Tag: Documentary

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.

Hells yeah. Took forever, but I finally get to see Justin Bieber’s Believe, his latest documentary.

I reviewed his first one awhile ago, Justin Beiber: Never Say Never which made a lot of money. There was a second and third documentary that I never saw, Justin Bieber: All Around The World, and Justin Bieber: Rise To Fame. No, I got stuck with Justin Beiber: Always Believe, which was one of the biggest horse shits disguised as a movie that I have ever seen.

But this one went to theaters! Released on Christmas! It has to be a better, higher quality, right?

Much like the first one, we get to see live performances of a lot of Bieber’s songs from whatever this album is. I think it was called Believe, the venue was in Miami. That also is really the only new information given by this documentary. At least the first one got to talk about growing up, his first fourteen years and how he got big. This one was filled with just behind the scenes tour stuff, a lot of which was focused on his dancers for whatever reason.

Here is Bieber trying to grow a mustache.

Lot of talk about the song Boyfriend, which is unfortunate, because that song sounds like pigs being slaughtered to my ears. That’s the only comparison I can think of, honestly. I know very little reason why it got popular. Beauty and the Beat? That is a song that makes sense. Even has singing in it. But Boyfriend? Get the fuck out of here. None of these songs really live up to his earlier work, in my eyes.

This documentary had a very large older man with a Bieber face tattoo. On his thigh. That deserved its own mention.

And uhh, that was about it. There is literally not much else in this documentary. Just behind the scenes crap of another tour, so nothing new outside of the songs being played.

What is kind of annoying is an interview in this movie where he talks about hos the paparazzi and media really want him to mess up and crash and burn. He says he hates it, but says he sometimes yells out at them so they get what they want just to leave him alone. But you know, that the bad life style isn’t for him.

Yeah. That explains everything he did since this movie came out then. What another waste of a documentary. Again, I don’t even hate Bieber. Just the song Boyfriend. I more hate Bieber haters, who only have like 5 of the same jokes, thinking they are so clever. Same sort of hate I give to people who say “still a better love story than Twilight“.

If you hate Bieber, then obviously you will dislike this movie. If you like Bieber, you will enjoy the new songs. If you are looking for new important stories or anything in his life, then this documentary will be disappointing. Consider me in that last area.

Sometimes life is hard. I get that. Life is hard over here sometimes too.

But movies tend to be great escapes from life, telling great stories, increasing your imagination. But then we have documentaries that bring reality crashing back down. They remind us that things aren’t always easy in the world, or that things aren’t so bad.

Rotisserie Chicken is a Netflix original movie that was only available for one day through its services. Personally I think that is because people couldn’t deal with the truths that were being shown. It created such a broad range of emotions. Anger. Apathy. Giddiness. Confusion. Hysteria. Glee. Depression. I have never seen such a polarizing movie, not since Napoleon Dynamite or something by Terrence Malick.

Speaking of that, I heard Terrence Malick hates chicken. Get him!

The story itself is relatively simple. You have a cooked turkey, almost at the end of its journey in the afterlife. It is basically a retelling of the end of the journey, but in reverse, so you know the outcome before you begin. Never has a backwards story been so real (after all, a documentary), yet so relevant to the lives of almost everyone in the world.

The chicken, that was set up and forgotten in its prison, roasting.

You want character development/change? You get that in this movie! It is slow/gradual, but if you pay attention you can see the changes as they occur. If you look away, you might have missed a lot and are left wondering how you even got to that point in the first place. Definitely a film that commands your full attention.

For those unlucky enough to have missed this opportunity, I am not sure what I can say. I guess I hope it doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass some day or cause you to live in regret. That would be terrible.

But really, you should feel regret if you missed it.

BOOBIES!

Originally, I didn’t want to watch Pink Ribbon, Inc., because how much would I actually learn?

I knew that the Susan G. Komen organization was lame with their donations and generally considered very crummy.

But eh, why not watch it. Maybe I can learn even more to signify my stance on the issue. Maybe, just maybe, my opinions on the subject were already wrong?

Mostly I am just upset over sports and their support of this.

Well, this documentary does give me a lot more detail! You get to see the history of the pink ribbon, the history of many companies using it for “awareness”, the truth behind certain companies and more. They talk about the tyranny of cheerfulness that is presented with breast cancer, and argue over the terms “survivor” and “losing a battle” with cancer.

Is this biased towards one side? Hard to say. It just seems to me, on the most part, that they are presenting facts and just giving a voice to the side less heard. Because everything they argue against is the majority voice and doesn’t need a side to vent itself. Also, I believe there were people from Susan G. Komen and other organizations who were interviewed and put into the documentary to get their voices across too. The validity of their comments no one seems to have complained about, like they did in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, so I assume everything was on the uppity up.

So yeah. Documentary review. Much short. I enjoyed this one.

Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?

That is the question that you have to wonder sometimes with Documentaries. One of the reasons why I distrust them. How much was naturally caught on camera and how much was set up? I have a hard time believing that Bully was actual bullying, for that reason.

Paper Heart intends to be a bit gray, though.

We are told that this documentary is an idea made by Charlene Yi, who claims that she has never been in love and doubt she ever will be. So she wants to go around, asking people their opinion on love, from her friends (Seth Rogen, Demetri Martin, Martin Starr, and more) to people who have good stories around America. She also goes and talks to the quick wedding people in Las Vegas, tries on a Bridal gown, and more!

Oh, and she also falls in love during this documentary.

Love. Or something like that.

Good timing huh? She meets Michael Cera, yes, that Michael Cera. He is awkward, but he likes her and tries to get her to go out on a date and eventually succeeds. Jake Johnson, who goes by Nick in this documentary helps out of course because Cera is his bud. Once their relationship starts to progress, Nick decides it needs to be a part of the documentary too, because it fits the theme.

But is this a real romance, or is this whole thing just a super awkward and realistic mockumentary?

I would say while watching it, it is pretty hard to say. I of course looked it up afterward to figure out if it was all true, all fake, or somewhere in between. I won’t tell you what, because you can look it up yourself yo.

What I can say is that everything about this at least felt real. The stories that couples told about their love were very cute, despite the awkward puppet show during them. Everything felt genuine, and it made me feel kind of sappy.

When I bought this movie, I didn’t even know it was a documentary until I saw a trailer for like, a year later. But I like what I saw in this film, even if I have a hard time explaining just what it is.

Željko Ivanek.
Xander Berkeley.
Craig Fairbrass.
Bruce Davison.

These are all names that you may have seen before, but probably don’t recognize in big amounts. If you clicked their links and saw their pictures, you might recognize their face, but find that you can’t quite picture what you have seen them in before.

Timothy Omundson.
Mark Rolston.
Wade Williams.
J. C. MacKenzie.

Are you getting it now? These guys are those guys. Those character actor guys. The ones that make you go, oh yeah, That Guy…Who Was In That Thing.

These are the working actors, who don’t make million dollar blockbusters, and then can live at home with their family or months off not a worry in the world. These are the actors who aren’t doing it for the money, because their pay certainly isn’t a lot (unless they are a long running TV show maybe). These are the ones who love to act, who will do most any role, and sometimes even have to live paycheck to paycheck. These are the guys not going to be winning awards down the red carpet anytime soon. Nope. They can probably only get Emmys. Well that is not true, one of these guys was nominated for a Tony, but I forgot who.

It was one of these sixteen guys. Yeah. One of them.

Robert Joy.
Stanley Kamel.
Rick Worthy.
Paul Guilfoyle.

This documentary interviews all of these sixteen individuals and splices them together to tell a sort of story. We learn why they wanted to be an actor, what they were before acting, how their parents took the news, what their first big break was, what their favorite memories were, their regrets, the process into getting onto a new television show, what they have been doing lately, their interactions with fans when they have that “Oh shit, you are famous” moment, and their thoughts on fellow actors.

And that is about it.

Gregory Itzin.
W. Morgan Sheppard.
Zach Grenier.
Matt Malloy.

Honestly, early on, I was excited about this film. What a fun concept!

Then I got bored. Like, a third of the way in, I was already done. It seems like a good idea, to let us get to know these guys, and some of the stories were interesting. But I stopped caring pretty quickly. I don’t know if it is just the straight them talking format, and nothing else (because that is true), or what. But man. It turned into a snoozefest. I think it is only 80 minutes long, but it felt really really long.

Maybe the problem is that I just only knew like, half of these guys from things, and the rest felt like scrubs? Let’s go with that.

Either way. This documentary could have been a lot better.

Sometimes life really sucks.

That is the case for Shane Crone. Shane is a gay man, and he has been wronged by the world, and this is a documentary to show what happened in his life.

I know for a fact I have read the story that happens in Bridegroom before, at least a year ago. It was a sad tale, and I didn’t know that it was the main plot of this movie.

Basically, Shane was in love. He was in a relationship with Thomas Bridegroom for about six years before a tragedy took his life. An unforeseen accident, that for all purposes should not have happened.

But what happened after was even more unseen and, well I won’t say more unfortunate, but still really bad.

I won’t harp on a lot of the details, but long story short: Thomas’ parents did not approve of his lifestyle, despite the fact that he was with Shane for six years. Because they couldn’t get married, Shane had no say in what happened to Thomas post death and was cut out of his life in more than just the one way. He could not see him in the hospital, he could not lay claim to any of their combined things, and he was threatened by members of the family in order to keep him away from the funeral, which he also had no say in.

And that sucks. Like a lot. Like I couldn’t imagine anything like that happening. There are some bad people out there at all.

But on the flip side…there is no good reason for this to be made into a full documentary. Because all it does it spend most of the time talking about their relationship and the good times they had together, then the last act of tragedy and bad things happening. It didn’t delve into government regulations or laws, or even demand change. It just told the story of a relationship that ended and had a lot of bad things happen to it.

I know why they talked so long about the relationship, but really, most of it didn’t matter. This feels like it would have just made more sense as a euology for Tom, and not a film meant to make people emotional. Because honestly, I thought the documentary did just an overall poor job of telling the story and making me feel anything. Sure, it could be because I heard the story before, but having all of that build up didn’t enhance the experience, it just made me more apathetic.

On its own, this documentary doesn’t say much and isn’t too important. I again think it sucks that it happened, and hey, everyone should be married. Will this movie help change laws? Maybe. But it isn’t made effectively to help try and do that. This would have worked a lot better if it was cut in half, and the bad parts were given more screen time, in my opinion. But at 80 minutes, it even feels too long.

Not every bad event needs a movie. I am worried the director of the movie came by and wanted to do this just to make a quick buck, outside of just being crushed by the story. It seems a bit forced, and I just didn’t like it.

I have no idea where I first heard about Stories We Tell. But it totally happened sometime in the last 0-2 years. I think. It was either something I read, or a friend’s post on facebook, or a trailer. Shit I really don’t remember. Which is funny, because this documentary is about memories not being infallible.

Sarah Polley is an actress that really no one cares about. She had a major role in Go, but since then its been mostly random stuff. She has made a project to honor her mother, maybe. She has gathered all of her older siblings, her dad, her parents friends, and others to just tell the complete story of their mother, as they remember it.

The film on IMDB is described as “A film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers.” We are told that basically their stories will show that not everyone has the complete story, that some people have contradicting thoughts about what happened and the only way to really know is to hear every single angle.

Angle means different person, not where the person is talking from in relation to where you are sitting.

But then I watch it.

And uhh, their stories really aren’t that different. A lot of people mentioning different things, but they are all really similar, so the stark differences we were promised don’t really come up.

I mean, this is no Rashomon, the first movie to have an incident occur, and people retelling it all have different memories, til we find out the truth is somewhere in between. It is now a pretty famous plot device. So we would hope for big differences in order for the time to be worth it.

What inspired this video was that she had heard rumors her whole life that her dad wasn’t her real dad. Surprise, it was true. The real dad knew he was the father, but he didn’t tell people. So that guy had part of the story that others were unaware of. A secret love. Maybe. The last line of the film makes us wonder if it was really that good of a love.

But here is the issue I have. Sure nothing crazy happens overall, this is real life. It is an issue a “Character” in the documentary brings up. People are talking for hours about her mom. This movie is less than two hours long. Sarah herself has to pick and choose what memories get told, leaving still an unstructured half truth of her mother, which is not what she set out to do. It is the exact same thing our mind/memories do, but at an editing table.

I just demand the 60 hour version, is all.

Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa, Bad Grandpa…

Well, it is presented by Jackass, and I can say I have never seen one of those movies in full, or the TV show, just random skits before that people have gone out of their way to show me. And this music video by Andrew W.K.

I literally have no desire to see people hurt them selves and do stupid things for amusement. Like, none. I am not high brow at all, not in the slightest, it just doesn’t seem appealing to me.

But this movie is different. So much different.

Like, this kid, who was the best part of Fun Size.

The “plot” of the movie is that Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) is old, his wife just died, and he is stoked. Too bad his only daughter is going to prison, and her son, Billy (Jackson Nicholl), needs someone to watch him and take him to visit his daddy in Raleigh, NC.

But Irving lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. That is far away. Fuck all that noise.

Well he does it anyways, and that is the backbone for this roadtrip film, which has the main goal of just doing ridiculous things and providing shock value to real people and our enjoyment.

And some stunts too.

Or fabricated little girl pageants in Raleigh just to confuse and bewilder people.

In case you can’t wait for the ending, I am giving this a 2 out of 4 for a few reasons.

Yes, it is at times entertaining. Some of the stunts/interactions are really creative. Nice moments. But a lot of the time they feel too far in between, or the joke takes too long to set up (so instead we are just given a lot of diatribe between Johnny Knoxville pretending to be a mean old man.

Speaking of that, this may be the only time I say this in a review but…

This movie has too much plot.

To be more entertaining, we need more skits, more hilarious interactions between real people and the actors. We have a lot of scenes just between Knoxville and Nicoll who in the car talking. And it is all bullshit, all stuff we would expect to see in a real movie, that feels just completely unnecessary in this film.

Similarly, because a lot of these scenes are so detailed, like the pageant, and that machine that crashes through a store window. That wasn’t just random, other people had to be in on it. So some of those other people are in the shots too, doing reactions as if its real, but you know they know its about to happen.

So to recap, this movie would have been a lot more entertaining overall if they just made more of it be real skits and less plot, and reduced the number of people who knew what was going to happen. Here is one thing I learned from the movie: The Guardians of the Children, a bikers gang, is incredibly fucking awesome, and they really believe in their cause.

Aw yeah, technically my first review of a stand up special ever.

Why this one? Why now? Well, I don’t plan on reviewing stand up specials pretty often. Not only because they mostly just appear on Comedy Central/HBO first, or some guys website for $5. No. They are just strange to review. I don’t know if I can measure my laughing amount on a scale too easily. In fact, most of these I do laugh throughout, except the occasional odd one out. It would be too difficult.

So why this one? Well, Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain was given a theatrical run, not in my area, but it still got one damn it, and I didn’t get to see it. Like a bitter ex, I have waited for it to finally come out on DVD just so I could review it for this website.

That tight clothing got even tighter when the fire came out.

Turns out the Trailer was very misleading for what this movie was about. It shows he went on a world tour, got into shenanigans, and did comedy. Like most concert films, all of the performances/material are actually taken from one show, and yes, that show is usually Madison Square Garden. But in between songs/performances, we normally get to see the performers doing fun stuff around the world. Not in this film.

I’d say about the first 15 minutes or so started off with a skit, and then went into travel the world mode, where we saw him for a few minutes, do zany things around the world. Then the next 60 minutes is his stand up routine presumably uncut, all in one go without any breaks, then the film ends with some more running around in the credits. That is it.

So basically, it is just another stand up special. There is very little not stand up special, and I don’t get to see what the trailer is about 50% of. So those scenes in the trailer? Most of them appear in the dang credits, so as the movie was ending I was more confused than anything.

As for Kevin Hart‘s stand up, sure it was funny. Most of this hour was dedicated to really long stories about his fame and overreactions. Some hit hard, some missed. Oh well. After it is over, I can only really remember a few that I truly laughed at, but for a comedy special, having those moments is still gold and still worth it.

I am just disappointed there is nothing really unique about this whole affair, despite being in theaters, and the misleading trailer.