Tag: Documentary

I first watched Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was in 9th grade. Given that I was born in 1989, that is actually a long ass time after the movie came out. And by watched the movie, I mean only watched like half of it because it was in a class. And by Raiders, apparently I meant one of the other two Indiana Jones movies. Because a few days ago I figured I should re-watch the entire movie before checking out this documentary, and hey, I was surprised that I totally never saw Raiders before.

Now now, I know what happened in the movie. Almost from beginning to end. So much of the film has become parodied, redone, and referenced that I could tell you most of the major plot points like a basic wikipedia article. I just never sat down and saw the dang thing until two days ago.

So why the hell am I watching Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made? Good question. It’s because I am a movie reviewer and I want to watch everything, damn it. If I only watched films I had a history in some way with, this would be called Gorgon Biased Views instead.

Yes, that last joke and this picture are brought to you by teenage levels of humor.

Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in the summer of 1981 and changed many lives. In particular, it changed the lives of Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb. Chris knew after watching it that he had to recreate the movie. He found Eric, who was a year older, another Raider fan and asked him to join in. He became the director and story board guy. He basically drew out the entire storyboard from the movie after just one viewing. And then they found Jayson, who ended up being key to all of their special effects and production team.

And then from 1981 to 1989, over summer and winter vacations and Holiday weekends they began to recreate Raiders of the Lost Arc. They didn’t film it in order, so scenes show them grow up and descend in age at random. Most of their first two years of shots were bad and had to be redone. They had to close down sets for fire issues and falling outs between friends. They basically used every Christmas and Birthday present to get more prop work done to authenticate the movie. But damn it, in 1989 they finished it, showed it to their town, and moved on with their lives.

Pictured: Not Harrison Ford and Not Steven Spielberg.

Moved on with their lives, for a short time period. They didn’t actually recreate the entire film. They could not do the “plane” scene near the end, with all the explosions, blood, fights, and planes. So they just never tried to because they’d be too disappointed. But their movie got famous again by 2002. It was seen by people throughout the film industry, passing around bad copies of a VHS tape. Eli Roth found it, yes that Eli Roth, loved it, showed it at a Butt-A-Numb-A-Thon run by Harry Knowles and the crowd went bananas.

This got them re-famous. This got them on tours. This got them to meet their idols. And so of course, with all this behind them, they set out to finally film that one last scene. With Kickstarter backers and real cameras and everything. And of course, their life stories, the film, and trying to film the last scene is really what this documentary is about.

As a reminder, I did not grow up with Indiana Jones being a major player in my life. Blame my parents, they showed me what they wanted to when I was young. Despite not having an emotional connection to the film, I had an emotional connection to these kids and their adult final forms as well. It is incredibly inspiring. It is about overcoming all the odds, showing what kids and people can do with limited resources and a whole lot of heart.

It made me long for my own childhood of freedom and time, making me a bit jealous I didn’t do more with it like these kids. I regret not going to the double screening of this documentary with the final cut of their film, but hopefully I will now see it one day in the future. And uhh, probably those other Indiana Jones movies as well.

Welcome to documentary review day, or foreign film day, depending on what I feel like doing and feeling. Today, I don’t look at just any documentary. I look at a documentary that is really local to my current location. I am looking at an award winning documentary, technically

I am looking at The Last Man on the Moon. Now that it has made it onto Netflix I finally had a way to watch it. It is actually a winner of the Texas Independent Film Award, given out by the Houston Film Critic Society. I mean it went up against such classics like…Results. And uhh, other films I haven’t seen.

Just because the competition was weak doesn’t mean the movie didn’t deserve an award though. Just remember that!

And in The Last Man on the Moon, we look at the space program, astronaut Gene Cernan, and how he has the honor of being the last man to ever walk on the moon. Not typically an honor one thinks about. When one thinks the moon and people on it, they think of the first two names and kind of gloss over the rest.

But damn it, after Apollo 11, there were six other missions that went to the moon! And since Cernan left, no one else has graced it with their feet. Well, no one that isn’t a robot.

Yeah, Science bitches!

This documentary is actually about more than the moon landings though. This is basically a sort of bio on Cernan’s life. How he grew up, when he joined the Navy Air Force, his days as a pilot, his first wife and first daughter, his second wife and many new kids, how he first heard about the space program, got drafted and tested and picked over dozens of individuals, and his not one, not two, but three trips into Outer Space.

Shit, I just talked about the entire documentary!

I think it is important to show that astronauts didn’t just go out into space and to the moon once, they had multiple trips. His first trip was part of the Gemini missions which had a lot of failed aspects. He was part of Apollo 10, the last mission before they finally let people go to the moon. And of course he was part of Apollo 17, how he scraped in barely to the final trip the US would fund for testing.

It is actually a really informative documentary, looking at early aspects of NASA that isn’t super common knowledge. I loved his story about his first interview to be an astronaut, the tests involved, the secrecy, and how no one knew really what the hell was even going on. It made science feel sexy again. And everyone knows that science was the sexiest in the 1960’s during the Cold War.

The Last Man on the Moon was a better documentary than I imagined. And it was about a man who did a lot who doesn’t get a lot of recognition. I wouldn’t say I am biased, but I heard his acceptance speech when it won the TIFA, and it made me cry a bit. A speech about reaching for your dreams and achieving what you love in life, never giving up, and making every minute count.

Shit. Astronauts are the coolest American heroes. Space Cowboys and what not.

The best documentaries deal with the hardest of subjects. I think we can all agree that we don’t need to see too many more musician/celebrity documentaries, or even worse, documentaries based on specific movies or fandoms. I have seen enough to last me a life time, but they keep chugging out.

when a documentary comes out that is about some seriously bad and shady shit, then you know that documentary is important and actually might be worth a watch.

So, what is An Open Secret about? Well, a sex scandal in Hollywood. Which doesn’t sound like news. But this is an underage sex scandal. I am talking about pedophiles in Hollywood, forcing child actors to get involved with older men sexually, in order to get jobs, get references, get big in the game.

Yeah. That is some serious stuff, with pretty serious allegations. And yet, still, when I first heard about the issues years ago, my first thoughts weren’t surprise or shock. No, it was a more fucked up acceptance. Kind of like a “Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense to be happening.” Not implying that it is a good thing, just noting that I can see it happening and that I would probably believe any reports.

And despite rumors over the last few years, former child actors speaking out, actual cases against producers and directors, and of course people who went to jail for kid sex issues, the topic is still barely discussed and documentaries on the subject (like An Open Secret) are practically buried and ignored.

This isn’t a joke line, this is a serious line.

I honestly don’t even know what to say in a review like this. The stories of these actors, most of which are not big names and didn’t get to make it big, hearing what they went through scarred them in their teenage years for the rest of their lives. Being told that if they didn’t comply, they wouldn’t get work. Being told that they can’t go against all these powerful people. And to think this is just talking about teenage boys in Hollywood, when clearly it is happening on the other side of the gender pool as well.

The biggest name mentioned in this film is of course Bryan Singer, director of The Usual Suspects and like, half of the X-Men related films. Now, he isn’t specifically called out as someone who took advantage of kids, but he does interact with a lot of people who were in the group talked about in the documentary.

And shit, this is a hard subject. It is best to just watch the documentary and see for yourself. I think the narrative started to fall apart a little bit by the end. It just started to lose my interest at the point when they should be making their biggest points and driving the whole thing home. But the beginning and middle are quite well done.

Watching it won’t make you feel better about it. In fact, it will probably make you feel conflicted about Hollywood and the movie industry in general. But you have to take the good with the bad, even if dealing with the bad is hard.

Thanks to South Park, when I read the title of this documentary, I can only think of the Weiner Song from their Game of Thrones episodes. However, while watching that television show, I barely recall seeing any weiner, so I really don’t get that joke.

And that is how you write an intro that has nothing to do with the documentary in question, Weiner.

If you recall, Anthony Weiner was a congressman who has an amusing last name and of course got in a sexting scandal that forced him to resign. What you don’t know about him is everything that happened before and after that.

He was actually a congressman for years, and there are quite a few videos of him on the floor yelling and telling it like it is, speaking for the lower class citizen. He was probably a hero. Until we saw his bulge.

But the documentary covers that time in his life in the first few minutes, with news clips, as it is the popular way of doing things these days. This documentary is about Weiner trying to reclaim his fame, to rise back to the top, and run for mayor of his home city, New York City.

Heh heh heh. Weiner.

If you like behind the scenes of modern politics, then this is the type of documentary for you. But also, if you wonder how a campaign can start, become successful, and then crash and burn due to a scandal. What? You mean the sexting scandal from years ago? No, I am talking about the new one that happened early in his campaign.

No don’t worry, he wasn’t stupid enough to continue that sort of thing years later while running (I think). This happened after he resigned, before he got his problem under control (according to him), and also involved a real picture of his penis. Full on man dick.

And what makes it even more uncomfortable is of course that he is married. His wife, Huma Abedin, well known fundraiser and campaign worker for the Clinton family. A family who went through their own sex scandal although in a bit of a different situation. Huma had forgiven Anthony, and they worked through it with counseling, but bringing up the past can be very hard. She is just a person and she has emotions as well.

I found Weiner to be a very personal and informative documentary. I learned a lot about the man, the things you don’t hear in the New York Post headlines. It wasn’t too long, it explained everything that went down, and it felt real.

We can learn a lot about Weiner, and you can learn more about it from watching. Just remember, the newspapers want catchy headlines, and if you only know about a person from the news, you are probably going to miss a lot.

It has been awhile since I have reviewed a food documentary. Honestly, after you have seen a few, they all start to blend together into the same knowledge pool. I can’t tell you the difference between so many of the ones I have reviewed anymore now.

So while they might not have individual lasting power, the information is something that usually you can keep inside. And despite knowing that, I still decided to watch and review Sugar Coated.

In terms of food and health documentaries, you can pretty much figure out what the main topic of discussion this one will be about. Unfortunately, another food documentary I saw at some point also was about how sugar was the real problem area, I just can’t tell you which one it was. Sorry. My bad.

And it turns out that the sugar industry is basically literally the worst thing ever, of course.

“Bitch, take all the sugar you want, we’re rich!”

I will be honest with you, it is really hard for me to talk about this documentary. Sugar, for actually a long time, has been considered toxic by some scientists. Not a lot of scientists, but some have talked about it. And it turns out that leading advocates of the sugar companies have tried to bury any scientific discovery about it.

Sure, okay makes sense. Then they are compared to the tobacco industry, making it seem like there is no consensus on the results of sugar and that more testing has to be done. And yeah, that is really shitty.

When it comes down to the analysis of this movie, I feel like I didn’t learn a whole lot of new information. In fact, the information about the history and the actual cover up, the only thing I have really retained, is all from the second half of the documentary. I wouldn’t call the first half filler, but it is full of information I have heard before and doesn’t fully grasp me.

At the same time, despite agreeing with the documentary and believing it to be correct, it presents information in a way that promotes flashiness over actual information. I always get weary over data presented in his format, and worry if what they are showing is correct or cherry picked information. Again, I don’t think the documentary is wrong, but its arguments are presented in lesser formats that lower the overall quality of the film.

Either way, this documentary isn’t going to end up on any best of the year lists, but can be interesting to someone if they are interested in a dietary change.

Michael Moore hasn’t made a documentary in six years. His last one was Capitalism: A Love Story back in 2009. Way back then, I didn’t have a movie review website. I was just a regular guy who watched movies. C:ALS was my first Moore documentary, hearing a lot about him growing up (thanks to Team America: World Police) and a lot of bad things thrown his way. So I watched all of his documentaries at that point in a single day.

And you know what I realized? I realized that the documentaries weren’t bad. Sure, Moore could be a bit of a jerk. And no, I didn’t agree with everything he said. But he also made a lot of great points and he tried to put them out in an entertaining way. Not all documentaries have to be super serious.

Either way, with all of the bad things going on in America, I am just surprised it has been so long since a new documentary. And when I heard this one was called Where To Invade Next, I again just made assumptions about the documentary and rolled my eyes. Every time I thought they would be terrible, and every time I have been wrong.

I figured this one would be about the wars in the middle east, why they are bad, and you know, the stuff I already knew. I don’t care about another war documentary.

But Moore fooled me. Instead this was a documentary about himself “invading” other countries, for the most part, European/English speaking places, in order to conquer them and steal their best attributes. And you know, steal them for America, which is what we do in wars or something.

I can’t make a joke here, because I have looked just as ridiculous in this pose.

So where do we go? Welllllll…

We go to Italy, where they have great work benefits, vacations if you get married, 8 weeks of vacation a year, and double pay in December. Then France, where the school cafeteria is actually good, lunch is class where your food is served, you have courses, learn to eat with style. In Finland, their school system is now the best, and they don’t even do homework, and sometimes only go to school 3-4 hours a day!

Speaking of school, in Slovakia, all of college is free. Even for foreigners, meaning Americans. Most people protest when there is a tuition increase, in America, we just say okay.

In Germany, there is free health care and spa vacations from work (for free) if you are too stressed. Hell, they even have a big middle class and workers serve on the board of directors!

Portugal got rid of outlawing drugs, and drug use went down. Norway has prisons that are like isolated communities, with your own house or room and very nice basic needs to survive. In Tunisia, the government funds abortions and in Iceland, women have led for a long time and are seen as great leaders thanks to progressive views. Things are very stable in Iceland (politically and socially, not economically or geologically).

And that is the crux of the documentary. A lot of foreign countries, most of which are super white and some that speak English well, have a lot of great stuff going on. Stuff that should happen in America, the wealthiest country. The land of the free. But certain rich people don’t want this to happen, and we then have a lot of problems.

Some of this you would have heard before and some of it is new. It is still an interesting thing worthy of discussion. But you know, Moore is still a dick.

Magic is possibly the greatest card game ever made, but I am a bit biased. I played for over a decade, in and out, depending on school and setting. At one point I was in tournaments weekly, paying $15 just for sweet cards and sweet fun.

And eventually I stopped playing and became a collector. Then in my mind they tried to piss off collectors more and more, either making everything fun super rare, or super common. It used to one special card a pre-release tournament every set, and then it ballooned to 40. No one has time for that.

Needless to say, I eventually sold my collection and quit magic for the most part, only willing to go back and play on a purely casual basis. I still keep up to date with the card game and they have had quite a few blunders in the last few years, alienating members of the community and their own judges for tournaments.

But now they have decided to fully back a documentary, Enter the Battlefield: Life on the Magic – The Gathering Pro Tour. Show casing individuals who are great players, who actually do make money from magic and winning huge tournaments. So yeah, show that off, let the kids dream and people might want to become great magic players! Or just show us what it takes and what people have to give up to achieve these high levels of success. Give us that sympathy level and make them feel human.

This is widely considered to be the best magic card in the game’s history.

Except this documentary does’t do any of that. It is little more than become a fluff piece on a few great players currently playing magic, with a bit of there stories.

In the intro it briefly explains the game and the tournament scene, as narrated by Wil Wheaton. It doesn’t do a great job of selling the game though, and anyone who isn’t already a fan won’t suddenly become one.

A large portion of the documentary is around three American players who formed a “team” to get better, the first female to get int he top 8 of one of the biggest tournaments, a long time magic player and writer, someone desperately trying to get into the Hall of Fame, and the last winner of the World Magic Championship, the biggest crazy tournament.

And sure, it may sound diverse, but really it is a bunch of Americans and an American-Israeli guy. It is awkward to see footage of the best tournament, see that 2 of the top 4 are from Japan, where one is highly considered to be the best player in the world, and not have them more featured in the documentary. It is just very pro American, pro English speaking players, instead of highlighting who actually might be the best.

At only an hour long, this documentary is quick to watch, but I fail to see what the actual purpose of it is. It won’t work to get new people into magic. It won’t make people want to become pro tour champions anymore than they already did (and cutting their appearance fees right before the documentary came out was also a strange tactic). And no one will really learn a lot about the game if they don’t already know magic.

This is a strange documentary. Like it feels like it was just an idea to waste some time, then someone thought it was good enough to release. Sure. Why not. And it will be forgotten about in a month.

Causing me pain with his stinger,
Shocking my life with lasers,
Killing Me Safely with TASER
Killing me safely…with TASER!

That’s right, we are talking about the wonderful TASER made by TASER International. The actual first shocking device was developed in the late 60’s early 70’s but it took decades to really hit off. The original problem with the device is that they weren’t really strong enough to do anything. You would get a slight zap and fight through it. They couldn’t just make it stronger, that could be bad news.

Well, eventually they were able to make it stronger and stop even the strongest guy from coming forward. They had science on their side to say it would do no real harm to those getting shocked. In most police departments as part of training they have to get shot with it to know just what it feels like to use it responsibly. The point of the TASER is to turn normally lethal situations into non-lethal situations. Now instead of shooting a bad guy, they can shock them and put them down and arrest them like normal people.

Sounds great! Especially if it can’t kill people and it saves many many lives!

And if “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.

Of course there are issues. Like people totally dying from getting hit with a TASER. The documentary shows quite a few real life cases of people who have died, despite claims from the TASER group who say the TASER didn’t do it, other causes were at play! That’s shady.

Technically this documentary is a bit shady too, tugging at my emotions with some graphic footage. There is one about a foreign dude stuck in a baggage claim at an airport, unable to communicate with anyone. That footage sickened me and I had to stop watching for a bit. Later one we get a case where it was a normal traffic stop, and then three cops decide to tase him for a long time, while his mom is nearby screaming that they are killing him. Sure enough, they did, and it basically killed me too.

There is some sound science behind the TASER, and technically if it is used correctly and in the right places, it can be a great service. But the real issues behind it is that there is no regulation to the training. It is all done by the TASER company and no one else. Add to the fact that police departments aren’t using it correctly, and you will find that there are big problems.

Doing my own research, I’ve found reports that cop shootings haven’t even gone down everywhere with Tasers. Instead, guns are still being used just as much and TASERs are being used as well at times when nothing should be used, like routine traffic stops. That is fucked up and abuse of power.

I am not saying the CEOs aren’t lying dicks, because they are. TASERs can kill people and should be used properly, they just aren’t being used properly and that is the biggest issue.

But honestly, what pissed me off the most was one of the CEO’s complaining on the radio about lawsuits and America. He brought up the Hot Coffee case and showed that he clearly knew nothing about it. So I figure he is a liar and an idiot, so fuck that guy.

Ugh. They reference the hot coffee case.

It is still quite hard to find new documentaries coming out that are easy to watch and not about another damn singer. I might have to refuse to watch any of them this year as a sort of protest.

Instead I found Gameshow Dynamos, a relatively recent release (within the last year at least) documentary about game show experts. I have only seen one “documentary” on game shows before, and it was Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal, which turned out to be quite creepy. There are probably great stories relating to the behind the scenes of the best game shows, and just someone needs to film it and make a sweet picture.

Gameshow Dynamos gave me a chance to see something different, and it was free on Amazon Prime, so even better.

Gameshow Dynamos is on the surface about two stories. One is the very specific story of Bernard and Claire Boiko. Two very different people who found each other, love, and grew a wonderful family together despite opposition. The other is a sort of history of the rise of Game Shows in America from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. And of course its pitfalls.

And obviously how the two stories connect and game shows saved the Boiko household from ruin.

I know I know, I used a promo poster picture. I suck.

Bernard’s first game show was Tic Tac Dough where he won an equivalent of $9000 in today’s money. He did it to pay back college debt and bills, but it didn’t last long. Then Claire went on the show, while pregnant for her third child and she also did fantastic, to help pay for medical bills.

And for awhile, they did a few game shows just to get by. Bernard didn’t make a lot as a teacher (until the teacher union succeeded in a pay raise), and they ended up with five kids. But there was a scandal back then where the producers would give popular people answers to do well for ratings. Bernard had to testify before a grand jury about it (he never was offered answers for cash) and it put a halt on the game show industry for awhile.

But eventually they got in it. And eventually their kids grew up. They did most of their game show playing once they were now grand parents, going on dozens of shows each separately, on the game show circuit because people liked them so damn much. And hey, game shows pay great.

This isn’t a sad story about game shows and debt and get rich quick ideas, but a happy one! And these people probably do hold the record for appearances on game shows a couple (and somehow never together on any two person game shows)! Also they talk about finding out the right hook for yourself to make you likable by producers to get on these game shows.

The documentary is a nice story, but at the same time, it does feel a bit too short. Its running time is just an hour, and a lot of it is basically the story of their life before they met, their marriage, and their problems. I would have liked a lot more footage of them actually on game shows, answering questions. We got bits and pieces, but not a lot of significant time. I want to see game show footage when I am watching something about game shows. More shots of them winning, losing, whatever. Heck, we got one of them on jeopardy but I don’t think we saw any actual questions from it, or watching them sweep a category or anything.

It was a good idea, but could have been better.

Believe it or not, reviewing a subject is actually pretty hard. What do you say? Do you know how to say it with more words than just “good” and “bad?” Are you able to convey your feelings in a factual way that makes people believe? Shit, just check out my guest reviews on the website. People thought reviewing films would be easy, but it takes awhile to really find your voice and your groove.

I can’t even imagine reviewing anything besides film. Television shows are similar, but no way could I review an episode or whole season. Goodreads only prepares me so much for book reviews. And food? Forget about it! I am the worst eater, so I could never even be a bit biased when it comes to food.

So you know what? Those people who review food, not the assholes on Yelp, they are the real MVPs.

I don’t know anything about these people, outside of the fact that they probably will eat anything. I never heard about Jonathan Gold, a famous food critic from Los Angeles. And by famous critic, I mean Roger Ebert levels of food criticism.

Here I am then. About to review a documentary about a guy who reviews food. Thankfully I have some experience reviewing a reviewer. Life Itself was pretty good!

Oh yeah, this dude loves food. All the food.

City of Gold is titled as such, due to Jonathan’s last name, and his relationship with the city of LA. Gold is apparently the first guy to really put himself out there and go to every little restaurant. Before then, the critics would only go to the fancy big French restaurants in the city, for the elite, and that was it. But not Gold. He went to every Mom and Pop shop, in every district, tasting cuisine from around the world.

To make a comparison, it would be like a movie reviwer only watching the top of the box office. Gold would watch the box office leaders, the weird indie stuff, and every straight-to-DVD B-Movie. (Hey, I used to do that when I had time!). Gold changed things for the food critics. He also isn’t extremely mean. A lot of critics bitch and moan over the smallest problems due to their “refined pallets” and ego. He doesn’t go around loving everything. But he gives it a chance. He learns about the story behind the dish, the culture that produced it, and how it might fare to similar dishes of that variety.

And of course, this leads to amazing business for these lucky shops to have been written about by Gold, the most trusted name in food since, well, anyone but Nestle.

What I liked most about this (arguably simple) documentary, is that samples of his writings were read out loud as a sort of narration, and I just found myself insanely jealous. He has such a way with words, every review becoming a beautiful story. I want him to write my biography some day. Or at least just narrate my life as a I sit around and do nothing on a computer.

Gold is an awesome person. And although the documentary is about him and what he has done to the industry, by the end it broadens out a bit to be about the city he is from as a whole. At the same time, it is still a very niche documentary. It won’t go leading any social change or change your thoughts on anything at all. But it is a nice use of your time, if you like learning about strangers.