Category: Documentary

Pick of the Litter ☆☆ (2/5) 3/31/19

The puppies are adorable and I’m not going to lie, I shed a tear or two. But there’s no confusing this for an actually good movie. It telegraphs its ending and splits the focus too many ways, especially given the fact that budget considerations clearly prevented giving all five puppies full time camera crews.

Puppies, though. Sometimes puppies are enough.

Free Solo ☆ (1/5) 2/18/19

…Assholes.

Look, I’m sorry. This review isn’t going to be empathetic or sensitive to the feelings of its subject or makers. Because I think they’re a bunch of assholes.

Alex Honnold, with his Jedi warrior masturbatory bullshit, is an asshole. His foundation sounds cool, but this movie isn’t about that – because he probably won’t die funding it. The filmmakers, who are clearly more interested in filming an aberrant personality possibly falling to his death than celebrating an athletic feat, are bigger assholes. Acknowledging (or faking in clearly staged conversations) their feelings about that makes them worse, not better. Alex playing to the camera during his climb is creepy, not cool.

I’ll leave the girlfriend out of my judgemental name-calling because she’s only hurting herself by pretending his (barely maintained) simulation of feeling is the same as caring. We’ve all made bad choices.

(Tommy Caldwell comes off okay as a supportive friend.)

Abducted in Plain Sight ☆☆☆ (3/5) 2/03/19

Truth is stranger – and more infuriating – than fiction.

My mouth hung open for 90 minutes watching this shocking tale of parental neglect and sexual abuse. There are so many twists, each so outrageous that I had to talk about the film all day today.

It is a bit like gawping at the scene of an accident, though. While it may empower other victims of predators, the situation is so specifically strange that it’s hard to see Abducted in Plain Sight as any kind of serious warning or enlightenment. Don’t be a shitty parent, maybe. Maybe that does need to be said more.

My nominee for worst person in a film full of them? The brother.

This is like The Up Series for misanthropes.