Author Topic: DOCember 2017  (Read 18089 times)

pixote

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #90 on: June 19, 2018, 11:37:48 PM »


Dawson City: Frozen Time  (Bill Morrison, 2016)

You know how, in the epilogue a film based on real events, the music slows down to a somber drone as footage or photographs of the real-life players from the story appear on-screen alongside factual tidbits about what happened after? ("Joe retired from the force and opened his restaurant. .... He never remarried.")

For better and worse, Dawson City: Frozen Time is pretty much two hours of that.

I love Morrison's effort here, and on paper it sounded like the perfect movie for me, but, dammit, it just missed the mark. Conceptually, it's wonderful, as the footage from the Dawson City Film Find becomes the B-roll of the story that that find — a story which encompasses the Dawson City itself, the Klondike, silent film distribution, and more. It's certainly fascinating the way so much history intersects at the forgotten nexus of Dawson City — but maybe that’s true of any place, if you look hard enough.

The film isn't just a history lesson, though — it's also a celluloid tone poem. It rarely finds the right balance between those two modes, however. It's such a delicate balance that the smallest things seem to throw it off: the opening interview of Morrison by Chris "Mad Dog" Russo establishes the wrong tone for what follows; the addition of sound effects to the silent footage, though subtle, still manages to breaks its spell on occasion; and the incorporation of certain archival footage — especially the home movies — without any explanation of relevance threatens to turn the piece into an academic exercise in editing.

The movie's production company was called Hypnotic Pictures, and I remain disappointed that I wasn't more hypnotized by what I saw. Honestly, though, neither the music nor the editing is quite good enough to truly mesmerize. One marvelous exception comes near the very end of the film, when the deteriorated state of the celluloid turns a dancer's dance into wild, ephemeral celebration of lost time. That is, ironically, the one image which lingers.

Grade: C+

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #91 on: June 23, 2018, 06:29:52 PM »


Holy Hell  (Will Allen, 2016)

Damn, I can't find my notes on this one, and I barely remember my reaction. I definitely didn't like it quite as much as oldkid and smirnoff did in the 2016 DOCember marathon. I believe I thought the story, though interesting, was undermined by Allen's dual role as both director and participant. The film, particularly the interviews, would have benefited greatly from an outside point of view. Allen's closeness to the material, which should have been an asset, instead becomes a liability, especially as he denies us key information until late in the game in order to give the film the shape of a mystery.

Grade: C+

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #92 on: June 24, 2018, 06:05:44 PM »


Abacus: Small Enough to Jail  (Steve James, 2016)

This good, behind-the-headline style documentary earned my love right away by showing a cute old couple watching It's a Wonderful Life. But it also made me think that couple belonged in jail for watching Capra's film in a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Its easy to imagine that many people (myself included) saw the Manhattan District Attorney's 2012 press conference announcing charges against Abacus Bank and thinking, "Finally! At least one of those damn banks is getting what they deserve!" But James' film, like Fantastic Lies, is a strong reminder of how the DA's office, the police, and the media are sometimes — maybe even often — imbued with too much authority as purveyors of Truth. And that's where a documentary like Abacus becomes so invaluable, as it reveals the flesh-and-blood people behind the 'evil' financial corporation — which, in this case, looks an awfully lot like a family-owned bank with George Bailey-esque aspirations.

This ninety-minute film (made for Frontline) includes a solid hour of rather gripping legal proceedings. The other thirty minutes weave together a portrait of an interesting family and of their community, underscoring the importance of those two things to the bank at the heart of the case — things which seem under attack by the prosecution. The procedural and personal aspects of the film don't always gel as well as they should, making the doc feel longer than it actually is. The photography is lackluster both in composition and in digital quality (has Kartemquin not bought a new camera since digital was first introduced?). The scenes of family meetings and meals are a bit trying in the way the family constantly interrupts and talks over each other; that's all a necessary part of the portrait, but a little goes a long way. The mom is the best, and it's a shame she gets so little screen time, even though she's more tangentially to the story than her husband and their three daughters. The way the dad ages throughout the trial, with all the untold stress no doubt taking a toll on him, is as heart-breaking as it is infuriating.

All told, James' film is a bit enervating but definitely worth a watch.

Grade: B

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #93 on: June 26, 2018, 10:51:56 PM »


City of Ghosts  (Matthew Heineman, 2017)

Between this movie and Cartel Land, Heineman is positioning himself as one of the best documentarians working today. City of Ghosts presents a searing, brutal view of Isis' stranglehold on Raqqa, Syria. Covering as much ground as it does, the film feels like a synthesis of most every documentary short that was Oscar-nominated in 2016. Heineman places extra focus on the importance of propaganda to Isis' effort, in parallel to the importance of (social) media to the resistance, and he integrates personal stories into the larger narrative more successfully than, say, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. I remain haunted by Facebook messages to the dead; a German Woman with FCK RFGS on her phone case; and bravery; and sacrifice; and uncontrollable shaking. It's an exhausting, emotional, and powerful portrait. I wish it didn't make me feel so helpless.

Grade: B+

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #94 on: June 27, 2018, 01:46:25 AM »
I'd read about Cartel Land and City of Ghosts, but neither had subject matter to end up on my Watchlist. Heineman has a fiction movie, A Private War, opening later this year and you have me wondering if he should have a Directors thread, even if just to remind me to take a look at his films?

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #95 on: June 27, 2018, 01:52:15 AM »
I'd read about Cartel Land and City of Ghosts, but neither had subject matter to end up on my Watchlist. Heineman has a fiction movie, A Private War, opening later this year and you have me wondering if he should have a Directors thread, even if just to remind me to take a look at his films?

Hmm, interesting. I'll be curious to see whether his skills translate to fiction. I think of him mostly as a fearless journalist, but he's got a strong cinematic sensibility, too. (I'm somewhat glad to see that he's working from someone else's script.). I don't know that he deserves a thread yet, but given the cast of A Private War, it sounds like it'll give him a third feature that people have actually seen.

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #96 on: June 27, 2018, 02:43:29 PM »


All This Panic  (Jenny Gage, 2016)

I don't pretend I'm Margot Tenenbaum!

Gage's camera follows seven girls from the middle of their high school years and into the first year of college. I couldn't help comparing the film to the 1982 documentary Seventeen, which I watched as part of DOCember 2016. The two films are very different in their approach — All This Panic focuses just on girls and covers a longer timespan in their lives, from the middle of high school to a year or so into college — but kids will still be kids, so certain things remain constant: sex, drugs, alcohol, popularity, existential ruminations about their place in the world, now and in the future, et cetera. It's tempting to attribute the different attitudes of each film's subjects to the generation gap — the girls of All This Panic don't contradict any stereotype of millennials — but I wonder if those differences have less to do with time (1982 vs. 2017) than class and location. The kids in Seventeen, as I remember them, were lower middle class, more or less, while the girls of All This Panic seem more firmly middle class — but New York City middle class, which is perhaps a far cry from Muncie, Indiana middle class. If there's a greater sense of entitlement on display in All This Panic, it doesn't serve as a critique of an entire generation; and it's also offset by a greater sense of hope and a stronger sense of empathy.

But I digress. All This Panic is an extremely sunny film in its cinematography, a style which really adds to the sense of the fleeting nature of these years, as childhood slips away and adulthood looms nebulously. It's a nicely cast documentary — full of with appealingly articulate youths — though a few of the girls blended together for me. Only two of them really made enough of an impression to distinguish themselves. It's also never quite clear what if any the relationships exist between the girls. It's a film of snippets; a glimpse into this time and these lives. It's not really penetrating or incisive, and there's very little sense of an outside world, but it succeeds in creating an instant nostalgia for time that's not yet passed.

Total Bondo bait. Available on Kanopy.

Grade: B-

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #97 on: June 27, 2018, 05:09:33 PM »


Jane  (Brett Morgen, 2017)

It’s good that I saw this. I don’t know that I truly understood before that Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey are different people, as different as chimpanzees and gorillas.

I spent the first third of Jane distracted by things that the film’s ideal viewer would probably never consider: Is the archival footage I’m seeing contemporaneous to the events Goodall is describing (through filmed interview and borrowed audiobook narration)? Was any of the sound recorded live, or was it all added as part of this documentary’s production? Did the colors always look this off, or were they lost to time? Was the film blown up from 16mm? Color corrected? Too many distracting, nagging questions.

Once I better oriented myself with the film’s means of production, I became much more invested in the jungles of Gombe than in the story of Jane Goodall’s time there. The latter isn’t without interest, especially when certain human/chimpanzee parallels come to the fore, but I’m not convinced that the existing documentary is superior to one more squarely focused on this community of chimpanzees. The title is a bit misleading in that regard, for the film’s treatment of Jane as subject is rather superficial. Her personality shines through, both in past and present, but we don’t really observe her in the way that she observes the chimpanzees. The film doesn't find the right balance between those oft-competing points of focus, and the result is a bit underwhelming, occasionally feeling like an audiobook with illustrations.

I was shocked during the end credits to learn that Phillip Glass was responsible for the score. The music has its nice moments, but more often it’s intrusive and even distracting. That might be more a criticism of the sound editors than of Glass himself.

Oddly, Jane made me want to rewatch The Nun’s Story because Goodall and Hugo look like less like real people than actors hired to play them in the movie version of their lives. Might as well have been Hepburn and Finch.

Grade: B-

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #98 on: June 27, 2018, 09:05:40 PM »


Risk  (Laura Poitras, 2016)

Risk, like Citizenfour, finds Laura Poitras tempering access to sensational figures and movements with an understated, almost drab presentation. The effect is a bit more damning here because this profile of Julian Assange and Wikileaks lacks the natural dramatic urgency of Edward Snowden's story. From moment to moment, Risk is generally interesting — not counting the scene of Lady Gaga interviewing Assange — but those moments lack the cumulative philosophical and ethical import they feel like they should possess. Perhaps the highlight of the film is the shot of Assange being practically swallowed up by a mob of media and paparazzi as he leaves a courthouse — where he's fighting extradition on sexual assault charges, something which adds a whole new layer of timeliness to the film — and the wonderful irony of seeing this kingpin of transparency subjected to such intrusive observation. I also like the incorporation of Poitras' production journals, though her omission of a key nugget of information until late in the film undermines the seeming openness of that narration. A film so rich in irony probably shouldn't be so staid.

Grade: B-

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #99 on: June 27, 2018, 10:54:23 PM »


Kate Plays Christine  (Robert Greene, 2016)

Greene (who previously directed Actress) casts Kate Lyn Sheil to play Christine Chubbuck, the Sarasota local news anchor who took her own life on air (as dramatized in the film Christine, starring Rebecca Miller). The documentary then follows Kate as she researches her subject, attempts to get into character, and deals with the consequences of living in the mindset of a suicidal depressive. Interspersed throughout are dramatized scenes of Christine's life, with Kate playing opposite local actors (who become interview subjects themselves). This intriguing approach to the biographical documentary adds strong interest, though the film actually works better as a meditation on the nature of acting than as an historical investigation, which often feels forced. It's an overly long and overly serious movie, and it betrays a self-satisfaction about its blurring of fiction and nonfiction — which struck me as unearned. That being said, when we finally get to see actual footage of the real Christine, the film made me really look at her and study her in a way that a conventional documentary likely couldn't have inspired, so props for that. More often than not, though, the film's core concepts are more interesting than their execution, and the ending undermines much of the film, turning it cheap and laughable.

Grade: C+

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