Tag: Documentary

Introducing a new genre type to Gorgon Reviews. The Horror Documentary. One part documentary, one part bump in the night, and one part magic.

This is not a genre I could even imagine existed. Sure, maybe documentaries about scary subjects? But this one also has some tense moments in it as well, with looking at places at night, scary images, and of course, scary stories.

Killer Legends wants to talk about four urban legends in particular, discovering why they became popular, where the truth really lies, and why people still talk about them today.

The hosts are Rachel Mills and Joshua Zeman, two nobodies basically. Just the movie makers and inquires.

There were some cameos from some clowns and wolf heads too, of course.

The documentary looks into four urban legends. The Hook, escaped mental patient, going after lovers lane people. The Candy Man, the man who ruined Halloween, and how often your treats have poison and razor blades in them. Then the call from your own place, babysitters getting found and killed while they are watching (or not watching) the kids. And of course, killer clowns. Or at least clowns driving around Chicago neighborhoods in white vans, trying to abduct kids.

Some of these stories you may already know the inspiration behind, because who doesn’t know John Wayne Gacy? But I thought each section was very well researched, if not super editorialized with some awkward and unecessary statements. It put a lot of great info out there, in particular with the Hollyween candy. This is important information, so people can stop living in so much fear. It is the worst hearing about people bemoan about “society these days” and such. All of them just being falsely nostalgic.

Either way, I thought this documentary was informative and every so creepy. Learning about the legend of the hook was the most informative for me, and gave me new movies to look out for in the upcoming future.

Killing Legends is a very new documentary and an exciting one in my book.

How exciting. In this documentary, I am not looking at anything controversial, mind blowing, or society changing. I am just looking into the lives of three(/four) people. The lives of a few Indie Gamers.

In Indie Game: The Movie, we discuss three games in particular. Fez, Super Meat Boy, and Braid, which is exciting, given that I actually own all three of these games. And have played two of them. And have beaten one of them!

All big names in their own right in the indie game industry, I got these games through various Humble Bundles in the past and they are all pretty damn unique. They were all also in different stages of the process.

Braid during filming was one of the first really big critically acclaimed indie games and sort of set the bar for indie games to pass in the future. Super Meat Boy in this documentary is working on finishing up the game and goes through their release on Steam and XBox and the nerve wracking wait to see how they did.

And Fez. Oh Fez. Fez who in 2008 won an award for best game design based on a demo, and then spent years in development hell, always tweaking and fixing. Fez wasn’t released when the movie was, so with Fez we got to see part of the development process and what it can do to a single person with all this pressure.

Thankfully they work in an environment where pants are optional.

I was actually impressed that I found this documentary interesting. I thought it would involve a lot more technical elements and show coding and how things were done. That worried me a bit. But no, it was all about the people behind their games and their genuine reactions to the events unfolding around them.

The creator of Braid was known to search the web for message boards where they talked about his game, responding to people. He was upset that people didn’t see what he saw when talking about the best features and the meaning of his game.

The creator of Fez almost had a nervous breakdown on camera it looked like, as he talked about a business deal with an ex partner that could ruin the chances of his game being released.

The two creators of Super Meat Boy lead me down a nostalgic past and seeing their success with their friends and loved ones was awesome.

Basically, it is a feel good documentary, and even better for people who know of those games or have played them. It delves into some theory (just a bit) about some hypocrisy in the gaming industry, and what really will make an indie game unique (and how to design a level, sort of), so it isn’t just human interest stuff.

It tells a nice story, but if anything, it lacked the other side of the coin. Someone who failed at making a game, either financially or through just making a bad game. It would have been nice to have a more “complete story.”

Hell, by the time this review is published, I will have hopefully played Fez.

Well then.

This documentary is brought to us by Netflix, where apparently there are documentaries called Are All Men Pedophiles?

That’s a title if I ever saw one. Just kind of, goes out and asks a bold question. It doesn’t make the claim, just asks the question. But it is still a very very eye catching title, so in that aspect it is doing the job it meant to do.

Are All Men Pedophiles? is only about 70 minutes long, so if it is going to answer that question it had to move quickly. But before it could answer that question, it had to delve into what the actual definition of a pedophile even is. My personal definition comes out of Great Britain, with the Paedofinder General (here and here). Ah, what great amazing satire.

You didn’t think I’d actually search the movie title on google for images did you?
I don’t want to be put on a list.

Well, the short answer to the question is no. Of course not. How could all men be pedophiles? That would be ridiculous. It did however imply that all men are ephebophiles though. What is that? Sexual attraction to mid to late adolescents, basically 14 year olds and highers. Aka people who have reached biological sexual maturity, but are not classified as adults in whatever country you live in.

There was a lot of evidence for this too. It went into the fashion industry, media, history, pre-history, biology and other science to help explain this all. To be honest, it all also checks out and seems pretty truthful. I found points it made hard to argue.

The end went interesting places as well, sort of defending pedophiles as its own mental condition. They don’t think anyone should be having sex with pre-pubescent children, no. But they do think that someone who is a non acting pedophile shouldn’t be looked down upon by society, given the fact that it isn’t a choice to love a certain person or gender or type. It’s all biology.

However, this is one of the worst put together documentaries I have ever seen. It repeats information constantly, not in a helpful way, but literally as if they never said it. The use of actual news footage was pretty awkward the way it was presented. All of the guest scientists/talkers felt awkward as well, no one really having any sort of charisma. It faded to black and used title cards. It was just seriously a piece of shit.

Which is sad, because it has great information in it. It points out the double standards in society and the absurd sexual offender list. The information, unfortunately, is just put together in a basket made of shit.

Like most people who still are alive, I sometimes find myself worrying about money. I don’t have any evidence to support this, but I also think a few dead people also might still worry.

Although I don’t think I was directly affected by the 2008 financial disaster, as in, I didn’t lose my 401k or anything (which is a thing I have now!). But it affected where I went to college thanks to increased enrollment in graduate school due to less jobs. It affected the job market that I went into 6 years later. And it affected the classes I took because all of the sudden they wanted to relate things to current events. Boo current events.

Inequality For All is a documentary that wants to help explain the direct cause before the effect, but how that first cause was able to happen in the place. This is all of course according to Robert Reich and a few other people. Reich has worked under several presidents and served as Secretary of Labor under Clinton. He also has about a shit ton of books, and now lectures about the economy and appears on some political shows.

So if anything, we can say the guys point of views have some amount of validity to them and he isn’t just a celebrity talking about someone else’s research.

He also looks a bit like a cult leader in this image.

Reich himself is a pretty charismatic guy. He had some condition causing him to be pretty short for and adult male, and if you didn’t notice right away, you will notice after his 30th short joke in the documentary. Some footage is him literally talking to a documentary camera telling information, some of it through his narration, and some of it through footage of his talks. But don’t worry, it isn’t just a guy babbling for 100 minutes. It does still feel like a standard documentary. We get animations of charts and graphs, we get figures, we get footage from elsewhere.

From what I can see, a lot of what he said seemed to be correct. I can’t say that finance is my subject background, so nothing appeared to be incorrect.

I however think that the way it was presented felt a bit boring. Sure, early on I was in to it. But as it went on, I kind of just wanted it to make its points quicker. Hurry the fuck up. Tell me what I need to know and stop trying to convince me.

This is all just how I felt watching it. Some good information. On its own, won’t change anything, but the ideas are correct and delightful. Since it is on netflix, it can be a nice watch to waste time, but this documentary won’t blow your mind.

Happy Freedom Day everybody! Unless you are reading this from Not-America, in which case, you know, the Fourth of July or whatever you want to call it.

I needed to review some sort of patriotic like movie for this special and awesome holiday, much like last year how I showed God Bless America. So when I found out some strange documentary was coming out this week with America in the title, I was thrilled.

America: Imagine The World Without Her. Alright, umm. Kind of a weird title. In fact, just reading it gives me negative thoughts about how this “Documentary” will go.

In middle and elementary school, every February for many years I would end up seeing a play put on for Black History Month. Usually it was about the achievements and inventions of Black Americans, and how life would be so different without them. It was an awkward play then and it is now, because they make the claim that if they weren’t there, then it would never be made. Which is bullshit of course, if they didn’t do it, someone else would have most likely. So I was scared that this documentary would be a lot like that play, but on a bigger screen scale with more kung fu fighting bald eagles or something.

But I was wrong. Somehow, it was far worse than I could have ever imagined.

And it was made by a man who looks like the Indian version of my second to last roommate.

Rage. That was my first emotion during this piece. After the intro of course. The documentary is full of historical reenactments, such as speeches by Lincoln or Frederick Douglas. It asks a hypothetical, how the world would be if Washington died in the Revolution. If the South won their independence. Some cool questions, of which, none of them were explored.

Instead, they ignored basically the title of the documentary and those questions and talked about why America was bad and their country was founded on thievery. What thievery? America stole the land from the American Indians, stole half of Mexico, stole people from Africa, stole resources from the world, and stole money from their own citizens.

What? This is what made me rage as it went through this list, detailed explanations from interviewed people as to why America was dick. I remember yelling retorts in my head. Like, “Fuck Christopher Columbus! He wasn’t American, he was Spanish, I don’t care what he did. Didn’t even land in modern USA!”

And then you know what? The documentary did it for me. Here came my confusion phase.

It started to use the same arguments in my head to clear up some of the issues. But it also used incorrect facts coupled with correct facts to make its point. I should have knew something was up when it grouped those five things together.

Not only did it mold the incorrect with the factual, blurring the lines with its biases, but a lot of what it started to say seemed pointless. Like, using these pointless “facts” as an argument against the earlier brought up points, where these stories didn’t actually relate to the points the argument made.

It’d be a lot easier to just dismiss if it was biased in one way. All falses, or something. But this documentary is sneaky.

So sneaky, that the true intentions of this documentary aren’t all made clear until near the last third.

And it all involves this woman reenactment video.

Turns out this documentary has a completely different agenda. It has turned suddenly into an anti-Obama documentary, almost completely out of left field. The director also did 2016, a documentary that I now have no reason to ever watch, because I can’t trust a thing he said. Should have known that, I guess.

So yeah, it went super hard against Obama out of nowhere. A lot of it was strange in that it was angry at him and his policies, despite it specifically being things started in the Bush years?

Then it went and talked about socialism, talkign about Saul Alinsky, and how Obama was someone who liked some of his ideals. This makes everyone bad by the way. Not only does it bring in Obama, but it then attacks Hillary Clinton, who wrote a thesis on him in college.

So there you have it. The whole point of this doc. It is entirely right wing propaganda, even had pro Tea Party information which no one should like. It made them seem like the little guy who was being walked all over, so the documentary wanted them to stand up and fight back against these evil changes to America.

They didn’t answer the questions brought up in the documentary. It was misleading. And it literally was just made quickly to affect the 2016 elections, which haven’t even had primaries for either side to see who is in the running.

What in the actual fuck.

Politically, I am an independent, so if a Democratic type documentary like this came out I would bash it equally as well.

America is an ass kicking country, and this documentary is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Political division is fucking stupid.

While looking around for new documentaries to see, to expand my reviewed genres and such, I saw Terms and Conditions May Apply and knew that was the next one to see.

If I have to watch documentaries, I prefer them to be relevant to me in some way. Clearly this one is modern and new and exciting.

From the title alone, you can probably figure out what it is about. The private policy and terms and conditions that you need to accept to go on to websites, use them, and use their services. The ones that no one ever reads. This documentary wants to us to know the dark sinister secrets and history behind them, and what they are leading America towards.

They also talk about this random guy a lot. No idea who he is.

This documentary makes a lot of nice points. A lot of nice, probably obvious to most people, points. But it does bring about the details in a nice narrative, stemming from the Patriot Act and how it changed the internet forever.

But, the way it brought these points? That is my main dislike of the movie. Especially early on in the documentary, where they used an abundant number of cartoons, TV clips, and kind of bullshitty strategies to make their point clear. It turned me off completely to the subject, thinking the whole documentary would go that way.

Which thankfully, it didn’t. The ending was a lot more organized, based on a lot of actual interviews, news clips, and documented evidence. So that was a good change. You just have to muddle through the shitty beginning to get to some content that is worth hearing.

TL;DR – Fuck the government, stop coming at me bro.

In an attempt to broaden my interests and review types, I set out to watch more documentaries. You know whose documentaries I usually enjoy? Why, those HBO Documentaries! I really only remember one specific one, Hot Coffee, and that one was really good. So why not another?

I picked Miss You Can Do It mostly because I liked the title. I went in knowing that it would talk about the first woman with a physical disability making it to the Miss USA pageant, and that she started a pageant for young girls with special needs as well.

And uhh. Well. That is basically the story I guess. And that is basically the documentary. The girl in question is Abby Curran, who at 20 won Miss Iowa 2008, sending her to Miss USA. She has cerebral palsy, just a milder version that mostly messes up her walk only. She made the Miss You Can Do It pageant actually in 2004 though, when she was sixteen, which is the miraculous part.

People from all over the US come and compete. I can’t tell how often it happens, but it is for young girls, most likely middle and elementary school.

Look, one of the girls dressed up as a sailor for her casual wear. CASUAL WEAR. That’s how you know their lives are rough.

So let’s get to the real talk. Not a lot happens in this documentary. They show us the lives of ten of the pageant girls. Their home life, school life, interview process, talks with their parents and more. Good insight, some are harassed, we get that. Also over the last decade or more, it has gotten a lot better. Kids/students are being more acceptable of those with differences. You hear every year about how a girl with down syndrome or confined to a wheel chair gets picked for prom queen instead of some popular girl.

But how much of that is fair, really? This might be a tangent, but hey, it relates to the movie. It is now getting to the point that if there is a voting based competition, and someone has a disability, they have a good chance of winning it now. Which is fine, if they deserve it the most, but the ultra PC-ness has lead to people voting that way because they think its the right thing to do only. I feel bad for the other girls who might have been dreaming of this moment their whole life, only due to sympathy.

Is sympathy the right way to vote though? I don’t know. I feel like it might be one of several categories to consider.

I only assume people have these hopes and dreams thanks to movies. My own high school experience didn’t have anything ridiculous like that.

However, like this is awesome and helpful for a self-esteem point of view. Watching this documentary and watching the happy faces of these girls who live lives I can’t even comprehend was joyous. I also might think the sympathy vote is what a lot of girls would use to win a competition.

I don’t know if I fully made any points here actually. The TL;DR is that the sympathy vote is crap, and every time I see a disabled person win a popularity contest, I wonder how much of it was from sympathy and how much was from actually earning. It is the cynical part of my mind, I guess. I won’t go into any further thoughts my cynical mind might have.

This documentary on it’s own doesn’t do a whole lot, just showcases a thing that exists that you might not have known about. No debates, no changing point of views, nothing. So it is okay. Kind of disappointing from an HBO Doc point of view, but okay nonetheless.

Documentary time!

This time, it was Forks Over Knives, recommended by someone to my fiance, so of course I said I would watch it too. It is in my range, came out in 2011. Title was a bit weird, mostly because I didn’t see the need for my cutlery to battle. I prefer them to work together in harmony. Where the fuck are my spoons at??? Represent!

Alright, so the tagline of this movie on its cover is “Warning! This movie could save your life”. Good, time to be a skeptic.

I will admit the beginning of the movie was a bit more interesting. The “reason” for this documentary is because the director Lee Fulkerson wanted to be healthier than he is, so he goes on a journey of self discovery that, miraculously, a lot of people have published papers on recently at the time of his documentary.

Long story short, Veganism. Or as they called it a “plant-based diet” void of meats and dairy. So you know, Veganism. There were studies that were interesting, showing people who switched over and got healthier. Studies that reported the same findings. They spent a lot of time talking about Cancer and China, because there was a “Cancer Atlas” or something, that showed cancer abundance over the entirety of China for each type. They related this to diet somehow too.

This is like my nightmare incarnate.

The one study I found really interesting was the one about Norway during WW2. Basically, because all documentaries need to mention Hitler, the Nazis invaded Norway, and fucked them up. They took away their meat and the citizens had to start eating basically just plants. Then a lot of diseases went away like the next year, instantly, and it had a drastic downgrade. Huh. Cool.

But if that was true, I wasn’t really ready to believe it. So I went and looked it up! Science bitches! Basically, I found that it was pretty misleading. The Nazis took away a lot of things. Like cigarettes, so there was a country wide shortage, a lot less smoking. They also increased in physical activity, so people had to move a lot more, doing healthy things. Shit, blaming it all on meat is kind of awkward, no?

Getting to that study lead me to this other “review” of the movie by MD Harriet Hall over at www.sciencebasedmedicine.org. Harriet looks at every claim and study the movie mentions, notes the inefficiencies of the studies (low sample size, no controls, whatever) and where the movie people make broad claims where the studies do not themselves.

So basically, OP is a liar.

Damn it, I hate bad science movies so damn much. Obviously this documentary would be biased, all of them are, but finding out how biased is just the worst. At least they didn’t also alter or have misleading interviews like another terrible science documentary.

You know there is an issue with a documentary if they seem to claim that humans were meant to be herbivores, not omnivores. Bitch, I know what these canines in my mouth are for.

So most of the claims are incorrect. Is Veganism healthier overall? Probably in some aspects. But it seems the science really goes towards living a healthy lifestyle, eating just not a shit ton of meat and diary, but still having it in your diet. Basically, increase fruit and vegetable intact will probably be the better results here, not an elimination of animal products completely.

Farmland. Farmers. Iowa. Hey, I live in Iowa!

So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that there was a huge crowd to see a documentary about farmers. They had the biggest theater in my city and there were barely any empty seats. The only real reason I went is because they were giving away some tickets, free movies yo. Not to mention to excitement of the crowd for a one time only showing of a movie.

They really love their farming here, so hell yeah, let’s watch it with them.

Farmland is a pretty basic documentary. Apparently a lot of old people own farm land, and they might die off soon. Not a lot of people are going into the farming industry for many reasons, and eventually there might not be good people to run the land. No farmers? No farms! Oh no!

So this documentary goes over six individuals who are all in various aspect of the farming life, and all under 30.

Brad Bellah Rancher in Texas. He wears a cowboy hat, grew up being a rancher, and still raises cows with his new family. Leighton Cooley from Georgia, who raises Chickens and other minor crops. Has a huge farm area, second generation I think. There is David Loberg, a Nebraskan who raises corn/soybeans, also at least a second generation.

We have Sutton Morgan from California, fourth generation, but doing huge organic farms and is very successful. Margaret Schlass a first generation woman in Philly, doing organic stuff also, but more small time and co-op based. Finally, we have Ryan Veldhuizen, a Minnesota native fourth generation pig farmer.

Yep. No one from Iowa. Denied!

Cowboys, cowboy hats, and cows? Is this my future calling?

This documentary was made to inform the general public about the wonders of farming, the hardships, and the fact that they aren’t just a bunch of dumb hicks. It is to get younger people interested in the profession and save America’s farming future!

But man, from someone without much of a farming background, it was just okay. It had some funny moments, but I wouldn’t say I learned a lot either. I guess it was okay to see their lives, and what they did throughout a year, but eh, still not really too interesting for me.

It did have some sweet moments too, particularly with the Nebraskan farmer. His dad died a year before the film, so they talked about him a few times and how he took over the business. Then there was a moment where he tried to explain a specific moment from his past, and he just started to babble incoherently, fighting back tears. It was extremely hard to not cry along with him. I looked around the packed theater? Dozens of teary faces in my vicinity. Very touching, but doesn’t make the movie great.

I can tell you if you grew up near farms or plan on going into farms, you will love this movie. The theater clapped at the end. Huge ovation over a documentary about farming. I guess that is what happens when you watch a movie like this in Iowa.

Bears.

Bears Bears Bears? Yes, Bears.

Okay, Bears.

We got a Disneynature film here, and they have been doing this for a few years. The only other movie that they did that I saw was African Cats, and man, did I love it.

So why not Bears? Why not a short movie in Alaska about a year in their life? Yeah, let me get some bears.

This is about a bear named Sky, and her two kids, Scout and Amber. They are new born cubs, and it starts with them in the den waiting for winter to end. We then get to see their journey from the mountains, to the coast, to salmon season, to hibernation. According to the movie, only half of all bear cubs survive the journey in their first years. Well, shit. There are two cubs here. Which one will it be?! The adventurous Scout, or the mama’s bear Amber?

Maybe one will take the other out in a fight well ahead of time.

They have to face avalanches, scarcity of food, big mean adult bears who want to eat them, foxes, raging rivers, and more.

We also get John C. Reilly as the narrator. He does an okay job. I get kind of annoyed, because he decides to “speak” for a lot of the animals, which has him then carrying on a conversation with himself. It is meant for humor, to add to the story and all, but I don’t remember African Cats having that bull crap in it, but still enjoying it.

I do find parts of the film questionable. I really don’t believe the avalanche scene happened as shown. I think some splicing went on there.

I am happy that during the credits, they showed a lot of the behind the scenes filming. So they had someone filming their camera man a lot, meaning it would show them filming, and then right after, what they filmed, to get it all into perspective. That was my biggest question with African Cats: How? And they kind of answer it! Really cool to see what they had to do to try and make this as natural as possible, without interfering. Although, you know, I doubt it worked out. Just by being there, they naturally interfere.

Overall though, this movie had a TON of awesome shots that are really hard to see, with great high definition. Even the salmon were exciting. Watching all of that shit was cool. I am glad they did it.

Come for the Bears, stay for the Bears. Unless your Stephen Colbert. He will probably hate this movie.