GRIZZLY MAN (DVD)

Director: Werner Herzog (Perhaps a “great” of German film, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, more)
Starring: Documentary

After 15 minutes of this DVD, I was terrified that I was watching nothing more than a glorified snuff film. You know, the old "man finds bear, man loves bear, bear lunches on man" story we've seen a thousand times. Luckily, I was wrong. This documentary about a silly guy who gets eaten was very much not what I was expecting.

The plot in a nutshell follows Timothy Treadwell, a compulsive, almost child-like presence, as he plays with wild grizzly bears in the Alaskan wilds. In some sense he was an animal activist, attempting to adertise the bear's situation. For 13 summers he got closer and closer to these wild animals until eventually he was killed and eaten by one. Most unfortunately, his foolishness cost him not only his own life, but the life of his girlfriend.

On one level this is an accurate description of this film. As the film progresses, however, it's startling just how much further it goes than these surface observations. This was significantly more than a crass look at this man's death.

Treadwell took a video camera with him during his trips to the wild north. The camera became a friend of sorts and a confidant. Gruesomely, it even captured his last moments where he was mauled by a bear. Luckily only sound survived from this final episode. I'm glad to say that Herzog did not include this audio, although I feared it at first. That really would have been unfit for this fine movie. We do get descriptions, however, and they are awful enough.

As the film unfolds we begin to see more and more layers in Timothy Treadwell’s confused persona. We see how his desire to play with bears has become a sort of religion for him. We see his own fears and inadequacies, his lonliness, and desire to connect with something greater. We see how he has even miscontrue his own place in the world. In reality this man is doing little more than taking pictures of some bears, and occasionally telling children about how wonderful they are. In his mind this has become a quest to save nature from the evil people he can't seem to connect to. In the film, he never really does anything concrete to save the bears. The closest he comes is to creep up on a group of men fishing on a lakeside. What in his mind is an odyssey of great proportions, becomes more clear as just another lonely soul searching for answers, or friends, or God.

This was an extremely powerful movie in my opinion. The unintended autobiography of this troubled soul reminded me greatly of another great nonfiction film, Capturing the Friedmans. In both films we see how a video camera can capture unintended moments of great sincerity. While discussing bears, Timothy manages to tell us much more about his own confusion that lead him to search for something more. I rate this as one of the best films of the year.

Standouts: Remarkably telling home video footage of an immature man searching for something more.
Blowouts: Not much, perhaps the teasing moments where the film describes his death in detail.

Grade: A

1/29/2006

MURDERBALL

Director: Henry Rubin & Dana Shapiro (no major film work)
Starring: Documentary

This surprising little documentary about quadriplegics was a very good movie. Nominally, the film is about Murderball, or wheelchair rugby, but as with any good movie it goes well beyond the central premise. When I say that the film is surprising, I mean it’s surprising in a number of different ways, not just that I was surprised by how good it was. I was surprised that the film showed quadriplegics not as targets of sympathy, but as full-blown assholes. I was surprised that the film devoted time to showing a father becoming a better father and that he just happened to be paralyzed. I was surprised that it showed (fairly graphically) the sex activities of the paralyzed. At times this movie wanted me to laugh at the paralyzed. At times this movie wanted me to dislike the paralyzed. And in the end this movie wanted me to understand the paralyzed. This was a very good film.

Standouts: The directors. They put together a very good film.
Blowouts: A scene where Para-Olympians make fun of the Special Olympics. Just sad.

Grade: A-

8/18/2005

THE ARISTOCRATS

Director: Paul Provenza (Long time stand up comedian)
Starring: Documentary (Penn Jillette does much of the interviewing)

A documentary by stand-up comics, nominally about stand-up comics. The hook on this film is the joke “The Aristocrats”. A family comes into a talent agent’s office and says, “Have we got an act for you!” They proceed to shit, fuck, piss, vomit and revel in obscenity for a while. The agent says, “That’s quite an act. What’s it called?” The answer: The Aristocrats! It’s a so-so joke. Really, I’m sure that Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette just thought that comedians being truly profane for 90 minutes would sell tickets. He’s probably right. I’ve heard that this film is a compelling deconstruction of stand-up comedy, and perhaps that’s true to a degree. We see a hundred different takes on the same material. I don’t know. In the end, I think it’s just a funny movie. I laughed throughout. I found it slightly less funny than a good stand-up routine, but being a stand-up fan, that’s praise on my part. The standout routines include Kevin Pollack telling the joke while doing a Christopher Walken impersonation, Bob Sagat in perhaps the dirtiest telling of the routine, and a hilarious mime routine of the joke. I didn’t find this to be an amazingly enlightening film, but I did find it to be a damn funny one.

Standouts: Kevin Pollack, Bob Sagat, Gilbert Godfried, Billy the Mime.
Blowouts: Although a lot of comedians were flat, I found Jon Stewart to be annoying.

Grade: B+

8/10/2005

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

Director: Luc Jacquet (no major film work)
Starring: Documentary (narrated by Morgan Freeman, US version)

While certainly a delightful little nature documentary, this small film narrated by Morgan Freeman has been rather oversold. The amount of press given to this tiny little release has far exceeded what it deserves. That does not imply that this is a bad film. It’s an interesting and enjoyable 90 minutes - although perhaps no more so than most top quality nature documentaries. Most unfortunately it’s also somewhat inaccurate. It spends those 90 minutes anthropomorphizing a group of emperor penguins living on the fringes of the livable earth, deep down in Antarctica. As a description of life, it’s exceptionally interesting. We see how life will struggle to fill every available gap in an ecosystem. Unfortunately, the filmmakers chose to present these penguins as brave, charismatic, heroes struggling through all odds. I don’t really believe that’s entirely plausible. Not many of these penguins rationally chose the life they lead any more than my cat chooses to be a persnickety clean freak. It’s called free will, my good filmmakers - free will. Nonetheless, I’m willing to pretend and enjoy the story of the dutiful penguins marching deep into Antarctica each year to breed. An enjoyable, if over advertised little film.

Standouts: The film crew. Amazing footage in horrible physical conditions.
Blowouts: The writers. Joyful chronicle of life? Nope. Anthropomorphic cliché.

Grade: B

7/17/2005

ENRON, THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM

Director: Alex Gibney (notable minor TV, documentary work)
Starring: Documentary

This is not a particularly insightful documentary, nor is it an in-depth treatise of the Enron Scandal. It is, nonetheless a good primer, and a maddening discussion of the subject. Similar in vein to the Michael Moore films or Super Size Me (although not nearly as entertaining or as well done), this film is entirely an editorial on the topic. It focuses on the character of the individuals involved rather than the particulars of how they got away with it. The film is annoyed that this huge disaster took place, but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as interested in the fact that we let it take place. The film really should have been disturbed that the American people seem to have simply accepted this corruption as a cost of doing business. Why the people don’t really care about this problem is, I think, the subject of an even better film than this one. Personally, I find this affair to be an evil only a couple of notches below the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but apparently most people don't agree with me. This film treats it as a bad deal, and by simply documenting it, asserts that it is something we need to worry about. It doesn’t even touch on the great indifference of the people to the subject, however. In terms of the craft of making a movie, this film is very average across the board. As a topic, however, this story is enraging and astounding. I'll give a grade somewhere in the middle.

Standouts: The real story of the fraud at Enron.
Blowouts: The very, very average production and direction.

Grade: B

6/12/2005

MAD HOT BALLROOM (DVD)

Director: Marylin Agrelo (no major film work)
Starring: Documentary

Mad Hot Ballroom is a documentary about ballroom dance classes in New York City public schools and a corresponding citywide competition for the children. I found the film to be mildly cute, despite it being incredibly thin as a subject/story. There simply wasn’t much to talk about here after we saw the awkward boys and girls spinning around the dancefloor once or twice.

Yes, there is no doubt it’s fun to watch 10 year olds in poor neighborhoods like Washington Heights doing the tango or rumba. Unfortunately, I think the filmmakers were well aware there wasn't much to show except for these kids dancing. So that’s what we get again … and again ... and again. This was no Spellbound, a moderately enjoyable recent documentary about funny little kids in spelling competitions. In that film the story was about the families and children themselves. The spelling competition was just a foreground. In this film we never really get to know anything about the kids except for a few snippets on their views of their dance classes.

I’m guessing here, but I’m assuming that the filmmakers intended this to be a story about the power of art (or dance as it were) on the poor. If that’s true this film really only enforces the notion that trying to free the downtrodden masses with art is a vaguely silly idea. The kids in this movie were generally the nerds of their schools, whether in a middle class or poor school district. I’m guessing they took the class to fulfill their gym requirement. Now I have nothing against this. In fact, I’m all for giving the nerds some new experiences. These are the kids who are the most likely to get out of their situations, and broadening their horizons can only help that. However, I doubt that ballroom dance did much of anything for most of the future gang-bangers or the next generation of the underemployed. At least this film didn't show me anything that suggested otherwise.

In the end this is all speculation on my part, because other than a very few bits here and there the film never really touches these sorts of things. It just watches the kids dance. So, I give the film some minor credit for cuteness and for giving some exposure to the dance program, but frankly I think this would have worked much better as an hour-long Frontline episode on PBS than it did as a feature film.

Standouts: Cute kids dancing their hearts out.
Blowouts: It’s a very thin story in the end.

Grade: C

12/19/2005