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Archive for the ‘Documentaries’ Category

“CHIMPANZEE”: Monkey business

Posted in Documentaries on April 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“CHIMPANZEE” My rating: C (Opening wide on April 30)

78 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

When Walt Disney began making nature documentaries back in the early 1950s, one of the first criticisms leveled at him was that he was anthropomorphizing his animal subjects.

The reviewers raved about the images captured by camera crews who camped out for weeks in the hope of catching an eaglet emerging from its egg or a stampede of lemmings committing mass suicide in a leap into an icy Arctic sea.

But they strenuously objected to Disney’s tendency to ascribe to these wild creatures human motives and human emotions, as if animals acted out of choice rather than out of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Funny how things don’t change.
“Chimpanzee,” the latest of Disney’s new line of wildlife film, is sometimes so astoundingly beautiful that you wonder if it’s for real or if some of those images (lighting strikes, a fog-enshrouded rain forest) haven’t been sweetened with a big fat dollop of computer enhancement.

(more…)

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“JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI”: Pass the raw eel, please

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged on April 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jiro…surrounded by his creations

“JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI” My rating: B (Opening April 6 at the Tivoli)

81 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

I’ve always been a bit dubious about sushi. (Raw eel? Really?)

But David Gelb’s documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” had my mouth watering for a slice of tuna on perfectly cooked rice and with a delicate brushing of specially-formulated soy sauce.

Yum.

The Jiro of the title is 85-year-old Jiro Ono, a sushi master whose tiny restaurant is in the basement of a Tokyo office building adjacent to the Ginza subway station. The place isn’t terribly much to look at – just 10 seats, all at the counter. No candles. No romantic booths. It’s sort of like a classic American lunch joint.

Yet a meal for one person at Jiro’s three-star Michelin Guide establishment costs nearly $400 and the place is booked a month in advance. That’s because day after day, year after year, Jiro make the best sushi in the world, working in raw fish and seaweed the way a master painter works in oils and canvas.

(more…)

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“MY REINCARNATION”: Defiant until you aren’t any more

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries on March 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Master Namkhai Norbu and Yeshi Norbu

“MY REINCARNATION”  My rating: B-  (Opening March 23 at the Tivoli)

82 minutes | No MPAA rating

Every son has to come to an accommodation with his father…either that or get out of Dodge.

But when Dad is one of the most revered men in Tibetan Buddhism…well, that adds some new wrinkles to the situation.

Jennifer Fox’s documentary film has been two decades in the making. Back in the early ‘90s Fox began filming the activities of Choogyal Namkhai Norbu, a Buddhist master who fled his native Tibet in the late 1950s and relocated to Naples, Italy, where he got a university job teaching Asian languages and, on the side, Tibetan Buddhism.

Unlike many Buddhist masters, Norbu isn’t a monk, though he studied in a monastery. Once in Italy he married a local girl and became the father of a boy and a girl.

The boy, Yeshi, is the main subject of “My Reincarnation.” Even before Yushi’s birth, Namkhai Norbu dreamed that his new son would be the reincarnation of his uncle, a rinpoche  (or guru) who remained in Tibet and died in a Communist prison.

In grainy old video footage we see Yeshi as a young adult. He says he and his father aren’t close. He says he knows about the reincarnation story and isn’t moved.

So  Yeshi goes off to work for IBM, marries and starts his own family. He’s a good career-driven corporate citizen.

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OSCAR NOMINATED Documentary Shorts

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged on February 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Four of this year’s five documentary shorts nominated for the Academy Award open Friday (Feb. 17) a the Tivoli Theatre.

And a more powerful handful of short films you’d have a hard time finding.

(The fifth nominated film, “God is Bigger Than Elvis,” about Elvis Presley co-star Dolores Hart and her decision to become a Benedictine nun, is not being made available for commercial presentation as part of the Oscar shorts package.)

Some of these titles are hard to watch. All are important.

James Armstrong...the Barber of Birmingham

“THE BARBER OF BIRMINGHAM: FOOT SOLDIER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT” My rating: B+

18 minutes

Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin’s film centers on 85-year-old James Armstrong, a barber in Birmingham, Alabama, who marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and now watches the election of America’s first black president.

He’s a lovely old fellow. His barber shop’s walls are covered with old news clippings about the Civil Rights movement and a sign advises patrons: “If you don’t vote, don’t talk politics in here.”

Armstrong is a churchgoer who says with pride that “I’ve been in jail six times…in this city.” He drives a car literally held together with duct tape.

“Barber of Birgmingham” cuts between archival footage from the ‘60s, interviews with veteran marchers (now in their 80s), and shots of political activity as the 2008 presidential election heats up.

The film isn’t particularly well organized — Fryday and Dolgin seem content to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks — but still it contains moments of breathtaking power.

(more…)

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“THE SWELL SEASON”: Travels with Glen and Marketa

Posted in Documentaries, tagged , , , on January 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“THE SWELL SEASON” My rating: B  (Opening Jan. 13 at the Tivoli)

91 minutes | No MPAA rating

One of my most satisfying moments of live music ever came a couple of years ago when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova brought their band the Swell Season to Kansas City’s Uptown Theatre.

Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard

Only a few weeks before the duo had won an Oscar for their folky song “Falling Slowly” from the film “Once” (they also starred in the movie…if you haven’t seen it, shame on you). It was about as copacetic a concert as I’ve ever attended.

“The Swell Season,”  a documentary by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis, is an easygoing, impressionistic film about the band’s post-Oscar tour (I think there’s even some footage here from the Kansas City gig).

It’s meandering and shapeless but it offers numerous opportunities to hear the outgoing Hansard and the more subdued Irglova perfoming…and that’s always a good thing.

It also chronicles — in very haphazard fashion — the slow undoing of their romantic relationship.

The filmmakers chose to present the movie in widescreen black and white…and it looks absolutely fantastic. Good choice.

If you’re not already a fan of the Swell Season you probably won’t have enough background on Hansard and Irglova to figure out what exactly is going on or why you should care.

If you love their music, then it’s a bit like spending an evening with dear friends.

| Robert W. Butler

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“BEING ELMO”: Unadulterated love

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , , , on January 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY” My rating: B  (Opening Jan. 6 at the Tivoli)

80 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Documentaries can be many things, but sweet is not usually one of them.

“Being Elmo,” though, is just that. Sweet.

Kevin Clash, Elmo and friend

Sweet in the same way that a child bestowing a kiss upon a beloved grownup friend is disarmingly, heart-grippingly sweet.

The “Elmo” of the title isn’t a person. Not technically, anyway.

Elmo is a puppet of shaggy red felt, one of the Muppet characters who inhabit “Sesame Street” on the PBS network.

Physically he reminds a lot of Grover or Cookie Monster. His personality, though, is uniquely his own.  This is due entirely to the man who performs Elmo, Kevin Clash.

Clash is a black man, raised in borderline poverty in a not-so-good Baltimore neighborhood. But as a child he fell in love with puppets he saw on TV, began making his own (probably not the coolest pastime for a young man in the ‘hood) and by the time he was a teenager was a fixture on the Baltimore television scene.

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“BLACK POWER MIXTAPE”: How far we’ve come

Posted in Documentaries, tagged , , on December 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975” My rating : B 

96 minutes | No MPAA rating

I’m not sure how members of other generations will view it, but for this boomer “Black Power Mixtape” was a sort of wonderful time machine to a not-so-wonderful time.

Goran Hugo Olsson’s documentary has been fashioned primarily out of footage shot by crews from Swedish television who in the late ‘60s and ‘70s reported on social upheaval in the U.S.

The Scandinavians were particularly intrigued with race relations in this country, especially the rise of the Black Power movement, the backlash from the powers that be and the arrival of charismatic new voices like Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and Bobby Seale.

(more…)

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“EAMES: THE ARCHITECT & THE PAINTER”: Designing couple

Posted in Documentaries, tagged , , , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“EAMES: THE ARCHITECT & THE PAINTER” My rating: B 

83 minutes | No MPAA rating

Charles Eames will forever be associated with the chair that bears his name — sturdy, lightweight and cheap while somehow embodying the essence of post-war modernism.

But as “Eames: The Architect & the Painter” makes abundantly clear, that was only the tip of the man’s iceberg.

Directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersery for PBS’ American Masters series, this documentary (narrated by James Franco) makes the case that Eames (1907-1978) may have been the 20th century’s most important designer.

Working for 40 years out of an office/studio in Venice CA (visitors described it not so much as a place of business as a never-ending circus), Eames cast a wide net. Though he made his initial mark with furniture, (more…)

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“REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR”: Righteous indignation is more fun

Posted in Documentaries, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

"Gadget" with his retrofitted electric car

“REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR”  My rating: C+ 

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Few things are as compelling as righteous indignation.

That’s one reason why Chris Paine’s 2008 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”    became something of a sleeper hit.

That film dissected the rise and fall of GM’s all-electric EV1, which was leased to hugely satisfied customers (mostly in California), then withdrawn and scrapped when company bigwigs concluded there was no profit in electric vehicles.

“Who Killed…” was ideal for getting people riled up about electric vehicles, fossil fuel pollution, corporate malfeasance and especially the idea of a petroleum-based conspiracy to suppress electric car technology.

(more…)

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“KLITSCHKO”: Brotherly love

Posted in Documentaries, tagged , , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wladimir Klitschko on the job“KLITSCHKO” My rating: B

117 minutes | No MPAA rating

My criteria for a sports movie is pretty simple. If you don’t really care about the sport in question, can the movie still hold up?

In the case of “Klitschko,” Sebastian Dehnhardt’s documentary about Ukrainian boxing brothers Vitali and Wladamir Klitschko, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

Born of a Soviet military officer, reared in abysmal base housing (at one point they resided in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster), the two look-alike brothers managed to develop an impressive work ethic while still finding time to get into trouble. (One great story involves Vitali finding an armed antitank mine and hiding it beneath his father’s bed.)

Inspired by the kung fu movies that until the late ‘80s were banned in the U.S.S.R., the pair got their start in kickboxing, then moved into boxing. (more…)

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