they were like, hey, let’s get two charismatic people. Not the people running for President, that’d be too hard. Let’s get two charismatic politicians, one democratic, one republican, and have them debate the issues on television.

This is an idea that has never been heard of before! Debates! And not the presidents! Just two allegedly smart people trying to show why one parties ideals were better.

And they were like fuck it, let’s do 10 of these, before and after the conventions. Let’s get Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. The Best of Enemies.

This ended up being big. Really big. Vidal is more famous, the Liberal, as he also wrote books and screenplays for film. He also had his own show after the debates to do debates with new people to get issues out.

These debates were so big, they can be pointed out for why political commentary exists today. This is why news stations have groups of people arguing about issues. Because us low non politicians love the shit out of these pundits.

Political commentary became big after it. The problem of course is it is less intellectual, features a lot more lying, and no one is having a real good honest debate.

But Vidal and Buckley started it. And one of them clearly one the debates, but I won’t spoil that. They are cool enough to have Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow as their voices though, when the need to read their written word arose. That is pretty bad ass.

Best of Enemies is on Netflix and up for and Indie Spirit award for Best Doc, and maybe an Oscar too. Either way, a very informative and good way to spend 90 minutes.

Apparently UNC Chapel Hill is the center of everything when it comes to colleges. They had all the sports scandals, and thus, were highly featured in several sports documentaries.

And now they find themselves featured highly in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape in college campuses. This documentary was made due to the positive response that The Invisible War received, about rape in the armed forces.

In case you didn’t know, yes, I did go to UNC Chapel Hill, so regardless of topic, it is always jarring seeing people walk around places I have walked, telling their stories. Now, sexual assault in colleges is a real issue and definitely not something anyone should take lightly. It is a real issue everywhere. But why is it potentially more prevelant in college?

Well, in college, you have thousands of young adults, making mistakes high on hormones. Access to drugs, and alcohol, when they aren’t legally to drink it for the most part and therefore go to excess because freedom and shit. Fraternities that haze their pledges by making them harass women, and sororities having rules forcing them to party and drink at fraternity parties. A lot of bad things. And you know, dudes who believe that no doesn’t mean no.

It centers a bit on UNC because two women, who had their plights ignored by administration, decided to check in the legality of their lack of effort. They decided to pursue their cases through the Board of Education as a Title IX complaint, noting that they are not making their campuses safe. If the college is found breaking Title IX, they would lose all government funding.

That is kind of a big deal for most universities, especially the public ones.

This documentary is chilling. Hearing these personal stories, seeing the alledged reactions from administrations and police, it is shocking. Basically, colleges don’t like reporting sexual assault numbers, because no one wants to be the school where people get raped. So instead, rape happens everywhere and is swept under the rug. This is especially true for when it happens to star football and basketball players. They won’t get in trouble until after an upcoming season or tournament. They might get suspended for 1 day or during the summer. They might get expelled after graduation, which means nothing.

But unfortunately, this documentary also has controversy. There were some emails that made interviews look sketch, and one of their crew members edited Wikipedia pages to make the stories match the documentary. Oh, because apparently not all of the stories they told in the documentary are factual and they are leaving out specific information that might make some of these cases not so clear cut anymore. Yes the articles I linked are biased, but they were reported elsewhere as well.

That makes me worried. Hell, while watching I was just waiting to see if they’d make a big deal out of that mattress girl, who was doing that bizarre senior thesis / point thing about carrying around the mattress that she was raped on everywhere because the school did nothing about it. They only showed her for like, 5 seconds near the end, not a big central piece, which is good since it looks like from anyone else looking at it that there was only consensual sex involved.

I don’t mean to get political, but I do hate it when a documentary, in an attempt to drive a single point home, ignores everything that might weaken their point. There is biases, and there is lying.

Rape in colleges is a problem. It happens a lot and administrations are not doing enough to combat it or punish those who have done the deeds.

But being sketchy in your documentary about it doesn’t fucking help.