Full Frame Documentary Film Fest 2010: Days Three & Four

I believe that for this year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival at the Carolina Theater in downtown Durham, NC (in case you haven't tuned in lately) I made much better picks of what to see than in previous years - all of the movies I saw out of the available 101 were worthwhile. Some, of course, more than others as this round-up of films from the last 2 days should tell you.

Oh yeah - please visit my recaps of Day One and Day Two.

Films I Saw On Saturday - Day Three:

WASTE LAND (Dirs. Lucy Walker with Co-Directors Karen Harley & João Jardim)


The old saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure" is taken to new limits with the art of Vik Muniz. Muniz, a Brazilian sculptor and photographer, is captured by the film makers as he embarks upon a new project involving Jardim Gramacho - the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. His plan is to create massive portraits of the individual pickers who work at the landfill out of the recyclable materials they gather.

Muniz's subjects appear to be lifted, albeit briefly, out of the squalor they live in through the process. It would be tempting to say that this film roots around in the garbage too much, but it's actually a very measured and inspiring break-down of unique artistic methods rounded out by the moving stories of the "catadores." The moments of creation are enhanced by absorbing time-lapse shots and a pulsating soundtrack mostly composed of Moby tracks.

STONEWALL UPRISING (Dirs. Kate Davis & David Heilbroner, 2010) Despite having no footage and only 6 photos of the incident, one gets a good sense of the 1969 Stonewall riots' vast importance to the gay rights movement. As one of the interviewees posits, it was actually more of an uprising than a riot when a large group of patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York, fought back against police raids.

Recreations and era period pictures help get us there visually, but it's the anecdotal evidence given by people who were there, surprisingly including former NYC Mayor Ed Koch (then a congressman), that makes the thing tick. It's an essential educational experience - from the disturbing yet funny anti-homosexual propaganda films of the 50's that set the suppressed scene to the first gay pride parades that stemmed from Stonewall, there is much to take home from this well crafted documentary.

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2010)

Another highly anticipated film of the festival featuring the work of Spalding Gray - an actor, monologist, and performance artist who committed suicide in 2004. Gray tells his own story here in this collection made up largely of transferred videotape recordings edited together expertly in the stream of consciousness style of his acclaimed spoken word pieces.

Eschewing celebrity interview testimonials and time-line conventions, an arc nonetheless forms as the clips are presented chronologically as Gray verbally illustrates his upbringing through to his years on stage. Gray often spoke of suicide in his performances giving the film an underlining context that is not betrayed by easy denotations. In other words, you want to know the biographical facts go to Wikipedia; you want to see excellent examples of his talent - see this very funny and emotionally engrossing movie.

STRANGE POWERS: STEVEN MERRIT AND THE MAGNETIC FIELDS (Dirs. Kerthy Fix & Gail O'Hara, 2010) Like Arcade Fire's MIROIR NOIR filled the same slot last year, it seems that the Saturday night 10 PM shift of the Festival is a great space for an indie rock doc. Oh, sorry - in his introduction of the film, Merge Records co-founder and Superchunk front-man Mac McCaughan spoke of Steven Merritt's fervent dislike of the term "indie rock" so let's just say, uh, art pop?

Well, whatever you call it you get a good sampling of it along with the zippily told tale of Merritt and collaborator Claudia Gonson's rise in the ranks of hipster approval. This bio doc does contain celebrity praises interspersed - best of which is author Neil Gaiman's description of Merrit's demeanor (based on a magazine interview he read): "He made Lou Reed look like Lil Orphan Annie." Merritt's ornery acidic aura gives the film, especially the concert scenes, an edge many rock docs would envy. And by the way, if you don't own any Magnetic Fields your record collection is severely lacking.

Films I Saw On Sunday - Day Four:

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS (Dirs. Judith Ehrich & Rick Goldsmith, 2009)

This was a complete eye opener - I'd heard of Daniel Ellsberg and his leaking of classified documents pertaining to the Vietnam war many times before, but I had no inkling of the full idealogical and controversial impact of the man's actions. In the 1960's Ellsberg was a military analyst despondent about the direction of the war in Vietnam.

After much deliberation he made copies of the vast files and floated them to a contact at the New Yorks Times after failing to spark the interest of several Senators. The infamous Oval Office tapes reveal President Nixon's profane displeasure at the situation and attempts to halt publication. When Ellsberg was revealed to be the source of the Papers, a reporter asked if he was willing to to jail for what he had done. "Wouldn't you go to jail to stop a war?" was his reply. A film of startling conscience and gripping resolve, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN... (a phrase that came from Henry Kissinger) is one of the best poli-docs I've ever seen. The audience around me seemed to think so too with cheers and many audible emotional responses throughout.

One of the directors, Rick Goldsmith, was on hand for a insightful Q & A. He was greeted with a standing ovation - the first he said he's gotten for a screening at which Daniel Ellsberg himself didn't attend.

A FILM UNFINISHED (Dir. Yael Hersonski, 2009) A harrowing display of a recently found reel of film taken of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The film was shot by producers of Nazi propaganda (sort of like in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS but without the glamour).

The stark images can be difficult to view - corpses lie in the street, emaciated children dressed in rags, overcrowded tenement houses, and terrified eyes fill every frame. It's all structured around color segues of a re-enacted interrogation of one of the original cameramen.

A documentary to appreciate instead of enjoy as per Festival Director of Programming Sadie Tillery's introduction of the film, it's a vital piece of celluloid connective tissue that brings already thoroughly covered history once again into sharper view.

FREEDOM RIDERS (Dir. Stanley Nelson, 2010)

A chapter of the Civil Rights Era that has gone oddly unsung is lovingly recreated via black and white footage, photographs, newspaper headlines, and scores of interviews with the core participants. The Freedom Riders were determined to challenge the Jim Crow laws of the deep South by taking 2 interstate buses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans.

That the violent resistance they encountered in Alabama, then later Mississippi, doesn't deter them is astounding. With stirring storytelling, from especially Robert F. Kennedy's assistant at the time, John Seigenthaler, and perfectly crafted structure, this, like STONEWALL UPRISING, is another essential educational experience that everybody must see.

Alright! Another Full Frame Documentary Film Festival over with. The films I saw were just a small percentage of what was shown so I urge you to seek out other coverage. Especially since I missed a number of highly touted offerings like PELADA, ROADS TO MEMPHIS, and HOW TO FOLD A FLAG. Now I'm off for a Vegas vacation - will try to keep posting though, so please check back in.

More later...

THE INFORMANT!: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE INFORMANT! (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

In a piece of inspired casting, Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre - the pudgy mustached toupee-wearing former President of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) who was an FBI informant in the early to mid 90's. However his heroic whistle-blowing stance was fairly jeopardized by the fact that he was defrauding his company of 9 million dollars during the same period.

At first, he seems a decent plain spoken sort, a straight-laced family man with a loving wife (Melanie Lynskey) comes through in an opening voice-over extolling the virtues of corn in his chosen industry. As he goes on shifting from corn to the German name for pen ("kugelscheiber") and back again, it becomes apparent that this is less an inner monologue than an unstoppable stream of consciousness that runs throughout the film sometimes obscuring important info that folks around him are trying to parlay.

Damon's Whitacre sees himself as a character in a Crichton novel; a good guy going up against a corrupt corporation. Initially we do too as his company is indeed guilty of price fixing and the film comes from the director of ERIN BROCKOVICH, but its take on the character zippy comic style places it more accurately somewhere between the OCEAN'S movies and OUT OF SIGHT Soderbergh-wise.

A couple of FBI agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) are stupefied by Damon's stories yet still wire him up to get the evidence against ADM. He makes hundreds of tapes, narrating them as he goes, and the case gets stronger but after a raid of his company the operation rapidly unravels with facts fudged and forged documents piling up to expose Damon's dementia.

While the film at times over-estimates the wackiness of its plotting, the tone is pleasingly punchy with a groovy score provided by the master of groovy scores: Marvin Hamlisch. Matched with colorful AUSTIN POWERS-ish titles, Hamlisch's brassy 60's pastiche, including a parody of John Barry's "James Bond Theme", suits the material marvelously as if it's as much the product of Damon's psyche as the voices in his head.

The supporting cast is curiously made of a roster of comic actors (the before mentioned McHale, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, Tony Hale, and Allen Havey) who you'd more likely expect to be present at a roast on Comedy Central than as button down "suits" with almost no funny lines in a slick Soderbergh satire. That they provide a sober stone-walling counterpoint to the delightfully off kilter Damon gives the THE INFORMANT! a cunning comic gravity.

And now for no other reason than that the film featured in this post has an exclamation point in its title, here's:

10 More Movies With Exclamation Points In Their Titles:

1. AIRPLANE!

2. ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!

3. FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

4. ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL

5. WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON!

6. OH, GOD!

7. 18 AGAIN! (Another George Burns movie! How about that?)

8. BEWARE! THE BLOB

9. TORA! TORA! TORA!

10. TOYKO!

More later...

CHE: PART TWO: The Film Babble Blog Review

CHE: PART TWO (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

It would be easy, if too simplistic, to label CHE: PART ONE as "The Rise" and CHE: PART TWO as "The Fall" of the infamous Cuban Guerilla leader. The arc established between these two halves is, of course, much more layered and densely imposed to support such Ziggy Stardust-style titling. PART ONE concerned itself with Che - the man, in its Oliver Stone-ish news footage framing of his successful revolution in Havana. Not to say that it was merely set-up; it told a sound story satisfyingly ending on a resounding note of triumph. PART TWO (subtitled "The Guerrilla") sets a decidedly different spookier tone from beginning with a SCARFACE-ean scroll telling us that Che (Benicio del Toro) has gone into hiding.

It is 1966 and Che is first shown in a remarkably unrecognizable get-up as a Uruguayan businessman with thick glasses, a shaved head, and a stiff suit - an image nobody would ever put on a T-shirt. This disguise gets him through customs into Boliva and he sets about meeting his men - fellow Guerillas in the mountains. Unfortunately there is trouble in Guerilla city (sorry) and the ragged fighters find they may be no match for the Bolivian Army. As Che assimilates into the groups of scrappy soliders, Soderbergh shoots del Toro mainly from behind reminding me of Aronofsky's presentation of Rourke in THE WRESTLER but focusing more on Che being engulfed by his surroundings rather than that of a personal POV.

Another film that came to mind was Woody Allen's BANANAS during the many jungle warfare scenes. In that 1971 classic comedy, New York loser schlub Allen becomes a revolutionary when on vacation in the fictional Central American country of San Marcos to impress his activist girlfriend (Louise Lasser). Since it was closer to the actual time period it had the grainy home movie look that Soderbergh was going for so maybe that's not such a silly satirical reference point. Maybe it is though - I've been on a diet of Woody Allen movies since before I could walk so of course my mind would go there. This is not exactly to say, of course, that CHE: PART TWO is BANANAS without the laughs but I couldn't resist the comparison.

That comical footnote aside, CHE: PART TWO is strongly involving and possibly superior to its other half. The deaths are more piercing and the pace is like a rapid heartbeat leading to one of Che's asthma attacks. Even when shown sparringly, del Toro owns the screen again making my head shake at the failure of award recognition. A solid troop of actors fights fiercely alongside del Toro including Damián Bechir (again dead on as Castro), Rodrigo Santoro, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Joaquim De Almeida. For some unknown reason the theater I work at part time is showing CHE: PART TWO nightly at 7:00 with CHE: PART ONE following at 9:30. While that may not be the ideal order to see them, it won't hurt because they have distinctly separate feels despite being one long movie split in two. Whatever the order I implore folks to see them both; they are major movies that deserve a much bigger audience - especially on the big screen.

More Later...

CHE: PART ONE: The Film Babble Blog Review

CHE: PART ONE (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2008)

The prospect of an over 4 hour historical epic spread over 2 separate contained movies will no doubt be daunting to most moviegoers, but the first half of CHE is incredibly involving despite its murkiness and powerful despite its sometimes plodding pace. Originally released last December for it to be eligible for the years Oscars (it didn’t get nominated for anything) in a limited release as one combined film, it now hits the rest of the country in a “special roadshow edition” with PART TWO following close behind PART ONE's release.

PART ONE mostly takes place in the late 50’s with an asthmatic Ernesto “Che” Guevara, portrayed with fierce grace by Benicio del Toro (also one of the film's producers), joining Fidel Castro’s (a dead on Demian Bichir) movement in Havana, Cuba. It has a flashback framework serving as semi narration from a 60’s interview with TV journalist Lisa Howard (Julia Ormond), later cutting between Guevara’s United Nations address and intense street warfare. These non-Cuban set-pieces are presented in grainy black and white, while the gritty yet vivid color of the exteriors enforces the implication that all that isn’t in the heart of the jungle for Che is simply artifice and not real life.

With the subtitle “THE ARGENTINE” (and Spanish subtitles to boot), this film works well on its own yet still leaves one wanting for a follow-up. Soderbergh successfully structures a docu drama feel in which real footage and photographs blend beautifully with the immacualte recreations. It is indeed a shame that the Academy snubbed this film, particularly del Toro whose precise performance is definitely in the league of Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk potrayal that took home the award. Penn himself was shocked and pondered over the lack of award nods for CHE suggesting that: “Maybe because it’s in Spanish, maybe the length, maybe the politics.” None of those factors should deter folks from taking the plunge into CHE: PART ONE; it may be tough going at times but it’s impossible to ignore its soaring sense of purpose. Several satisfying though viciously violent sequences save the film from inaccessibility and in moments like when del Toro answers interviewer Ormond’s question about what is the most important quality for a revolutionary to possess by saying “love” he is utterly convincing. Here’s hoping PART TWO: GUERILLA lives up to PART ONE’s mighty promise.

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Coming Soon To A Film Babble Blog Near You...

The next few months are going to be very busy for me so I thought I’d give readers a preview of some upcoming attractions:

Coming Soon - Reviews of:

CHE: PART ONE (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2008) So epic it had to be cut into 2 separate movies (THE ARGENTINE and GUERILLA respectively), PART ONE opened last Friday at the local theater I work part-time but I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. Expect a write-up shortly because I’ve been really looking to this sweeping biopicalious looking opus that I'm planning on approaching as if it was a TV miniseries. CHE: PART TWO opens on the 20th so I better get to it.

TWO LOVERS (Dir. James Gray, 2008) Yes, my area is usually late getting indie fare like this so my list of films from last year I need to catch up on is endless. Whatever the deal with Joaquin Phoenix and his possibly fake hip hop career *, there has been considerably favorable buzz around this title. I’ll let you know when I see it.

* Now I don't have to mention any of his off screen shenanigins in my actual review.

And on the horizon:

WENDY AND LUCY (Dir. Kelly Reichardt)

GOMORRA (Dir. Matteo Garrone) The trailer for this is fantastic! I hear the movie is too.

ADVENTURELAND (Dir. Greg Mottola)

And also coming soon:

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of REPO MAN
(Dir. Alex Cox, 1984) An undeniable 80’s cult classic and a favorite from my youth. Thanks to Cool Classics @ The Colony I'll be able to see if it still holds up. If you're in the Triangle area you really ought to consider coming out for the Wednesday (the 18th) showing at 8:00 PM in North Raleigh. A 35 MM print of this dusted off punk flick with vintage trailers for $5.00 is impossible for me to pass up.

A Film Babble Blog Soundtrack Special - I've been working on this off and on for a while. A blogpost tribute to the soundtracks of my life. This will include another patented Film Babble Blog list about soundtracks that think outside the box office, i.e. albums that consist of more than just songs or pieces of music from said film. Works of audio art that are distinct in their use of film dialogue and purposeful re-editing of movie material. Any suggestions for this piece please send them on!

Coverage of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2009 (April 2nd-5th) A wonderful annual event in Durham, N.C. that I'm eager as Hell to blog about. Currently I'm going through the schedules trying to figure out which films I will attend - again, if you have any recommendations, please send them on!

More later...