Documentary Review: Earth

Earth (2007) 

Directed by Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Planet Earth 

Release Date April 22nd, 2009 

Published April 22nd, 2009 

We are definitely spoiled when it comes to the modern nature documentary. With what the BBC and the Discovery Channel did with the documentary Planet Earth and what Imax filmmakers have contributed in just the last decade, the allegedly new documentary Earth from Disney looks a little like a modern Mutual Of Omaha production. Then again, the whole thing is basically lifts and leftovers from Planet Earth, what does it matter.

Disney's Earth arrives on Earth Day 2009 and feels like a cynical capitalization on the burgeoning holiday. More and more schools and businesses have come to embrace Earth Day and that makes a venture like Earth potentially viable in the marketplace, if not such an artistic endeavour.

That is not a shot at the filmmakers, directors Allistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, did some astonishing work. It's a shot at Disney for recycling the work of the BBC and the Discovery Channel and pretending it's something new. The fact is, some of the footage cut together for Earth was actually used in Discovery's 12 hour doc that transfixed documentary lovers in 2008.

When not recycling, Earth fills out 90 minutes with the stuff that didn't make Planet Earth. This amounts to some comic relief, monkeys and penguins, and some striking shots of Great White Sharks and baby ducks learning to fly for the first time. Don't get me wrong, even the stuff cut from Planet Earth is pretty impressive looking, it just feels icky that Disney refused to come up with something of their own instead of feasting on scraps.

At the very least, the Mouse House could have released Earth in Disney Digital projection, if not using their dazzling 3D. But no, the release is on average, everyday film stock and thus even loses a generation of quality from the awesome HD presentation of Planet Earth.

For school field trips and those desperate for a way to celebrate Earth Day indoors, Earth may be worth the ticket price but if you have seen the Discovery documentary Planet Earth or can get over to the IMAX for any one of their current offerings, you can skip Earth.

Documentary Review: Corman's World

Corman's World (2012) 

Directed by Alex Stapleton

Written by Documentary

Starring Roger Corman, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese

Release Date March 27th, 2012

Published July 10th, 2012 

History is funny; what we choose to remember, what gets lost to time. Director-producer Roger Corman is part of film history and at times it seems like that part of history is lost. Every now and again however, Corman bounces back and with him a near forgotten history of the past forty odd years of film that he influenced for better or worse.

"Corman's world: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel," a new documentary from director Alex Stapleton, is a terrific time capsule of Corman's career and the history within that career is worth digging up and rediscovering, again for better and for worse.

"The Gunfighter"

Roger Corman got his start as a messenger at 20th Century Fox and worked his way up to reading screenplays. When one of the screenplays he approved and amended was made into a hit feature, "The Gunfighter" starring Gregory Peck, and Corman received no credit he quit and began making movies.

Corman made nine movies between 1955 and 1960 including such classics as "Swamp Women," "It Conquered the World" and "Attack of the Crab Monsters;" each more successful than the last. Regardless of the artistry, or lack thereof, of these pictures they tapped into the desire of a generation looking to escape from the bore of the 1950's into fantastical worlds where armies of men battled giant crabs.

Hippies, Exploitation and Civil Rights

In the 1960's Corman presaged the move toward exploitation pictures by making movies about motorcycle gangs. He then joined the hippie movement and was the rare filmmaker to work to understand and reflect the hippie movement as well as exploit it.

In arguably his boldest and bravest move Corman joined the civil rights crusade with a picture called "The Intruder," starring a very young William Shatner, and shined a light on southern racism that even the nightly news was afraid to expose.

Edgar Allen Poe and the College of Corman

Corman never made the move toward being taken seriously however and after "The Intruder" bombed he found a new money-making venture in low budget adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories. Today, Corman produces movies like "Dino-Shark" for the SyFy channel and is finding a whole new cult fandom.

Roger Corman's legacy however, is not his movies but his influence. It was Corman who found Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, Joe Dante, and Francis Ford Coppola among others. He changed the career of Peter Fonda with "Wild Angels" and "The Trip" leading Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Nicholson to start the American New Wave with "Easy Rider."

Corman, "Jaws," and "Star Wars"

Without Roger Corman there is no "Jaws" and maybe no "Star Wars." Then again, without Roger Corman there is no Eli Roth or "Piranhas 3D." It's a mixed legacy in the end; Corman's World puts a nice bow on things with Corman's 2010 Lifetime Achievement Oscar.

When Hollywood discovered Roger Corman, via the success of "Jaws," it was arguably the end of the very brief American New Wave. Not to take anything away from "Jaws" which is a classic but once executive caught on to that style of movie, the kind that Corman made on the cheap for 20 years prior to "Jaws," there was no turning back from the wave of B-Movie blockbusters that continue to dominate the box office today.

"Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" opens in limited release on Friday, December 16th.

Documentary Review: Whitey The United States V James Bulger

Whitey The United States Vs. James Bulger (2014) 

Directed by Joe Berlinger

Written by Documentary 

Starring Whitey Bulger

Release Date January 18th, 2014

Published January 18th, 2014 

I sit here thoroughly depressed and deeply moved. Joe Berlinger's "Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger" has wrecked me. The case that Berlinger lays out against the FBI and aspects of the Justice Department is thorough, damning and terrifyingly true. That Whitey Bulger is a horrible murderous individual is not in question. How the government made use of Bulger during his time being a horrible murderous individual is as criminal as any crime Bulger committed. 

What are we to do when the people charged with enforcing our laws flaunt those laws. It's the question we've confronted since we first hired men to be police officers and prosecutors. That these, our most trusted individuals can be corrupted is not surprising. When these same men make criminals of us all through their actions however, it's not so much surprising as appalling and terrifying. That's what the FBI and the Justice Department did, they made criminals of us all under the guise of fighting a just fight. 

From the late 70's through the early 90's members of Boston's FBI and Justice Department aided and abetted the life of the murderer Whitey Bulger. Bulger, you see, was uniquely positioned to be of use to them as a supposed FBI informant. However, Bulger was not and never has been an FBI informant. Rather, Bulger's name as a criminal was used as a cover by lazy, venal FBI agents and Justice officials to gain access to members of La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mob. 

Placing Bulger's name on an informant list lent credibility to flimsy prosecution requests that indeed did lead to the capture and conviction of criminals equal to and greater than Whitey Bulger. Indeed, one could argue that while leaving Bulger free under the guise of being an informant to kill whom he pleased, may have saved more lives than Bulger's actions ever took. You could argue that if you were capable of the kind of evil calculus that made people like Whitey Bulger possible. 

Do the ends justify the means? That may be a question you ask. Lives were saved when evidence uncovered using Bulger's name put away members of the Anguilo crime family; the Anguilo's were killers just like Whitey. But ask yourself this: Who should decide who lived and who died? Who's to say that the lives saved by putting away the Anguilo's were worth more than the lives lost by those killed by Whitey Bulger and the members of his crime family. Members of Boston's law enforcement community, the FBI and the Justice Department made themselves into Gods and decided fates. What gave them the right? 

"Whitey" forces you to confront this question. "Whitey" demands that when you begin considering the math in who lived and who died by what murderous thug that you look into the eyes of the wife of Michael Donahue, a man killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and explain why the life of her husband was mathematically convenient for American law enforcement. The facts are indisputable that if law enforcement had done its job Whitey Bulger would have been in prison long before Michael Donahue died. Whitey was allowed to take the life of Michael Donahue, husband and father, because Whitey's life made life easier for a group of lazy, fat, FBI criminals and Justice officials. 

It gets even more disgusting than the simple actions of a few corrupt FBI Agents and a few prosecutors however. Even after Whitey Bulger was captured and brought to trial last year, after nearly 15 years on the run, the Justice Department continued the deception and maintained their lie so as not to lose the tainted evidence they gained from his name. The supposedly heroic members of the Justice Department who put away one of "America's Most 10 Most Wanted Criminals," are perpetuating the crimes their predecessors committed because they don't want to confront the work that would be needed to clean up this mess. 

Prosecutor Michael Kelly who's been feted as much as anyone for his hard-nosed prosecutorial tactics in the Bulger case even goes as far as to attack the one heroic member of the FBI who tried to expose Bulger in the midst of worst criminal years and make him a target. Bob Fitzpatrick called Bulger's installation as an upper echelon informant into question in the early 80's and was shouted down before being drummed out of the FBI. When he tells this story in court, even as he is corroborating cases against Bulger, he is treated as a criminal for pointing out the corruption that allowed Bulger to be a murderous criminal for so long. Why? To maintain the convenient lie: That Whitey Bulger was an informant.

Documentary Review: Waiting for Superman

Waiting for Superman (2010) 

Directed by Davis Guggenheim 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Geoffrey Canada 

Release Date September 24th, 2010 

Published November 15th, 2010 

We should be ashamed of ourselves. The documentary “Waiting for Superman” from Oscar winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim should make us all ashamed to look our children in the eyes. It’s our fault. We let this happen. Years and years of neglect and an inability to adjust to the times combined with an intractable group of teachers who we’ve allowed to slouch toward tenure have turned more than a third of the schools in the United States into what one expert calls ‘Failure factories.’

“Waiting for Superman” begins with an idealistic Davis Guggenheim looking back at the amazing, dedicated teachers he met while making his first documentary more than 10 years ago. A decade later Davis has kids and this fact has forced him to reassess his opinion of public schools. The fact is that with a little research Davis finds that the best place to assure his kids of a good education is a private school, even if this flies in the face of his liberal ideals.

Yes, Davis Guggenheim does not hide his political leanings, never has; he won an Oscar with Vice President Al Gore for “An Inconvenient Truth.” Politics aligns Guggenheim with the teacher’s union, a group whose funding of the national Democratic Party has lead to the party being called a ‘wholly owned subsidiary of the teacher’s union.’

Yet, it is also this union that is a big part of what is sinking our schools. A scourge of bad teachers shirking their duty to kids are leaving generations of our children unprepared for the road ahead of them. These teachers pass on kids who lack the skills needed to move forward only to get them out of their classroom. Then, this teacher is bounced from one school to another in the vain hope that the next bad teacher won’t be as bad as the one he/she replaced.

Not all teachers are bad and not all of our problems can be blamed on the teachers union but, Davis Guggenheim and “Waiting For Superman” make a persuasive case that teachers acting in their own self interest and union leaders who put bad teachers ahead of children, are driving schools into the ground to protect the jobs of teachers who deserve to be fired.

The best example of this in “Waiting for Superman” is found in Washington D.C, the single worst school district in the country. A reformer by the name of Michelle Rhee was named Superintendent in 2007. Her goal was to cut through the bureaucracy and move the millions of dollars that the district wasted on administration out to the schools. Once she began that shift; Ms. Rhee found that not only was bureaucracy dragging down D.C schools but an intractable union, braced by a tenure agreement was passing on generation after generation of unprepared and ill-educated children.

Michelle Rhee set about changing this as well and seemed to have a solution. She offered an exchange; teachers could get exorbitant pay increases, six figure salaries, if they gave up tenure.

Giving up tenure would allow the Superintendent to fire the failing teachers and reward the teachers who deserved it. The teachers union refused to even discuss the idea, giving up tenure would mean losing members and losing members equals losing power. D.C is the ultimate example of adults choosing their best interest over the interests of children. “Waiting for Superman” is not all criticism of the teacher union and the despair of lost children; there are heroes to be found here. Jeffrey Canada was an idealistic New York teacher who rose through the ranks to become an administrator in New York. Canada believed he could change the system that was creating so much poverty in Harlem, New York. Then he ran up against the teacher’s union.

Stymied by a union which wastes more than 100 million tax dollars per year on failing teachers, Jeffrey Canada moved to start a charter school, a non-union school that would select a small group of students and educate them in new and progressive ways. Jeffrey Canada’s Harlem Success Academy is changing the way kids are educated. Harlem Success Academy catches kids before they lose hope, before bad teachers rob them of their love of learning.

Jeffrey Canada is joined by other heroic educators who also have started charter schools and are showing astonishing results. In Texas and California; KIPP, Knowledge is Power Program, is delivering kids who are prepared to compete in the changing global economy.

In Los Angeles, Seed Academy is pulling kids out of impoverished homes and placing them in a boarding school that separates them from the violence, crime and apathy of the streets. Each of these schools has been around for nearly a decade and the results have been staggering. Unfortunately, thanks to the teacher’s unions, these charter schools can only take on a small number of kids.

Year after year these charter schools hold state mandated lotteries during which they choose 40 or 50 applications from hundreds of struggling parents desperate to rescue their child from the education system that, in most cases failed that parent in decades passed. Davis Guggenheim follows several families from Los Angeles to D.C to New York as they pray for a space in a charter school.

“Waiting for Superman” ends on a heart rending note as we watch several ordinary and sometimes extraordinary kids facing what could be the defining moment of their lives. If these kids do not get into Harlem Success, KIPP or Seed they will end up at failing middle schools and high schools. The most despairing example is an exceptionally bright, 6 year old Latina girl who if she loses out on the KIPP lottery in Los Angeles will be turned over to one of the worst schools in the country because that’s the district in which her struggling parents live.

These lotteries play like Sophie’s Choice on a massive scale. At one charter school we can save 60 students at another charter we can save 150 students and at still another charter we can save 10 or 20 students. Davis Guggenheim is very specific in choosing the families he chose to follow, kids who are in failing school districts who will end up at some of the worst schools in the country because of geography.

One might guess that only inner city schools are failing but that is not the case. Guggenheim travels to a posh suburban school in Silicon Valley that has nearly as many failing students as any inner city school. Even with a school that looks like a University parents are eager to get their children out and into a charter school that has shown an uncanny knack for sending kids to college and prepared to actually be in college.

This suburban palace school you see has a curriculum based on what is called tracking. Tracking is a system created during World War 2 and was meant to quickly identify traits in kids that could predict how their skills could be put to use in a very different workforce. The economic changes of the last 60 years have shifted the ground beneath us. We have evolved from a manufacturing economy to a thought economy that values a very different set of skills and yet schools continue tracking kids to jobs that are no longer relevant.

On the hopeful side, Guggenheim demonstrates quite clearly that kids are not failing in school, we are failing them. At Harlem Success Academy and KIPP and Seed, kids who in the past would have been written off as being incapable of learning or kids who would have been tracked into irrelevance and despair, are thriving and striving toward College and success.

“Waiting for Superman” is an act of bravery, a desperate cry for help and for change. It’s not about throwing more money at schools but about changing the way schools are set up. Teacher’s unions are protecting bad teachers for their own self interest and in doing so they are abandoning generations of kids to lives of despair, poverty and struggle.

We need to be embarrassed. We should be outraged. We tout the US as the greatest country in the world and yet we rank in the 20’s in terms of education worldwide. China, among others, is well ahead of us in math. When the companies in Silicon Valley go looking for Engineers they look to India because US schools are not turning out kids with the skill level to handle these exceptionally difficult and well paying jobs.

It is an embarrassment and an outrage. Republican or Democrat, you cannot watch “Waiting for Superman” and not come away outraged and ashamed. See “Waiting for Superman” and get involved in changing this abhorrent situation. There is still time to save several generations of kids but we must act now.

Documentary Review: Touching the Void

Touching the Void (2003) 

Directed by Kevin MacDonald 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, Ollie Ryall

Release Date December 12th, 2003

Published December 12th, 2003 

I am not much of an outdoorsman. I am especially not much of a climber, I once damn near killed myself on one of those plastic climbing walls, don't ask me how. So reading the book Touching The Void by Joe Simpson, detailing his unreal ascent from a mountain in Peru with a broken leg and a climbing party that assumed he was dead, was quite an experience. The book, however, is surpassed by this amazing docu-drama that combines the best of documentary filmmaking with re-enactments of what happened on that mountain in 1985, a story that was nearly never to be told.

In 1985, two friends from Britain were looking for a challenge. Having only been climbing for a little while Joe Simpson and his slightly more experienced partner Simon Yates felt they were ready for a real challenge and chose a large, snowy peak in the Andes mountain range in Peru. With a climbing party consisting of just them and another man, Richard Hawking, who remained at the base camp, the two made for the top of Siula Grande 21,000 feet high.

Climbing to the very top of the mountain was quite a challenge, especially with the constant snowstorms and freezing temperatures. However, Joe and Simon's real challenge would came on the way back down. Having made the peak in two days and looking down on the world, they were ready to go back to camp. There are no maps on the top of a mountain to tell you what is solid and what is just lightly packed snow. One false step and you could fall a long way. That is what happened to Joe Simpson.

Searching for the safest route to climb down, Simpson walked to the edge of a snow shelf to look over the side when the shelf broke and Joe fell. Thankfully he was tied at the waste with Simon but that was not enough to keep him from hitting the ground hard and breaking his leg. This is a serious injury at any altitude but on this high peak, in this weather, it's a veritable death sentence. Simon could leave Joe and go for help but by the time he could get to base camp (it's a three day walk back to the main road and still a few hours drive to get to civilization), it might be too late.

Simpson tells us that he would not have blamed Simon for leaving him and was in fact a little surprised that he didn't. Instead, they attempted a very complicated descent that put both their lives in great danger. Simon, using all of the rope they had, slowly lowered Joe as far as the rope would go. Then, he would climb down to where Joe was and lower him again. Having to cover some 20,000 feet of mountain with three hundred feet of rope, this took a while. They worked through the night, with no sleep and even colder temperatures.

Things get worse when another snow shelf causes Joe to fall, this time with Simon too far away to know what happened. Joe is dangling over the side of a snow shelf unable to reach the wall and brace himself. Simon is left to wonder if Joe has succumbed to the cold or blood loss from his injury and is forced to make a difficult decision that pits his life against that of Joe's. Should Simon assume Joe is dead and cut the rope, thus saving his own life? Or, hope that Joe is alive and can correct the problem and continue the climb? Simon's decision has been debated ever since among climbers and laymen alike.

What is most amazing about Touching The Void is the combination of documentary-style narration of Simon, Joe and Richard alongside actors Nicholas Aaron, Brenden Mackey and Ollie Ryall re-enacting the climb on the actual mountain in Peru and the slightly safer Alps. Yates and Simpson narrate the action, which shows that they survived this amazing ordeal and yet the action is so well-directed by filmmaker Kevin McDonald (Oscar winner for One Day In September), that the suspense is still palpable.

People have been trying to turn the book Touching The Void into a live-action feature since it was published in 1990. Sally Field had once been in line to direct the film with Tom Cruise as Simpson but something about this story escapes a traditional narrative. Invented dialogue and traditional movie structured storytelling just doesn't seem right for this.

Kevin McDonald's docu-drama approach is the clearly the perfect way to attack this material. The actors resemble Yates and Simpson so well and the situations described in the on camera interviews and voiceover so well rendered you can't escape the feeling of actually being there. You feel as if you are inside the memories of Yates and Simpson and that is a truly amazing feeling.

Documentary Review The Devil and Daniel Johnston

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005) 

Directed by Jeff Feuerzeig 

Written by Documentary

Starring Daniel Johnson 

Release Date March 31st, 2006 

Published August 20th, 2006 

There is a thin line between genius and madness. Daniel Johnston crossed that line with a combination of manic depression, fundamentalist Christianity, and bad acid trips. Somehow, despite his obvious mental deficiencies, Daniel Johnston became a cult legend as a musician and an artist and the line between genius and madness blurred to nothing.

In 1985 Daniel Johnston left his home in West Virginia to live with his brother in Texas. He soon disappeared and was later found to have joined up with a traveling carnival. The carnival led him to Austin, Texas, the iconoclastic home of one of the most eclectic music and art scenes in the country.

Johnston, carrying his self produced tapes and lyrics, made the rounds introducing himself, handing out his tapes, and blowing the minds of the Austin intelligentsia who saw something in him that most people did not. Johnston would go on to become one of Austin's most renowned characters and likely its most tragic.

His national profile is equally uncanny. Daniel Johnston once lucked his way onto MTV when the music channel's hip underground show, 120 Minutes, profiled Austin's music scene and Daniel simply showed up at the taping and soon found his way on to the stage. From there, in between trips to various mental facilities, Daniel Johnston's friends and acquaintances passed his legend on to anyone who would listen.

When Johnston’s manager set up a publishing label for him, bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth lined up to cover his work. Curt Cobain brought Daniel his most consistent national exposure by wearing a T-shirt with a drawing created by Daniel Johnston on the MTV music video awards. Cobain subsequently wore the shirt in TV and magazine interviews for months on end.

Here is the odd thing I kept going back to as I watched the documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Daniel Johnston is clinically quite crazy. From a purely scientific standpoint the man's mind is out of his control. He has crazy visions of God and Satan, some of which he has copied down and sold as art. Daniel Johnston has the kind of grand delusions that would have most people lined up for lifetime commitment to a hospital. However, a random arrival in Austin and finding just the right oddball community of artists, finds Daniel Johnston a world renowned musician and artist.

I don't know whether I admire Daniel Johnston or pity him. Watching people like the members of Sonic Youth, who brought Daniel to New York to record with them, and people like Simpsons creator Matt Groening, talk about how much they love Daniel's music is very strange. If these same people saw Daniel Johnston singing on a street corner in New York or LA would they or anyone give him a moment's notice?

The music of Daniel Johnston is bizarre. At once unlistenable and strangely compelling. When Daniel Johnston is riffing at his best; his lyrical combinations are rather mind blowing. More often, however, listeners will find Daniel Johnston lost in his delusions and proselytizing about god and satan and the various voices in his head.

Daniel Johnston has a gift and absolutely no ability to master it. This makes him both fascinating and tragic. It makes the documentary about his life The Devil and Daniel Johnston one of the most compelling and thought provoking documentaries I have ever seen.

Documentary Review: Free Solo

Free Solo (2018)

Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

Written by Documentary

Starring Alex Honnold, Tomy Caldwell 

Release Date September 28th, 2018

Published September 26th, 2018 

Free Solo is one of the most strange and harrowing experiences I have had at the movies in 2018. This deification of free climber Alex Honnold which attempts to portray Honnold as a heroic figure and not a man with a death wish or a callous disregard for life, is also wildly, enthralling. Free Solo contains a full 20 minute sequence that is one of the most riveting of this or any year as we watch Honnold do something no one has ever done before and lived to tell. 

Free Solo introduces Alex Honnold as a legend already in progress. Among rock climbers, Alex is a God. Alex has made some of the most difficult climbs in history, all around the globe and all without the use of safety equipment. What Alex does is called Free Solo and it very simply means that he climbs mountains without the use of a rope, a harness or anything else that could keep him alive if he were to lose his grip and fall from hundreds of feet in the air. 

We meet a restless Alex as he is once again pondering an attempt at the most difficult Free Solo Climb on American soil. No one in history has completed a free solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California but Alex has had the idea to do it for some time. As Alex recounts in the documentary, he had been to ‘El Cap’ three years in a row with the intent of possibly making the attempt at a free solo, only to back out. 

Nerves are a rarity for Alex and we don’t really know what it was that drove him to abandon his previous attempts. Was he afraid? Did his research of the mountain, climbing with safety equipment, discourage him? Don’t expect to find out much about Alex’s thought process. A key scene in Free Solo has Alex undergo an MRI to see if his brain works any differently than normal people and indeed, his amygdala, the part of the brain that senses an emergency or fear, is less active than the average brain. So, we can rule out fear, for the most part. 

Were it not for Alex’s girlfriend, a non-climber named Sanni, we might not learn much of anything about Alex beyond his climbing exploits. He’s not a big personality, he’s not particularly charismatic, he’s friendly enough but if you were to ask about anything other than climbing rocks it’s easy to imagine his level of discomfort or disinterest in any other topic. Rock Climbing is everything for Alex Honnold and El Cap is the closest thing he has to a religious experience. 

Free Solo was directed by Honnold’s friends Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin a married couple and fellow climbers who’ve been with Alex for a few years. They too have an obsession with climbing as their previous director effort was Meru which followed Chin’s ascent of the 4000 foot mountain climb in the Himalayas on a rock known as ‘the shark fin.’ Rock climbing, as portrayed in Meru and especially here in Free Solo is portrayed as pure obsession. 

There is a dark complexity to Free Solo that is inescapable for those of us in the audience. Free Solo at once is quite direct about the danger of free solo climbing and yet still manages to portray Alex Honnold as a hero. There is a sequence in Free Solo in which we hear about the number of people, some of whom are contemporaries of Alex, men he had admired and emulated who have died, falling from incredible heights during a free solo climb. 

Alex is almost indifferent to these facts. Alex is downright callous in his disregard of how these men died. The filmmakers are similarly unaffected by these scenes that they chose to include. They don’t so much as confront Alex with these men’s deaths as offer these men's’ lives as a plot point in order to demonstrate how incredible what Alex is doing truly is. It’s not hard to imagine that these scenes are in the movie simply to deflect the idea that they are simply making a hagiography of Alex that glories in his manly pursuit of his dangerous vocation. 

That would, at least, be a more honest movie. Instead, what we get is a movie that is rather dismissive of how dangerous free solo climbing is in favor of showing how cool free solo climbing is. Indeed, I cannot deny that free solo climbing is cool looking. I can’t sit here and pretend I wasn’t riveted with car wreck fascination over Alex’s climb, even as I knew he had survived it. Much like Nascar, we pretend that this is about the remarkable challenge but we secretly, darkly, are watching for something horrible that might happen. 

Do I recommend Free Solo? Yes, it’s undeniably compelling even as it is uncomfortably uncritical of how it glorifies an activity that will get more than a few people killed. Free Solo will inspire someone to want to try what Alex did. You could say this about a number of different movies but there is something more disquieting about Free Solo and how it appears to invite new daredevils to be the next Alex by making him a hero just for not falling to his death. 

The lengthy segment of Free Solo in which Alex Honnold is making his climb to the top of El Capitan is among the most exciting, unnerving and compelling scenes in any movie in 2018. There are very few words, just grunts and brief sounds updating the crew on where Alex is on the mountain. The crew is just as transfixed as we are and while the silence was certainly a dramatic choice, it was also because they are as absorbed in this sight as we are. These scenes are why I can’t dislike Free Solo even as I am uncomfortable with it. 

Documentary Review Jig The Story of the Irish Dancing World Championships

Jig The Story of the Irish Dancing World Championships (2011) 

Directed by Sue Bourne 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Brogan McCay, Julia O'Rourke 

Release Date June 19th, 2011

July 14th, 2011

Jig: The Story of the Irish Dancing World Championships" is an inside look at Irish Dancing and like nothing you have seen before. Director Sue Bourne goes beyond "Riverdance" and "Lord of the Dance" and into the real, day to day lives of competitors and their families whose quirks, obsessions and intense dedication to their craft are as compelling as the prize they compete for is surprising.

Brogan and Julia

First, we meet 10 year old Brogan McCay from Derry, Northern Ireland. A lively and precocious youngster, Brogan is already a champion in Irish Dancing when we meet her for the first time. With her instructors Rosetta and Elizabeth, who storm about in tracksuits and bark instructions ala "Glee's" Sue Sylvester, Brogan is preparing for the 40th Irish Dancing World Championship where her top competition will be Julia O'Rourke from New York City.

Julia, the daughter of an Irish father and Asian mother, has long idolized Brogan having watched her competition videos on YouTube and copied her steps. Together, Brogan and Julia offer the most compelling and dramatic of all of the tremendous stories in this highly compelling documentary.

Eye on the Prize?

However, Jig is more than cute little girls in sparkly costumes performing extraordinary Irish Dances. Director Sue Bourne juxtaposes Brogan and Julia's story with those of older, teenage competitors, Claire, Simona and Suzanne and through them we see what may be a glimpse into Brogan and Julia's future, a future filled with obsessive dedication to dance that consumes not just the competitors but their families.

All of the obsessive, day to day, practice and all consuming dedication to perfecting routines grow even more fascinating when you find out that these girls and each of the more than 3000 people who compete in the Irish Dancing World Championships are not competing for prize money and that the judging of the event is wholly subjective, based on the tastes of the judges and not on any specific criteria.

Dedication and Obsession

Sue Bourne's approach glosses over the lack of prize money and shows little interest in the judges and their tastes. Instead, she is focused on these extraordinary young people and parents who have dedicated their lives to Irish Dancing purely out of the love of doing it including several Russian women who paid thousands for a world class coach after stumbling upon Irish Dancing almost by accident.

Then there is little John, a nine year old boy who endures the taunts of other boys who spend their time playing soccer while John practices his steps. Though John's love of Irish Dancing is obvious, you cannot help but be a little sad as you watch John working out his steps while watching other kids play. John later joins the game, softening the sad perspective but only a little.

Awe inspiring talent

John's idol is Joe; an American born in California whose parents gave up everything to move to Glasgow so Joe could be trained by world class Irish Dancer John Carey. Joe is a multiple time champion whose work is indeed remarkable but you cannot help but be astonished at how willing his parents were to trade in life in California to pursue a goal for their son that has no prize beyond personal pride and a gold plated trophy.

"Jig: The Story of the Irish Dancing World Championships" is a fascinating documentary about remarkable people doing something truly extraordinary and the awesome lengths they go to in order to achieve their goals. The story is informative, the dancing is awe inspiring at times, especially Joe, and in the end there is even some tense drama surrounding the results.

All of the elements come together to make Jig a must see when it opens Friday, June 17th, in limited release and whenever it arrives in your neck of the woods.

Documentary Review: This Movie is Not Yet Rated

This Movie is Not Yet Rated (2006) 

Directed by Kirby Dick 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Kirby Dick, Becky Altringer 

Release Date September 1st, 2006

Published December 22nd, 2006

Documentarian Kirby Dick's snarky, sarcastic, irreverent approach can be a little off-putting, especially when he has a real point to make. In his latest documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Dick has some real strong points to make about the machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America, the group that basically decides what movies Americans can see in movie theaters.

The doc is highly entertaining and very smart. However, when Kirby Dick wants to, he can be a real arrogant, pedantic prick. It's all part of this wonderfully amusing and highly important little movie that I highly recommend, despite it's creators foibles.

I have long felt that the M.P.A.A played a valuable role in the film industry. As long time President Jack Valenti so often pointed out, the motion picture ratings board was what stood between the film industry and government censorship of film. What Kirby Dick demonstrates with sharp, expert interviews is that the M.P.A.A incorporates censorship rather than prevents it.

The argument is thus, remove the MPAA from the equation and force the government to attempt to rate movies. The government being subject to the law would be forced to abide the first amendment. The MPAA being an industry institution is not subject to the law. Filmmakers can work around the MPAA if they like, but theater owners refuse to run films that don't have the MPAA seal which leaves that film basically in limbo.

There are other important points made about the MPAA in This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Among them is the very obvious homophobia of the ratings board members. An interview with director Kimberly Pierce reveals her struggle to avoid an NC-17 rating for her film Boys Don't Cry. Though films featuring graphic sex between men and women sailed to R-ratings, Pierce's love scenes featuring Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny had an impossible time getting past the ratings board.

Atom Egoyan struggled with similar issues on his film Where The Truth Lies and when he challenged the ratings board and demanded to speak face to face with raters he was denied. He appealed to the ratings and asked to speak directly with the appeals board and was also denied. His case however, revealed something about the board that is one those great gotcha moments of This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

An interview with Trey Parker of South Park fame revealed two more strange things about the board's taste in movies. The first is the different treatment of violence vs sexuality. On South Park Bigger Longer Uncut, the creators of South Park were able to get away with any and all forms of violence and yet when it came to the sexual content of another Parker-Stone creation, Orgazmo, the cuts requested by the board were deep and seemingly arbitrary.

The other side of that debate was the ease with which the studio that produced Bigger Longer Uncut made it through the ratings process, despite it's highly offensive content, versus the uphill battle that faced the far more innocuous, independently produced Orgazmo. Remember the MPAA is a studio creation, thus it is fair and well argued in This Film Is Not Yet Rated that their is a bias against independent movies.

The most controversial aspect of This Film Is Not Yet Rated and it's most inventively snarky inclusion, is Kirby Dick's choice to hire a private investigator to identify MPAA raters. What he finds is even more hypocricy than that demonstrated just by the ratings the board has given out. Though the MPAA claims that the ratings board is made up of parents of young children, Dick and private investigator Becky Altringer find that few of the raters have children in their teens or younger. A few raters are even single childless men, not a shocking revelation but something MPAA doesn't want us to know about.

And that is the key. What the MPAA does not want us to know about. Why isn't this process more open to scrutiny. Why can't filmmakers speak with raters and plead their case instead of having to simply bend to the will of these non-artists. Why is appeals process even more secretive? And, in another of the films gotcha moments, why is the opinion of church officials so important to the ratings appeal process?

As Dick reveals, a pair of priests reside on the appeals board and one of them even submits to an on camera interview. The priests have no vote in the final process but are allowed to voice concerns over a films content.

Kirby Dick is an arrogant, pushy, jerk. It's what makes him a great editorialist. He has a point to make and will do whatever he can to make that point stick in your head. His work is as off putting as it is persuasive and while you may walk out of This Film Is Not Yet Rated not liking Kirby Dick you will likely still end up agreeing with many of the valuable points he makes about censorship and the MPAA.

Like Michael Moore however, Dick's editorial approach  effects the perception of his film as documentary. Most documentary films are meant to observe a story and come to conclusions only after the facts have been explored. For guys like Michael Moore and Kirby Dick, a documentarian begins with a point of view and seeks only information that conforms to that point of view. That, of course, leads to fair accusations of bias and indeed calls into question some things you may see in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

If Kirby Dick is only seeking information that backs up his opinion that the MPAA incorporates censorship into the film business then what is the other side? What are we not hearing. Kirby Dick would likely not care. I guess if the MPAA has a problem with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, they should make their own documentary or at the very least respond to the various charges that Dick makes that have thus far gone unchallenged by the MPAA.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is muckraking, editorial journalism with a whole lot of snark and circumstance. Kirby Dick has an axe to grind with the MPAA and grind away he does invading the homes of the MPAA and taking the fight against film censorship right to the people he feels are incorporating it. Is his style arrogant, overbearing and peevish? Oh yeah. But, is it effective? Definitely.

Documentary Review ESPN 30 for 30 June 17th 1994

ESPN 30 for 30 June 17th, 1994 (2010) 

Directed by Brett Morgan 

Written by Documentary

Starring O.J Simpson, Mark Messier, Marv Albert, Bob Costas, Chris Berman 

Release Date June 16th, 2010 

Published June 17th, 2010

ESPN Films has turned out remarkable documentaries under the banner 30 for 30. The death of Len Bias, the story of the USFL and the unique life of running back Ricky Williams are just some of the subjects that some of the finest documentary filmmakers working today have tackled with astonishing success.

The latest filmmaker to tackle a sports subject in documentary form is The Kid Stays in the Picture director Brett Morgen. His esoteric subject is one of the more remarkable days in sports and American cultural history, ..June 17th 1994... The date will always be remembered for O.J Simpson's bizarre slow speed chase but this strange worldwide theater encompassed more than just that famed white bronco.

On ..June 17th 1994.. the New York Rangers celebrated an amazing Stanley Cup Victory with a parade in New York's famed canyon of heroes. Ticker tape was thrown and thousands of New York fans gathered to cheer for their hockey heroes as they were feted by New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani.

That same morning Arnold Palmer teed off for the final time at the US Open after 41 years. In Chicago Oprah and President Bill Clinton welcomed to the world to the United States for the opening games of the World Cup. That night the scene was to shift back to New York where the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets played game 5 of the NBA Championship series.

I say that it was supposed to shift because that evening as the Knicks and Rockets tipped off in Madson Square Garden the world's attention was aimed at the 5 Freeway in Los Angeles as O.J Simpson, with a gun to his head and his friend Al A.C Cowlings at the wheel held police at bay.

Brett Morgen brings these stories together in a non-traditional documentary fashion, minus talking head interviews and canned narration. Instead, Morgen uses news footage from that day and archive footage of the man O.J Simpson was to craft the story of this remarkable day in a way that brings it stunningly back from the depths of our collective memories.

Among the most striking memories for me was Police Commander David Gascon's announcement that the Los Angeles Police Department was actively searching for O.J Simpson. More forceful and better remembered are the words of former L.A County District Attorney Gil Garcetti's famed statement, nevertheless powerful today, "Mr. Simpson is a fugitive from justice right now."

These scenes were burned into our memories. Director Morgen returns to these scenes the context of that day and the emotion that so many felt in seeing a man who had been a positive presence in so many lives from sports to commercials to film and TV. O.J Simpson was not a huge star but certainly the most well known ever to be accused of murder. Morgen's style, no modern interviews or narrator, takes us back to that day and the confusion and horror of those stunning moments come rushing back.

With crisp editing and tremendous orchestral scoring Brett Morgen and his editing team cut gracefully between the stories that developed that day around the country and the ways those stories that on any other day could lead the news headlines, were effectively rendered meaningless by a slow moving white bronco carrying a football legend to his seeming doom. 

The story of ..June 17th 1994.. is, as director Morgen says in an interstitial interview, a turning point in our culture. Reality TV and our celebrity obsessed culture was born on this date. The chase, capture and eventual trial of O.J Simpson began a media and cultural obsession with the private lives of public figures as we salivated over finding the next scandal, the next murder, the next blood in the cultural waters. 

Morgen cleverly makes my last point with a pair of moments that most might not have taken note of. During a Royals-Mariners baseball game that day an announcer callously jokes "Did you hear O.J Simpson is at the US Open? He already has 2 under." Later that night as Knicks coach Pat Riley was taking questions about his teams Game 5 win another diseased member of the media asked a perplexed and appalled Riley if O.J would have gotten away if he had not 'cut to the left.' 

Our cultural civility has long been a myth, ruptured, in my opinion, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate when cynicism born of the Kennedy, Kennedy and King assassinations finally boiled over into outright hostility and festered into the 80's with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggart and others. 

This festering finally found full disturbing bloom when it melded with the birth of modern media in the O.J Simpson murders. A culture tortured by cynicism met a perfect storm of media and technology and a hellmouth of ugliness and obsession was born, it's spawn being the resurgence of the tabloid, TMZ.com, Perez Hilton and the ability for the average American to engulf themselves in the ugliness with reality television. 

It is strangely poetic and darkly humorous that standing amid the media storm ..June 17th 1994.. was a little known Los Angeles lawyer named Robert Kardashian. Preening for the camera with his perfectly coiffed pompadour and carrying what was believed to be O.J Simpson's suicide note, Kardashian relished the glare of the media on that day and in the ensuing trial days in the same way his daughters Kourtney, Khloe et al seek the glare of the modern spotlight. 

The strange, dark, ironic humor doesn't end there as director Brett Morgen caps the doc with the wonderful Talking Heads song "Heaven." The chorus repeated by David Byrne as O.J finishes the day in police custody and Pat Riley faces down that reporter and Rangers fans begin to sober up and Arnold Palmer finally gets a moment to rest, says "Heaven, heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens." 

Something happened that day and we've never been the same. Brett Morgen and ESPN Films have stunningly recreated a cultural landmark and in doing so have created one of the most fascinating documentaries of the year.

Movie Review King of Kong A Fistful of Quarters

King of Kong A Fistful of Quarters 

Directed by Seth Gordon

Written by Documentary 

Starring Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe 

Release Date August 17th, 2007

Published November 17th, 2007 

What kid, alive and aware in the 80's doesn't remember Donkey Kong. Arcades all over the country teemed with kids lining up to run Mario over those barrels, up those ladders and finally all the way to his girl on that platform where inevitably Kong would snatch her up again and the game would start again. The next rounds would feature killer springs, tiny fireballs, elevators, pulley systems and more ladders. When the game was made available for the original Nintendo system my friends and I would spend several frustrating hours playing that stupid game, my frustration should tell you how well I ever did at it.

That said, I do recall a friend of mine who made it all the way to the 21st screen, scored over a million points and the game stopped because there was no further to go. According to the documentary The King of Kong A Fistful of Quarters what my buddy did was set a world record. Of course, when we played it rarely seemed like anything more than a diversion, not something you took the time to document or even remember accurately. The stars of this documentary however, consider my words blasphemy. They have spent their lives keeping track of scores on video games, documenting them on videotapes shown to men who call themselves judges or video game referees.

One sad soul spends days at a time watching videotapes of people playing videogames in order to authenticate what he believes is an important world's record. As condescending as I'm sure I sound toward these men, and indeed they are all men, what is stunning about this documentary from director Seth Gordon is how compelling and even fascinating these characters become.

Billy Mitchell has long been the all time Donkey Kong champion. His high score has sat at the top of the rankings for more than a decade. Yes, there are video game championship rankings, documented by an Ottumwa Iowa arcade owner named Walter Day. Mitchell has lived this accomplishment for most of his life. Kong along with his perfect score on Pac Man in the mid-nineties, are the defining moments of his life. The undeservedly arrogant, mullet wearing Mitchell is also a successful businessman in Florida who still plays Donkey Kong, longing to break the million point barrier.

Steve Wiebe, on the other hand, didn't pick up his Donkey Kong obsession until he was laid off from his job as a high school science teacher. Long a man with an obsessive personality, Steve's family has long suspected he may have obsessive compulsive disorder or may even be slightly autistic. Whatever Steve's issue it drives him to do things like play Donkey Kong for days on end in hopes of breaking Billy Mitchell's record score. As Seth Gordon documents in King of Kong Steve does break the record but it's not nearly as simple as one might imagine.

Controversy erupts, was his machine that he plays in his garage, street legal or modified. Was the videotape of his game used to authenticate his score tampered with? If these questions sound inconsequential, director Gordon does an amazing job demonstrating how much they matter to this oddball collection of humans spread literally across the country from Steve in Redmond Washington to Walter in Ottumwa, Iowa to Billy Mitchell in Hollywood Florida. As goofy as it sounds I guarantee you will be riveted by Steve's reaction and what happens next.

Seth Gordon adopts just the right level of skeptical distance and non-judgemental humor. You sense that Gordon is on our side in thinking how goofy this competition is. However, as he indulges these strange personalities, you must admit that a compelling story of rivalry and obsession emerges that for 84 minutes keeps you fascinated and wanting to see what happens next. Mock if you must but I recommend you take a look at King of Kong A Fistful of Quarters and try not to be sucked into the war between Steve and Billy and Donkey Kong.

Funny and fascinating, King Of Kong A Fistful of Quarters is one of the most unique and compelling documentaries I've ever seen. A must see.

Documentary Review: Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers (2018) 

Directed by Tim Wardle

Written by Documentary 

Starring Edward Galland, David Kellman, Robert Shafran 

Release Date June 29th, 2018

Published August 25th, 2018

Nature or nurture is a question as old as when man began to question his very existence. This question speaks to the very soul of humanity: am I a product of how I was raised or is my existence a reaction to my environment. To me, the answer is rather simply, a mixture of both but that isn’t exactly a satisfying answer if you’re a social scientist. For years, the field of mental health would draw battle lines surrounding the nature vs nurture debate and it led to something rather monstrous in its coldly calculating science.

In 1961 a psychiatrist by the name of Peter Newbauer decided there was one way to settle nature vs nurture. With the help of a wealthy and well respected adoption agency, he would oversee the separation of sets of twins at birth, sending the siblings to different homes with different demographic make ups and track how they grow up via interviews mandated as part of the adoption agreement.

What? You’ve never heard of this monstrous experiment? There’s a reason for that, it was never published. The fact that this ever happened likely never would have came to light if Bobby Shafran hadn’t decided on attending community college, the same community college attended by Eddy Galland, his heretofore unknown twin brother. Even then, it seemed like a brief heartwarming accident, the kind of story that closes a local newscast. 

But then it was revealed that Bobby and Eddy had another brother, David, and were, in fact, adopted triplets. The story became a media sensation in 1980 and carried on for a few years with the triplets parlaying off of their minor fame. That to, could have been the end if the triplets story hadn’t intrigued an award winning journalist into looking into how something so strange could have taken place. What he found turned this heartwarming story, into a heart-rending scandal.

Three Identical Strangers is an incredibly compelling documentary. Director Tim Wardle is new to feature length documentary, he’s worked for several years in television but Three Identical Strangers feels like the work of a veteran. The story unfolds with remarkable clarity and vision with a strong hand at the narrative. Wardle sets us up brilliantly and then employs brilliant twists that are never forced or overly dramatic, but rather perfectly calibrated to documentary storytelling.

Wardle has a cinematic eye as well as a documentarians eye. Notice a scene in which he describes the adoptive parents meeting with the adoption agency after the triplets have found each other. There is a moment here that is dramatized and it is apart from the rest of the doc which is more traditional, face to camera interviews. The father of one of the boys witnesses the adoption agency people toasting over having seemed to dodge a bullet in their meeting with the parents. Your first thought is that this is a throwaway scene and this will now turn into a legal battle, but you’re wrong. I was wrong while watching it as well.

The scene is urgently important for setting up the rest of the documentary narrative. The whole film turns on this dramatized moment and it is an ingenious way to shift the structure of the narrative. The heartwarming and curious portion of the story is now over and the murky and darker side of this story is fully begun and what an incredible story we’re being told in Three Identical Strangers.

The film even begins the debate of nature vs nurture by seeming to take one side before switching and pleading the case of the other side. Again, I find this shift to be incredibly smart and in keeping with the clever way Wardle shifts from heartwarming curiosity to mysterious and murky morality play. The nature vs nurture debate will not be decided here or likely in any kind of text, filmic or otherwise, but Three Identical Strangers offers something unique and fascinating to that debate.

Three Identical Stranger is one of the best movies of 2018 and were it not for my deeply emotional connection to the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, I might call it the best documentary of the year. It’s a wildly fascinating and exceptionally well told story. Tim Wardle is a terrific new voice in a feature documentary and I can’t wait to see what he does next after his remarkable triumph with Three Identical Strangers.

Documentary Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)

Directed by Morgan Neville

Written by Documentary

Starring Mr. Rogers 

Release Date June 8th, 2018

Published June 8th, 2018

What is missing from the world in this day and age? Kindness. Kindness appears to be missing in this day and age. While everyone is yelling at each other and becoming tribal via social media, kindness is becoming more and more rare. Kindness exemplifies the work of Fred Rogers, the remarkable host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The life and work of Fred Rogers is now being celebrated in a new documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?).”

In the 1951, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Fred Rogers was on his way to become a Presbytarian Minister when he first saw a television. The remarkable invention inspired him with its seemingly endless possibilities. Mr. Rogers would become a Minister eventually as well as a music scholar with a degree in music composition from Rollins College in Florida before settling into the world of television at WQED in Pittsburgh.

Rogers determination from the beginning was to work in children’s television and by 1963, the seeds of what would become Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were sewn. You likely know about Mr. Rogers and his sweaters and his songs and puppets but did you know he studied child development with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh alongside? That’s just one of the fascinating notes that make Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) so unique and interesting.

"Won’t You be My Neighbor(?)" was directed by Morgan Neville, a documentarian who specializes in music documentaries. His “20 Feet from Stardom” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature at the 2013 Academy Awards. Neville is a smart, thoughtful and curious director who comes at the material of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” with an eye toward a conventional documentary narrative, a linear, life story, approach.

However, the unusual part of the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is in the weight Neville gives not just to telling Mr. Rogers’ life story but explaining the impact he had on the lives of his viewers. Rogers was a quiet revolutionary, a Republican who fought for the funding of PBS in front of Congress and won. In 1968, in the wake of the death of Robert F. Kennedy, Rogers engaged his child audience in a conversation about death.

That same year, as controversy raged over civil rights and black people were being kicked out of public pools, Rogers enlisted his friend, Francois Clemmons as Officer Clemmons in the Neighborhood, to share a soak in his pool. The conversation had nothing to do with race or the raging controversies, it was just pleasant small talk about the weather but the visual of two people, black and white, sharing a kindly conversation, said what the conversation did not.

Clemmons is among the very emotional interviews that are featured in “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?), alongside Rogers’ sons and his wife, Joanne. Naturally, everyone has lovely things to say about Rogers but the stories aren’t saccharine hagiography, but rather an earnest, emotional, fond remembrance. The film humanizes Rogers, especially near the end of the film when we get a glimpse of Rogers’ own insecurities, the kinds of things he helped children get passed.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?)” is a remarkable documentary without being showy or over-dramatic. Like its subject, the documentary is quietly revolutionary, playing to our emotional attachment to Mr. Rogers while genuinely educating us about this remarkable man and his impact on the world. For me, his kindness is a model. Rogers’ kindness is a superpower better than most superhero powers. Kindness is at the heart of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor(?) and that kindness, remembering that kind of kindness, makes this the best documentary of 2018 thus far.

Documentary Review The Stone Reader

The Stone Reader (2003) 

Directed by Mark Moskowitz 

Written by Documentary 

Staring Mark Moskowitz 

The name Dow Mossman may not stir the average man on the street. Other than the unusual nature of the name Dow, the name has little cache.

That is, except for a one man fan club named Mark Moskowitz who knows everything there is to know about Dow Mossman. Why? Because in 1972 a then 18 year old Moskowitsz read a New York Times review of a book called The Stones of Summer. The review caused Moskowitz to seek out this book that was described as the novel of its generation by Times reviewer John Seelye. Thus began a series of events that some thirty years later became a documentary called The Stone Reader, a paean to the art and craft of reading and appreciating a great book.

As a 17-year-old, Mark Moskowitz got very sick. His weeks of bed rest left him with little else to do but read. It was during this time that he discovered a number of books including The Stones of Summer by Dow Mossman. Unfortunately for Mark, Stones was a little too dense. The pack rat in Mark however caused him to hold onto the book and nearly thirty years later he picked it up again. What he found was a transforming literary experience, a book that spoke to him in a way that few books ever had.

Assuming that since the book had been written so long ago that the author must have a number of books available, Mark began to scour the internet for the works of Dow Mossman. To his surprise, however, there were no other books. There was in fact no information about Dow Mossman at all, as if he had disappeared completely.

What began as a curiosity quickly grew into a passion. Why had such a brilliant writer simply stopped after one incredible piece of work? Mark, now in his late thirties and working as a director of political commercials, decided that he would put his behind the camera skills to new use in the medium of documentary filmmaking, find Dow Mossman and discover why he had stopped writing.

That is the story of The Stone Reader. Without giving too much away as to what Mark Moskowitz discovered in his work and whether he ever found Dow Mossman, you'll have to see that for yourself. This is a truly magnificent documentary. The film has traditional documentary elements like talking head interviews and narration but what is unique is the way that Mark Moskowitz makes the search for Dow Mossman more about himself than Dow or his book. Moskowitz has an aggressive almost abrasive personality and yet as the documentary moves along he wins you over with his passion.

Moskowitz narrates the film himself as if he were reading a book on tape and it's a really great book. The images on the screen often have nothing to do with the narration and yet it feels right. It's as if you were in his head as he reminisces about books and his journey with Dow. One particularly striking sequence, Moskowitz discusses another author whose work output was limited to one brilliant novel, Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22.

Moskowitz goes on for something like 15 minutes discussing military novels that he discovered as a kid and happening upon Catch 22. Heller died just as the documentary was being made and that fact likely inspired this bit of stream of consciousness. As this narration goes, the images on the screen are of Moskowitz's son at an amusement park riding the Ferris wheel, winning toys and eating cotton candy. The camera is Mark's perspective watching his son and it's as if the narration is happening in his head.

There are a number of shorter sequences of the same kind and they all have a quality that draws the audience closer to the subject. Combined with interviews that piece together the clues of Dow Mossman's disappearance, it’s like a Sherlock Holmes novel but with a lighter tone. Moskowitz tips his hand a couple of times that finding Dow might be easier than he lets on and almost admits a couple times that he is dragging things out, but it's such a terrific journey that I didn't mind.

Documentary Review Stevie

Stevie (2003) 

Directed by Steve James

Written by Documentary 

Starring Stevie Fielding, Steve James 

Release Date April 11th, 2003 

Published July 4th, 2003

In 1994, Steve James took us inside the lives of a pair of rising basketball stars in Hoop Dreams. We watched as these two naive kids tried to navigate the world of big time college basketball, all the while still in high school. Roger Ebert called Hoop Dreams the best film of 1994, and it's difficult to argue with that. Now after a brief respite in the world of fiction directing, James returns to the documentary field with a very personal story that draws from his own past and brings him out from behind the camera and into the story.

Before launching his career in documentary filmmaking, Steve James was a college student who volunteered for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, an organization that pairs volunteers with needy kids who need guidance and a good role model. It was here that Steve came across Stevie, a young boy from a troubled home. It wasn't long though before circumstances intervened that caused Steve and Stevie to part ways. Some ten years later James is back home to promote Hoop Dreams and takes time to drop in on Stevie. What he finds is ten years of sadness, pain and familial strife all centered around Stevie.

Originally, James didn't plan on being on camera with exception of the film’s introduction. He had planned on hiding behind the camera and not getting overly involved. However what he found upon visiting Stevie was a kid that needed someone to talk to, who desperately needed guidance and with no father figure in Stevie's life, James unwillingly accepts the role.

In the time James spends with Stevie, learning about his past and all that happened since they last saw each other, we find out the horrors that awaited him. In those ten years, Stevie bounced from foster home to foster home, he was beaten and molested and has become very bitter towards his mother who gets most of the blame for his wrong turn in life. To be fair, James interviews Stevie's mother who explains her side, though she doesn't come off very sympathetic. Stevie also expresses some bitterness toward James who he feels abandoned him.

Over the course of months and years of off and on contact, James chronicles Stevie's odd life. From battles with his sister and mother to Stevie going to jail on a charge that James isn't sure is true. The final scenes culminate in a jailhouse interview in which James has to accept some hard truths about Stevie and excise some of his guilt, however unfounded that guilt is.

Stevie as a character is truly shocking and sad. The stereotype of white trash may have started with Stevie, he's violent, crude, ignorant, lazy and a racist. He's also occasionally sweet and caring, especially with his mentally handicapped girlfriend even if that relationship is as dysfunctional as any in Stevie's life. Stevie is impossible to like and especially care about. Even so, he's been through a lot in his life and certainly a lot of people let Stevie down throughout his life.

As for Steve James the filmmaker, he does earn our sympathy and watching his reaction to Stevie is truly emotional and sad. It's easy to see why James gave up on little Stevie and you don't blame him for walking away from him at the end. James did everything he could for Stevie but now with a family of his own, especially having his own little children, he can't continue to help Stevie. No good deed goes unpunished yet James seems to get nothing but punishment from his relationship with Stevie.

Documentary Review: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer

Directed by Alex Gibney

Written by Documentary

Starring Elliot Spitzer 

Release Date November 5th, 2010

Published December 22nd, 2010

Eliot Spitzer does not easily earn your sympathy. A child of privilege, Spitzer used a combative, bombastic style of politics to battle his way to the top of New York state political apparatus. Then, at the apex of power, he allowed his weakness for sexual encounters unencumbered by emotion, those that could be paid for without an emotional toll to pay, to end what should have been a merely colorful but deeply impactful career to be derailed.

Alex Gibney’s documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer tells the three track story of Eliot Spitzer’s life from his rise to Attorney General of New York in the late 90’s to his crowning himself the ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’ where he battled corruption and dirty financial dealing in ways that few had done before to his astonishing fall from power.

Track one of Client 9 is about the exciting and sexy world of high end escorts. As Wall Street rode the boom of the late 90’s internet explosion and the rise of deregulation in Washington, high end escort services boomed to service a new crop of mini-millionaires riding high on the filthy lucre of derivatives trading and mutual fund meddling.

The best of the best of this new era of the whorehouse was New York’s Emperor’s Club where models, athletes and wannabe starlets paid their bills by offering what was dubbed “The Girlfriend Experience” to Wall Street’s elite. The Girlfriend Experience is package that allowed clients to act as if their escort was really a date, merely one that was guaranteed to end in sex.

Whether Eliot Spitzer signed up for The Girlfriend Experience or not is up for debate. What is known is that as Governor of New York; Spitzer somehow managed to set up thousands of dollars worth of escort’s services through The Emperor’s Club under the nomme de plume George Fox and that at least one of these trysts with an escort named Ashley Dupre, variously known as Veronica or Kristen depending on the client, was captured on a wiretap.

Track two of the story of Client 9 lays out the background in front of which the Eliot Spitzer’s story became the ultimate distraction. As Wall Street’s self appointed Sheriff Eliot Spitzer led a crusade against powerful Wall Street fat cats with massive bonuses and the shadiest of shady practices among traders and trading firms. In his fight Spitzer made powerful enemies such as former NYSE Chairman Kenneth Langone, former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg and longtime Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone.

These three men, two powerful and one who knows how to manipulate that power, each had a serious bone to pick with Spitzer as their money was at stake in Spitzer’s crusade against the dirty deals on Wall Street. As Alex Gibney lays out the story each of these men emerges as unabashed bad guys in interviews, in their own words they admit with relish the joy they took in watching Spitzer fall and leave plenty of evidence behind of what they may have known and even influenced in the case against Spitzer.

Spitzer’s story became the perfect distraction from the trouble Wall Street was in 2007 and 2008. AIG, with Hank Greenberg as CEO, certainly needed a distraction what with their illicit practices leading to a massive collapse that required a multi-billion dollar bailout from Washington. That they could distract from that story by watching the man who started the investigation of them seems almost too perfect, a point not missed by director Gibney.

The third track of Client 9 is Eliot Spitzer in his own words and here is where the story stumbles. In his words Spitzer is not a man prone to introspection. Thus, Spitzer is not as forthcoming as many would hope. His inability to open up combined with the roughhewn political style demonstrated throughout the story make Spitzer a less than sympathetic central figure.

Does he own what he did? Yes, but he also doesn’t offer any apologies and while he refuses to speculate or lay blame on others for what happened to him, Spitzer is enigmatic about what drove a man with his powerful enemies, high profile and so much at stake to take such ridiculous chances for mere sexual favors. These are the things of which a sex addiction is made yet, slightly to his credit; Spitzer avoids a simple diagnosis for why he did what he did.

The most controversial figure in Client 9 is not Spitzer or his powerful enemies but rather an actress. Wrenn Schmidt plays the role of Angelina the fake name of the real escort who was Spitzer’s most often paid for companion. When the real Angelina agreed to talk with Alex Gibney off camera with assurance that her name and face would never be revealed, Gibney made the controversial decision to have Ms. Schmidt act out a transcript of his interview with Angelina.

The information is revealing and it applies to all three aspects of the story of Client 9. It’s fair to say that the information she reveals is necessary to the outsize, ambitious narrative Gibney paints, one of conspiracy meeting flawed humanity in the form of a Modern Greek Tragedy. But, having an actress play act the words of Angelina leaves one feeling a little uneasy as if on slightly shaky ethical grounds.

Thankfully, Alex Gibney does not push the ethical envelope too much and admittedly there is a certain humorous irony to pushing the bounds of decency in a story about Eliot Spitzer. Nevertheless, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is, if at times uncomfortable, an engrossing story told with a bold voice and a grand vision, a flawed man, a flawed story and a near perfect documentary.

Documentary Review: Catfish

Catfish (2010) 

Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Written by Documentary

Starring Ariel Schulman

Release Date September 17th, 2010

Published September 23rd, 2010

Why can't I get interested in writing about “Catfish?” As I watched this potentially faux documentary about a guy in a relationship with what may be a fake woman from Michigan I was at first compelled then after the big reveal of the big twist I completely lost interest. Is it the filmmaker's fault or a case of temporary A.D.D? I’m not sure but I know I can't recommend a movie that I barely finished out of disinterest.

”Catfish” is a supposedly real documentary about New York Photographer Nev Schulman who begins an online relationship with 19 year old Megan Facci after being approached online by her little sister Abby, a surprisingly talented artist at just 8 years old. Abby painted a gorgeous watercolor of one of Nev's photos that appeared in a New York Newspaper as well as online.

Abby's mom Angela sent Nev a print of the painting and from there Nev through Facebook befriended Abby's family, including her older half sister Megan. The relationship with Megan grows as intense as any long distance relationship can get with sexy text messages, emails and late night phone calls. While Angela urges caution and other family members, like Abby's rocker brother get involved and cause drama, Nev begins pondering a real relationship with Megan. 

While on a business trip to Colorado Nev, his brother and the documentary director Rel Schulman and co-director Henry Joost, decide that a trip to Ishpeming Michigan to meet the family and Megan is the logical next step in what has been till now a sweet chronicle of long distance love, art and Facebook. However, the trip to Colorado also reveals a key lie Megan and Angela have been telling and leads Nev to worry that the whole thing is a sham. 

Before we get to the full critique of “Catfish;” the marketing of “Catfish” bears mentioning. Producer Andrew Jarecki, the filmmakers and the studios Rogue and Universal Pictures made a strange choice to market “Catfish” as some sort of thriller with a 'shocking twist' at its center. There is a twist but it's a sad slow reveal of something that will not surprise anyone who has spent time on Facebook getting to know strangers some of whom bring their sadness and desperation to social networking. 

Pretending “Catfish” is some kind of juicy thriller is likely the reason so many people think “Catfish” is a big fake out. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, fellow documentarian Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) is alleged to have confronted director Rel Schulman after a showing of “Catfish” and complimented him on the best fake documentary he had ever seen. Why pretend a documentary is some kind of Blair Witch-esque, found footage thriller when the reality is so much different? 

Maybe the filmmakers realized, as I did about half way through “Catfish,” that what they had was half of an interesting story based on a good looking and interesting lead character who goes all limp and boring in the second half when confronted with the unfortunate reality of his long distance love affair. I really liked Nev Schulman and was compelled by his relationship with 'Megan.' However, when they make the trip to Michigan the film loses steam and bogs down when Nev drops his New York superiority in favor of faux Midwestern compassion. 

Do I believe what I have seen in “Catfish?” Maybe, mostly, I didn't care if it was real. “Catfish” fails to stay compelling once it reveals its twist and how unsurprising and merely sad it all really is. Documentary or not “Catfish” just isn't all that engaging after the twist and certainly not as compelling as the bizarre marketing campaign that pretends “Catfish” is “The Blair Witch” or “The Last Exorcism,” films that brilliantly use the form of fake documentary to tell riveting faux real life stories with real scares. 

One could go on for a while about the dangers of online life about how “Catfish” details our alienation from reality through the looking glass of social networking but there is a better and far more compelling example of that alienation that is competing for Oscars right now in “The Social Network.” Director David Fincher's fabulized tale of the founding Facebook is far more on point about our alienation through the online world than anything possibly evoked by accident or intention in “Catfish.”

Documentary Review: Young @ Heart

Young @ Heart (2008) 

Directed by Stephen Walker 

Written by Documentary 

Starring The Young @Heart Chorus

Release Date April 4th, 2008 

Published May 10th, 2008

As I sat down to watch Young @ Heart I expected good things given the positive buzz from other critics. My hesitations came from just how I would enjoy a documentary about seniors singing rock music. I can do camp, I don't mind camp but I didn't want to laugh at old people singing James Brown or Sonic Youth just for the sake of laughing. To my joyous surprise Young @ Heart overcame all of my reservations, surmounted my detachment and touched me as deeply as any movie of the last decade.

Several years ago filmmaker Stephen Walker took in a performance of a senior citizen choir in Northhampton Massachusetts. What he found was a plucky group of oldsters not just singing rock n roll songs but breathing life and magic into these well known tunes. Walker was so inspired he had to tell their story.

Young @ Heart was born 25 years ago as a vaudeville act. It was a way for active seniors to stay active. Then  Bob Cilman, the choir director, was struck with an idea. He found that the most rousing, entertaining moments of the old vaudeville show were the songs. Introducing new songs, introducing rock n roll tunes, Cilman transformed the show into Young @ Heart and audiences ate it up.

Now Stephen Walker has brought the Young @ Heart choir to the world and we are better for it. We join the story as the choir is readying their newest show. Bob Cilman is ready to take some risks. With just a few weeks to prepare he is introducing 5 new songs and not just any songs but five truly challenging tunes.

Sonic Youth's Schizophrenia is loud, noisy and incomprehensible to most of the choir. James Brown's I Feel Good is just a bit quick and tongue twisty for the group, especially for the man chosen for the lead, Stan Goldman who, try as he might cannot keep up with the lyrics. If you think I Feel Good is a tongue twister, how about Allen Toussaint's Yes We Can which uses the word can 71 times, mostly in close repetition near the end of the tune. The song comes close to being cut.

The Talking Heads Life During Wartime does not make the show for reasons that have nothing to do with the song or the performance of the choir. But the most moving and heart rending new tune is Coldplay's Fix You sung by a pair of returning vets of the choir. Fred Knittle and Bob Salvini both were forced to give up singing to deal with health problems. Each is convinced they have atleast one show left in them, Bob despite having survived repeated chemo treatments and the administration of last rites.

Fred Knittle for my money, is the star of Young @ Heart. A former regular member of the choir, Fred had to stop singing because of lung trouble. Now on an oxygen machine, Fred feels he has a show left in him. Does he ever. In him we find the roots of the old vaudeville show that was Young @ Heart. Quick with a one liner, Fred threatens to tip into parody until he sings.

Fred Knittle for my money, is the star of Young @ Heart. A former regular member of the choir, Fred had to stop singing because of lung trouble. Now on an oxygen machine, Fred feels he has a show left in him. Does he ever. In him we find the roots of the old vaudeville show that was Young @ Heart. Quick with a one liner, Fred threatens to tip into parody until he sings.

His lovely deep bass is given the assignment to sing Coldplay's Fix You. It was to be a duet but when we reach the night of the show Fred is on his own to sing the lead with the choir backing him up. It's a scene that could not be script. Poignant, heartbreaking and healing all at once, Fred Knittle delivers to us in the audience a performance of a lifetime. Fight back the tears, if you can.

One of the most wonderful moviegoing experiences of my life, Young @ Heart moved me like few movies I have witnessed. Such heart, such hope, such life. It's pure magic that will move, inspire and rock like few movies you've ever seen. Young @ Heart arrives on DVD September 16 and must be seen. This is one of the best movies of the year.

Life, death, joy and sadness, Young @ Heart runs the gamut of emotions in the same way a great song does. It lifts your heart, breaks and heals it all in the space of 108 lovely minutes.