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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 8, 2021 11:53:22 GMT
God's Angry Man (1981) - 7.5++/10 re-watch Underrated, impenetrable short doc (45 mins) from Werner Herzog in his great period - 1968-1982 - that people don't like because I think, it's not as obvious as they want it to be. Focusing on televangelist Gene Scott who is not merely a money grubbing huckster but a Stanford educated Ph.D money grubbing huckster - who is both a triumph of the will example and a psychological jigsaw puzzle. Herzog doesn't judge him as much as reveal him and here's the thing - Herzog ADMIRES him too - he's like any madman who is willing to go so far with it. He's Aguirre.......he's Kinski.......he's Fitzcarraldo....etc. Now, Herzog makes mistakes as a filmmaker sure - he re-narrates the film over Scott talking (annoying af) but that's probably because he's not as interested in his own film Art as he is preserving a record that Gene Scott actually existed at all. In the clip that the picture below is from Scott breaks your heart admitting that he has no friends, can't trust anyone, is a loner more than lonely but lonesome too .......and that at the end he almost imperceptibly smiles. Is he conning you? Is he bemused by his own ridiculousness because he's smart enough to be that self-aware? Is he acting? What does the camera really capture anyway? Fascinating stuff.....underrated doesn't begin to describe it actually....
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Post by cheesecake on Feb 11, 2021 1:13:45 GMT
City Hall (2020). Wiseman is kind of a blind spot but I've loved what I've seen from him. This was really good.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Feb 11, 2021 8:25:06 GMT
Oh honeys, is anyone else watching this? I think we all know the Elisa Lam story, but the Cecil Hotel's history is super creepy. The Hotel's manager, Amy So & So seems so exasperated by it all.
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Post by thomasjerome on Feb 13, 2021 20:19:39 GMT
In Search of Darkness Part II (2020) - Almost as good as the first one. It was particularly great to see Nancy Allen reflecting on her De Palma movies.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 14, 2021 17:53:27 GMT
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at Cecil Hotel (2021) I never heard of Elisa Lam before this so it was interesting.... at the beginning, especially the wild coincidences.... but after Ep2 it feels badly dragged and I kinda wanted to pull my hair out with how much of the language and info were being repeated. And some of the subjects, especially that one web sleuth guy, were infuriatingly annoying. Coming from the director of the best doc of 2019 (The Ted Bundy Tapes), this one letdown.
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Post by cheesecake on Feb 15, 2021 16:46:06 GMT
Frank Oz's In and Of Itself.
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Post by wilcinema on Feb 20, 2021 8:11:07 GMT
One Child Nation
I got slightly lost at one point as it shifted the focus from the policy and the personal stories to the government brutality, but it is a powerful, heartbreaking documentary. Not many people knew of the consequences of the single-child-policy but this film is very effective at telling and showing. It has left a scar on an entire generation.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2021 3:44:55 GMT
The Preppy Murder: Death in Central Park - told in five parts - a totally panoramic and absorbing dive into the crime of the 80s.
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 21, 2021 18:17:41 GMT
Scared Straight! (1978) Oscar winning and Emmy winning doc, much debated and much parodied. Hosted by Peter Falk.
Fun fact - John Carpenter was gonna do a thriller twist on this idea in '08 with Nicolas Cage as a longtime prisoner, and they were already pre-selling it when Cage bowed out, killing the project, in favor of a two-picture deal to do Bad Lieutenant and Drive Angry.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Mar 4, 2021 19:05:30 GMT
The Memory of Justice (1976) - The amazing footage includes things like a former SS officer happily fishing with his wife in an idyllic West German village in the 1970s, as he tells the camera he's an "unrepentant Nazi" and explains why. Turns out a great number of influential Nazis flourished in 50s and 60s Germany, and not just economically: they were beloved members of their communities. Marcel Ophüls' thesis (and it's a very convincing one) is that the German consciousness rejected the Nuremberg trials outright. Everybody blames someone else for what happened, and postwar Germany is split between an older generation who longs for the Kaiserreich and wants the shame of Nazism interred, and the younger generation who can only dig up so much dirt before denouncing their own parents as criminals. But when Ophüls draws parallels between Auschwitz and the Dresden bombings, Hiroshima, and the Vietnam and Algiers wars, he's only partly successful. The movie turns into a coordinated polemic on guilt. Ophüls seems to be saying none of the Western powers have a right to pass judgment on Germany. That is the dubious part of the documentary, but it's still a great watch overall, though it doesn't come near the heights of The Sorrow and the Pity (my #1 doc of all-time ). Movie looks amazing as it was restored in 2017.
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Post by wilcinema on Mar 8, 2021 17:38:14 GMT
Tell Me Who I Am (Netflix)
It falls sometimes into its own traps (the gothic horror landscapes don't always work), but it manages to stay just clear of what might be seen as exploitation. It is a very hard story to tell, because it is horrific and traumatizing (and you can predict early on what it's gonna be about, but that's not a problem), so you have to be extremely careful, as one single misstep could ruin the whole thing. It felt very genuine to me because I couldn't imagine the two people involved open up the way they did without a sense of safety from the filmmakers. It won't be everyones cuppa, for sure, but I thought this was really good, because you keep thinking about it, there's a big question in there that is a profoundly existential one and that would generate a very interesting debate.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2021 16:14:52 GMT
Oh, my poodles... This documentary celebrating La Magnani premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. È bella.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Mar 15, 2021 21:34:18 GMT
Oh, my poodles... This documentary celebrating La Magnani premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. È bella. Oh honey, where can I see this? She was the greatest actress of the 20th century, maybe of all time.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Mar 15, 2021 21:43:58 GMT
Oh honeys, this is a very good documentary; it not only tells how Jay Sebring was a pioneer of mens hair styling, his tragic end with Sharon Tate in the Manson killings, but how the press sickly twisted the truth. Crime victims and their families are given so little respect and support. 8/10
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2021 0:12:25 GMT
Oh, my poodles... This documentary celebrating La Magnani premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. È bella. Oh honey, where can I see this? She was the greatest actress of the 20th century, maybe of all time. Poodle, I watched it through MHZ Choice on Amazon.
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Post by cheesecake on Mar 17, 2021 23:23:10 GMT
From the director of Napoleon Dynamite... Murder Among the Mormons (2021). I applaud Netflix for not milking this into 6-8 parts per usual. Very engrossing and worth the watch -- would make a great feature film.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 18, 2021 18:20:05 GMT
Chris Smith binge.... Home Movie (2001) Only 66m, a wonderful little doc looking at a few idiosyncratic homes and why they're meaningful to the occupants. One home is a Trekky dream of faulty gadgets, another is a leftover underground missile silo ("We have the biggest basement in town"), etc. Some of this (like the alligator guy) looks forward to Smith-produced Tiger King and Exotic's follow-me "hosting." The Yes Men (2003) 80m, about a pair of traveling parodists, they're like 12 Monkeys meets Borat with a touch of the duo dreaming of Smith's American Movie dudes. In terms of the dribble of their antics, slow-news, this feels a world different from today, but their devising and satire-questioning is interesting... ^ These two viewed now seem like they could've easily been a running series on tv. Home Movie, like all those home-hopping shows. Yes Men branches to the good (Nathan For You) and the not very good (Impractical Jokers). Collapse (2009) 80m. Noting times bc these are pretty swift runtimes which I usually like.... but this is just one doomy interview about oil and I felt would better fit as a major subject in a bigger, deeper-looking doc. Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal (2021) Just recently up on Netflix....It's engaging but to me Smith's least-best doc. Something unlike Smith here is that it's quite reenactment heavy, with Matthew Modine "starring" as Rick Singer, and at a certain point I feel like this should've just been a good little conman movie like Bad Education or something. Doesn't have the upfront character-rich feel of his earlier movies or the brilliant digging tension of his Madeleine McCann docseries.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Mar 19, 2021 3:39:36 GMT
The Last Blockbuster (2020)
My first job ever was at a mom-and-pop video store, so watching this was quite the nostalgia trip. Covers the rise of streaming services of course, but also gets into how the 2008 financial crisis played a significant role in Blockbuster's downfall. Also didn't know that Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix in the early days (we could have had Blockbuster Best Picture nominees Roma, The Irishman, Marriage Story, etc.). Kind of wish the doc touched at least a little bit on remaining independent video stores like the just recently closed I Luv Video in Austin (what used to be the oldest and largest video store in the world until this past year). Some fun appearances by Kevin Smith, Doug Benson, Brian Posehn, and Paul Scheer.
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Post by wilcinema on Mar 20, 2021 11:35:17 GMT
The Ripper - Netflix miniseries
A very ambitious true crime documentary that attempts at telling the story of an incredibly challenging criminal case and of a completely botched police investigation in a profoundly changing society, without putting the murderer at the center of the story. It doesn't quite get there, imo. It is very effective in the retelling of how the social landscape was changing at the time, of how women (some of them interviewed here) felt more empowered and stood their ground amidst these shocking murders, of how de-industrialization of West Yorkshire gave the killer fertile ground for what he did. What I think it really lacks is a clearer portrait of the killer. I get that they didn't want him to be the main focus, but we basically don't know anything about him, and while it is obvious that he was a byproduct of a patriarchal, misogynistic society, that is a connection that the viewer makes, not something that is clearly depicted in the series. I'm kind of surprised that the makers didn't go there, because it would have made the whole doc much more effective, and it would have only been one more episode, probably, but alas, it is what it is. It is still worth a watch.
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Post by wilcinema on Mar 21, 2021 10:52:37 GMT
Time (Amazon Original)
Loosely structured, by powerful in its storytelling. I found it an amazing film. It has some of the best editing of the year.
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avnermoriarti
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Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on Mar 25, 2021 23:47:52 GMT
Boys State. I'm still quite shocked it didn't get the oscar nomination, lol. Love it because it looks / plays like a Christopher Guest movie, and fits perfectly as sort of a microcosm of reality.
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Post by Mattsby on Mar 26, 2021 16:58:03 GMT
Salesman (1969) Doc masterpiece. Can’t believe I’d never seen it before.
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Post by cheesecake on Mar 26, 2021 22:21:23 GMT
The Octopus Teacher. What a love story?
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Post by MsMovieStar on Mar 26, 2021 22:48:50 GMT
306 Hollywood (2018) 8.5/10Oh honeys, this is a gorgeous documentary. Lovingly made as a tribute to their grandmother, it uses the house she lived in for seventy years as a philosophical exploration about life, death, family, memory, and our possessions. It's brilliantly inventive. If Wes Anderson made documentaries, it would be something like this.
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Post by cheesecake on Mar 28, 2021 20:46:18 GMT
Crip Camp. Dang, that was so good!
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