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Dog Day Afternoon is a great film, but not a documentary
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Jul 30, 2023 21:30
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the tingler posted:Dog Day Afternoon is a great film, but not a documentary I know. The video I linked, however, IS and discusses the changes the movie made, etc.
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Jul 31, 2023 11:56
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Just watched Kokomo City, a punchy highly stylized doc on Black trans sex workers in the states. It's shot in high contrast black and white by D Smith, a former music video director, and has a lot of heart and great interviews in it. https://youtu.be/lrHUHc1cZWY It's fun and sad and full of life. Highly recommend if it's playing near you.
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Aug 4, 2023 05:10
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Interested by Ken Burns' choice to use folksy fiddle and banjo backing tracks in The War. When you're used to hearing dramatic Hollywood scores in war movies, it's quite dissonant.
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Aug 7, 2023 07:28
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https://homecinema.curzon.com/film/on-our-doorstep/ Just watched this doc about a refugee camp I worked at during the time of the doc's filming. Really worth a watch, the guy did a great job with it. What a crazy situation
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Aug 13, 2023 22:03
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Ken Burns' Vietnam War just keeps on using that ridiculous Gut Wrenching Scream stock sound effect.
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Aug 24, 2023 12:14
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I love all the HBO crime/drug documentaries and stumbled on one I'd never seen called Dope Sick Love https://play.max.com/movie/f71ce2b7-6a13-4a86-83d0-5ddb8cde334e It's pretty much what one has come to expect from HBO drug docs but, as a recovering addict myself, I still find them fascinating. Mainly for how real they are and how well they capture the dehumanizing effects of severe drug addiction without really dehumanizing the subjects themselves. Oddly, I find it a little cathartic to see people who have sunken lower than I did and there's a weird sense of accomplishment knowing that I managed to quit freebasing on my own as I watch these people spiral lower and lower, even though I'm rooting for them. I was right up on the edge with a cocaine habit and facing having no place to live at the age of 25, three thousand miles away from my family, multiple (failed) attempts to quit and ultimately being involved in a hit and run accident that still haunts me to this day. (Nobody was injured). I got into a fender bender wreck right near my work a long time ago. It was the other driver's fault but I was driving my friend's car, had no California license, had an 8 ball of coke and a 1/2 ounce of weed in the car and had done a few rails so I booked it out of there by pretending to pull over and then took off. I still feel bad about it and that was the incident that ultimately led me to get clean - or to at least stop doing hard, illegal drugs - so I sold my possessions and moved back home. Thing I never get with these movies, though, is how they film them and the relationship between the camera crew and the subjects. I think of this when I remember the crazy poo poo I got up to, much of which was not only embarrassing but VERY illegal, and I think about "what if this had been filmed?" Do these addicts get paid? How do they film them shoplifting, getting high in apartment elevators, copping deals around policemen and poo poo like that? How do bystanders and witnesses not notice the film crew? The addicts are leaving blood and dirty needles in plain sight in common areas that I have to think are extreme health code situations at a minimum, where people should be warned and the areas cleaned up. I wonder if footage ever gets subpoenaed and what types of disclosure forms and legal protection the filmmakers have? Or the subjects for that matter? Many, MANY crimes are shown being committed in full view, in broad daylight and with easily identifiable locations and suspects. Also, the drug users in these docs seem to willingly allow the film crew to record them at their absolute lowest, with their family members, endangering kids and getting up to all manner of horrible poo poo that's real easy to locate on a map; with a timestamp even. Can an argument be made that these subjects are being exploited or even set up in a fashion? They appear to be being enabled at a bare minimum. Lastly, god drat do I ever loving HATE needles and turn away every time one of these people shoot up, especially when they seem to be having trouble with it. One line I'm glad I never crossed or got caught up in. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 19:15
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Did you ever see the three Life of Crime docs on HBO? (One Year in a Life of Crime, Life of Crime 2, Life of Crime 1984-2020). The crime is for the most part petty street stuff done to fuel addiction. Fascinating to watch as it covers mostly the same people over a long period of time. It’s interesting to watch not just them change, but the approaches in documentary film making over the time period too. The first hour of the 3rd one is essentially a recap of the first two so you can mostly skip that, however in recutting it they introduce one of the primary people from 2 briefly in the time period of the 1st, which is kinda important. At the time they had no idea she would be such a principal character so her scene didn’t make final cut.
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Sep 9, 2023 19:28
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Documentaries are the ultimate answer to "why don't they just stop filming".
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Sep 9, 2023 19:29
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when i see an addict or someone doing something illegal in a doc and they don't take steps to conceal their identity i can only think "wow, what a dumbass"
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Sep 9, 2023 19:32
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EL BROMANCE posted:Did you ever see the three Life of Crime docs on HBO? (One Year in a Life of Crime, Life of Crime 2, Life of Crime 1984-2020). The crime is for the most part petty street stuff done to fuel addiction. I have, yes, and I really like them.
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Sep 9, 2023 22:27
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EL BROMANCE posted:Did you ever see the three Life of Crime docs on HBO? (One Year in a Life of Crime, Life of Crime 2, Life of Crime 1984-2020). The crime is for the most part petty street stuff done to fuel addiction. I liked these, but I felt like they may have blurred the line between observing and participating in the lives of the people they were filming in an uncomfortable way. There's one guy who's an abusive piece of poo poo (Ricky? Richie?) who skips a court date or is wanted by the police for some other reason. The filmmakers are with him when/where he's hiding out, and they're also riding along with the police when they arrest him. I think it's the only time they interact with the police in that way and it's hard to think of an explanation for that other than that the crew told the police where to find him. Regardless of that, goddamn did I hate to see people find their way into recovery and at least appear to be building a sober life before relapsing and dying before the next check in with the filmmaker. COVID killed a lot of people who never got the virus.
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Sep 10, 2023 01:14
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BrianRx posted:I liked these, but I felt like they may have blurred the line between observing and participating in the lives of the people they were filming in an uncomfortable way. There's one guy who's an abusive piece of poo poo (Ricky? Richie?) who skips a court date or is wanted by the police for some other reason. The filmmakers are with him when/where he's hiding out, and they're also riding along with the police when they arrest him. I think it's the only time they interact with the police in that way and it's hard to think of an explanation for that other than that the crew told the police where to find him. That's kind of what I mean. Could this be a form of aiding and abetting? The filmmakers are also right there when that rear end in a top hat beats the poo poo out of his wife and do nothing about it. All kinds of weird questions I have watching these. For instance, it seems like the cameras would be quite large so how do they blend in in department stores and poo poo while the subjects are shoplifting? Wouldn't a street dealer take issue with a big rear end camera filming a drug transaction?
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Sep 10, 2023 14:08
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It's also kinda gross showing the bloated decomposing corpse of a guy you based the majority of your doc around.
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Sep 10, 2023 21:26
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BiggerBoat posted:For instance, it seems like the cameras would be quite large so how do they blend in in department stores and poo poo while the subjects are shoplifting? Wouldn't a street dealer take issue with a big rear end camera filming a drug transaction? I know in some cases (reality TV, for example) the cameras and crews are so omnipresent that they become wallpaper for the primary subjects, but yeah, the guy doing a thing that could get him locked up for 20 years is probably going to be pretty aware of all that and less cool about it. banned from Starbucks posted:It's also kinda gross showing the bloated decomposing corpse of a guy you based the majority of your doc around. It was super gross in a number of ways. Seeing a guy you know reduced to that mess is pretty hosed up. It would have been super duper easy to handle it like when Delores relapsed and died. BrianRx fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 10:22
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BrianRx posted:I know in some cases (reality TV, for example) the cameras and crews are so omnipresent that they become wallpaper for the primary subjects, but yeah, the guy doing a thing that could get him locked up for 20 years is probably going to be pretty aware of all that and less cool about it. If it's like that moonshiners show, I think the doc makers say they sit on the footage for a few years until the statute of limitations passes for whatever crime was committed passes.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:31
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BrianRx posted:
Yeah, that was visceral and probably a bit much but the fascinating thing to me watching these people deteriorate over a long period of time, just being trapped in the life and often retaining a sense of optimism. It was like the movie "Boyhood" only non fictional. What was the time span from "small time shoplifting junkies" to full on "passing out in the street"? Less than a decade? More? Guess I could look it up.16 years. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15119154/ Getting back the idea of the subjects being enabled by the films: I remember the Hookers on the Point series or whatever it was called and one of the more "famous" characters actually had an increase in business because Johns recognized her from the show and looked at her a little like being able to gently caress a celebrity. I don't know how you show the reality of this poo poo without at least somewhat exploiting the subjects, no matter how sympathetic you make them out to be. But I'm glad these docs exist since they're about the most honest portrayals of that life that we're ever liable to get. Related: Anyone ever seen the doc about the photo journalist who took it upon himself to get inside the reality of heroin users and then documented himself hopelessly hooked? It may have come up before. His name was Lanre_Fehintola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanre_Fehintola Here's the films about him https://vimeo.com/145770018 https://vimeo.com/149131539 and one more by the same director https://vimeo.com/145135738 BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 23:54
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I honestly don't have much connection with John Le Carre beyond Tinker Tailor but I caught this doc at TIFF and it's spectacular. Errol Morris still the king. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gWnuhjwNrw
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Sep 19, 2023 20:25
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flashy_mcflash posted:I honestly don't have much connection with John Le Carre beyond Tinker Tailor but I caught this doc at TIFF and it's spectacular. Errol Morris still the king. Well, as a huge fan of Le Carré I had no idea this was coming out so thanks for posting it!
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Sep 20, 2023 12:16
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flashy_mcflash posted:I honestly don't have much connection with John Le Carre beyond Tinker Tailor but I caught this doc at TIFF and it's spectacular. Errol Morris still the king. IIRC John Le Carré became an irish nationalist late in life.
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Sep 20, 2023 16:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:IIRC John Le Carré became an irish nationalist late in life. I don't know about a "nationalist", but he did become an Irish citizen shortly before he died. I think he had just become fed up with the direction of the country, especially after Brexit. I read that he had nothing but Irish flags at his funeral, which I suppose is a pretty strong statement from a guy who spent 15 years spying for the British government (and only retired because his cover was blown).
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Sep 20, 2023 17:46
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Brettbot posted:I don't know about a "nationalist", but he did become an Irish citizen shortly before he died. I think he had just become fed up with the direction of the country, especially after Brexit. I read that he had nothing but Irish flags at his funeral, which I suppose is a pretty strong statement from a guy who spent 15 years spying for the British government (and only retired because his cover was blown). In my heart he sang Come Out Ye Black And Tans, reality be damned.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:01
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Finally found the time to watch the HBO Telemarketers doc after hearing a lot about it. I liked it overall but I definitely think it's uneven. I'd heard bits and pieces of the scammy telemarketer stuff they were talking about, but seeing it all laid out in a narrative fashion and having the complicity of all stakeholders involved progressively revealed was really compelling. The main problem that I had with it is that the initial strength that Pat brings to the project, his infectious grassroots dirtbag energy, by the end became a weakness. I have a lot of sympathy for him, and he's a fun guy to watch gently caress around, but he's clearly a liability as the public face of an investigation. After the first interview that Pat does, when Sam states that he'd never thought about the possibility of Pat being a bad interviewer, I thought they would transition to Pat taking the lead on investigating and Sam being the interviewer. But then in the third episode Pat is right back to doing a lot of the interviews and it's clear that people are instantly wary of him, not to mention that he interrupts people with pointless interjections and forgot that guy's name when he confronted him at the end. Who knows what they could have gotten out of interviewing more people at the FOP convention, for instance, if they'd presented more of a professional front and been a bit more canny in their approach? I have to admit that once I realized about halfway through the final episode that their investigation was hitting a brick wall and they weren't going to get any major revelations, I just skipped forward, because the interviews with Pat were too cringe-inducing to watch. Still worthwhile, and the futility of the ending has its own gut punch effect, but kind of a frustrating watch.
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Sep 27, 2023 11:29
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MeinPanzer posted:Finally found the time to watch the HBO Telemarketers doc after hearing a lot about it.
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Sep 30, 2023 05:01
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Just watched Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, another 3-part HBO doc, and this one I liked a lot. In a nutshell, it dives into the new age cult that shot to notoriety a few years back when the police raided the home its members were living in and discovered the corpse of the founder, a 45-year-old woman known as Mother God, lovingly positioned in a shrine-like bed. The cult itself is relatively benign and the characters are pretty standard mentally ill people with major substance abuse issues, but it was way funnier than I thought it would be and had some interesting twists and turns. The filmmaker benefitted from having an immense amount of material at her disposal, since the cult members basically live-streamed everything they did 24/7 and also recorded every action of Mother God in the belief that they were producing the new gospels. The overall vibe of the documentary is also great, with fantastic music and cinematography. I was pleased but not surprised to see in the end credits that the Safdie brothers were producers--it seems like they're involved in more and more media I'm consuming these days... Highly recommended. Up next: Ken Burns' documentary The American Buffalo. MeinPanzer fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 23:38
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Watched Beyond Utopia, the new documentary about a family escaping North Korea trying to make their way to Thailand and it was genuinely both heart-stopping and heart-wrenching. There's also a story in it about a mother in Seoul trying to get information about her son who was captured trying to cross the border from North Korea into China. Between the two stories there's quite a bit of stuff about NK as a country and how people are treated there which isn't exactly new info but it explains why people would want to leave, and why they wouldn't. It follows a long line of similar documentaries but the stories are definitely something that should be seen.
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Nov 30, 2023 03:25
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I just finally watched the one about the Murdaugh Murders, and I’m sure it’s been discussed several times in this thread but… holy loving poo poo. Just, holy loving poo poo.
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Nov 30, 2023 03:27
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MeinPanzer posted:Just watched Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, another 3-part HBO doc, and this one I liked a lot. In a nutshell, it dives into the new age cult that shot to notoriety a few years back when the police raided the home its members were living in and discovered the corpse of the founder, a 45-year-old woman known as Mother God, lovingly positioned in a shrine-like bed. Definitely gotta get on this one, I followed this as it was happening and could hardly believe any of it.
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Nov 30, 2023 16:15
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MeinPanzer posted:Just watched Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, another 3-part HBO doc, and this one I liked a lot. In a nutshell, it dives into the new age cult that shot to notoriety a few years back when the police raided the home its members were living in and discovered the corpse of the founder, a 45-year-old woman known as Mother God, lovingly positioned in a shrine-like bed. Also why the gently caress is trump on mom’s council of angels or whatever?? Edit: ok I kept watching and that lady’s kids got out of there remigious fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 30, 2023 |
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Nov 30, 2023 22:03
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Netflix has The Spiderman of Paris about a daring robbery of the Parisian Museum of Modern Art. To render it in bulletpoints: * It's deceptive in that the titular spiderman didn't need his mad climbing skills to do the robbery * They manage to interview almost all the major players, thieves, police, art experts * The robbery involves the museum being incredibly dumb and the robber incredibly smart * It's a single 90 minutes program * It's really good
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Dec 1, 2023 01:03
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remigious posted:Also why the gently caress is trump on mom’s council of angels or whatever?? The documentary doesn't really focus on it but their group was QAnon-adjacent. You can pick up on it if you listen to what some of them say or look closely at some of the shots where you see poo poo like WG1WGA or whatever Also they were really really white
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Dec 1, 2023 01:15
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nonathlon posted:Netflix has The Spiderman of Paris about a daring robbery of the Parisian Museum of Modern Art. To render it in bulletpoints: Thanks for the heads up on this one. He's very charming and I like the ending even if there's some lingering anger about the real assholes in the story.
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Dec 1, 2023 05:55
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Definitely gotta get on this one, I followed this as it was happening and could hardly believe any of it. quote:I’m about halfway through this and it’s really well done but hitting me really hard for some reason. I am so worried for the kids that grew up in that environment, I hope they are ok now. Urgh the obviously mentally ill woman that brought three kids with her. This is stressful. It does a great job of weaving between the pathetic, the creepy, the enraging, and the hilarious, and the filmmaker was seemingly able to get access to pretty much everything available from the group. The sequence in the final episode when it depicts the very last phase of her life is genuinely affecting and painful to watch, but then like 30 seconds after she dies the group get up to their hijinks again and all of a sudden it's Weekend at Bernie's; it's truly something. The talking head interviews with the core cult members provide an absolutely surreal narrative track. It also features one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a documentary: the cult leader Mother God, who claimed to be the most loving being on Earth, filming herself crudely berating her ex boyfriend, named Father Multiverse, for bringing her a meatball sub instead of the chicken parm that she wanted, explaining that her anger was just her channeling Robin Williams. quote:The documentary doesn't really focus on it but their group was QAnon-adjacent. You can pick up on it if you listen to what some of them say or look closely at some of the shots where you see poo poo like WG1WGA or whatever The documentary does largely gloss over the QAnon stuff, which is a bit odd, because it doesn't hold back from showing the other obviously lovely aspects of the cult in other ways. They basically believed in all your standard Q-adjacent conspiracies, but seem to have been even more antisemitic than most: quote:They claim that what society has been taught about the Holocaust is suspicious and that Adolf Hitler's intention was to "serve the light." This was continued by the claim that "[Jews] wanted everyone else to do the work and they would take the money…. The idea behind the concentration camps was to teach them to work.” 
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Dec 1, 2023 09:15
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ccubed posted:Thanks for the heads up on this one. He's very charming and I like the ending even if there's some lingering anger about the real assholes in the story. It is good. I was unaware of the story although it must have been major in France. And it didn't outstay it's welcome - wish more documentaries were like that.
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Dec 1, 2023 11:16
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Thanks for mentioning Love Has Won, I checked it out based on the posts here and it was weird/wild.
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Dec 2, 2023 06:35
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Is there a good documentary on The Cure anywhere?
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Dec 6, 2023 01:40
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Goddamn The Act of Killing is so crazy. Glad I finally got around to that. Now I want to see the companion documentary that focuses more on the family of a victim of the mass murders in Indonesia in the 70s rather than the killers. But I think I need a little breather first.
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Dec 6, 2023 06:09
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Waltzing Along posted:Is there a good documentary on The Cure anywhere? There drat well should be if not.
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Dec 6, 2023 06:45
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Snowy posted:Goddamn The Act of Killing is so crazy. Glad I finally got around to that. Now I want to see the companion documentary that focuses more on the family of a victim of the mass murders in Indonesia in the 70s rather than the killers. But I think I need a little breather first. The Act of Killing remains after all these years one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It is utterly unique and somehow manages to be more disturbing than just about any other movie I've ever seen despite being a documentary with no real graphic scenes in it. I have to admit, though, that I couldn't make it through The Look of Silence; I'm sure it's great, but I just found it exhausting returning to the atrocities from the other side and had to turn it off after about 30 minutes.
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Dec 7, 2023 07:22
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 00:46 |
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Snowy posted:Goddamn The Act of Killing is so crazy. Glad I finally got around to that. Now I want to see the companion documentary that focuses more on the family of a victim of the mass murders in Indonesia in the 70s rather than the killers. But I think I need a little breather first. You're in luck because there is a follow up film called THE LOOK OF SILENCE (2014) that was exactly this. One thing I like about THE ACT OF KILLING is that it directly indicts not just America's government but American culture (John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Rambo) specifically in its encouragement and empowerment of an anticommunist genocide. It stands out even more now.
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Dec 8, 2023 16:30
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