Stop Making Sense

Jonathan Demme, 1984 (9.2*)
I guess it helps to be a fan of the rock band Talking Heads to really enjoy this concert documentary, but for any fan of concert filmmaking, this will also be a treat. There have been other good concert films, like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, documenting The Band’s last concert, but for me this one went a little more over the top.

When I saw this in the theater, there were people dancing in the aisles, and the crowd was a huge range of ages. I was already a fan of the band, so for me it was an unexpected treat that I felt like I was also at this concert at the Pantages Theater in L.A., shot over three nights.

The band had just been a more intellectual punk rock band than most, led by the cerebral lead singer-songwriter David Byrne, known as much for his out-of-sync gyrations as much as songs. Then they added two former members of the Funkadelic-Parliament funk bands, Bernie Worrell (keyboards) and Alex Weir (guitar, vocals) and suddenly discovered rhythm, notably from the James Brown school of funk grooves. This suddenly rejuvenated the band and it’s obvious in this concert; they’re now a fusion of musical influences working together to create something unique. My own favorite here is near the end, “Cross-Eyed and Painless”, and I can’t imagine it without the P-funk connection. Of course there’s the hits, “Burning Down the House” and “Psycho Killer”, but just as good are “This Must Be the Place” and “I Get Wild/Wild Gravity”.

Ironically, Byrne is now best known for wearing the big suit around this era. On a live tv interview (Letterman?), Byrne said "a friend told me 'onstage, you're bigger than life', so I said 'oh, then I need a really big suit'"

If you’re just interested in good rock concert films as well, this is one of the best ever (maybe the best) - along with The Police “Synchronicity Concert” (a live concert, unedited, from the Omni in Atlanta, Ga), and the all-time classic, Woodstock (1970) which did it’s best to record both highlights of three days of concerts and also document the event itself. For these reasons, it will likely forever remain the ultimate rock concert film.

Demme is best known for directing the Oscar®-winning best picture The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he also won a directing Oscar®. Demme is currently the 78th ranked director on our top ranked 1000 films compendium of all polls, with 4 titles in the top 1000, with Silence of the Lambs his top-ranked at #47 all-time.

See the full list of top ranked 100 directors here: Top Ranked 100 Directors, 2011 Edition

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Richard Pryor Live in Concert

Jeff Margolis, 1979 (9.6*)
This is stand up comedy at it's best. Richard Pryor in his prime is as funny as anyone in history. No props, just a mic and an audience, and comic genius flowed forth like a fountain from the subconscious.

You simply have to get Pryor uncensored as well, the language is part of the humor, it all fits the syntax, the rhythm of the language adds to the humor, which at times moves into the hilarious stage. He will talk about anything, too - some topics here include his pet monkeys, a Chinese stutterer, people at funerals, good sex, his heart attack, whippings from his granny, and dudes lying.

This was a very successful lp, then CD, but you really need to see Pryor act out his humor, as much of it is facial expressions and hand gestures, and even body language, especially when he delves into the sexual realm.

Pryor has influenced comedy forever, it's too bad that he didn't really translate to films, largely because the dumb humor written for him was never as funny as his own stuff, much of it penned by writer Paul Mooney, who is still doing his own standup today. Mooney says that the way to attack racism is to get people to laugh at it first, and at this, Pryor succeeded like no one else. He does perfect imitations of caucasians (even a little John Wayne) and asians both, and has several black voices and characters as well.

This is rare ground, and I doubt there will ever be anyone this funny again in the arena of standup comedy. For what it is, this should really be rated a 10.0, but when I compare it to films that are emotionally moving that's the one thing this lacks.

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Restrepo

Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, 2010 (9.0*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon film #21
Documentary that follows The Men of Battle Company 2nd of the 503rd Infantry Regiment 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, in Afghanistan's deadly Korangal Valley, as they work out of firebase they call Outpost Restrepo, after a fallen comrade, medic Juan Restrepo.

If you're interested about how contemporary American soldiers look in daily combat, this is as good a film as you'll get, shot with superb cinematography, as risk of the filmmakers themselves being shot. (Director Tim Hetherington was in fact killed while filming in Libya in March of this year).

The film is simply a journal, following the platoon with little narrative structure other than their building OP Restrepo, the 15-man outpost on a hill overlooking the entire enemy valley - and a patrol into the civilian population called Operation Rock Avalanche, during which the troops came under heavy fire. Through face-to-face interviews with the soldiers, we can see what this has done to their psyches, and many of the soldiers are just out of high school.

4 awards, including Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, out of 12 nominations, including an Oscar® nomination for documentary (Inside Job won). Tim Hetherington also won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2007 photo of the soldiers resting at Restrepo.

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Marwencol

Jeff Malmberg, 2010 (8.3*)
Marwencol is a documentary about the fantasy world of Mark Hogancamp. After leaving his local bar one night, Mark is beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five teenagers outside in the parking log. After coming out of his coma, he is on Medicaid and "the money runs out", so they tell him he is released, and is sent home with only partial brain functions. He has to relearn how to walk, eat, write, and think, with the help of his mother and friends. (He's divorced and was living alone)

In order for some spiritual as well as physical therapy, to help his shaking hands, Mark thinks he needs a hobby, so he builds a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard, which he dubs Marwencol.  Mark populates the with hobby dolls representing his friends and family and creates life-like photographs detailing the town's many relationships and dramas. Setting up scenarios like a miniature movie set, to illustrate an ongoing story (see photo at bottom), and then photographing the action helps Mark to recover coordination heal his psyche - he's still afraid of the outside world, now it represents possible danger. He only goes to work one day a week at a local restaurant-bar, and doesn't drink since the attack.

The town has American, British, and German troops all using it as a sort of neutral-zone r-and-r. There are also some blonde babes there, because Mark's ex-wife was a blonde of Eastern European descent. Mark has his own character, and there are five SS 'bad guys' that bother everyone and threaten the town. The conflicts in his psyche are played out in all the good soldiers in Marwencol trying to avoid the threatening SS. At one point, the women join the resistance and take up arms as well. There's even a character representing General George Patton. (see jeep photo below)

When Mark and his photographs are discovered, a prestigious New York gallery sets up an art show as Mark's creation is deemed art, forcing him to choose between the safety of his fantasy life in Marwencol, and keeping it private, and the real world that he's avoided since the attack, and sharing his own created world.

You won't see many stories this odd and this interesting, especially in documentaries. The biography of Crumb, about the underground comic artist, comes to mind, as well as American Splendor, a docudrama about another comic artist, that blends animation with real action, and includes the real people in the film alongside their life actor counterparts, with whom they sometimes converse, and sometimes comment about to the director.

15 awards out of 17 nominations

See more at marwencol.com

Mark Hogancamp setting up a scene in

Marwencol before photographing it

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Crumb

Terry Zwigoff, 1995 (8.5*)
Documentary biopic of legendary hippie cartoonist Robert Crumb, creator of Mr. Natural, Zippy Pinhead, among many others, and the women who all have giant butts and long legs. Crumb said this is from remembering lots of aunts as a kid, and since he was less than waist high to them, they all were out of proportion in his mind's eye, so he draws them from memory as they looked to him then.

Crumb's comic books were often passed around by the thousands at rock music festivals, to kill the time between bands, or during the ever present rain delays (did the government seed the skies above pop festivals?) He likely had the greatest word-of-mouth following in the history of graphic arts. He also did some famous rock album covers, the best being the one for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin's first album, where he created a color cartoon for each song on the lp.

You don't have to be an aging hippie from the 60's like me to appreciate this documentary. It offers a truly rare biography of an influential artist during his times, something we'll never have regarding great artists of the past.

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Inside Job

Charles Ferguson, 2010 (9.0*)
Best Documentary (AA)
This is probably the most important documentary made in our lifetime, as it covers the biggest financial crime ever committed which will have worldwide repercussions for decades to come. Actor Matt Damon narrates a story that is pure nightmare become reality, one that has touched most of the world by now in one way or another. (Many lost jobs, houses, life savings, pension plans - the rest will pay higher taxes and have higher inflation as a result)

Director, author, producer Charles Ferguson does a good job explaining exactly how this all happened, and won an Oscar® for documentary as a result. I for one am glad he included the repeal in 1999 by a Republican Congress of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was put in place to prevent banks from taking unnecessary risks in order to prevent the exact scenario which took place within a decade after it's repeal. (me and many financial experts predicted this exact outcome over time - my friends called me a "doomsayer"; now they don't call me at all - they're probably broke; I pulled all my money out of the market in 2003) Every time you hear someone ask for "deregulation", remember that it's NEVER WORKED YET, so get ready to be fleeced again by con artists. (it was deregulation that caused strikes, riots, and death squads in Argentina; it was done as a condition for a loan from the World Bank, controlled by the U.S., which was, of course, to allow corporations to pillage Argentinians as a test)

This film shoud infuriate everyone. Hopefully, many people not currently in prison will be put there eventually, especially the fat cat execs at the superbanks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, etc.. One of these guys (Fuld at Bear Stearns?) pulled 246 million out of his company in "compensation" just before it went bankrupt. Good grief, this would bankrupt 99% of all companies in America. How could we NOT have gotten his money back? If this nation was any more spineless, we'd have to be reclassified as earthworms, and at about that level, for letting these crooks get away with pillaging the world's wealth for their own private benefit.

The most maddening part is that Obama hired many of the same criminals himself - perhaps they really work for the Corleones and Sopranos and everyone has a gun to their heads. That's the only possible explanation for this entire baffling chain of events, especially giving the same crooks even more money to throw into their private coffers.

This film will hopefully ignite a fire under someone here with BALLS - it's obvious that NO ONE in our government has any, and the populace is suffering as a result. This truly is a government "of, by, and for the corporation", as Jim Cramer on MadMoney termed it. We are living proof that "democracy" just plain doesn't work, due to the corruptable nature of humans, who will sell out to the highest bidder, in this case the corporations willing to pay them off in the guise of "campaign contributions", so it has the appearance of legitimacy.

How typical that NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, interviewed here, who tried to go after some of the crooks, was then painted with the "immoral" brush for using hookers, something the Wall Streeters did by the tens of thousands, according to one high price escort madame interviewed in this film. He paid a personal price while the crooks have gotten off scot free so far. If I were these guys, I'd not only leave the U.S. for good, but I'd hire a small army of bodyguards, as they won't be able to sleep safely anywhere in the world now that Al Quaeda and everyone else knows who they are.

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Note: everyone should read journalist, and former corporate corruption investigator for the insurance industry, Greg Palast's eye-opening expose of U.S. corporations and politics "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", about how all western politicians are controlled by big money who simply buys the favorable legislation they want, and who also control the media that refused to report or even print his findings. In England, the government ransacked his office and gave him death threats, likely due to pressure from the U.S. "Freedom of the press" and "free speech" are just expressions used by politicians - if they have to tell us that we have them, then we really don't, which is obvious to everyone by now. In fact, in the Smother Bros vs CBS trial, U.S. government lawyers testified for CBS, and said "freedom of speech is only for owners, it was never implied for individuals". That was news to nearly everyone who has read the Constitution.

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Capturing the Friedmans

Andrew Jarecki, 2003 (8.2*)
This is an eerie documentary about suspected child molesters, named the Friedmans, a family that ran a daycare center in their home. Director Jarecki looks at the case from all sides and interviews the suspects, but never really makes a judgment himself, he leaves that up to the film audience as if we are members of the jury ourselves. This is a very creepy film about a very sensitive subject, so it definitely won't be for all audiences, but it is a riveting documentary and one well worth seeing.

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Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, 1991 (9.2*)
Documentary footage by Eleanor Coppola
Perhaps the most incredible film about the filmmaking process ever made, which was put together by Bahr and Hickenlooper using over 60 hours of Eleanor Coppola's footage that was shot to document husband Francis Ford's monumental effort to make his war classic Apocalypse Now!

We get to see behinds the scenes obstacles, such as how actor Martin Sheen almost died during filming, suffering a heart attack likely brought on by exhaustion. We see Francis wrestling with the ultimate statement of the film, the ending. In one revealing scene he says something to the effect of "I have this incredible journey on film without a destination, without a proper conclusion".

The production faced set-destroying typhoons, lack of financing, disease, and even at one point had their helicopters pulled by the Philippines military to use in fighting rebels. The fact that we have this film at all is really a minor miracle, as Coppola had to mortgage his own personal home to continue shooting.

This is a must-see documentary for all fans of the creative process in general, and filmmaking in particular. Along with Burden of Dreams, which followed Werner Herzog as he filmed Fitzcarraldo in the Brazilian jungle, one of the most moving testaments to a director's obsession with a personal project that simply must get filmed at all costs.

An excellent companion to this film is Eleanor's book "Notes", a non-fiction journal kept daily during the filming.

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Triumph of the Will

[Our 600th film reviewed]Leni Reifenstahl, Germany, 1935 (8.2*)
This is a hard film to recommend, but an important documentary for both historical events covered as well as pioneering film techniques. Leni is a former actress turned filmmaker as Hitler's chosen film propagandist. In her first major film here, she documents the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

She later apologized for the film, but it's so eerie to watch today that it's effective as anti-propaganda as well, likely scaring far more people than it inspires. She went on to direct the documentary of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, in Olympia, also a classic of film technique. She buried a camera in the earth to get a shot of the starting line of the 100 meter dash. In Triumph, she uses striking geometric compositions to amplify the impact of crowd scenes, into what could rightfully be called, in Clockwork Orange vernacular, real 'horrorshow', something so terrifying that you have to watch it.

Down a point or so in the rating for being blatant propaganda, but it's still cinematic art, and influenced many other directors.

Note: posted on Pearl Harbor day, as this film shows the seeds of war being sown in the 30's

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Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal, 2006 (8.4*)
Baichwal's visually riveting documentary follows photographer Edward Burtynsky around the world as he takes photographs of man-made landscapes of staggering immensity, from open pit mines to mountains of coal to seemingly miles long factories.

Though Burtynsky's individual photos are works of art, giant museum-sized prints with amazing detail, the landscapes they portray make a visual statement of how out-of-control civilization has threatened to become.

Perhaps the eeriest scenes to me are the giant tankers allowed to run aground in Bangladesh where workers break them up into giant slabs of iron for recycling. Think again where your recycled products end up, as we are shown mountains of recycled materials in China where workers in masks (due to toxins) basically pull out only a few metals, such as aluminum.

This is scary stuff to view, but something we need to deal with if civilization is to survive without turning our planet into a giant toxic refuse dump of unusable waste. The world of Wall-E is becoming a reality.

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Touch the Sound

Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2004, Germany (8.2*)
The most sought after percussionist in the world is Dame Evelyn Glennie, a dimunitive woman from Scotland who was voted "Scottish woman of the decade". She is considered to be the first person to have a career as a solo percussionist. She can play anything that can be beaten with sticks, plastic tubes, horsehair bows, or really anything handy she happens to pick up. Even more amazing: she started going deaf at age 8, and by age 12 was designated to be 'profoundly deaf'. She wanted to continue her music career, so she was taught how to feel the sound of drums by touching them with her hands, and she can now perceive tones in her body.

In this film, director Riedelsheimer explores not only her music, but also what drives her creativity internally. She knows how to appreciate a Zen-like silence, saying that 'silence is one of the loudest sounds she's heard'. We are shown Dame Evelyn playing solo, creating improvisations with fellow experimental musician Fred Frith in a large vacant warehouse, and playing drums with some Japanese koto drummers, who say that it all comes from breathing.

She is an amazing woman, knighted before age 40, and is unlike anyone else you will see on film. A virtuoso adult musician, she seems to have the same inquisitive curiosity about sound that children have exploring their surroundings. This film won 5 awards at film festivals, most for best documentary. I lowered the rating a little due to less concentration on Evelyn's music and more on the visual aspects of her life.

Thomas Riedelsheimer makes gripping documentaries about uniquely talented individuals that most will never hear in the mass media. Rivers and Tides is about environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, and is an arresting visual film, while this one is more awe-inspiring for it's audio.

Here is a clip of Evelyn playing a marimba solo from the film:

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Olympia

Leni Riefenstahl, Germany, 1938, bw (9.2*)

This historic documentary shot by the Nazi propaganda machine's chief filmmaker still looks modern today. The idea originally was to show the glory of Germany and document their many Olympic victories in a fine film by their top director, but the politics were taken out when black American Jesse Owens and others stole the thunder, leaving the Germans with little more than this filmed record.

Riefenstahl pioneered a number of techniques that will look more commonplace today. One that stands out here is burying a camera at the starting line of the 100-yard dash to capture a ground-eye view of that race's tension just before the gun. She always manages to interest the eye even when the action isn't so riveting, and is a master of b&w composition and lighting.

Denounced by many for being the film voice for the Nazis, Riefenstahl later apologized for making Triumph of the Will (1935) in particular, about the rise of Hitler and the party, and attempted a normal film career afterwards, but never again approached the artistic achievement of these two documentaries.

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Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

Mason Spurlock, 2008 (8.0*)
This is a more comedic than serious documentary that attempts to show that most people in the world are moderates, with a few extremist wackos on both sides stirring the pot of war.. Spurlock, the director of Super Size Me, takes the approach that he just wants the world safer for his almost newborn child, and travels to various nations in the middle east on a mock hunt for Osama to get the 25 million reward money. Along the way we see that most citizens are moderates who just want to work and eat and live comfortably and raise their children (so what else is new?), but that a few extremists on both sides, such as the Saudi faction of Islam and the Orthodox Zionists in Israel, will likely continue to keep the flames of war burning regardless of the rest of the world.

Not a particularly enlightening film, but is fairly entertaining as a lot of this is humorous, especially an animated Bin Laden break dancing to "Can't Touch This".. Here is a link to that excerpt from the beginning of the film at YouTube:
Osama break dancing

This film is more like a tv show than a film, but is an entertaining look at a serious subject, and perhaps will help defuse the anger that most feel about this subject. After all, the politics involved don't really affect many of us, just the few victims of terrorism (less than 10,000 so far) that the media and governments have exploded into numerous wars to benefit the defense contractors and military, who are making billions off this miniscule conflict.

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Baraka

Ron Fricke, 1992 (9.5*)
This is a beautiful visual poem to the spirituality of the planet, mankind included. Director Ron Fricke has given us a film without narrative or even dialogue, yet it's the best description on film of, in his words, "man's connection to the eternal". In order to achieve his vision, Fricke created film equipment cabable of giving us time lapse sequences of both nature and urban settings.

The film primarily shows serene locales in nature (like Arches Nat Park in Utah), or of man's creation, such as temples, zen gardens, meditating monks. Fricke filmed in over 200 locations in 22 countries, many familiar sites, some not so familiar. The beauty is occasionally contrasted by images where we've interrupted the inherent serenity, such as the oil fires in Kuwait, traffic in a metropolis, a hand-rolled cigarette factory in Asia.

This film won't suit all tastes, but if you're of the meditative type, or just love the visual artistry of films, enjoy nature films like Planet Earth, which this preceded by a decade, then Baraka will strike a resonant chord in your spirit.

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War Photographer

Christian Frei, Switzerland, 2001 (9.4*)

[Partially in English, partially sub-titled]

As a photographer and visual artist myself, I've always admired those willing to risk their lives just to give the world photographs of war and other human tragedies as they occur, all on display here such as extreme poverty and starvation (Africa), hazardous working conditions (Indonesian sulphur mines), and war itself (Palestine). This story is a biography of photojournalist James Nachtwey, often called the 'greatest war photographer of all time'. As one who survived to see gray hair, he's had a longetivity that few others achieve, as most don't live to see 50.

This is a great story of a great artist and humanitarian, a film which will have difficult images to bear, but one which we owe ourselves as fellow human beings to bear witness to and never forget the injustices which our fellow humans can inflict on the innocent. This is the goal of war correspondents and other journalists, and is certainly the 'raison d'etre' of James Nachtwey. Hats off for the documentary filmmakers who followed Nachtwey on his assignments, often into the heat of battle itself. This is one of the most important political and humanitarian statements ever captured on film.

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Visions of Light

Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels, 1992 (8.7*)
For all students and fans of the art of cinematography, this documentary produced by American Film Institute not only shows great example of cinema art, but also interviews many directors of photography (DPs as they call themselves), many Oscar® winners. As any photographer knows, the camera captures light emissions on film, so lighting is extremely important, not only for proper exposure but also for creating the intended mood for the scene. This film even goes one step further, having these artists also explain their inspiration and possible symbolism for their compositions. They also talk about camera movement, an important aspect of film viewing that keeps scenes from being so stagnant they they resemble a stage play.

Oscar®-winner (and favorite) Vittorio Storaro has extensive examples shown from The Conformist (dir by Bertolucci), Apocalypse Now (Coppola), and The Last Emperor (Bertolucci), in which he said he used red for life, yellow for the embryonic emergence into the world, and green for knowledge. These metaphors are likely noticed by very few filmgoers. Another fave of mine is also featured: Oscar®-winner James Wong Howe, a b&w master who shot Hud and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Other prominent DPs are included such as Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane), Lazslo Kovacs, Gordon Willis (Godfather), Conrad Hall, Charles Lang, Vilmos Zsigmond, Nestor Almendros, Sven Nyqvist (Bergman's DP), and more. They also talk about how they had to light certain actors, such as Garbo, Dietrich, Cooper, and what those stars demanded. Though the film was shot in 92 and therefore missed some recent masters, such as Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, Hero), this is still an important documentary for serious students of cinema, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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God Grew Tired of Us

The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan
Christopher Dillon Quinn, 2006 (9.0*)
co-dir by Tommy Walker
Sundance Audience Award and Jury Prize
The story of the genocidal slaughter of the largely Christian southern half of Sudan by the Islamic north is one of the sadder stories of modern times. This film first documents the long exodus of at least 27,000 young men from Sudan to Ethiopia, then when that government fell, to a refugee camp in northern Kenya. Only 12,000 made it there, facing hunger and thirst along the way, forcing many to eat mud and drink their own urine. For some reason the UN and the U.S. both have decided to sit back and let this occur, even though the U.S. had no problem invading Grenada, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (there is no oil nor any terrorists or communists in Sudan). Those who didn't flee the troops were burned alive in their villages.

This film begins with the story of a few lucky young men selected to be flown to the U.S. for education and jobs. Their first western food is on the airline, and they grimace and say that the survival camp food was better, that "this tastes like soap"! Things get better in the U.S., as they can cook their own food in an apartment, and most receive jobs, even though the pay is around minimum wage. The film, narrated by Nicole Kidman, follows the path of three men and their friends and their new lives in America.

Most find life in the U.S. lonely, as one named Panther says "If you're lost and go to a house in Africa they will help you; here they call the police - I feel alienated and lonely as a result. No one walking on the streets talks to each other." Most hope to send money back to the refugee camp for their friends, or to locate their families, missing since the civil war began. Even though the beginning is very harsh viewing, in spite of the singing and smiles of those in the camp, the remainder of the film offers hope that the "Lost Boys of Sudan" is a story that will belatedly find a larger audience, and the apathetic industrial nations will make a much larger effort to rectify this situation. The film won 6 awards at 5 different film festivals. More films like this one need to be made and seen by the world.

Quotes: "God must have grown tired of the unrighteous acts of mankind; God must have grown tired of us."
"I have never used electricity; when I get to America, I think I will have a hard time learning how to use electricity."
(re Christmas, after arrival here): "What does Santa Claus have to do with Jesus? Is he in the Bible? What does the tree have to do with this? In our country we sing and dance and prepare for the birth of Jesus in our hearts"

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The Power of Nightmares

subtitle: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

Adam Curtis, 2007 (9.0*)

This three-hour BBC documentary details the historical and concurrent rise of Islamic fundamentalism, esp. Al Quaeda, and the neo-Christian right wing, both beginning around 1948 in the U.S. Most don't know that Al Q was basically started by a professor in Colorado that was disgusted by the lack of spirituality in the U.S., who "only worships the dollar". He went to Egypt to fight agains U.S. influence and imperialism in the Islamic nations of the Middle East, and was executed by the Egyptian government. The next day Al Quaeda had 5000 new members.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the right wing began to urge both politicians and the clergy to "perpetuate the myth that the U.S. is the moral police of the world" and to mobilize church-goers to vote, who had become so dis-enfranchised that they shunned politics altogether. This documentary shows how each side built power by broadcasting a fear of the "other side", and gains financial, government, and military support the more each attacks the other and the media broadcasts all the "messages of fear".

In one part, the CIA admits that it created the "myth of organized international terrorism" in the 80's to help bring down the USSR by linking them to the terrorists. After the USSR fell, the CIA was unable to convince the right wing and the Christians that it was their own fabrication from their "black ops" or disinformation department, especially the "Bushy" Republicans.

This is uneven, at times repetitive in its use of the same footage, but is a must see by all who are interested in how we arrived at the current situation of chaos in the world. This film is free at http://www.archive.org/, or can be rented or purchased on DVD.

Note: rated 9.1 at IMDB, this has one of the highest ratings there - in fact it's the same rating at the #1 rated film there, The Shawshank Redemption

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The Memory Loss Tapes

Shari Cookson and Nick Doob, 2009, HBO (10*)

[Update: This just won an EMMY for "Exceptional Merit in Non-Fiction Programming" - congrats to all involved! updated 9.14.09]

The Memory Loss Tapes is the first part of the HBO series The Alzheimer’s Project, and it’s an extremely powerful documentary that touches on the most basic human emotions, those that flow naturally from love, caring, and mortality. The film was brilliantly constructed by producer-directors Shari Cookson and Nick Doob to slowly reveal the progressive stages of Alzheimer’s in seven different patients, and just as importantly, to show how the families of each have to cope with different aspects of the disease.

The first patient, Bessie, has only mild symptoms, so we get to see her as a lively, outgoing, and funny person. She knows what’s coming eventually but is still enjoying every day to its fullest. Another patient, Fannie, is losing her ability to drive her car, and with it her independence. Joe keeps a blog of his decline and can feel his mind slipping away. Yolanda thinks her reflection is a new best friend. Woody can’t remember his wife but can still remember song lyrics and sing with his old group.
Josephine’s daughter has had to fence in her property to keep her mom from wandering away. The patients shown exemplify the progression of the disease by revealing their everyday reality.

The most gripping part of this film deals with someone in the final stages of life, and the devastating effect it has on his family. In a heart wrenching revelation, the man’s wife admits feeling selfish for wanting to keep her husband with her as long as she can, despite the fact that he has "no life."

I don’t think I’ve ever seen mortality treated so realistically or with as much impact in any film. For parents, I would warn you to either pre-screen this for your children, especially those under ten, or counsel them before viewing. It’s something we’ll all face, but it may be distressing for young viewers to actually see in reality.

The saddest part of this illness to me is that it robs its victims of their memories at a stage in life when these are likely their most cherished possession. As a child, we would visit my great-grandmother in her nursing home, but she never remembered who we were, and she lived to be ninety-nine. I would have loved to have heard her stories that began around 1870, and just imagine the century she was able to witness.

Hopefully this film will instill a desire in many to become healers or medical researchers, and bring an understanding of the heavy cost of all terminal illnesses on the families and friends of the patients. We should all be aware now that new biotech research is necessary to cure this and similarly debilitating illnesses, and that money wasted on destructive goals is being diverted from these more humane purposes.

Many elderly patients don’t have any remaining family, as I found out when my mom was in a nursing home with Parkinson’s. Many eat alone and never have visitors, something we should never allow to happen. Visit as many of these people as you can, their smiles will be the best reward you’ll ever receive.

The Memory Loss Tapes should receive a handful of well-deserved Emmy nominations, and some awards. It's technically superb, emotionally powerful, and for me is one of the best TV documentaries ever made.

Producer-director Shari Cookson at IMDB
Producer-director Nick Doob at IMDB

[Though not yet on DVD, I'm reviewing this here in the hope that people will watch it on HBO or from their website: Click here for the HBO Link, and all episodes can be streamed from here as well.]

The Alzheimer's Organization is at http://www.alz.org/

Patients and families affected by Alzheimer’s can visit Icara Study to see if they might be eligible to enroll. [Thanks to Tracy for this]

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Man With a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1928, bw/silent (9.5*)
This is a very lively, fast-moving documentary that attempts to show to the world one day in the life of people within the Soviet Union. Most of the footage appears to be around Odessa, and the film begins showing sleeping people in a quiet city, some outside on benches or sidewalks, then as the sun rises, the city comes alive. What could have been just a boring travelogue has been instead raised to the level of art by some innovative cinematic techniques that even some of today's boring directors would be well advised to watch.

Director Dziga Vertov often shows his cameraman Kaufman (or did Kaufman film Vertov?) carrying the movie camera around on its tripod, or superimposed as a giant on top of a building, or as a window reflection. He even films Kaufman while he films a scene, such as a galloping horse and carriage which they're racing alongside in a convertible automobile. The resulting shot of the horse is simply breathtaking, as exciting as the chariot race in Wyler's Ben-Hur 31 years later, and it's likely that Wyler had seen this himself.

We are shown some mundane images, such as coal miners, shopkeepers, sunbathers, street cleaners, crowds entering buses; but we also see the unusual: women cleaning and greasing the tracks for electric streetcars, athletes clearing bars in slow motion, a woman shooting a rifle at a target with a hat bearing a swastika, a topless pair of women at the beach spreading mud over each other!

This is a short film at 70 minutes, but it moves very quickly for a silent film as none of the images are onscreen for long, so the result is perfect for the short attention span century, and the film editing is at genius level for just about any year. At times the modern soundtrack detracts somewhat, but there is a nice correlation between the music's rhythms and the visuals onscreen.

Vertov also shows the film being projected in a cinema in front of an audience; it start with them filing into the theater and taking seats, closes with the curtain being drawn and the crows exiting - so he shows the creative process during and after the film's completion. This is a bona fide cinema classic that ranks highly on all serious lists, it's #78 on our Top Ranked 1000 Films survey, and its the highest-ranked documentary.

[Note: I would have given this a 10 if it had a compelling story]

One of the first recipients of our World Film Awards, as we started with 15 silent classics

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