Tag Archives: documentary

Side by Side Side by Side 4 star

March 8th, 2013 by surlaroute

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“What was ever real?”

(I’m afraid this might read like an unstructured babble that almost makes watching the movie unnecessary, so… spoilers? I was just desperate to post something here as it’s been nearly a month since I did lol and this one really gave me a lot to think about…)

If I never said so before – though I’m sure I have in one form or another – one thing I always want from a movie is for it to be more than what it seems on the surface… if I have expectations, for it to exceed them. I knew I’d find this documentary marginally interesting based on its subject and interviewees (not just the big names on the poster) – even though I don’t have a strong opinion (though I didn’t know why that was until this documentary – which I’ll explain at the end), the whole film/digital debate has of course been something I’ve followed as a cinema lover.

So while on its surface this is a documentary about the digital revolution, particularly as it pertains to film – a lot has been said in the past year or so about “the end of film” with film labs and camera makers actually shutting down and most recently with half of the Oscar nominated films being shot digitally – Side by Side goes far, far deeper, eventually becoming more about all our potential fears of the digital nature of our lives. Anybody could’ve found talking heads to talk about why they favour the old or new mediums, and there’s certainly plenty of that here – but this film looks beyond the actual celluloid and/or pixels at other ways technology affects expression.

There’s discussion with actors and directors about how the ability to shoot nonstop with digital affects performance – while John Malkovich talks about how stifling it was to have to wait when shooting on film when the performance was ready “now”, there’s talk of another actor who left bottles of urine around a set in protest at being constantly on record. The whole subject of dailies is covered, with one contributor saying, with digital, they’re “no longer dailies… now immediatelies…” and how that instant access to playback can also affect both performance and technical things like lighting, for better or worse. Robert Rodriguez makes a beautiful comparison about the delay between shooting and developing film as being like “painting with the lights off”.

Crucial analogies are made here – the film retraces points in film history covered plenty in other documentaries where technology advanced cinema and we either embraced it or didn’t notice – the boom in digital effects around Jurassic Park, digital colour correction coming from music videos, and way before that, digital editing systems and audio. One of the big questions asked is, we didn’t care when everything else went digital, why are we so hung up on the image?

The big plus touted in film’s corner is its archival value. As digital stands there are just too many risks and continuing format changes alone make it difficult to keep a backup for more than 10 years even if the file survives, while film always works as long as you have a light to shine through it – I think it’s David Fincher talks about having to put an actual reader in with any digital archive to be sure of being able to decode the format in the future. But one person rightly, again, looks beyond cinema and, while acknowledging the problem, states, “there’s too much digital information out there not to figure out a way to store it forever.” I’d like to believe this is so. It seems ridiculous if not, right?

The other quite amusing issue addressed in all this is the new abundance of content that digital brings. Everyone has a camera and access to YouTube now – yes, the democratisation of the art form is wonderful, “Everyone’s interpreting reality – or what they think is reality – through a lens,” Martin Scorsese says, but some of the more stuffy contributors fear that this will just result in noise. A telling moment makes clear where this film stands on this, when one of these anti-digital folks moans, “There isn’t a tastemaker involved!” and a voice from behind the camera simply says, “Wow.”

My big takeaway from this movie was that it’s really all the same. The abundance of content we face now? It brings to mind that commonly stated factoid that 90% of films made before 1929 have been lost. There’s always been a lot of stuff to watch. Maybe loss is a fact we have to face in art as much in digital as ever. Film may have the edge on digital as far as archival storage goes, but it’s still only got 100 years on it, it’s as young as anything. Any global event large enough to have a devastating impact on our digital storage would likely affect our film storage systems too.

More than this? I found myself thinking, what if it all did disappear? Would that be so bad? We didn’t have sound recording technology when Mozart and Beethoven were around. We don’t even have photographs of the first performances of Shakespeare. But it all survives. Even if all the great films of our time were somehow snuffed out one day, as long as there were people, they’d survive because we talk about them with passion constantly. Something will always remain of art or ideas that change the world – even if it’s just a memory handed down and bent out of all recognition. One of the greatest benefits of digital is immediecy, and perhaps the fact that its ubiquity makes it so fleeting is what finally makes the moving image as an art form complete.

Room 237 Room 237 4 star

February 12th, 2013 by surlaroute

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Room 237 opens with a surely deliberate attempt to cheekily mislead. We see footage from Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut, only… is Tom Cruise looking at a poster of The Shining? People less familiar with Kubrick might accept it as actual footage, like the rest of the footage that makes up the bulk of the image portion of this documentary, perhaps knowing or having heard of Kubrick’s more subtle intertextuality (a 2001 soundtrack album is hard to miss in one scene of A Clockwork Orange, for example; Quilty refers to himself as “Spartacus” at the beginning of his Lolita; there are many YouTube montages of breathtakingly similar shots from all his films). Even Kubrick fans, though, might think to themselves, “I can’t have missed that… can I?”

The Shining poster doesn’t appear in Eyes Wide Shut but this moment does come back into one’s mind later when some of the more visual theories about The Shining (the one that really knocked me back was the pattern of the carpet reversing from shot to shot) are discussed and footage is shown as “evidence”. I don’t doubt for a second that the other footage presented here is untampered-with, but I guess what I’m saying is, boy does this documentary make you want to go back and watch the movie again (and I’ve watched it a lot recently, working through Taschen’s Kubrick Archives book and the recent Movie Geeks United Kubrick series).

Speaking of those other extraordinary Kubrick works (the Taschen and Movie Geeks United podcast series – particularly the latter’s episode on The Shining – both musts for any Kubrick fan), what most impressed me here was that Room 237 never felt redundant. Even when discussing theories I’d heard before, the use of Kubrick’s own footage only hammered it home all the more. There’s an enormous disclaimer right at the start of the movie and I’m assuming it’s the only way they could get away with using so much of the man’s own imagery in conjunction with often controversial ideas of what he meant by it. It’s one of those documentaries that benefits hugely from this somewhat official blessing – like the use of the Sherman Brothers music in a documentary I recently watched, The Boys, or the slick old horror documentary Terror in the Aisles hosted by Donald Pleasence, it makes it so much more than if it were just a series of talking heads (which is essentially what the soundtrack consists of). It’s more a jumping off point for infinite further discussion than a definitive collection of theories and interpretations, but the fact that it managed to thrill me so much by the end after having heard so many of the stories before is the highest recommendation I can give.

I Am Nancy I Am Nancy 4 star

February 1st, 2013 by surlaroute

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“I’m Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street.” “Oh really. Where’s Robert?”

You’d think I would’ve had enough of Nightmare on Elm Street extras after the 8 hours of Never Sleep Again and all the other Elm Street stuff I spent weeks watching a couple of years ago but I’ve actually been looking forward to seeing this, which has now seemingly been rebranded as “Never Sleep Again 2”, for over a year now. I don’t really know which is the higher praise – that it more than deserves to sit beside the vast array of material in Never Sleep Again, or that it made me appreciate again the original movie – which I’ve said before is one of those movies that have kind of grown a little stale to me over time through over-watching – more than any other horror documentary I’ve ever seen.

As the title suggests, this is billed as Heather Langenkamp’s story but in all honesty her contribution is not as total as I expected. The documentary is split into two major parts: footage of a horror convention celebrating the original Nightmare’s 25th anniversary where Heather spends most of her time asking people “what about Nancy?” and looking for an action figure of herself (one that doesn’t suck – she finds a “freezing cheerleader” in one Nightmare board game but no Nancy), and a great extended interview with the creator of Freddy and Nancy, Wes Craven. This interview is intercut with another interview with his daughter Jessica, holding a baby daughter of her own – Jessica explains that she may have “inspired” Nancy by saying of Craven’s Swamp Thing 2 years before Nightmare, why are the girls always falling down in your movies?

The documentary reaches some real moments of honesty towards the end – I’m incredibly cynical about emotional moments in these things since the whole reality TV boom but (though not quite as tragicomic as Best Worst Movie) there’s an awkwardness to the human interactions here that I believe can’t be faked. The parade of fans lining up to get her autograph in the convention segment is really something to behold – a worrying moment has one fan pull out a machete to be signed, then there’s a deaf girl with her father, a lot of young children, a guy who wants to tell Heather all about his recent break-up, and most notably a British girl in a wheelchair who moves Heather to tears telling her what Nancy and the Elm Street movies meant for her. Langenkamp’s mission is to get all these people, and us, to “be Nancy!” through the dark times – it sounds corny, but I couldn’t believe how good this movie made me feel.

Terror in the Aisles Terror in the Aisles 4 star

August 8th, 2011 by surlaroute

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I’ve reviewed a bunch of horror documentaries here and though I might just be leaping at the opportunity for a short review (trying to get back into writing more regularly here), this one should really be no exception as it’s among the most notorious. Coincidentally it finally hits blu-ray this Halloween as an extra on a new release of Halloween II; I only just heard about it very recently (despite its seeming notoriety lol) and was surprised I knew nothing about it.

There’s very little of social or historical commentary as you find in other horror docs here – at only 80 minutes with the list of films it shows clips from (let’s just say too many to list here; and just about any horror movie you can name that had been made before the film came out in 1984). What you get is Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen sitting in a movie theatre talking solemnly about how horror movies (or terror movies, as they’re called here; a great move allowing the inclusion of such nightmarish movies as Marathon Man and Midnight Express) make us feel.

What strikes one most about this one is not just the array of movies included but the slickness of the whole thing. The editing is top notch – cutting together, say, door slams or something, a dozen or more at once from different movies. The whole opening sequence is a relentless montage of “alone in the house” scenes. We see this kind of thing all the time now but it’s strangely impressive to see it in a production so old.

Suddenly, after describing the movie, I realise it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s one of very few of these horror documentaries that I’ll likely watch again and again, just for the sheer assault of content it provides. It’d be something great to have on in the background on a scary movie night, or on an iPod to watch a little of on a long journey, etc when you want that atmospheric je ne sais quoi that all these movies provide but you either haven’t the time for a full movie or can’t decide what movie to watch. If you love horror, chances are you don’t need me to tell you all this; but if you love horror, really, drop everything if you haven’t seen this yet.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams Cave of Forgotten Dreams 4 star

April 5th, 2011 by surlaroute

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“An 8 year old boy’s footprint is found next to those of a wolf. Was the wolf stalking the boy, were they walking as friends? Or were they walking thousands of years apart? We just don’t know…”

Two years ago I went to Paris for three days and on one of those days I went first to the lowest point of the city – its catacombs – and, as the sun set, to its highest point – the top of Montparnasse tower. It was a glorious experience, and it was only as I lay in my bed at the end of the day, full of champagne, that I made the poetic (or pathetic, depending on your outlook) observation that it was as if I’d been to heaven and hell in one 24 hour period, so harsh was the contrast between the two realms.

Werner Herzog makes no apologies for seeing this kind of epic, spiritual, poetic (or pathetic, see above) drama at every turn of this new documentary that takes us to a remote network of caves in France where the oldest known paintings in the world – over 30,000 years (take that, Creationists – sorry, but I’ve been listening to Richard Dawkins this weekend, lol) old – were discovered. The caves are so delicately preserved that his time is limited – his crew is limited – the freedom of his camera is restricted – even the amount of light they are allowed to use to illuminate their subject is rationed.

The limitations show. The resolution varies vastly, and at times the 3D frankly looks worryingly, badly post-converted. I have to say, it’s almost always forgivable due to the fact that the images – for example, one of the worst-looking pieces of footage, of the “dark side” of a hanging rock pendant, where one of the earliest depictions of the human form is to be found – are either going to be seen like this or not at all. And when the 3D and resolution conspire to do their best, the effect is that of total immersion… only the smell is really missing (at one stage it’s suggested they may recreate the caves as a “theme park” in the near future, complete with a replication of the smell… maybe they can pump that smell, once created, into future screenings of the movie, or provide a small vial of essence with the blu-ray package? lol)

Towards the end, I have to say, it kind of takes on a truly peculiar trajectory, with a bizarre host of characters miles away in Germany finding not paintings but sculptures and musical instruments believed to be from the same time and place (well, they were closer to being in the same place at the time, that is…). There’s an experimental archeologist dressed as an Inuit, playing the Star-Spangled banner on a primitive flute, and a fascinating perfumer sniffing around the rocks. There’s a certain urge to laugh like a schoolboy at some of these people, contrasted as they are to Herzog’s super-reverent approach – but mostly, this urge for me was completely trumped by the infectious enthusiasm for their subject they radiate.

Herzog tags on an epilogue which is so further disconnected from the initial subject matter that it’s equally easy to dismiss, but it fits Herzog’s flighty (albehe so sinister in tone) personality. At one stage he’s interviewing a French scientist about the history of the caves, etc, and he’s talking about how overwhelmed he was on seeing the paintings. “I am a scientist, but I’m also a human,” he says, prompting Herzog to inquire about the man’s personal life. He used to work in the circus, it transpires. This leap embodies Herzog’s approach – humanising the sublime by placing it in the context of the ridiculous. His epilogue is just an idea that occurred to him that he felt might be important, and he simply leaves it with us… and it haunted me all the way home and still… Some alligators in a tropical biosphere 20 miles from the caves, heated by the cooling waters discharged from a nearby nuclear power plant. It’s all connected. We’re all connected. He imagines the alligators looking at the paintings we’ve been looking at and wondering if they have any better chance of truly understanding the human truth behind them, so distant and different were the artists. One of the scientists on the journey with him latches onto a detail of a man with a crooked finger, this detail enabling us to “follow” him through the cave where he left his unmistakable mark. But does that detail really tell us anything about him?

At only 90 minutes, it must be said that to me it felt much, much, longer. To many people, me included, it will test the patience. On the big screen, the variable quality of the footage can be trying, and there’s much repetition of some of the paintings. But I still want to say, this is the best 3D experience I have ever had. This movie (or the footage it contains) is undeniably important and, whether you like it or not while watching it, I’m convinced anyone would feel glad that they watched it. As Herzog has said in interviews, he barely considers it a movie really, and rightly so. It really is more an experience – as thorough a documentation as currently possible of what it is like to be privileged enough to enter these caves. Herzog’s narration and his interviewees touch on questions of art, history, science, time, cinema, and the nature of human existence itself. It’d be a sorry soul indeed whose mind wasn’t left buzzing by all this. I didn’t just mention my trip to the Catacombs in my opening to show off or segue into my review… what this movie left me with was a huge desire to go back there, armed with the thoughts Herzog left me. I knew what I felt when I was down in that darkness, but I couldn’t even wordlessly articulate it in my own mind to myself at the time. It was exactly what this movie is all about, and my second visit (or indeed, my first visit to any historical place from now on) will be completely touched by the beautiful mess of thoughts and feelings it delivers.

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue Nightmares in Red, White and Blue 3 star

November 8th, 2010 by surlaroute

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This review will be even shorter than the one I wrote for Never Sleep Again lol… Basically this to me is just an extension of The American Nightmare, a horror documentary that came out a few years ago dealing with horror in the 60s and 70s, mostly relating their content to the likes of the assassination of JFK and the Vietnam war.

A sizable chunk of this repeats stuff that we’ve heard about many times before now (not just in The American Nightmare either), but I have to admit that once it hits the late 70s and less-chartered territory, it does become a lot (well, a little) more interesting. It must be said it does cover much earlier ground too – though Mark Gatiss’ recent BBC4 series blew all this out of the water. At 90 minutes with such scope you could never really come to this expecting a wealth of depth… but if you’re a horror fan, the clips and talking heads are bound to keep you well appeased.

Best Worst Movie Best Worst Movie 4 star

November 8th, 2010 by surlaroute

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“Mostly I’ve frittered my life away… but what else is there to do with life but fritter it away?”

This is an odd one to review – as you’ll know perhaps from previous reviews, pretty much any horror documentary tends to get an automatic minimum of a 3 heart rating from me because I love the genre, and this one has been on my must-see list for some time… but it’s really something else than a horror documentary. The subject is the movie Troll 2, widely regarded as the worst movie ever made (but, y’know, in a good way); specifically the cast and crew of that movie and where they are now, 20 years later. Its closest relative lies far outside the horror genre, in the wonderful Anvil: The Story of Anvil.

For the most part, I’d say it really lives up to that comparison and I understand the high praise that led me to so badly want to see it. There’s a heartwarming sense about most of the participants that reminds one of movies like Ed Wood or Bowfinger …they were never trying to make art, really, they just figured it’d be fun to make a movie. I have to admit, I don’t go so wild for the “so bad it’s good” thing as others, so I was never really going to “get” much of the “fan” side of the documentary, but some of it is kind of glorious.

What let the movie down for me is the incredibly awkward sequences with those who actually were taking the movie seriously or those who clearly don’t really want to be associated with it. The most notable of these is the Italian director of the movie and his wife who wrote the screenplay. His wife actually makes a decent attempt to explain how this mad movie really did have a “message” of sorts but it still mostly comes across as kind of cringeworthy compared to those like the documentary maker himself who just accept that the movie was a glorious failure that became a cult classic. The director eventually justifies all this to himself but early on I felt pretty bad for him as he realised people were laughing at his movie and not with it.

Then there’s the sequence with the (like I say, otherwise good-natured) guy who leads the documentary (a cast member of Troll 2) at a UK comic convention. We see him prior to this repeating “classic” lines at other screenings and conventions, but it’s clear at the UK event that nobody has ever heard of the movie, and the guy genuinely seems embarrassed, in fact actually leaving the convention under the guise of blowing off its patrons (it’s clear who the biggest loser in the situation is, I’m afraid). On top of this is a sequence where the film makers track down another original cast member whose life now is caring for her elderly mother. The awkwardness of this scene is almost too much to bear. I haven’t even mentioned the cast member who was actually mentally ill at the time of filming, or the kindly old gentleman nobody who delivers the line quoted above.

In thinking about the movie after the credits rolled, however, I kinda began to think how even this awkwardness, the tragic element, only really adds to the humanity of the whole movie. As a true documentary, it could never really be all, “hey it was a bit of fun” like the movies I mentioned… these are real people in the end. I’m not sure I’m any more likely to watch this again than the movie it’s about… but “so human it’s awkward” is something you rarely get to say about a horror documentary, so there’s something here worth celebrating.

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy 4 star

November 3rd, 2010 by surlaroute

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There’s little to say about this but I feel like I should at least post something because it more than deserves mentioning. This is a 4 hour documentary about the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series, which when I first heard about it already made it a must-see – it becomes even more so when you discover there’s a further 4 hours of “extras” on the DVD set. This month I’ve been working through the many older extras, interviews, featurettes to be found on older releases of these movies (notably the Nightmare on Elm Street encyclopedia, etc) and I can tell you there are few, if any, duplications here. These are all new interviews with just about everybody involved in the original, the sequels, the spin-offs, the merchandising… literally everything seems to be covered. Even actors you mightn’t expect to appear (for example Kim Myers, of Nightmare 2, who I don’t think I’ve ever seen interviewed) have been pursuaded to join in.

Obviously this kind of thing is only for fans, and if you are such a fan then you’ve probably already run out to buy it. But I just found this to be even more astounding than it sounded when I first heard about it. It’s a hell of a way to to spend an afternoon if you love these movies. It even kinda makes you love them even more, or at least make that love seem a little less strange. Oh yes, and there’s some terrifically disturbing stop-motion interstitials too. It’s really about time someone made an all-out stop-motion horror movie… Evelyn Evelyn anyone?