Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann got his hands on a bunch of films of Elvis performing in concert. Most of the footage seems to have been shot during one of his last efforts, his appearances in Las Vegas. It's always impressive when they find this old color footage and digitally restore the picture and sound. The footage of Elvis performing from this period is quite remarkable.
The running time is 96 minutes.
Probably the high point for NASA and the race to beat the Russians to be the first to land on the moon, Apollo 11 is a very well made film about an amazing technical triumph that is now almost 60 years old.
The director Todd Douglas Miller had access to lots of footage of the Apollo 11 mission. NASA was obsessive about filming every single aspect of the mission. Miller and his team had the footage converted and enhanced to the digital format which gave the old film a really sharp look. The decision was also made not to have a narrator droning away throughout the film. This allowed the original film footage to let the story speak for itself.
Probably one of the biggest takeaways from this film besides the stunning pictures is of a program that literally employed thousands of people to achieve the goal to land on the moon which started in 1961 and took eight years to finish.
This an interesting film about an event that was an exciting time in American history which is probably now starting to fade into the past.
No credited writer on this film, the pictures tell the story. The running time is 93 minutes.
This is film maker Errol Morris at his peak with this incredibility fascinating film about four men and the unusual occupations they have. Superficially they have nothing in common but the film is so well edited and paced, this documentary begins to interconnect their lives as you watch it.
George Mendonca is a topiary gardener who is responsible for a large park in Rhode Island called the Green Animals Topiary Garden which has around eighty sculptured trees. Mendonca kind of stumbled into the job when he married the daughter of the previous gardener. This is a guy who has devoted his life to making plants and trees look like animals. He works on these trees with a zen like devotion to trimming them.
Ray Mendez is a man who has devoted his life to studying a creature called the naked mole rat, mammals who live in underground tunnels and have a highly developed social system. They are apparently resistant to cancer and can live almost without oxygen. Mendez has built a complex of tunnels in his basement to observe them and he believes they are at times observing him.
Rodney Brooks is an MIT scientist who builds robots and studies how they interact with people and the environment. He observes how they react to moving around as it relates to hand and eye coordination, sound, and vision which he feels also can explain how the human brain functions.
The film was edited by Karen Schmeer and Shondra Merrill, the running time is 82 minutes.
The granddaughter of one of Walt Disney's most important contributor's Ub Iwerks, has assembled this film about the construction of Disneyland in Orange County, California during the 1950's. First off who was Ub Iwerks? Well he was with Walt Disney at the very beginning helping to develop the Mickey Mouse character. Iwerks was responsible for many of the visual effects that showed up in Disney's films in particular Mary Poppins, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Sleeping Beauty just to name a very few. Iwerks also handled the special effects for Hitchcock's The Birds.
Disneyland was one of Walt Disney's most important creative endeavors and he spared no expense in building it. Amazingly the park was constructed in one year, a real pressure cooker of a time table. The film has voice over narration from the actual participants in the construction of Disneyland and they clearly had their doubts about the whole project.
Obviously this film is going to appeal mostly to nerds groupies of the Disneyland Park. However it is kind of fascinating to see the construction of one of the seminal theme parks in the United States and the near perfect color films shot during the construction are pretty cool to look at. This documentary can be viewed where else, on the Disney plus channel.
The running time is 79 minutes.
This documentary about the pet cemetery business was what really put Errol Morris on the map as an interesting filmmaker to watch. Morris's documentaries usually focus on the oddball or eccentric or just plain weird in people.
The film runs 83 minutes.
Chris Marker who is generally considered part of the French "New Wave'" filmmakers that showed up towards the end of the 1950's, didn't exactly fit in with that bunch which included Truffaut, Goddard, Rivette and Chabrol. Marker was interested in more than just making films.
Traveling to Siberia, Maker documented Siberian life which at the time was considered a vast mysterious and foreboding expanse barely inhabitable. Maker's film shows an area which indeed was vast but he also shows the lives of the inhabitants which range from reindeer riding Siberian cowboys to workers constructing gigantic power plants and cities in order to harvest the natural resources of Siberia.
Marker's presentation with the omniscient narration, spoofs of animated cartoons, pet bears and satires of western advertising is very witty. Marker continued to work on and off in the film world. His best known film is his clever time travel story La Jetée which was later turned into the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys.
Written by Chris Marker, the running time is 62 minutes.
Astutely described by legendary film critic Roger Ebert as a "glorified music video." Koyaanisqatsi is a silent film with music and at times stunning photography. The film according to its creator, Godfrey Reggio is about "how we live technology," whatever that gobbly gook means.
It all comes to a crashing end with stock footage of a rocket blowing up as the camera follows pieces of it falling back to the earth. What does it all mean? In the end should we abandon our fast paced and out of control lives for a more simpler existence in the southwest desert trying not to get bit by scorpions? Or is the film just a bunch of interesting locations tied together by at times stunning photography and editing that achieves a visual impact on the viewer?
One thing is for sure the minimalist film score by composer Phillip Glass is an important contribution to the film and kind of saves the day.
The film was written such that it is by Ron Fricke, Michael Hoenig, Godfrey Reggio and Alton Walpole. The running time is thankfully under 90 minutes. A little of this stuff goes a very long way.
Steve Spielberg and count em (10!) producers pay tribute to film composer John Williams in this so called documentary that is a very quick journey through Williams's professional life while an endless stream of talking heads sings his praises.
I don't think that anyone can argue that Williams isn’t important to film history. His orchestral scores for Jaws, E.T., Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark certainly contributed greatly to the classic status of these films. However I think there should probably be a limit to how many times someone should be called a genius and in this film he's called that over and over and over by the usual bunch of Hollywood hot shots. Spielberg, Lucas, Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams, ad nauseam. They seem to exhaust about every superlative they can think of in their praise of Williams. Spielberg can be justly proud of his collaboration with Williams, but after a while his fanboy blathering dilutes William's achievements.
This film would have probably been maybe a tad more interesting if usually competent documentary director Laurent Bouzereau spent a little time investigating some of the films he was involved in that weren't exactly a raging successes like 1941, Always, Amistad, Hook and The Terminal some of Spielberg's lesser films. Williams may have been a major player in many commercially and critically successful films but his music in these disappointing films is about the only reason to watch them and might be interesting to hear how he tried to improve them.
Probably the person who comes off best in Music by John Williams is John Williams himself. For all of his success he is a rather soft spoken and modest man. Williams seems like a talented craftsman doing his best in about any project he's involved in which in it self is plenty impressive.
The film's running time is 105 minutes.
The actor Roger Moore passed away seven years ago. Moore appeared in his last James Bond film almost forty years ago. So it's kind of strange that this tribute film to Moore was made now. Apparently the film aired on the BBC during the holidays. This is the usual mixture of interviews and home movies. Moore apparently liked to run around with a Betamax VHS camera of all things and filmed a lot of the guests who stayed at his home in Switzerland.
After his failure in America, it was back to England where he found his signature role in the popular TV show The Saint playing sort of a gentlemen thief. After working in television for a while he was cast in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. He was James Bond number three during the 1970's. Moore was blamed for bringing a lot of silliness to the James Bond franchisee but the reality was the series took a sharp turn towards goofiness with Sean Connery's last Bond film Diamonds Are Forever.
If there is anything to be learned from this documentary and I use the term documentary very loosely it's that Roger Moore recognized his limitations as an actor and was able to turn these limitations into a film and television career. Moore was apparently a very nice guy in real life. He was never a prima donna on film sets and he apparently never turned his nose up at his fans. Moore was also a very lucky man in his career. Christopher Walken who never does these tribute interviews shows up and speaks very highly of him.
From Roger Moore With Love is about as lightweight as Roger Moore was. It's a painless way to pass some time, sort of entertaining if you are a fan and in the end not remotely memorable.
The film is amusingly narrated by actor/writer Steve Coogan imitating Roger Moore's voice which Coogan has made a career of, the running time is 79 minutes.
Sensing this would probably be his last film, Ingmar Bergman had a cameraman named Arne Carlsson follow him around while he filmed Fanny and Alexander. The resulting documentary with the less than clever title The Making of Fanny and Alexander was the result. The film is sort of fascinating and probably of more interest for film scholars especially those who are admirers of Ingmar Bergman.
We get a lengthy scene of Bergman staging a scene on the Ekdahl family set and we see Bergman working with the young actors playing Fanny and Alexander. We also see cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind the camera setting up the lights and the camera angles. Sven Nykvist was clearly an important collaborator for Bergman and at times he almost seems like a co-director.
Probably the most poignant and interesting part of this film is Bergman directing one of his old colleagues the actor Gunnar Björnstrand. Björnstrand is clearly suffering from memory loss. Bergman is extremely patient with him as Björnstrand blows take after take.
Again, an interesting film but it's probably best to keep in mind since Bergman took a director's credit on this we are only going to see what Bergman wants us to see. Considering the big cast and the logistics of filming such a long film I doubt things went as smoothly as he seems to indicate.
The running time is 110 minutes.
The director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg probably had his hands full during the making of this Beatles documentary which turned out to be filmed as the group was finally breaking up. Let It Be is supposed to be about the Beatles but the film should probably be called Let It Be starring Paul McCartney with featured players The Beatles because McCartney really dominates the film.
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John Lennon looks mighty disengaged during the sessions. The presence of his girlfriend Yoko Ono who hovers next to him during the recording sessions is almost like she was super glued to him. Yoko doesn't utter a word but she does seem kind of intimidating throughout the film. Ringo is Ringo.
The film was rescued by Peter Jackson and remastered with his company's usual technical wizardary. It's been playing on the Disney Channel. If you are a Beatles fan and interested in the group's history you can give it a look but there doesn't seem to be much here. The film was clearly heavily edited to present The Beatles in the best light that was possible at the time of filming. It's probably amazing they got a film out of these recording sessions at all.
The film runs 80 minutes.
File this under the "I'll watch anything" department. The African Lion is part of the Walt Disney True Life Adventure series which ran from the late 1940's until the early 1960's before finally wearing our it's welcome. The Disney company would purchase films from nature photographers and turn around and give them the Disney touch. A folksy narrator , a music score which at times could get fairly silly and a story line. I guess the films for the most part would be called documentaries but they are unmistakably Disney influenced documentaries.
The film was written and directed by James Algar, but the real stars of the film were the husband and wife team of Albert and Elma Milotte who literally followed the animals around for three years in a specially designed truck to photograph them.
Obviously time has kind of taken the freshness off of this wildlife documentary. Advances in photography have made the art of wildlife photography easier. Still this is an impressive achievement and it is from a time when Africa was still a somewhat mysterious place.
You can make some valid criticisms about Walt Disney and the product he put out while he was in change, but you can't argue that he occasionally was willing to try some new approach to story telling. Today the Disney company seems to only be in the business of live action remakes of its classic cartoons or unending super hero movies.
The film was written and directed by James Algar who clearly organized the Milotte's animal footage into a narrative. The running time is a brisk 75 minutes.
Martin Scorcese takes a producer credit and also narrates this documentary a brief overview of the film career of Val Lewton the B-movie horror producer who worked at RKO in the 1940's. Val Lewton had been employed at MGM and hooked up with independent producer David O. Selznick for a while. After the disaster that was The Magnificent Ambersons and Orson Welles getting kicked off the lot of RKO. Val Lewton was put in charge of their horror film division in order to make a quick profit on some of Welles existing sets.
What sets Lewton apart from other horror film producers is that he actually made very good films. Stuck with titles like Cat People, Curse of The Cat People, The Leopard Man , I Walked With a Zombie and The Body Snatcher amongst others. Lewton's production team turned out what at times very poetic films in the horror genre. Many critics think that Lewton was a big influence on Alfred Hitchcock.
How's this documentary? Well it's all right I guess nothing special. It made me want to revisit some of Lewton's films. Scorcese narrates in a very soft almost inaudible voice. To bad Scorcese didn't take away some of the lessons from Lewton's film making style. Lewton rarely made a film over 90 minutes. Considering the bloated running times of his last couple of films , Scorcese could have learned a lesson or two.
The film was written by the director Kent Jones, the running time is 77 minutes.
An arty silent film sort of a documentary from the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertog real name David Abelevich Kaufman. This film is a completely plotless piece and has no titles in it since there is basically no story.
Apparently Vertog's film was fairly controversial when it came out. Unsurprisingly considered this was Communist controlled Russia which wasn't a place that was all that hospitable to individual artistic expressions. The film was shot around Moscow and in some ways this is the most interesting aspect of it since you get a look at life in Moscow before World War I.
I would have to say that all of Vertog's photography tricks only goes to show that when it comes to film in many ways people are still creating films in much the same ways as they were back in the 1920's before sound came in, editing is editing after all.
The film was written by Dziga Vertog and the running time is around 68 minutes. It exists on YouTube in a fairly decent copy if you are so inclined.
This documentary looks at the life of Jerry Harvey. He was an obsessed film buff who just happened to stumble into what for his was probably the job of a lifetime, programming a cable channel in Los Angeles with foreign and esoteric films that would have never been shown on HBO or Showtime.
The documentary is presented in the standard "talking heads" format as they say. People associated with Jerry Harvey are interviewed an recall their interactions with him.
The film has quite a collection of interviewees. Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Jacqueline Bisset, Theresa Russell, Jim Jarmish, Vilmos Zsigmond, F. X Sweeney, and Penelope Spheeris to name a few. It also includes many of Harvey's coworkers and friends.
My favorite moment is the filmmaker Alexander Payne complaining to Jerry Harvey that the letterboxing on a Kurosawa film was to wide and cut off a small part of the image, talk about movie nut obsession.
This is a fascinating documentary about film obsession which probably will have limited appeal to the not so obsessed film goer. Still, highly recommended.
The running time is 122 minutes.
David Byrne the lead singer of the Talking Heads jumps, struts, shakes and runs around like a mad man possessed in this film version of one of their concerts that features most of their hit songs up to this point in the band's lifetime
The concert film was directed by Jonathan Demme a big rock and roll fan who's major contribution was probably just turning on the cameras and letting the Talking Heads do their thing. Stop Making Sense is certainly a lot less pretentious than Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz which practically patted itself on the back with all the big name talent they had for that film.
A very enjoyable film, however six years later Byrne walked away from the band. Byrne didn't even bother to tell the band they were breaking up, they had to read about it in a newspaper article.
The film was written by the Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme, the running time is 88 minutes.
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