|
Primoman posted:I'm interested in checking out any documentaries that focus on either of the following: Try Ross Kemp's On Gangs, which often delves into the seedier sides of cities around the world.
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2012 07:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:07 |
|
|
true.spoon posted:I just watched The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On by Kazuo Hara and holy poo poo, what a haunting experience. Hara follows a WWII veteran who fought in New Guinea and now revisits his superiors and other members of his unit to bring the gruesome details of some incidents to light. Of course most don't want to talk to him but he is relentless (to say the least). Just want to echo the sentiment that this is a great film. Truly one of the most spellbinding documentaries I've ever seen.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2013 03:43
|
|
|
spooky_rob posted:What are some good documentaries about the Mexican drug cartels? Ironic you ask that, because I just checked Metacritic and saw that a new documentary on Mexican drug cartels and the subculture of glorification surrounding them is opening in theaters across the US tomorrow and is very highly rated so far. http://www.metacritic.com/movie/narco-cultura
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2013 20:42
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Has anyone actually seen The Unknown Known? Being a big fan of Fog of War I was really looking forward to this but it's nowhere to be found still. What the hell's going on with this one? I saw it last fall at the Philadelphia Film Festival. It was decent, but nowhere near as good as Fog of War, which I am also a big fan of. The problem is that Rumsfeld has not changed his position on anything he did while in office and is obviously using the documentary as an opportunity to spin his own legacy; he comes across exactly as you'd expect him to: as a slippery, scuzzy guy who will never give you an even remotely honest answer if it doesn't serve his own purposes. It's really more frustrating than anything else, which is disappointing, since I've found all of Morris' other documentaries satisfying on one level or another.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2014 17:50
|
|
|
Just watched the new Netflix documentary Virunga last night and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's about a huge and stunningly beautiful nature preserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo most notable for its large population of endangered mountain gorillas. After oil reserves are discovered in the park, it becomes the target of two factions in an escalating and complex conflict: a British oil company and a rebel group bent on overthrowing the government. The film itself focuses on a handful of protagonists, including a child soldier turned game warden, a young French journalist, a keeper of orphaned gorillas, and a Belgian prince primatologist determined to save the park. It's incredibly gripping, saddening, and infuriating, and one of those remarkable documentaries which makes you feel like you're truly witnessing something historic unfold. I can't recommend it highly enough (plus it's available on Netflix, so it's easy to watch).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2014 04:12
|
|
|
Stare-Out posted:Next up, The Act of Killing! Just finished The Jinx, and it strikes me that in an odd way it and The Act of Killing are similar in some ways. Both deal with individuals who ostensibly showed no sign of remorse for having killed people and gotten away with it; both deal with confronting those individuals over and over again with the details of what they did and the lives of the people they killed; and both end with the killer vomiting after realizing how the process of producing the documentary has affected them.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2015 15:47
|
|
|
Abu Dave posted:Has anyone seen Last Days in Vietnam? Thoughts? I saw it in theatres last fall and I wasn't hugely impressed. I love a good historical documentary, but Last Days in Vietnam really lacks oomph. My biggest criticism is that they strangely don't really establish a sense of urgency and tension - they cover the North Vietnamese invasion of Saigon during its initial stages, but then they perplexingly basically ignore the advance of Communist troops until the very end of the documentary. During most of the running time of the movie, right up to the final American evacuations, I basically had no idea how close or far the enemy was. It's worth watching with some great interviews and reconstructions of events, but the director wasted an opportunity to really make it a compelling story.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2015 02:51
|
|
|
Fruit Smoothies posted:Any documentaries regarding the Bible's history? Obviously going for historical accuracy over speculative lore. I am an atheist and just interested in how it all happened / got edited / was sourced etc. I'm a big fan of the Frontline documentary From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, which follows the development of Christianity from Jesus to Constantine and the establishment of the Church in the broad terms we understand it today. It takes a very balanced historical perspective, and, as an ancient historian who has worked on ancient Judea before, I found it to be quite accurate. You can stream it for free on Frontline's website.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2016 16:36
|
|
|
KoRMaK posted:For juxtaposition! I liked Cartel Land too, though I agree that they could have cut out the entire American border militia part and it would have been a bit stronger. It ended up being much less heavy handed than I thought it would be from the first half hour or so. This does the best job of anything I've seen or read of illustrating how cartels in Mexico, like jihadi groups in the Middle East, continue to emerge despite efforts to eliminate them because of problems inherent in society and the system. One of my main criticisms is that it would have enriched the narrative if they had initially given more background on the Templars and their origins, since they, too, were initially supposed to be more of a social movement intended to protect the poor and helpless and to put an end to violence and drugs.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2016 15:59
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:The Templars are a really interesting case study. Once you take up arms and ingratiate yourself into your society, what, exactly, is stopping you from turning popular support into a protection racket? What I found most interesting about the documentary is how it allows you to understand the shifts in mindset, at least somewhat. We need to take up arms to protect our people! Now we are achieving success, but we're also attracting more attention. We need to step up our defences, which requires more guns and the ability to pay people. The cartel members we are fighting steal from us, so let's steal from them. Also, the government makes us pay taxes for protection and they do nothing to protect us; is it so wrong to require payment from people in exchange for actual protection? Now our rivals are cutting into our territory and influence, and people are unhappy about us extorting money from them, so let's cook some drugs to pay for our operations. What's the problem? It only hurts Americans. Finally, the other groups selling drugs and extorting money have the police and military in their pockets; we have to join with them to ensure that they don't stop us. That's all it takes to get from noble militia defending the people to cartel decapitating anyone who resists. This is also basically how groups like ISIS and the Shiite militias in Iraq emerge. MeinPanzer fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Feb 18, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2016 18:39
|
|
|
Just watched O.J. Simpson: Made in America (which I haven't seen being discussed much around here - or am I just missing a discussion thread?) and holy poo poo it is an incredibly compelling documentary. As someone who was six when the trial was going on, I only have vague memories of it and by the time I was old enough to be interested in true crime stories it had basically become fodder for tired rehashing by tabloids. I never truly understood the significance of O.J. as a cultural figure and was unaware of many of the details surrounding the case. What I found amazing about Made in America is how it manages to be an amazing documentary both on O.J. himself as an individual and on race relations in America. It's incredibly nuanced and complex, resonates with immense cultural significance (as I think A.O. Scott wrote in his review, in the '90s a lot of people thought the whole trial was being overblown; watching it today, it's amazing that it hasn't remained a bigger deal over the last two decades), and has so many great interviews and revelations that I wasn't once bored in its entire runtime despite being familiar with the outlines of the story. I was reminded in its deft use of interviews, archival footage, photographs, and written material to craft a compelling narrative of horrible events of One Day in September, which I still consider one of the best crime/thriller documentaries ever made. Each episode is well balanced, including the final episode, which tracks O.J.'s descent into a sleazy oblivion and ends on an appropriately tragic and ironic note. I never thought I'd say this, but I wish it was longer than its 7.5 hour runtime.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2016 01:23
|
|
|
Meowbot posted:wow i saw "only the dead see the end of war " war documentary and besides being very very violent iwasnt expecting decpations and seeing fuckin ISIS videos which ive tried to avoid nm y whole adult life but that was an AMAZING first hand look at the war I am very removed from and didnt realize how rough this war actually was for americans Watched this last week and I have to say that it wasn't really what I expected. I first saw some of Ware's stuff in 2006, when he featured prominently in the Frontline documentary "The Insurgency" (which - like all of Frontline's stuff on Iraq - was excellent, btw). He talks in that documentary about a lot of the same subject matter related to embedding with early insurgents and getting information on Zarqawi, but obviously without all the restrospective reflection on the psychological toll it wreaked. Purely from a filmmaking perspective Only the Dead is not great - I found the editing to be lacking, and the whole thing seriously lacked context. This might not be a problem if the personal angle was more compelling, but, to be honest, the narrative of the descent into the madness of war did little for me, and most of the notes he hits are banal at best. It struck me that now, with the rise of ISIS and a good amount having passed since the withdrawal of US combat forces, would be a perfect time to produce a large-scale documentary on the war, how it developed, and why it produced the geopolitical situation we see today (Frontline has dealt with many of these issues in varied documentaries, but it would be great to have one cohesive overview). Ware, with so much really great material from Iraq at his disposal stretching much of the length of the war, could have produced such a documentary. Ultimately, what he produced just feels pretty shallow.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2016 23:50
|
|
|
Meowbot posted:It was not what I expected either since it was featured on a bunch of "top 10 iraq war" lists and no ones like "warning tons of death". It sounds like you have a lot more information about the subject which is what made it so jarring and exciting for me to watch because seeing it first hand captured so close to the atrocities knocked the wind out of me because I had no idea how little the insurgents really cared for human life and you hear about it in the news but to see it was astonishing and very sickening. I'll check out the other stuff you mentioned and I can see your points but for me it really surprised me how vicious the footage was and you gotta think someone is crazy to be in that situation and not even think of wanting to leave I wouldnt dream have stayed another day if there was a knife at my throat and I was seconds from being another missing jouranlist. Aside from those that have already been covered, I would again highly recommend all the Frontline documentaries on Iraq and ISIS, which can be viewed for free on their website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ - just click "Watch"). These stretch back to soon after the war began and really covered in gory detail the conditions on the ground as well as the machinations that led to the whole mess. If you're also interested in Afghanistan, they have lots of good episodes on that too, including similar on-the-ground type coverage. If you're interested in seeing "the other side", I particularly recommend Behind Taliban Lines, which is, to my knowledge, unique in presenting footage obtained from an Afghan journalist who embedded with the Taliban, and even filmed as he accompanied them when they try to ambush American troops with an IED(!).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2016 16:28
|
|
|
Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:Best Frontline docs? If you're into that kind of thing, anything related to the Middle East. Standouts include the early stuff on Iraq and the episode where they follow a reporter embedded with the Taliban.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2017 18:04
|
|
|
Unmature posted:Are there true crime docs that aren't about white trash or OJ? Death on the Staircase
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2017 06:53
|
|
|
Mahoning posted:Wow this thread really died. I’ve got two for ya: Just finished this with my family. I thought it was a fantastic return to form for Morris after the mediocre Tabloid and The Unknown Known. I have to admit that I found the re-enactments a little off-putting at first, since I generally dislike that kind of thing in documentaries, but given the whole recurring motif of collage that is so prominent throughout I came to like it. The whole thing probably could have been cut down a bit, maybe to 5 episodes instead of 6, but I still really enjoyed the careful, piecemeal revelation of twists and turns. The themes it addresses (especially about deception, whether you can ever reconstruct the truth, and what that drive reveals about us) are pure Errol Morris, and the broader context makes it an interesting sequel of sorts to Fog of War The story did make me curious though about how exactly Eric Olson used collage in his psychological research. They seemed to imply that he got people to choose images and put them together in order to reveal their subconscious, but I'm curious if, or how, that was effective.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2017 23:10
|
|
|
The pacing is a bit uneven, and the first episode is IMO unnecessarily vague on what exactly the story is about. Nonetheless, it really picks up in the second episode, when it becomes more of a straightforward documentary with some illuminating reconstructions instead of a confusing mix of reconstruction and seemingly random snippets of information. By the time we'd gotten to the fourth episode my parents and I felt compelled to watch the last three back-to-back, which is not something we often do.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2017 21:12
|
|
|
The Empire's involvement in the Galactic Civil War began in secrecy. It ended 30 years later, in failure... It was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings, Imperial overconfidence, and Clone War miscalculations. And it was prolonged because it seemed easier to muddle through than admit that it had been caused by tragic decisions, made by both sides...
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2018 07:44
|
|
|
Just finished binging all 13 eps of The Staircase. I watched the original way back in the late 2000s and was unaware of The Staircase 2, so imagine my surprise when I heard about the Netflix release and saw those extra 5 episodes. The whole thing is one of the craziest crime documentary rollercoaster rides ever, right up there with the Paradise Lost series. I can't believe how much access the crew got; I guess North Carolina is pretty liberal with allowing media involvement in legal proceedings. The final interview with the judge in particular was surprising. It's all the more impressive because other than a few lingering shots in the new episodes that could have been cut short there wasn't really any fat that could have been cut. Candace's speech in the last episode was really crazy, but I thought it was a really interesting coda for the whole documentary. She specifically calls out the filmmakers for biasing the film towards Michael Peterson and trying to make him look more innocent, and one thing I was struck by watching it this time through is that they do seem to have left out a lot of information on evidence. For instance, we hear in The Staircase 2 episodes that the blood on the inside of the shorts was apparently what swayed most of the jury towards a guilty verdict, but this wasn't even discussed in the the original episodes. Also, someone in here mentioned that there was blood leading from the pool into the house. It just leads me to wonder how prejudicial the filmmakers were in their inclusion of evidence and theories (like the owl theory, for instance). Basically, I'm left still wondering what happened. A fall seems plausible, but every time I see the crime scene pictures all I can think of is how much blood there is and how it's absolutely everywhere. Even if the defence's reconstruction is the most plausible explanation it's still really hard to imagine her getting all those lacerations from falling against anything in that staircase all by herself.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2018 03:55
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:Head wounds are just insane. I work in a kindergarten and one day a kid fell and got a little cut on his forehead. After I had rushed him to bathroom to try and comfort him and stop the bleeding there was blood everywhere. On my clothes, on his clothes, where he had fallen and in the bathroom. OK, the blood can be explained by the number of lacerations, but the number and shape of lacerations still appear to me not at all to be in line with an individual falling and repeatedly hitting their head in a stairwell. I think at some point Rudolph mentions that there was some sort of metal fixture or something in the landing of the stairwell that she might've been hitting her head against, but neither side in the documentary seems to talk about that and in the diagrams it's not exactly clear.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2018 17:22
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:In my experience working in kindergarten it's extremely easy to cut your head when falling. Also the DA's explanation was that Peterson was mad but not restrained enough to not break the skull and choose a weapon that would lacerate without cracking the skull. I absolutely don't buy the DA's explanation, but I am still perplexed by even the most plausible accident scenario. I guess it's just easier than I thought to severely lacerate your head down to the bone.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2018 17:37
|
|
|
Just finished DFWC and I liked it overall but the criticism from last page about it relying so heavily on the internet detectives is spot on. They make for a good intro to the whole story, but their smugness about how the police "just didn't listen" is obnoxious given how slight the evidence they dredged up was. It was odd revisiting the whole case because I remember first reading about the murder and initial investigation on these forums back in the day, but I'd long forgotten about the case itself and didn't follow up on any of the background info that subsequently emerged. I never watched the murder video -- which somebody actually posted in the original GBS thread -- itself, but reading back about the case now I'm surprised the documentary never reveals the full extent of it -- the Quebec forensic investigator mentions that the video got worse after the puppy killing, but I didn't realize he filmed himself fully dismembering and then having sex with the corpse as well. As an aside, I didn't believe that any of the Manny Gomez stuff was real from the beginning given his pathological fantabulism, but the reveal of the Basic Instict connection at the end was well done.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2020 14:10
|
|
|
So I guess everyone's been watching Tiger King on Netflix? I got really into it and enjoyed the crazy twists and turns, but hoo boy I've been reading some spicy takes on the whole situation. I've had multiple friends already tell me that they think that everyone, including Carole, is equally crazy and bad, and that they all just want to eliminate competition so they can have the best big cat zoo in the US. When I pointed out to them that she runs a non-profit rescue operation, which doesn't breed or sell cats and takes in abandoned animals, two of my friends said some variation of "yeah, of course she says that..." I think the documentary was really trying to spin a both-sides narrative that did a disservice to what she actually does, which is clean up the mess that people like Joe Exotic and Doc Antle create and profit from. As for the whole husband disappearance, I think that it's more likely he orchestrated some kind of disappearance to Costa Rica to live with one of his girlfriends, based mainly on that one statement he made to his employee about pulling off a great trick.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2020 10:43
|
|
|
lexxyth posted:There is a lot of information online that Carole's organization rescues animals to put them in the same conditions. Is there any source that isn't an obvious hit job by one of the guys from the documentary? Also, the pictures and anecdotes on that site either sound ambiguous or relatively harmless. quote:Carol literally opens her interview next to a tiger in a very small cage Pretty sure that was a small extension containing a water bowl off of a much bigger cage, which is necessary to attract the animals and administer medicines and the like. quote:Don't forget that Doc's paying his people $100/week for seven 16 hour long days. That's 89c/hour. Carole is running hers off of dozens of interns enrolled in a 5-year program, during which nobody gets paid anything and she makes bank. They're all trash Again, they don't make this clear in the documentary, but Big Cat Rescue is a non-profit charity -- unlike the other organizations, which are purely for-profit organizations. She doesn't breed or sell the animals, which (as is clear from the documentary) is the main source of money for the other operations. They need to charge people to be able to pay for the huge costs of feeding grown cats, most of which come to their park after being abandoned by owners who bought them as kittens from breeders like Joe and Doc. Her park isn't "making her bank." I wasn't aware of this whole subculture before the documentary and I don't have a dog in this fight, but I was curious about some things and read up on basic facts after watching it and I think it doesn't make clear some of these fundamental differences between these different operations.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2020 15:32
|
|
|
Mahoning posted:And there’s zero reason Carol’s first husband would disappear to Costa Rica and leave Carol with all of his money and let her gently caress over his children. A) It was pretty clear from the documentary that he disowned his kids before he disappeared. B) He said to his employee that he was looking to pull something off that would be "one for the ages" (or whatever exactly that guy said he said to him). C) They said that he was known for hiding away money and assets, and that he was specifically moving stuff to Costa Rica. D) He would probably have been in for a long and nasty divorce battle if he stayed and divorced her. I think it's perfectly plausible that he set up some red herrings, like the van at the airport, and made off with one of his girlfriends to live in relative comfort in Costa Rica. quote:Also laughing at the naiveté that non-profit means good or that non-profit means Carol doesn’t make any money off of it. I don't think it makes her inherently good, but the bottom line is that operations like hers need to clean up the mess that operations like Joe's or Doc's make by breeding and selling big cats in the first place. I think she should pay her employees, and I'm not defending that aspect of her operation, but the line that everyone involved in the documentary is equally exploitative or whatever just isn't true.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2020 16:20
|
|
|
banned from Starbucks posted:In Dont gently caress with Cats did they ever find out who the supposed other person was tied to the bed in the Jun Lin video? The show just kinda forgets about it and when they finally catch him is just like "well case closed." What other person? I don't remember anything about that.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2020 09:34
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Probably late on this but I watched OJ: Made in America and was blown away by how good it is after watching the dreck that was The Last Dance. I've been enjoying TLD for what it is but OJ: MIA is on another level with its incisive and nuanced rumination on how sports, race, politics, law, and popular culture uniquely intersected in OJ's life and career. Honestly one of the best documentaries ever made. TLD on the other hand is a fluffy, nostalgic hagiography dressed up as an insightful, prying biopic. For those of you not reading the SAS thread, David Roth has written great recaps of each episode and in his discussions of the last two eps he's done a good job of teasing out how the documentary when viewed with a skeptical eye actually does a good job of revealing the true character of Jordan: https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/the-last-dance-part-7-recap.html https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/the-last-dance-part-8-recap.html The man just has, in his own words, a "competition problem."
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2020 16:32
|
|
|
I'm three quarters of the way through the Epstein doc and it's amazing how much they don't even touch on. Like the fact that the person who hired Epstein at Dalton even though he didn't have a degree was Attorney General Bill Barr's father. Or that Epstein's hedge fund, which exclusively works with billionaire investors and which was the primary source of his wealth, has no real operational staff to speak of. Or that he wanted to use his NM ranch as a base from which to impregnate huge numbers of women and seed the human race with his DNA. Or that he wanted his head and weird egg-dick to be frozen for posterity, so that he could rape girls from beyond the grave. Probably for the best that they kept it focused though. The one detail from this doc I'd never heard of but which makes a lot of sense was that he had a sexual relationship with Les Wexner, and probably blackmailed him or something. That goes a long way towards explaining the bizarre stranglehold he had on that guy. MeinPanzer fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 30, 2020 |
|
#
¿
May 30, 2020 20:07
|
|
|
This is the best out there: https://www.pbs.org/video/jesus-christ-first-christians-part-one-uosmze/ It's over twenty years old by now, but it's still excellent. It basically explores the history of Christianity from a non-religious perspective, beginning with the movement Jesus started and covering up until the time when it became the official religion of the Roman empire. As an ancient historian, I can attest that it's very even-handed in its discussion of the evidence.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Just watched Gladbeck too -- thanks for the recommendation. One of the tensest things I've seen in a while. I'd never heard of the incident and didn't know how it ended, so by the end I was vaguely nauseous from the tension.Waltzing Along posted:I watched it, too. It's just a total mind gently caress to go through. I get the police trying to keep everyone alive. That's what they should be doing. But then the gently caress-up with the arrest and then the last bit which isn't really explained. Based on the pics I am guessing they rammed into them to get the car to stop or something. Still confused what happened. I get why they don't have video but it was still confusing. This is the one major shortcoming of the documentary; they should have inserted a couple of title cards explaining what happened during the Dutch rest stop altercation and the final confrontation. I ended up looking up the Wikipedia article which provides some details that somehow make both the press and the cops look even worse: quote:At 2:30 am on 18 August 1988, the bus entered the Netherlands. At 5:15 am two women and three children were released, after the Dutch police refused to negotiate as long as children were being held hostage. At 6:30 am Rösner and Degowski got a BMW 735i. The getaway car had been prepared by the police so that the engine could be stopped by remote control. While attempting to escape, Löblich and the bus driver were injured. By the way, if you haven't seen it, this pairs well with another excellent but harrowing documentary, One Day in September. Completely different circumstances, setting, and players involved, but another unbelievable example of German law enforcement incompetence in handling a hostage taking.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2022 13:58
|
|
|
Yeah, a questionable choice in an otherwise fantastic documentary. From what I recall, it kind of fits with the film's overall approach (there are some other montages set to contemporary music), but obviously done in bad taste, and a bit ghoulish.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2022 17:08
|
|
|
Having just finished a long true crime podcast in which jury selection was a central issue, knowing one of the lawyers involved doesn’t necessarily disqualify you. Basically as I understand it there are two rounds of jury selection: a first round removes people based on serious issues that come up in the questionnaire they have to fill out ahead of time (I.e. having committed a crime in the past); the second then involves what are called peremptory strikes, in which either side gets a fixed number of opportunities to strike people for basically any reason short of openly discriminatory ones. My understanding is that if the relationship isn’t specifically brought up in questioning, it wouldn’t necessarily be an issue. Also, in a lot of small communities everyone knows everyone, including prosecutors and public defenders, so it can be almost impossible to avoid that kind of connection.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2022 11:57
|
|
|
Adam Curtis' new seven-part documentary, TraumaZone, about life in the Soviet Union and Russia from 1985-1999, will be made available on BBC iPlayer on Oct 13: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/adam-curtis-russia-1985-1999-traumazone Apparently Curtis was given access to a huge trove of unused BBC archival footage from that period, so it looks like it'll be a great examination of the lived experiences that led to the Russia we know today.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2022 11:12
|
|
|
BrianRx posted:A criticism I have heard and have is related to that last bit: Americana. Yeah, I’m a fan of Burns’ documentaries, but there’s no getting around the veneer of old fashioned patriotism that coats just about everything he does. This was probably most egregious in the case of his Vietnam documentary, which, despite featuring many Vietnamese voices, still framed the whole conflict as something entered into “with the best of intentions.” For someone who dives as deep as he does into history and historical documentation, there’s a startling amount of naďveté in Burns’ work.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2022 23:06
|
|
|
Androies posted:Like watching a horror movie in slow motion. Really good and don't miss the narration at all. Just finished TraumaZone and it's a masterpiece IMO. I was born in the late 80s, so the fall of the Soviet Union and its ramifications throughout Eastern Europe (most notably in Yugoslavia) were fixed in my childhood brain as major world events but I never really had a good understanding of how they unfolded. Notably, my memories of events in Russia were primarily visual: bread lines, fighting in Chechnya, Boris Yeltsin stumbling around drunk. Over successive years I've watched numerous scattered documentaries on this topic, but never something as comprehensive or mesmerizing as this.I usually don't have more than a couple of hours to spend a week watching shows or movies with my wife, but I managed to squeeze in time to watch all 7 hours of this because I found it so captivating. Ever since I saw The Power of Nightmares on TV in the mid-2000s, I've been drawn in by Adam Curtis' documentary style, and several of his documentaries opened my eyes to a new way of looking at the world at a time when I was still a pretty naive and staid lib. As I've gotten older, however, I've begun to tire of his style; as much as I appreciate his soothing English tones, I've found in recent years that his authorial voice (both literal and metaphorical) often overwhelms the subject matter, and once you've seen a few of his films the repeated sequences of stock footage overlaid with soliloquies begin to wear thin. The decision to feature only minimal captioning and no voice over in this documentary is really refreshing and allows Curtis to play to his strength: finding remarkable documentary sequences left on the cutting room floor and weaving them together to form a captivating narrative. It's got all the usual Curtis themes, but allows them to emerge and interact organically. Be warned, though, that it in addition to many, many generally distressing scenes, it features some surprisingly graphic footage: just off the top of my head, a guy showing a photo of three decapitated bodies, a blown-off arm hanging from a tank, and mothers looking at footage of rotting corpses in the hopes of identifying their missing sons.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2022 11:01
|
|
|
I just finished Ken Burns' The US and the Holocaust. It's got all the usual Burns polish, with its methodical exposition of the historical evidence with personal accounts interwoven, and I was thoroughly impressed with its even-handed evaluation of the US side of the picture. The treatment of a few key elements in particular, such as the possibility of the Allies bombing the German rail system and death camps in 1944, was really good, and the direct connection Burns makes between the rise of fascism, the treatment of immigrants, and the development of contemporary far right US politics in the end is refreshing, if brief. A gruelling watch, but it feels increasingly important now that the final eyewitnesses on both sides of the Atlantic are almost entirely gone.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2023 18:20
|
|
|
Groovelord Neato posted:Hate to post my own tweets but I clipped two parts that really struck me when I watched it: That first clip is particularly interesting in the context of this documentary because it's exactly the kind of thing that would get presented in your standard American documentary about the Holocaust, probably coming after some stock footage of Hitler giving a speech and before stock footage of concentration camp victims. Only in this 6-hour documentary it's a singular 10-minute sequence that occurs between, among many others, lengthy sequences devoted to the people aboard the St Louis being refused refuge by US authorities, the State Department deliberately sabotaging efforts to bring more Jewish refugees into the country, and Anne Frank's family waiting in line to immigrate to the US until her death because of the quota system. It made it feel much more genuinely moving. I especially appreciated Burns' decision to use the Franks' story not for the usual trite exposition of innocence destroyed by fascism, but rather as an overarching narrative that highlighted how impossible it was for most Jews to navigate the American immigration system. The biggest takeaway for me though was a new appreciation for how unfathomable the Holocaust was to people at the time, even when they were literally coming upon concentration camps in 1945. That is something that we today can't really appreciate, having had the historical narrative driven into our brains our entires lives: the existence of an industrial death machine that was capable of killing tens of thousands of people a day for years must have seemed like something from an H.G. Wells novel. MeinPanzer fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Mar 3, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2023 20:16
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2023 11:29
|
|
|
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 |
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2023 23:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:07 |
|
|
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.” 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2023 09:15
|
|