Tag: Documentary

So last week I tried to find a scary documentary, I failed to find something in a few minutes and settled on Gideon’s Army, which ended up not scary at all. So I had to change my criteria a bit. I am still planning on trying to review more current and newer documentaries. But fuck it, they are documentaries. I can review older ones of these, most of you don’t just sit around watching documentaries, so you probably haven’t heard of the older ones either right?

Yep. Everything is available now. Or else it stays too hard to find good documentary content.

Thanks to this, I can talk about serial killers. Maybe, yeah. H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer. Definitely an eye catching subject matter about a dude I have never heard about before! I quickly learned this is definitely someone who I should have heard about before today, and a crazy interesting subject.

Holmes was like the perfect killer. He got his doctorate, studied anatomy and chemistry and got a bit rich. In the late 1800’s, after all the Jack the Ripper stuff going on in London, Holmes was living in Chicago and he wanted to kill.

Psychopath isn’t a detailed enough word to describe this man. To get to the crux of his insanity, you have to realize that he built what was called a “Mansion” in the middle of Chicago with many floors, that he used as a sort of hotel. At least, the third floor was definitely a hotel. But the 2nd floor was a labrynth of rooms twisting hallways, with fake staircases and more. And the basement was even worse.

That is where he kept his mustache comb collection.

Needless to say, he killed a lot of people, but the numbers are unknown. Hell, there are two books out there suggestion that Holmes was also Jack the Ripper before heading back to the USA, but without reading them, I don’t believe them. Seems too “movie” and not enough “Reality.”

Oh hey, back to this documentary. It is only a little over an hour long. And yeah, it is kind of poor quality. The only thing making it a bit average is that the story is actually a pretty sweet one, which goes into his mistakes and how he got caught, his eventual trial and execution. But it is filled with old timey black and white clips to showcase people in old horrors being scared, and it is incredibly cheesy.

It felt like they only talked to 2-3 historical experts to tell the tale, with the majority of the story coming from the narrator, Tony Jay. It was a poorly done documentary on the subject, but it is the only one we have.

What it did was get me interested on the subject. I want to now read (or audiobook) the main story on the subject, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. Even better news is that this is totally being turned into a real movie, so watching this documentary ended up being me just doing some basic amounts of research. Do you want to see Leonardo DiCaprio with that stashe and killing people, directed by Scorsese? I know I do.

In preparation for Halloween, I looked up some ScArRrRrRyYyYy documentaries on the Netflix. I’ve done a few of these before, like The Imposter, the Nightmare on Elm Street one, and Killer Legends. They are all on Netflix, but I decided to use Killer Legends to try and find more scary ones for this month. So I used their “More Like This” feature and chose its top recommendation.

Gideon’s Army. As a reminder, Killer Legends is about the truth behind four popular urban legends, where they started, and why they became stories. Gideon’s Army is about public defenders doing their job and being severely understaffed.

Sure, I guess that is a scary situation. I don’t know if I could afford a lawyer if I got into some sort of legal trouble. I’d probably want some public defender. But after watching Gideon’s Army, maybe I shouldn’t. Also, I guess, after watching that episode of Last Week Tonight about Public Defenders. That one happened too. And it said a lot of the same things, with jokes, sarcasm, and only 15 minutes long. I guess technically, if you want to find out more, just watch that clip, you will save yourself time.

But you can go watch that clip on your own in time out, mister!

But really. You know about these guys? The guys who get paid by the government to take those people too poor to have their own lawyer? Well, they can have over a hundred active cases at a time. They can spend less than 7 minutes per client. Shit is a bit terrifying, It is supposed to be a system to make sure that wealth doesn’t protect you from the law and that justice is blind and everyone should get a fair chance in front o a judge. However, reality is never able to match the intent, and the same wealth issues that have plagued mankind since the BC time still affect us now.

Not to make any conclusions. I am just trying to stall my description and analysis. The documentary takes a look at three different public defenders, as they go about on several cases and face different struggles. Struggles including: bad clients, no money, not enough time, unfair judges, and more.

Did I mention the situation really sucks? Don’t try and imagine yourself in a similar situation, just do whatever you can to avoid the situation.

As for the documentary, I thought it told a decent story, but what it lacked was a solution. Public Defender pay, oversight, or something should probably change to improve the system that a lot of people take for granted, but it mostly told a few long anecdotes and that was the end of the story. These documentaries are important in that they highlight parts of society you may not realize, but I just want something more overall.

Just…make it seem way more important.

Sometimes it takes a long time to get your documentary filmed and published. Like, let’s say, for example…oh…I don’t know…The Wrecking Crew!

The director, Denny Tedesco, started getting film for this project in 1996. I was seven years old when he started this documentary. At that point in my life, I doubt I had even seen a documentary. The film was completed twelve years later, in 2008. He went and showed it at some of the festivals and people loved it. The issue with his documentary was that it was basically impossible for him to get a distributor. You see, this documentary uses music. A LOT of music. And all of the music is owned by a corporation or person and they need to pay those people money to use the song in the documentary. This suddenly makes the documentary costs several hundred thousands of dollars before they can even start selling copies!

Needless to say, no one wanted to front load that bill. So they raised a lot of the money on their own. Roughly $300,000. Somehow that still wasn’t enough. It was 2013. So he turned to Kickstarter. Using the story he wanted to tell, he was able to raise $300,000 more dollars to pay off the fees and make the film even more snazzy. And now it is on Netflix for us to enjoy.

Enjoy what though? All this intro and I don’t tell you about what it is, like some sort of movie slut.

Well. It is about music. It is about most of the famous songs that you know and love from the 1960’s and 70’s. Back when bands didn’t necessarily know how to play instruments that well and companies were figuring out how to sell an image and look more than talent. They needed to make hit records fast and didn’t have time to spend weeks in the recording studio when there is all that touring to do. That is where The Wrecking Crew came in, the most famous recording studio band of all time.

And you forgot all of their birthdays. 🙁

The name The Wrecking Crew was just a nickname for a lot of these people. They weren’t an official cohesive group that worked together, but technically each individually signed musicians who knew how to play their instrument well, could read music fast, and could improv on the fly to make a tune better. Sure, a lot of these guys were hired over and over again, so they grew to be friends and had that bond, but technically any of them could be replaced at any moment. This documentary does its best job to talk about as many big members of this crew as it can, based on who is still alive. It even gets a few of them talking to tell stories about musicians from behind the scenes.

Funny enough, we can all thank Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys for basically setting this up, using different musicians to make his Pet Sounds album. What? Didn’t know about that? You missed my review of Love & Mercy then (which I only just saw mere weeks before this). The efficiency and professionalism made these people work hard for their money and helped create such fantastic music.

Back to the front, Danny made this documentary because of his dad, Tommy Tedesco, who was one of the main guitarists from The Wrecking Crew. He wanted to tell his story, and didn’t get a chance to show it to the world before his death. If you want more name drops, the most famous member of the crew ended up being Glen Campbell. Yeah, he got super damn famous and started as a studio band jockey!

I didn’t do a lot of talking about the details of the documentary, because hey, it is on Netflix and you can easily watch it for yourself. Just hearing the music and hearing their stories is a blast on its own. Overall I didn’t find it life changing in anyway. It was light, easy, and fluffy. Yeah, I said fluffy damn it.

A good documentary that a lot of people should watch. I appreciate the effort and passion that went into it and it really shows on the screen. Now give me more more documentaries about people who did all the work for others, or something. Yay the little guy!

Divorce sucks. No way to sugar coat it. It breaks up families, people start having trust issues, children get fought over, you know.

There are some pros I guess. For the kids, they get two Christmases, and everyone knows that means more toys. And you don’t have to spend much time ever with someone you presumably hate!

But, in America, getting a divorce is actually very hard. From alimony to child support, from splitting of assets, to the legal code, it can get very confusing very fast. In fact, a lot of people out there seem to be making assloads of money over the break up of couples.

It isn’t a bad thing that people make money off of doing a job, that should be expected. What is unexpected is the lengths the entire system goes through to make sure your divorce hurts you in the wallet as much as possible. Which is really what Divorce Corp. is all about.

So what kind of shady shit is going down? Glad you asked. Obviously the documentary goes into extreme amounts of detail and personal anecdotes, so watch it for the full picture.

See? It is a giant office building behind a church? Fuck your subtle metaphors.

First of all, the family court law has gotten very complicated over the last few decades. It used to be relatively simple, but due to increase in complexity, for really no reason at all, it is basically impossible to represent yourself in court. You are basically forced to hire a lawyer regardless of how amicable your divorce will be. And of course, the divorce court lawyers can cost anywhere between 500-1000 dollars an hour.

If children are involved, Child Support isn’t a set in stone amount, it is based purely on the difference of income and how much custody the parents have. So, if someone has 100% custody, the other parent has to actually pay a lot more. This actively encourages couples to fight it out. Fighting it out makes the trial take a long time, which racks up the hourly fees, in order to earn money to probably just pay off your lawyer fees. The two lawyers probably know each other or are friends, and they both know the longer they take, the longer they get paid.

It is a shitty situation to be in. But that isn’t the end of it.

The court can appoint people to come in and monitor both households/parents. I don’t remember what they are called. These people have a fee as well, and the judge can force a couple to pay for them. These people aren’t neutral, can be friends with one firm, and can say whatever they want to make one parent seem bad. Of course, they have also been shown to accept bribes and more. Yayy.

These things are just the bottom of the barrel. I actually had to pause the documentary 20 minutes into it, sort of shocked with how fast and hard the information was coming at me. The whole thing is kind of disgusting and can make you just afraid of stepping outside.

Why only a 3 out of 4? Well, it is definitely dense and very detailed, but at the same time, it still just felt a bit one sided. Most of the anecdotes they showed have a lot of the “he said, she said” element, and for all I know, the people in these situations were bad. The evidence at times could easily have been hidden from the viewer.

Clearly the documentary has an agenda, and the agenda seems like a good one. But I feel like things can’t 100% be as bad as described everywhere. Maybe some parts of the country are just worse than other parts. Maybe. Hopefully.

The internet can be a dark and scary place. And that is based only on my limited experience as a regular person. But in reality, I have only seen the surface of what the internet really offers. So I can sound cool, I will start using the lingo and refer to regular internet as Surface Web for that reason! I watched Dope, which means I know what I am about to talk about.

But there is a darker side of the internet. A deeper side. A Deep Web, if you will. This part of the internet has “non-indexed content”, or pages that cannot be found through simple searching. In this area, a lot of fun stuff can happen, including: anonymity. That is one of the biggest complaints about our lives. If we want to remain anonymous, we have to basically go off grid to do so. Everything tracks us, our phones, our search history, everything. But the deep web is where people can just do things that they want to do without worry.

Sure, some of those things might be very illegal activities, like hiring hit men or child pornography. But there is also less serious stuff, like simple selling of drugs or other contraband, and just a community of people who can be honest with one another. Deep Web is a documentary that explores just what is the Darknet and talks about Silk Road, a famous website for drugs and more, that went to trial recently. And interestingly enough, it was directed by Alex Winter, aka Bill from Bill and Ted. Admit it, you were wondering what he was doing with his life.

To make things even better, the documentary is narrated by Keanu Reeves himself.

Bill and Ted’s Darknet Journey!

Enough joking, this is SERIOUS BUSINESS. After all drugs are bad right? Well, not if you listen to like, 5 of the documentaries I have reviewed (And meant to review). Silk Road was a place founded to buy and sell goods with anyone around the world, using bitcoin, an untraceable (if you do it right), currency. It was the safest and best way to get drugs and is one of the biggest reasons Bitcoins became so valuable.

It then goes into the sites eventual take down by the FBI, how they did it, and how they captured the supposed creator or owner of the site, Dread Pirate Roberts aka Kirk Ulbricht.

Of course, naturally, it then goes into the trial, the investigation, shady things that happened and very shady things that happened. This trial ended this year, so it is recent. The point it makes is that the trial wasn’t fair, and the government did illegal things and broke a lot of real life privacy laws to do what it did. Is that guy really the Dread Pirate Roberts? Hell if I know. Probably. But doesn’t mean that I would be fine with the government stepping so far outside their laws to catch him.

It is just a snowball effect. If it is fine with one person, it is fine with everyone, and it is more fuel for the NSA to keep their sails on course.

Now, despite all of this, I still think the documentary went way too long on the trial information. Halfway through it, I was finding myself bored and more susceptible to distractions. A lot of pauses started to happen as I cared less and less. I can agree something sucks, and I can say it started out great, but I wanted a bit more information on Deep Web and other things going on there. Over 75% of this is actually just about the Silk Road and the trial, but damn it, the documentary wasn’t called Silk Road.

Man on Wire is another documentary I have inexplicably just avoided. I blame the year it came out, 2008. Right now I am only watching things from 2010 and on! A five year window is very important for my website to feel modern and fresh. If you ever google recommended good documentaries, Man on Wire will be a relatively recent one always recommended, along with Grizzly Man.

Needless to say, it has almost always been on Netflix as well. A very easy documentary to get access to. There is also the ticking clock element here, with The Walk coming out in a couple weeks. You know, the movie version of this same old story that was probably only made because of how allegedly good the documentary was. I have to watch this, because a film based on a film is totally something I should do as a reviewer. Nothing like reading a book before the movie. And that is why I chose Man on Wire for my 4th day of Fucking Finally week.

The documentary is about Philippe Petit, an eccentric French man, who is really confident in his balance.

And he had dreams. He had dreams of showing the world how good he could balance. He was just a guy who had a type rope and would walk it in the park, getting better over time. But he wanted to reach for the stars. He wanted to tight rope walk on national land marks.

Kind of like my own goal to take a poop in every National park in America. It is just something that can drive someone to do weird things.

Hey look. A dude on a string!

How weird? Well, homeboy went and tight roped on top of the Notre Dame chapel thing. Kind of cool. But not that impressive. Then he went to Australia and did it on top of the Sydney Opera House. Boring. Gravity works differently in Australia because they are all upside down. We all know that.

Those things were all for the kids though. His real life long goal was the Twin Towers in NYC. He knew it when he first saw a picture of them in a magazine before they were finishing being built. That would be his greatest life moment. One day.

So he did it! Before they were even finished. With many months of planning, sneaking, with a group of friends and acquaintances to help him pull of the best art crime of the century. Man on Wire is his story, told by him and his friends (yes, still alive!), through reenactments and real footage.

And despite knowing the outcome (success, good job!), it is still somehow unbelievably tense. The music department does a fantastic job, along with the reenactments of keeping away from the guards in their many trips to make their plan work.

But the reason this documentary works is Philippe Petit himself. This man has a huge ego and is clearly in love with himself. But he is also giddy and excited in the telling of his own story (I would be too if it made me world famous and helped me not have to really work much again). His enthusiasm is contagious. He doesn’t even sit still for the interview, getting up several times to make a point more clear by acting things out.

Petit is the kind of guy you invite to a party, assuming you don’t care if it becomes all about him.

Petit is the kind of guy who can make a really good sandwich, and will share it with you, but only one type of sandwich.

Petit is the reason this documentary is so well loved and a fantastic thing to view and listen to. I hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt can pull him off!

How To Change The World will premier in theaters nationwide on September 9, 2015, as a part of Fathom Events.

If there is one thing every kid wants to do, it is to change the world. Or rule it, which would definitely be a type of change. So going to see a documentary called How To Change The World should be something on everyone’s radar. What can be better than a step by step guide that anyone can follow?!

Well, things aren’t that simple. And the documentary in question isn’t meant to be a vague guide, but instead tells the story of how a group of scientists, journalists, free thinkers, and all around hippies, accidentally started one of the largest environmental movements in the world today: Greenpeace.

Now now, calm your britches. Greenpeace is an organization with a lot of controversy and strong opinions. People seem to either love them or hate them, rarely maintaining a neutral stance on the group.

Despite that, the documentary can still be seen as an eye-opener. You see, the founders realized that the media would be important in order for any of their protests to matter. So they filmed everything they did. Every meeting, every decision, every protest in action, every run in with the law. They knew they needed documentation, and How To Change The World shows footage from their most famous early moments, showing how the group was made and eventually how they began to fracture.

This picture is a metaphor, but also something that really happened.

Their basic leader early on is the now deceased Bob Hunter, a journalist from Vancouver. He was the one who kept up their early news presence. Their first goal, as a group of friends, was to sail a Canadian boat from Vancouver to Amchitka, Alaska to protest a nuclear bomb test. They would go straight to the testing site on the boat and just exist offshore, daring the US to set the bomb off. Their boat of course was named Greenpeace.

After that, their next main goal was to help Save The Whales. Yes, they made the phrase. Their goal was to find Russian vessels that were harvesting the whales off of the coast of California, and again, put themselves in the way of their harpoons, hoping to save the whales by risking their own lives. A bold move that definitely put them on the map, allowing them to then protest the clubbing of baby seals and more environmental issues.

Other notable members include Patrick Moore, who has since defected from the group and actively goes against their protests, and Paul Watson, that asshole from Whale Wars who uses ridiculously aggressive tactics because he thinks he is better than other people. I should note, I felt really bad for Moore, because he clearly had good ideas but no one else in the group would listen to him. It makes sense that he hates them now. But then I also found out he is a climate change denier suddenly, so all good faith was quickly lost.

How To Change The World ended up having incredible depth. I was amazed at the amount of footage that actually existed on these first few voyages and the seal clips. And the footage isn’t edited down to make it easy on the eyes. You will see slaughtered whales and see baby seals getting clubbed. It makes its points by showing you the reality.

In all honesty, the organization started off with great ideas and goals and this documentary makes you feel like you are there the whole time with them. But once they began to fracture and have offices around the world, things got out of hand and they have gained a lot worse press.

The main thing I think lacking from this documentary would be addressing some of their controversies that are more modern and in greater detail. The documentary is only about 1:45 in length, and it doesn’t go into the members feuding and other smaller problems until the last 15 minutes, the majority being about their first few voyages. It has a lot of interesting information and will definitely do its job on teaching about Greenpeace.

However, I just wanted more, damn it.

No, this is not a The Hangover reference. This is just a group of brothers who are best friends who love movies.

The Wolfpack, a term never really applied to them in the documentary that I remember, is about a group of best friend brothers because they literally have no other friends. How could six brothers have no friends? Well, they lived in NYC on the 16th floor four bedroom apartment and they aren’t allowed to leave.

That sounds crazy, and it is. Their dad is the only one who left the home for any real amounts of time and the only one with a key. The mom was a certified teacher and homeschooled the whole family. They maybe were able to leave the apartment a few times every year, but some years they never had the chance to leave. None of this is technically illegal, because no one was chained up, they weren’t being abused, they had a loving house hold apparently. The dad was just very paranoid and protective.

So the brothers Mukunda, Narayana, Govinda, Bhagavan, Krisna, and Jagadesh, and one sister Visnu, looked to each other for companionship and social fun. They also turned to film.

Sounds like my life, except I was allowed to leave home and chose to stay inside.

FILM. A big part of their lives, as the dad was able to buy a lot of bargain DVDs and VHS tapes so they watched a shit ton of movies. They were able to get a lot of the classics and every single kid loved movies with all their heart. Hell, they loved them so much, they even recreated a lot of their favorite films. They would write down all of the dialogue, make a script, give each brother and Visnu a part, design costumes of varying quality and film the whole thing scene by wonderful scene. Tarantino films mostly, apparently.

But hey, there is a documentary about them! That means something must have changed eventually, right? Of course. Eventually the oldest boy, while the dad was getting groceries, just decided to leave the house and explore, consequences be damned. And then their lives changed forever…The outside world is a lot different than the movies.

The Wolfpack is a weird documentary, in that you assume it HAS to end with someone getting arrested, or a murder, or something. Maybe a big philosophical discussion about how to raise a kid properly. But no, it just ends with the family getting adjusted to society and having their children go outside once in awhile, discovering how the world is different than the movies.

As a movie watcher, I often find myself excited when I am watching something about movies. This feels like a more realistic version of a small plot from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Which means I was excited about The Wolfpack. But in all honesty, The Wolfpack was frankly overhyped to me. I expected something life changing after my watching. I expected to learn something poignant about family and film. But in reality, this was just a documentary about a strange family that was living with weird circumstances.

Yeah, there are interesting parts in it. It is amusing seeing them play out their film fantasies. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t feel like something I need to ever watch again or would rush out to show friends, like a truly great documentary.

A cool and interesting story, but not a lot more after that.

I miss Chris Farley. I don’t know a single person, outside of future review comment trolls, who hated the guy. He had some of the best sketches on SNL, was always full of energy.

Sure, his movies are hit and miss. Sometimes terrible. But they helped elevate David Spade way more than he could on his own. Sure, he mostly wasted it after the fact, but he tried, damn it.

I wanted to see I Am Chris Farley, which yeah, is a made for TV documentary. It aired on Spike TV. I was curious about Farley before he was big on SNL, and since they interviewed tons of his former friends and coworkers, it would feel great to hear some behind the scenes stories of some of the bigger sketches.

Shit, they were even able to get Lorne Michaels to do an interview, and I assume that dude is super busy.

Maybe it isn’t a “traditional documentary” on a “respected channel” that is worthy of a “Review” but I am “writing” it anyways.

This is a short post because there isn’t a lot to talk about. I learned about Farley’s earlier life. I learned about how he played Rugby in college, how he got into sketch comedy and eventually SNL.

The highlight of course would be the stories about and dealing with Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker. And the stories we hear are told by Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Dan Aykroid, David Spade obviously, Bob Odenkirk, Bob Saget, Christina Applegate, his brother Kevin P. Farley, Pat Finn a college friend, and more actors of course.

As a suggestion, you might want to have a copy of the SNL: Best of Chris Farley on hand, because you are going to want a lot more Farley than the documentary can give you and want to see the sketches without tons of interruptions from his friends telling stories. Pure. Unadulterated. Farley.

But if you are cheap, just watch Tommy Boy instead. It will get you through the urges I suspect, but not fully satisfy them.

I’d like to think I can keep a secret. Unless it is any form of gossip. If I hear about gossip, I will most definitely pass it on to somebody. Everyone knows that if you tell something to a married person, their spouse gets auto-dibs on the secret anyways.

Best Kept Secret is a documentary not even about a real secret. So I guess I can talk to you all about it and not feel like a dick for betraying its trust.

Best Kept Secret is actually about a teacher, in Newark, New Jersey, who just wants to do what is best for her kids and help them get jobs after they graduate high school. It is hard for her, even though her class is only four guys and she has over a year left to do it, because the kids are all very autistic.

And you will get to meet each and every one of the kids and their families and their struggles. They aren’t on even playing field of course. One guy can talk a lot more than the rest, some can barely say a thing, but damn it, they are working on it.

The hardest part about all of this is making sure they have a job after they finish high school. Most of them want to work (and honestly, apparently they all want to work at Burger King). They want to keep learning and get better at communication. They don’t want to live at home or in a home for the rest of their lives where they live only to exist and never do anything great.

Normally a joke statement, the struggle is actually real here.

So yes, the stakes are indeed very high for these individuals. But the issue this documentary brings up is that the tend to lack support and it can be frustrating. For the case of this teacher, she probably works 100 hours a week, planning, teaching, and coming up with leads for these kids to make their lives better. She is awesome for that fact.

But what this documentary does NOT talk about is overall increasing funding for people with special needs to increase their quality of life. It doesn’t ask for any sort of law reform to stop budget cuts anywhere. It does none of these things. It just showcases the reality of the situation in one of the poorest areas of the country with a higher than average number of special needs children.

And frankly, I think that did a disservice to the situation. Maybe I have been watching too many grand scale documentaries lately, but the small focus of this documentary just didn’t feel right. I got a personal look onto the lives of five people, and that was it. It feels like the documentary should be part of a series, going into different people’s lives, instead of a standalone feature. At the end of this one I am left wondering, “Well, yeah, now what?” It doesn’t really make any claims at all, so it just feels a bit pointless. Sure, there are some interesting things in here. But usually documentaries just do something more for their given topic.

Also, the ending felt like a kick in the nuts. The part where they update you on where everyone is now after all the filming. That part sucked a lot. Reality blows.