At Least It Wasn't an HOA

Film: The Perfect Neighbor
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

There are too many stories where people of color who are not a threat or acting in a threatening manner are nonetheless gunned down by the police. What we don’t hear about as much, aside from particularly celebrated cases, is the people who are shot as a result of “stand your ground” laws. By some estimates, 700 or more people are killed using this law every year, and particularly in the cases of white people shooting Black people, they get away with it. The Perfect Neighbor explores one such case.

This doesn’t merely explore the situation in question, though. Rather than interview the children of the woman who was killed, or have a roundtable discussion with the neighbors, The Perfect Neighbor uses bodycam and police interrogation room footage to tell the story. This is literally a story told in the words of the people who experienced it, filtered only by what is included in the edit. There’s nothing cleaned up here—no language or action, no matter how ugly or unsettling.

If Only, If Only

Film: David Byrne’s American Utopia
Format: Streaming video from HBO Max on Fire!

Ask people who watch a lot of concert movies and you’ll hear over and over that the single best concert film in history is Stop Making Sense, the Jonathan Demme-helmed film of the Talking Heads tour at the end of 1983. Honestly, it’s not a huge shock to me that what is probably the second-best concert film in history is another David Byrne project, this time produced and directed by Spike Lee. David Byrne’s American Utopia captures the same sort of lightning in a bottle, showing a display of music, dance, and art from front to back, covering Byrne’s Broadway show of several years ago, and nothing more (with a few minor exceptions).

It is very much like Stop Making Sense. What was unique about Demme’s film, or at least very different from a lot of musical documentaries and films is that there was nothing behind the scenes. It was just the concert, one song leading into the next, the band and the instruments coming out one by one as the show progressed and screens drop down so that images could be projected on them. American Utopia is even more stripped down. This is literally just the show, filmed from start to finish. The genius of the show, and the genius of the film is that it doesn’t need to be anything more than this.

Cross Country

Film: Will and Harper
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Most people, I think, have a fairly strong opinion about Will Ferrell. I don’t actually. When Ferrell has good material and is reined in by a strong director, he’s a very capable actor. He can pull off drama and he has the capacity to be incredibly funny. I think television was much more his medium; his movies often feel hit-or-miss to me. Will and Harper is very much a different sort of film, though, and when I heard about it, I knew I’d be watching it.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of this one, it’s pretty simple. Former Saturday Night Live head writer Andrew Steele decided late in life, after having kids and ultimately getting divorced, that he would be more comfortable living as a woman, and began transitioning. This was something that she sprung on people with an email. Her close friend Will Ferrell decided that the two of them should take a road trip across the country, going to places where Andrew had been before but would now be approaching as the newly-named Harper Steele for the first time.

Hail! Hail!

Film: Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on basement television.

I think I’ve mentioned before that a lot of my musical tastes come from my older brothers. You pick up what you hear, naturally, and I grew up around a lot of prog rock and yacht rock from the ‘70s. What this means, though, is that the artists I discovered on my own are going to in many ways be much more important to me. Ike Reilly, and now the Ike Reilly Assassination, is one of those artists. I first heard him on the big Chicago alt-rock station, WXRT a couple of years after the release of his first album, Salesmen and Racists. I missed the name of the artist and had to call the station to find out who he was, and I’ve loved him ever since.

Ike (Michael) Reilly is one of those artists that has somehow managed to elude fame and popularity outside of a crop of dedicated fans. I have a fondness for songwriters who are storytellers more than anything else. There’s a lot of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Woody Guthrie, and Warren Zevon in his work (as well as lesser known writers like Eef Barzelay, Freedy Johnston, and Dan Bern). He’s the type of artist who, if you ask 1000 people if they have heard of him, 999 will look at you with their head cocked like a dog hearing a sound it doesn’t know. But that one person who does know him is going to be someone who knows their stuff. His fans include people like Penn Gilette, David Lowrey from Cracker, and fellow Libertyville, IL alum, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who is also the film’s executive producer.

Religion is Cancer

Film: Four Daughters
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

My position on religion has not been a secret on this blog. I mention it when it’s relevant, because my opinions are always going to come from a position of someone who is not merely irreligious but who is anti-religious. Movies that glorify religion are going to naturally be viewed by me in a particular way. This is also going to be true of movies that are critical of religion. Such is the case with Four Daughters (also called Les Filles d’Olfa), a movie that is very much centered in the damage that religion can cause.

It’s worth saying that when it comes to religious belief, I am an equal opportunity heretic. I a, probably more concerned on a day-to-day basis with Christian nonsense than any other religion, but that’s because I live in the U.S. where Christian nationalism is a genuine threat and a genuine existential threat. But on a worldwide scope, Islam is almost certainly a much more serious problem. Four Daughers is concerned with Islamic extremism, and specifically with ISIS, which makes it a difficult topic. No one, or almost no one, is going to go into this film completely unbiased.

Girlfriend is Better

Film: Stop Making Sense
Format: Classic Cinemas Charlestowne 18

A lot of high schools have a tradition, looked down on by faculty, of Senior Ditch Day. All/most of the seniors essentially blow off school for a day, typically a Friday, to get a three-day weekend. For where I grew up, the tradition for many was to spend a day at the Indiana Dunes, about a 2-hour drive from home. My friends and I, though, went to downtown Chicago and saw Stop Making Sense at the Music Box Theater.

Stop Making Sense is a concert film, and it’s nothing more than a concert film. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that, though, because this is a Talking Heads concert, and David Byrne’s style (and less so the rest of the group) is as much about the visuals as it is about the music. It’s about the full experience, something that shouldn’t be too surprising coming from a musical group where 75% of the core members met at art school.

...and the Spiders of Mars

Film: Moonage Daydream
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

As a casual fan of David Bowie, I wasn’t really sure how to approach Moonage Daydream, the approved documentary film on Bowie using a substantial amount of archival footage. It’s nearly impossible to be my age and not know at least something about Bowie, of course. In terms of my musical tastes, Bowie was less important to me early on than the other prog rock acts my brothers listened to when I was very young. It was probably around the Let’s Dance era that I listened to him more in earnest, despite knowing the earlier work through my brothers to some extent.

It's hard to say that Moonage Daydream is a warts-and-all biopic, because it’s not really that sort of movie. It’s a movie that is very much from Bowie’s own point of view. So, while this is going to provide a particular perspective on his life and work, it’s also going to be a perspective that feels honest and important. Much of what makes this interesting is the fact that David Bowie reinvented himself regularly; the same guy who did Ziggy Stardust also did Modern Love and further reinvented himself into a Nine Inch Nails-like band with Tin Machine.

Kabul-ing a Life

Film: Flee (Flugt)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on various players.

Oscar has a real problem with animated films. Every now and then, a film like Flee (or Flugt in the original Danish) is nominated for Best Animated Feature. This is not a movie for children, and it’s clearly been nominated because it deserves to be, but it didn’t have a chance in a million of actually winning. The same was true of Anomolisa and Persepolis. Remember that the Academy is an organization that thought Waltz with Bashir was one of the best non-English features of its year but that it wasn’t worth nominating as an animated feature over a mid-range forgettable clunker like Bolt.

Flee is a documentary about Amin Nawabi, an Aghan refugee now living in Denmark. Nawabi fled Afghanistan with most of his family, but for political, financial, and other reasons, has been separated from them. This is a true story with names changed specifically to protect people who need to be protected. It is a story of terror, fear, violation, and ultimately triumph. Seriously, this is a little bit of a spoiler, but if any documentary story deserves its happy ending, it’s this one.

Fear of a Black Cinema

Films: Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on rockin’ flatscreen

I like horror movies. I’ve liked horror movies for a long time, and I’m fascinated not just by the movies themselves but by the stories behind them. For a long time, my favorite horror documentary has been Nightmares in Red, White and Blue about the American horror movie industry; I recommend it without reservation. So when I heard that there was a documentary about the relationship between Black audiences and actors and horror films, I was very much intrigued. Well, thanks to my wife’s love of the show Dexter, we have the AMC add-on for Amazon, and this means I finally got a chance to watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.

What makes this topic so interesting is that this relationship has for a long time been one-sided. Black audiences have often loved horror but have not been loved in return (a sentiment expressed almost immediately when the film begins). There are many tropes relating to the Black experience in horror movies. Black characters are the first to die, or will sacrifice themselves for white characters, for instance. Black characters are also often fonts of ancient wisdom and are similarly the source of danger. In many older movies, Black characters are comic relief, and in horror movies without Black characters, the monsters themselves are often coded to be at least non-white (just as many movie villains in general are queer-coded). In that respect, the relationship between Black audiences and their representations on screen has been almost abusive.

Failed as a Species

Film: For Sama
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I honestly don’t know where to start with a film like For Sama. This was evidently a Frontline documentary shown on PBS stations. The film is essentially a compilation of five years of raw footage from the siege of Aleppo in Syria. I don’t really know the politics except to say that this is more or less the attempted genocide of the Kurdish people. The Syrian government, Hezbollah, and Russian military attacked civilians repeatedly, and the civilians held out for half a decade.

During this time, journalist Waad Al-Kateab went to school at Aleppo before the revolution began, became involved, met her husband Hamza, got pregnant, and gave birth to her daughter, Sama, who is named in the title of the film. The film is very much made for Sama, whose early life was spent in a hospital in the middle of a city being subjected to missile attacks and gunfire, while her mother filmed and her father operated what was eventually the only hospital in that part of the city.

Daniel Striped Tiger

Film: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

Most of my reviews on this site run between 750 and 1000 words. I have a feeling that Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is going to be a lot shorter than that. This is not because I don’t have something to say about the movie or because it isn’t worth talking about. Instead, it’s because this is the sort of movie that you’re either going to be drawn to or you are not, and there’s not going to be a great deal of middle ground. You’re either going to be enamored of Fred Rogers and the philosophy he seemed to live with every fiber of his being, or you’re not.

On the surface, Fred Rogers would seem to be anathema to me. I am open about my lack of religious belief and falling away from the church; Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. Where I can have a temper that does me no credit, Rogers was a man of calm and peace. He appears by all accounts and by everyone who knew him to be a genuinely good man as well as someone overflowing with true kindness. I recently told someone that, while I strive to be a good person as much as I can, I find that I am frequently not a nice one. I don’t always “person” very well, and Fred Rogers may well have been the best at personing in the last century.

History Lesson

Films: Dawson City: Frozen Time
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on The New Portable.

I said the other day that I commented that I was initially worried about finding Dawson City: Frozen Time, but found it at my local library. I’m not, of course, entirely sure that this will be included in the next 1001 Movies book, but it is exactly the sort of movie that seems like it should be in the next edition. It’s considerably different than I thought it was going to be. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just a true thing.

The story behind this is fascinating, and it’s the main reason to track this down. Nearly 100 years ago, Dawson City was a gold rush town in the Yukon. It was also the last stop on a film distribution cycle. What this meant was that movies would eventually show up in Dawson City 2-3 years after they were released. A new silent produced in 1917 might not show up until 1920 for the Dawson City residents. The fact that this was at the end of a distribution chain is important. Once the movies got to Dawson City, they stayed because it cost more to ship them back than they were worth. Keep this in mind.

Acting Out

Film: The Quiet One
Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.

There are times when I regret the average length of a review that I seem to have gotten into the habit of writing here. A film like The Quiet One is important in a lot of ways and unique in several ways as well. And yet, I’m not convinced that there is a great deal to say about it. There’s a strange sense of propaganda about the film that seems unintentional, but a natural adjunct to the way the film is made. The film feels both entirely relevant despite being 70 years old and equally dated.

The Quiet One is unique in Oscar history as the only documentary film to ever be nominated for a screenplay Oscar of any type. It’s only “mostly” a documentary in that some of the events of the film seem very much to have been staged. It’s likely, or at least possible, that these events were based on real life, but it’s also possible that they were dramatically heightened or created as something that was intended to be representative of the truth. In any event, it’s incredibly unlikely that a camera crew would have gotten this footage naturally, and a number of the events have a staged feel to them.

Free at Last?

Films: 13th
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

A few days ago, fellow 1001 List completer Adolytsi posted news that the next version of the book, while not available, is listed on Amazon and all of the new movies can be seen. The 2017 edition looks to add 12 movies; one is from 2015 and the other 11 are from 2016. As it happens, I’ve seen four of them and two others are on my Oscar list and planned for the next couple of months. That means I had to add six movies to my NetFlix queue. Of those, four are streaming and a fifth is available on disc, leaving only one that might be a problem in the months ahead. I’m always down for getting a jump on things, so today I decided to watch 13th.

I may be wrong, but I think this is the first NetFlix film to be included on the List, which makes it noteworthy, if that’s the case. The truth is that it’s noteworthy even if that isn’t the case. 13th is named after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is the one that outlawed slavery. The gravamen of the film is that while slavery was outlawed, something very akin to a loophole was included in the amendment that allowed for a kind of slavery to still take place. That loophole is that slavery or involuntary servitude is illegal except in cases where someone has been convicted of a crime.

The Depth of Human Evil

Film: The Look of Silence
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

The Act of Killing was a documentary that I found extremely difficult to watch. That was certainly the intent of the filmmakers. Knowing that The Look of Silence covers much the same territory made this a film that I wasn’t excited to watch. This is not because the first film is bad or poorly made, but because it is a difficult film to watch. It’s hard to see men who conducted and orchestrated the murders of thousands and thousands of people not only discuss these crimes, but speak of them with pride. The Look of Silence goes further than the first film in that it’s far more confrontational and far more personal.

Essentially, we are visiting a lot of the same people who planned and executed the military coup in Indonesia, people who are still in power in many cases and continue to think of themselves as heroes routing out communists. As I say, this is much more personal, though, because here we’re going to follow the journey of one man (someone roughly my age) confronting the men who admit to having killed his brother.

Nick's Picks: Hanson: Strong Enough to Break

Films: Hanson: Strong Enough to Break
Format: Internet video on laptop.

This is the eighth in a series of twelve movies suggested by Nick Jobe.

One of the most interesting stories in the music world for me is what happened to the band Wilco in 2001 and the years following. They were dropped by their label for producing an album that the company thought was unmarketable. Ultimately, the band released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to tremendous (and deserved) critical acclaim, suffering through people leaving the band and other heartaches. Ultimately, it’s a story of a band’s dedication to their craft and the triumph of artistic freedom and vision over crass commercialism. This is documented in the 2002 film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. How interesting, then, that the same thing happened to another band in the same time frame. Hanson: Strong Enough to Break parallels the Wilco story in a lot of ways. The two movies make interesting companion pieces for each other.

Nick’s relationship with the band Hanson—known almost exclusively for the surprise smash hit “MMMBop”—is one I understand as well. It’s a similar relationship I had with the band Barenaked Ladies. Nick knows about Hanson because his fiancée loves Hanson. I knew all about BNL because my wife was a superfan of the band for a few years, going so far as to help plan and attend a convention in Canada. So sure, I got why Nick wanted me to watch this. You can’t be immersed in that environment without either imploding or at becoming at least a marginal fan.

Thai-ing One on

Films: Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
Format: Turner Classic Movies on laptop.

Documentaries have a long history, and early documentaries have an interesting history in that realism was often eschewed in favor of compelling narrative. That’s at least partially the case with Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, the only documentary ever to be nominated for anything like a Best Picture award. It was actually nominated for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, an award that vanished after the first Oscars and became essentially a part of the Best Picture category. This is sort of an ethnography, albeit with some bits that were staged. To the credit of the filmmakers, though, these events were evidently restaged because the original footage didn’t turn out, so these are at least based on real events.

Chang is the story of a “family” in Thailand back when it was still called Siam. On its face, it’s the story of a family trying to survive in a jungle and trying to raise a small crop of rice while dealing with predatory cats and stampeding elephants. Based on that, it’s hardly a shock that this was such a hit the year that it was released.

Picks from Chip: The Way We Get By

Film: The Way We Get By
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

This is the fourth in a series of twelve movies selected by Chip Lary at Tips from Chip.

Chip Lary, who picked this film for me, lives in Maine. I’m certain that this is part of the reason that Chip found this film in the first place, since it takes place in large part at the Bangor International Airport. That airport is a joint civilian/military airport, and as one of the easternmost airports in the United States, it serves both as a departure point and an arrival point for U.S. military troops heading to and from combat areas in the Middle East. It also features a woman named Joan Gaudet, the mother of Aron Gaudet, the film’s director.

Like many documentaries, The Way We Get By doesn’t so much have a story as it has a topic. The film follows the lives of three elderly people, the aforementioned Joan Gaudet, William Knight, and Gerald Mundy. What makes these folks and a number of others who appear in the film interesting is that they are on call 24/7 to head out to Bangor International whenever a flight comes in bringing in troops from combat. They are there to welcome people back from war, to let them know that they are appreciated, and as it comes out late in the film, to give themselves a sense of purpose and meaning.

We've Sprung a Leak

Film: Citizenfour
Format: Streaming video from HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.

Watching movies off a list means watching a lot of older films. This means that I’m frequently behind the times when it comes to more recent films. When I get the chance, I do try to catch up on newer films. I cooked all day yesterday, so I had the opportunity to watch a couple including Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In that movie, the evil organization Hydra has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to locate and neutralize direct threats to itself.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the new 1001 Movies list is out and it includes Citizenfour (sometimes written CITIZENFOUR), the documentary about Edward Snowden and the release of data on NSA spying. It wouldn’t be difficult to see The Winter Soldier as a fictionalized, somewhat jingoistic version of Edward Snowden’s story. It’s interesting that a lot of the people who would cheer for Captain America in the one movie will happily brand Snowden a traitor for in many ways doing a less action-packed version of the same thing.

Your Face Pics Movies (Nick): Man on Wire

Film: Man on Wire
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

This is the ninth in a series of twelve movies selected by the guys at YourFace. This is Nick’s third pick.

As it happens, I’m putting up a review of Man on Wire about 10 days before the release of a biopic version of the same story. That wasn’t by design; it just happened that this is Nick’s month and the last film he’s suggested for me evidently has a Christmas theme, so I’m saving it for December. It’s a happy coincidence. This also happens to be the only of Nick’s four suggestions that isn’t an animated movie.

Man on Wire is the story of Philippe Petit, a French wire walker who conceived of the dream of walking between the two towers of the World Trade Center. According to the documentary, Petit first came up with this notion when he first heard of the towers before they were built. That may well be true, since it would appear that he fashioned his entire life based around the idea that he would someday walk on a high wire between the two buildings.