Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

2020 DOCUMENTARY THREAD


Dolfan in NYC

Recommended Posts

I thought I'd start what's sure to be the most infuriating thread of the year - the documentary thread - with some genuinely wholesome content.

DON'T BE A DICK ABOUT IT

Deals with two brothers, one who's very afraid of dogs, the other who's obsessed with Survivor. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Found out that The Kid Stays in the Picture was on Encore On Demand yesterday so I watched it again; the last time was ages ago on edited TV. You gotta love how in one instance the film outed Evans as a complete liar (by showing the panoply of women he went out with cut with an interview where he said he went to bed early and didn't go out much) and then in another he himself confirmed his liar status saying he hadn't touched drugs until the late '70s (and didn't drink much hahaha) which is just ridiculous on its face. Everything else, meanwhile, is too crazy to not be true. Boy, was his run of production roles awesome until he hit the wall with Popeye and The Cotton Club. 

Oh, and the best part is over the credits, where they film Dustin Hoffman doing an imitation of Evans with a bunch of absurd and filthy claims ("I'm pregnant. Yes, um, I, um, didn't know I had a vagina") done in Evansspeak. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez

I'll be watching this...and whenever they get around to making the most obvious 30 for 30 ever about the Florida team with the most arrests in NCAA history, I'll be watching that too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

American Factory

Quote

Cultures collide. Hope survives. When a Chinese billionaire re-opens a factory and  hires two thousand blue-collar Americans, early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

Obviously on Netflix. 

It is the first film distributed by the Obamas production company so that is pretty much what all the news stories today are running with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Cave

Quote

From Oscar-nominated filmmaker Feras Fayyad, THE CAVE tells the story of a hidden underground hospital in Syria and the unprecedented female-led team who risk their lives to provide medical care to the besieged local population.

Here is a recent article from Variety - https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/the-cave-the-incredible-story-behind-the-making-of-feras-fayyads-documentary-about-syria-1203455980/ - that talks about the making of the doc and how the director is struggling to get a visa to be able to come to the award shows

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Edge of Democracy

Quote

A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis - the personal and political fuse to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. Combining unprecedented access to leaders past and present, including Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, with accounts of her own family's complex past, filmmaker Petra Costa (ELENA) witnesses their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.

I definitely remember posting this one before with the exact quote "If you thought America was fucked right now..."

Another Netflix documentary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For Sama

Quote

FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.
 
Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice–whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

The film is the first feature documentary by Emmy award-winning filmmakers, Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts.

The entire documentary is available on PBS website since it was a Frontline episode - https://youtu.be/8jFHbo0Cgu8

Hope you are ready to weep

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honeyland

Quote

Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. When an unruly family moves in next door, what at first seems like a balm for her solitude becomes a source of tension as they, too, want to practice beekeeping, while disregarding her advice. The most awarded film out of this year's Sundance Film Festival, winning the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, a Special Jury Award for Cinematography, and another Special Jury Award for Originality. HONEYLAND is an epic, visually stunning portrait of the delicate balance between nature and humanity that has something sweet for everyone.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

McMillions

6 Part HBO documentary series about the rigging of the McDonald's Monopoly game

I will admit to playing that stupid game every year up until six or seven years ago.  it was around that time I heard about the cheating scandal.

I am surprised my teeth are in decent shape for all of the large iced teas I ordered when I got off work so that I could get game pieces.  I think the best prize I ever won was another fucking large drink.

I am sure this documentary series will infuriate me.

Edited by J.T.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

American Factory

Obviously on Netflix. 

It is the first film distributed by the Obamas production company so that is pretty much what all the news stories today are running with.

I need to watch this.  My hometown was built on plants like this, and the last major one closed last year.  Someone bought it and wants to use it to build electric trucks.  I can see a lot of the same problems.  The problem with all of these plants is that the work is too physically demanding/potentially dangerous for you to not want to pay a high wage.  The companies don't want to pay that much so they leave and not only do those employees not get the wage they wanted...they don't get shit.  We built our entire economy to pay educated people a lot of money to do not much, and pay less educated people who actually do hard work nothing.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm finally almost all the way caught up on the Country Music miniseries. There are some pretty unbelievable twists and occurrences in the lives of these artists. 

- Marty Stuart meets a singer at 11, swears he's gonna marry her someday, ends up doing it 25 years later. Talk about a May-December romance. 

- George Jones, on the outs with Tammy Wynette, gets tore up and drives in circles in his driveway over and over again. Not as good as the "going to the liquor store on his riding lawnmower" story but still quite an image. 

- A singer (can't remember her name) loses a son in Vietnam and then her other son shoots himself because of it. When faced with a request to come and protest the war because of what happened to her boys she says no and that if the guy ever shows up at her door again he'll be facing her .357 Magnum. Jesus... some people are just well and truly fucked.

- Nixon invites Johnny Cash to play the White House. He accepts. Nixon requests a popular song disparaging people on welfare (!), Johnny plays "What Is Truth" instead.

- George Strait goes to LA and ends up playing shows with the post-punk scene of the time and they name drop and show photos of the Blasters, Los Lobos, and the freakin' Gun Club! Sure didn't see that one coming. 

- Kris Kristofferson is a military brat who goes damn near full-bird in the Air Force along with being a big time high school athlete. He decides to be a songwriter instead and ends up a janitor at a record studio. His mother sends him a letter completely disowning him; he shows the letter to John Cash and his reply is "it's always nice to get a letter from home, isn't it?" 

- Willie Nelson's farm burns down. The only two things he manages to save are his guitar Trigger and a guitar case full of weed. ?

There are a lot of moments in this that are super sad/emotional too. Vince Gill being unable to sing his eulogy song to George Jones and Reba's band of eight getting killed in a plane crash will wreck you. You've been forewarned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just remembered Charlie Pride trying to break into Nashville. The behind-the-scenes people said "we got to get on top of this" and decided to introduce Pride to the most racist power player in the scene. They end up having a sing-off going back and forth between each other and it breaks the ice; he says that if anyone won't play with Charlie then he won't play with them either. Of course, the first time he plays the Opry the crowd goes dead silent after he walks out, then starts booing. Everyone who heard him on the radio just thought he was another white dude.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Cheer

6 part Netflix series that hit last week from the folks who did Last Chance U

Cindy burned through it in one day (who knew the wife was a cheer aficionado?). It's definitely interesting to see this tiny JUCO in Texas as a magnet school for cheerleaders.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watched I Love You, Now Die over the weekend.  For those who don't know, it's a documentary on the case of Michelle Carter, who was convicted in Massachusetts of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to commit suicide.  The preconceptions I had going into the documentary were almost all misconceptions.  The case is far more complicated than the sound bites I'd picked up.  Even if my preconceptions (that she was this evil person who basically goaded her boyfriend into suicide for her own perverse fun) had been accurate, I was never comfortable with the idea that they should be worthy of a manslaughter conviction.  And, as I said, I was wrong anyway.  Conrad was the product of an abusive home, his mom having apparently assaulted his mom and his dad apparently having assaulted him (father says it was a fight started by Conrad, who was 18 at the time).  Michelle was on prozac and other mind-altering drugs, was bulimic, and apparently somewhat divorced from reality.  She may or may not have invented a romantic relationship with another girl.  She may or may not have invented Conrad raping her.  She may or may not have invented the "get back in the car" words she spoke to Conrad that ultimately led to her conviction.  

All in all, an excellent, balanced, nuanced look at the case.  Carter ends up far more sympathetic than you might expect.  Highly recommended.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/23/2020 at 3:14 PM, RIPPA said:

Cheer

6 part Netflix series that hit last week from the folks who did Last Chance U

While I am appreciative of the fact that this series pretty much dispels the idea that cheerleaders are failed gymnasts that still want to tumble, I couldn't sit through half of this without getting infuriated.  Bad things happen when you have an entire population of Type A's under one roof.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Watched the 1st episode of McMillions about the McDonalds Monopoly game in the 90's that turned out to be this extremely shady deal where only a few related people actually won the big prizes.   Really they would just allow us to binge watch all the episodes instead of one a week.  From the looks of it this is going to have a ton of interesting twists.    The only small negative so far is that the main FBI agent Doug Matthews is kind of annoying and full of himself.  Maybe that is just me.  

Really fascinating that the last ever version of the game was created with everyone from FBI and McDonald's knowing it wasn't legit but necessary to find the culprit. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The wrestling movie talk made me look for Lucha Mexico on Amazon Prime which led me to watching the Rat Skates doc which led me to watching The Rainbow.

The Rat Skates is homemade and pretty much just details the early years of Overkill and how he did everything DIY. It's fun if you like old Overkill, I guess. He shits on bands doing the Satanic, anti-Christian thing which he can fuck off for but whatever, he was more than happy to jump that trend back then too. It is funny seeing Overkill looking like Too Fast for Love-era Motley Crue but with corpse paint. 

ANYWAY. The Rainbow is where it's at. It should be called The Rainbow and the Whisky A Go-Go, because it details the history of both clubs, ran by the Maglieri family for three generations now. Their importance as venue and watering hole for rock music is pretty much unsurpassed and it's cool seeing how the Whisky got imported from France to start the go-go thing here, Mr. Maglieri came down from Chicago to clean the place up and run it, and then they turned the movie star watering hole the Villa Nova next door into the Rainbow. They shot it before Mario died and Lemmy from Motorhead (who practically lived there) died so we get interviews with them, Slash, Lita Ford, Gene Simmons, Ozzy, etc. Both places really deserve to be declared local or national landmarks considering all the clubs (some of which are listed at the end) being bought out and gentrified around the country. Also I wish I could get ahold of the two songs over the closing credits done by one Simon O'Connor of MGMT, really good NWOBHM-style rock with great guitar harmonies. I have no idea who MGMT are but they don't sound like that at all.

Oh and there are several lucha docs and Lucha Mexico on Prime. The latter you either pay for or have to go through the Starz package, though.

Edited by Curt McGirt
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...