True Films
I'm interested in documentary films, educational programs, non-fiction cinema, and what the British BBC empire calls "factuals." I call them true films and I'm trying to round up recommendations here. It's way embryonic, so be gentle.
True films are great non-fiction films available on DVD or VHS at consumer prices. Here are some of the ones I've seen recently and would recommend:
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River and Tides
One of the best films about art, by one of our best living artists. Drift in and out of the dreams of Andy Goldsworthy as he summons a cornucopia of temporary monuments -- an arc of icicles, a train of flowers, a hive of sticks -- from bits of leaves, twigs, rocks, ice and mud. He makes things you could easily make -- if only you saw the world as he does. By the end of this beautifully lyrical film, you DO begin to share Goldsworthy mystical vision of a world swimming in energy and flows. My favorite moment: when he despairs as his painstakingly constructed pieces fail before they are finished. But a little later, after he tries again, he watches in boyish glee as they naturally fall apart. There's an angelic sweetness about that switch.
(Since Goldsworthy sees his photographs of his creations as essential to his art, a gallery of his best work is available in several books. The best one to start with is Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.)
-- KK
Rivers and Tides
By Thomas Riedelsheimer
2001, 90 min
$20
Amazon
Netflix
Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature
By Andy Goldsworthy
$35
Amazon
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How To Draw a Bunny
A pointed film about a most peculiar artist -- an artist too peculiar even for the New York art crowd. Ray Johnson had as much talent as Andy Warhol (a friend and colleague) but he really didn't want money or fame. He just wanted to make mail art and to amuse himself at home with whimsical and sly collages. (A goofy kilroy-is-here scribble bunny became his signature.) Soon, like Picasso, or a naive folk artist, everything in his grasp became art. Real artists grokked his stuff --if they ever got to see it, which few did. So he came by reputation to be the most famous unknown artist in America and then as a recluse he mysteriously disappeared, probably a suicide drowning. He left behind a huge master collage -- one clue pointing to the next in a complex recursive joke -- which turned out to be his life. In a delicious way I really enjoy, this documentary itself became an integral part of his grand collage to keep us guessing.
-- KK
How To Draw a Bunny
By John W. Walter
2002, 90 min
$37
Amazon
Netflix
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Chuck Jones: Extremes and In Betweens
A lightweight biography of the guy who developed Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Roadrunner and the Warner Brothers style of slapstick cartoons. But that's not why this is worth seeing. On the special features menu on the DVD is a short tutorial by Chuck Jones on his rules of animation, illustrated by brilliant clips from his cartoon shorts. These spots quickly give you the best short course in classic comic animation you'll ever find. It's no more than 10 minutes but it's revelatory.
-- KK
Chuck Jones: Extremes and In Betweens
By Margaret Selby
2000, 90 min
$13
Amazon
Netflix
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Touching the Void
This true film re-enacts a harrowing adventure by two mountaineers on a remote peak in the Andes, still unclimbed today. Near the top one mountaineer with a badly broken leg disappears over the edge of a cliff in a storm, hangs by a single rope, but is thought to be dead, so the rope is cut. Miraculously the injured man falls into a deep crevice, lives, and crawls out with his hands and rolls down a glacier and creeps back to camp almost dead on his elbows 6 days after they set out. Together with two stunt men, the two climbers re-live their nightmare by re-climbing the route and revealing what they were thinking the first time around. As an act of honesty, bravery and endurance, it's staggering to watch. At every junction you are sure, this is the end! But it isn't. In the climbing community this is considered one of the best mountaineering films ever.
-- KK
Touching the Void
By Kevin MacDonald
2003, 106 min
$11
Amazon
Netflix
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Supersize Me
Sure, it's a foolhardy stunt, to eat three meals a day at McDonalds for 30 days, just to see if it would wreck your body. But the perpetrator is extremely entertaining, and his hi-jinx are not as fanatical as you might think. His prank diet is also far more informative than any serious expose on bad nutrition. I'll continue to eat at McDonalds, but I really think every school kid in every country of the world offering fast-food should see this movie. It's fun, brilliant and more memorable than any health class. Real gonzo science video, enjoyable no matter what you eat.
-- KK
Supersize Me
By Morgan Spurlock
2004, 98 min
$20
Amazon
Netflix
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The Devil At Your Heels
Another crazy Canadian. This is a guy who jumps cars for a living. He buys junkers, pops the windows out, and then with a running start, uses a ramp to see how many lined-up cars he can fly his junker over (usually a dozen). He does that twice a night until he breaks a bone as he crashes into the last car. After 20 years and many injuries this small-time circus gets boring so he is seized by a big dream: to jump a car one mile. Over a river. A river that separates the US and Canada. So for the next 5 years his life is consumed as he spends millions of dollars of other people's money building this gigantic impossible ramp 200 feet into the air on the edge of the St. Lawrence River, while every possible thing that can go wrong with his rocket car goes wrong. Even the great Evel Knievel visits and advises him to give up. Nothing stops him from trying, and nothing prepares you for the shock of the surprise ending. Oh my gosh.
-- KK
Devil at Your Heels
1988, 103 min
$20
Shocking Videos
(You'll have to scroll down the page to find this title)
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Christo's Valley Curtain/Running Fence
The deep pleasure in this DVD is watching an artist work, from concept to final execution, on two of America's finest modern art pieces: Running Fence and Valley Curtain. Running Fence was a 24-mile 18-foot fence of white fabric zig-zagging across farmland in northern California, till it ran down into the Pacific ocean; Valley Curtain was a huge orange drape hanging across a canyon in Colorado. Both extravagant structures were deliberately temporary -- 2 weeks. Nonetheless the relentless political opposition to these ephemeral public works, an opposition conducted primarily by misguided over-zealous environmentalists, became in Christo's hands, part of the artwork itself. This pair of documentaries spends much time on Christo and his wife's frustrating campaign to convince landowners, politicians, greenies, engineers, and even other artists that their work was art. Understanding this resistance elevates your appreciation of the magnificent land-art pieces when completed.
-- KK
(Both documentaries are on the first DVD of a series of three containing 5 documentaries about Christo's work.)
5 Films About Christo and Jeanne-Claude
By Albert Maysles
1973, 282 min
$54
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on December 29, 2004 at 05:00 AM
The third installment of really great educational, factual, how-to and documentary films distilled out of the many I've recently watched. All of the following films are non-fiction, and they are available as DVDs or tapes. All the films here (with one exception) can be rented from Netflix or bought on Amazon. Let me know of ones I've missed. The other true films that have appeared in cool tools so far are archived here.
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Colonial House
The premise is somewhat familiar now. Take a hopelessly modern family and stick them in the past, as authenticated by historians, and make them live with only the tools and resources available centuries ago. In this case, the modern Americans are sent to live in the summer of 1628, on a forested island off of Maine. Their task: build a new world colony that can both survive and pay back its investors in England. Life is pretty grungy. Two families to a room; no outhouses. This is the third in a series of living history documentaries. The first began with one family living in London in the year 1900 (1900 House, reviewed earlier), then graduated to three families pioneering in Montana in 1883 (Frontier House), and now this one, where 20 people must cooperate to make their new pilgrim colony viable -- only with fewer tools. Of the three programs this is the best, in part because of the reality show-like drama and bickering between the colonists. Cameras record every detail as the pudgy newcomers scrounge for food, learn how to farm Indian corn and build with the most rudimentary tools, all the while wearing appropriate clothes, slowly starving, and assuming appropriate roles such as indentured servants with astounding ease. Who knew how easy devolution was? Like the hit TV series Survivor, it's about how primeval people get when survival is at stake. But unlike Survivor, there's historical logic, authentic rituals, and significant meaning in their test. Many participants are there to discover the origins of modern ways. As history and education, the series is unparalleled. My kids, both young and teenage, are addicted to this series and its never dull episodes. I think this brilliant method of history telling is the most innovative education going; if I had to choose one series, I'd start with the 8-hour Colonial House.
Colonial House
Director: Nick Brown
2004, 8 episodes
$43
Amazon
Netflix
***
Dogtown and Z-Boys
You would not expect a documentary about the slacker origins of skateboarding culture to hold your attention for more than 10 minutes, but Dogtown and Z-boys certainly does. It unleashes a steady stream of surprises, beginning with a small band of juvenile delinquents and outcast school kids who were so downtrodden they were kicked out of good waves in Santa Monica California. They then began to surf dorky skateboards. Soon they were amusing themselves with breaking into vacant backyard swimming pools and "taking on air" with zany skateboard antics and a lot of attitude. How this small-time obsession became an international sport, entertainment and merchandising complex is the rest of this amazing and well-made story. I consider it a key document of contemporary American culture.
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Director: Stacy Peralta
2002, 90 min
$17
Amazon
Netflix
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Rough Science
A very cool BBC series wherein the crafty producers take a bunch of scientists and technicians to a remote location and have them recreate sophisticated tools and inventions using only the primitive materials on hand. Vines, wood, bits of metal, shells. Here: make a clock (with bell), or a device to record sounds, or how about a camera, microscope, soap and sunblock?; or go survey and map the island -- using tools of your own construction. You don't know science until you can roll your own. This 10-part program is highly instructional because you get to see technology reduced to its essence -- and because not everything works. The DVDs are expensive; fire up your TiVo to catch them on PBS; another new series begins this fall.
Rough Science
Directed by Sarah Topalian & David Shulman
2002, 90 min
Bullfrog Films
(Ignore the ridiculous price of $890 for the 10-part series DVD on the website; Bullfrog offers an undisclosed "home use" price of $200 for the set or $25 each per tape of 10 or $65 per each of 3 DVDs. 800-543-3764)
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Microcosmos
It begins as a small nod to the insects in your backyard, but soon becomes a wide-opened window into a previously unknown microcosm of insect-dom. How is it possible we've never seen this world before with this clarity? With scarce narration this better-than-usual nature film is more poem than documentary. Works for kids. Filmed by the same Frenchman who later did Winged Migrations.
Microcosmos
Director :Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou
1996, 80 min
$18
Amazon
***
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
This documentary has grown on me. At first I thought it a biased view of a minor argument between a rinky-dink kook and an edgy government agency which doesn't know how to deal with a messiah. The films reconstructs how in 1993 the US government burnt down (accidentally?) a commune of 74 men, women and children after an insane 2-month long siege. All dead were followers of David Koresh, a cultish pastor of a messianic Christianity, who stupidly, recklessly, selfishly (and criminally) put his entire commune in the line of fire and likely death. Yet it is clear that the childish behavior of the US government as it reacted to a bully was far more reckless, stupid and wrong than Koresh's. Over time this film didn't fade away as many activist films do. Rather it has only grown in import as the US has begun to deal with extreme religious believers elsewhere. The events of the standoff and incineration at the church in Waco shows that regardless of who is president, there's no return from hatred once you demonize the antagonist. This film includes revealing home videos made by the believers trapped inside, new aerial film of the crazy bombardment, and first-hand accounts of terrible misunderstandings. If your government hasn't enraged you in a while, try this film. Works for both lefties and right-wingers!
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
Director: William Gazecki
1997, 136 min
$18
Amazon
Netflix
***
Fog of War
Strictly a talking head -- this one of Robert McNamara, considered the chief strategist of the Vietnam War as he recounts his personal history of how the war began. There are many lessons to be had from his belated candor as an insider; the one I took away reflects the title of the documentary: not only was the public kept ignorant of all that was going on, but even the brass in charge did not fully agree on or understand what was happening: thus the fog of war. And 10 other lessons as well.
Fog of War
Director: Errol Morris
2003, 107 min
$20
Amazon
Netflix
***
Sing Faster
A quick look at the work of stage hands on the very elaborate set of the epic Wagner Ring Cycle opera. Stage hands are like sailors (all that rigging). These guys seem to date only ballerinas, and they endure long spells of boredom between intense physical coordination. The title of the film comes from their eternal desire to close the last act: "come on, sing faster" they mutter. The best parts of this short peek behind the scenes are the interviews where stage hands give their New Yorker street version of the convoluted plot of the Wagner operas playing endlessly around them.
Sing Faster
Director: Jon Else
1999, 60 min
$24
Amazon
Netflix
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Brother's Keeper
Four elderly brothers share a dairy farm in the boonies of upper New York state. They are barely smarter than their cows, with some kind of genetic dim-wittedness. Without grooming skills, or reason to care, they soon are left alone in their muddy and filthy shack by their neighbors. Until one of the brothers dies. The older brother is charged with murdering him by suffocation as a mercy killing. There is no evidence -- other than two of the brothers' own confessions to the police. But they retract those soon enough. Kind of. Their intelligence seems to fluctuate by whim. This story is about the subtle degrees of mental illness and what is disability (can run a real farm for 40 years if you are retarded?), and the reach or overreach of law and its cold justice. Mostly you want to know, did the accused brother kill his brother to relieve him of his pain? A honest murder mystery. I liked it because I realized that if I were the cops I would not know what was fair.
Brother's Keeper
Director: Joe Berlinger
1992, 105 min
$22
Amazon
Netflix
***
Silk Road
Even in Marco Polo's time the Silk Road between Europe and China wove through vast desert wildernesses and sparsely populated steppes. It was a tough and lonely journey then, and unlike most travels in 2004, it still is a journey through grand nothingness. Because it has always been so remote, the ruins of those ancient days lay near our modern touch now. One can still find bits of silk hundreds of years old fluttering in the sand at ruins on the old road. In 1979 the Chinese government and NHK, the Japanese TV station, teamed up to make a well-financed expedition to explore the Silk Road within the Chinese borders, and the resulting documentary remains the best orientation to what remains of that ancient route. The big surprise is the extent of Buddhism in the lands we now imagine as classically Islamic. Think of those Buddhists' statues in Afghanistan. At times this 12-hour (!) extravagant travelogue plods as slow as a Chinese propaganda movie, and the soundtrack is inexplicably scored by the new age celebrity musician Kitaro, but Central Asia is looming on the horizon as the political hot-spot of this new century, so better get your maps out as the caravan trudges along.
Silk Road
1990, 600 min
$117, 3-disc DVD collection
Amazon
Netflix
***
Bounce
Who are these guys, the beefy ones standing at the gates of nightclubs and discos deciding who gets in? Are they as beautiful as the beautiful people they control? I never tire of seeing what really happens behind the scenes, or of hearing about what really goes into other peoples occupations, and with this documentary I now know more about bouncers than I thought possible. For a bit of drama, there's an opening at a hot club, so we follow a few wannabees who hope to get the job. I was rooting for the meek giant who lived with his mom. It's a satisfying journey into a world you often cross but never see.
Bounce: Behind the Velvet Ropes
Director: Steven Cantor
2000, 71 min
$22
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on September 22, 2004 at 11:08 AM
Best way to learn French at home
French In Action is a video-based course created by Pierre Capretz of Yale University. I know of no better way to rapidly obtain a knowledge of day-to-day French. This course is so excellent it almost justifies the invention of television.
The French in Action course is focused around 52 half-hour video lessons which assume you have no prior knowledge of the language. The course starts in French from the first instant. You may feel like an idiot at first, but the fact is you can mess up genders, adjectival forms, and much of verb conjugation in French and still be understood perfectly well on the street.
Get this course and play one video per day, each and every day, week in and week out. Just pick a 30 minute time period in your day, and work your way through the videos from number 1 through number 52, one per day. When you get to the end, go back to the beginning and start over again. Repeat until you understand perfectly and have ceased to improve. Even if you don't have time to read the accompanying text, or practice with the workbooks, or use the audio cassettes, make the 30 minute slot for the video a permanent part of your life. The first time through you'll probably miss about 90% at first hearing. The second time, you'll get about half, and by the third time you'll understand almost everything. Your very progress provides strong reinforcement as you follow the course. Simply by watching this series of 52 videos through two times, you could parachute into Abidjan and get along in day to day life from the moment you hit the ground. It's that good. Really.
-- John Walker
French in Action
Streaming video on demand, click the "VoD" button following each segment
DVD purchase
For library borrowing see note in Destinos.
Posted on September 09, 2004 at 02:59 PM
Best way to learn Spanish at home
Based on the above recommendation of John Walker, founder of AutoDesk, now living in a French-speaking part of Switzerland, I tried out the French in Action series. It is all that he promises. I knew zero French. No, let me correct that: I knew negative French because I've had a long aversion to French words. I was amazed how far I got so quickly merely by watching and responding to this series of ever deepening complexity. The key to progress is the vivid visuals, body language and corny involvement that the videos cultivate.
Inspired by the French method, however, I sought out a Spanish equivalent and found it in Destinos. Like French in Action, Destinos is a highly structured, highly-evolved video program based on an innovative professor's work, and published by the Annenberg Foundation. In Destinos, you again start off with no Spanish and very rapidly become sucked into a long Spanish telenovela. The story is cleverly designed to start basic and steadily leverage in sophisticated terms, so that by the 52nd show you can understand nearly everything in the first show. And then you start over.
Having gone through both courses, there are some differences. In French in Action you get a wild-haired French professor gesturing emphatically to convey weird French grammar, while cute little clips from French movies repeat a phrase in many voices so you can get used to hearing it spoken live. And the love story that forms the backbone narrative is heavily diagrammed in a French logical way. Destinos, on the other hand, is more relaxed and focuses almost exclusively on a very high-production detective mystery/soap opera which was filmed in 5 countries on 3 continents. It is easy to let yourself get hooked on the story, even though you are only catching 10% of it. Because Spanish is less distant to English speakers, there is less emphasis than the French on grammar and pronunciation. Destinos is more casual, go with the flow and you'll pick it up, while French in Action is more pedagogical and well... French.
The ideal way to learn a language is immersion, where you are forced to both listen, speak and read. Because of the nature of this medium -- a series of videos -- listening is the primary action stressed, although both programs give plenty of opportunity for reading and speaking. At the end of even the third time through your fluency will be primarily in comprehension -- but you'll be in a great position to take it much further very fast.
Both of these programs share another very important feature; both are funded by Annenberg/CPB, a non-profit promoting innovation in schools. Recognizing the value of educational videos, Annenberg has funded the purchase of these series for public libraries. This means that almost every library system in the US has a copy of the series.
These shows are also occasionally broadcast on PBS so you can set your TiVo to capture them. Some local PBS stations conveniently run the series consecutively on a few nights to make them easier to tape.
They are outrageously expensive to purchase: $500 for the series of 12 DVDs and $400 for 14 VHS tapes. DVDs could be a good deal for those traveling to Spanish or French speaking lands, where the videos are extremely effective with local practice.
However, if you don't mind sitting in front of your computer you can get a completely free video stream of either Destinos or French in Action from the Annenberg website.
Me? I borrowed mine from the library.
In a perfect world, someone wise would fund a similar well-crafted soap opera language series in Chinese for learning Mandarin, which is only spoken by 1 billion or so people. Or Arabic, Swahili, German, and so on.
In the meantime, buena suerte, or bonne chance!
-- KK
French in Action
Streaming video on demand, click the "VoD" button following each segment
DVD purchase
Destinos
Streaming video on demand, click the "VoD" button following each segment
DVD purchase
Posted on September 09, 2004 at 02:56 PM
A 1950s capture of voodoo rituals in Haiti, created by Maya Deren, an experimental filmmaker. Because she was an initiate of voodoo, this film became an influential work of visual anthropology. It's value to me is in its rare portrayal of voodoo practice prior to becoming well known outside of
Haiti.
-- KK
By Lonard Forest
1985
52 min
Amazon
Posted on July 02, 2004 at 01:16 PM
I rely on Rick Steves' masterly command of travel minutia to guide me in Europe. This guy spends 4 months there every year keeping his advice updated in his expanding line of eponymous books. Rick has the drill down perfectly, and he has a real gift for teaching what he knows. Yet as great as his books are, the very best way to get educated in traveling Europe with ease and grace is to watch his short course in Travel Skills. I am a hardened veteran traveler and I picked up some great tips. If you are just starting out to Europe, I can't recommend this enough.
Once sold as a separate tape, this video is now packaged as part of a longer DVD which also includes a quick and lively video tour of Germany and the Swiss Alps by Rick Steves himself.
-- KK
By Rick Steves
4 hours
$20
Ricksteves.com
Posted on June 02, 2004 at 12:15 PM
A million stories unfold in Lijiang, a picturesque historic town in the mountains of southwest China. This 4-hour tale follows four local families over several years as their lives twist, turn, deepen, intermingle, and blossom. Their openness is uncharacteristically candid for rural China; a tribute to veteran documentarian Phil Agland. The universal fears and dreams of a vast continent are condensed into a tightly edited few hours of subtitled witness. So intimate is this view of Chinese life that it is close to anthropology. Highly recommended.
-- KK
1994
115 min
$40
National Geographic online store
Posted on June 02, 2004 at 11:52 AM
Natural history of the past
What if you could film dinosaurs on location, like in a nature documentary? That's what this four-hour BBC extravanaza does with advance digital technology. The incredible footage in Walking with Dinosaurs is utterly convincing. Home movies of Ornithocheirus. As far as science can presently tell, this is what dinosaurs were like. From mating rituals, to tending their young; from chasing prey to fleeing from predators. These videos are better than any textbook: scientifically sound, technically astounding. Even better is Walking with Prehistoric Beasts. This sequel expands the variety of creatures brought back to digital life. You get saber tooth tigers, giant sloths, and a two-ton armadillo, among other extinct species -all with the same versimilitude of a convincing digital recreation. One continues to believe they were merely filmed. Walking with Allosaurus features one species of dino in depth. The "making of" portions for each film by the zoologists are just as educational . We watch these films quite often. Walking with Dinosaurs alone is worth four hours of your time.
-- KK
2004
240 min each
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on June 02, 2004 at 11:45 AM
Although it is now 25 years old, Carl Sagan's Cosmos still warrants viewing. I watched it again recently and it captured me. I've found no better orientation to the visible heavens and our small place in the universe than this 13-part series, now conveniently housed in one boxed DVD set. Most of the science is still valid, and Sagan's explanations and astronomical insights have yet to be exceeded for clarity and wit. When a student begins to wonder "where are we?" and asks other big questions, these are the disks to slide into the player.
-- KK
By Carl Sagan
1980
780 min
GreenCine
Amazon
Posted on June 02, 2004 at 11:36 AM
Civilization as seen through the eyes of art and architecture. While art is the narrow focus, the vista in Kenneth Clark’s view is as vast as 2,000 years of western history. The continuity of this long-view is a treat. I can’t think of any other factual video with an equal span of attention.
By Michael Gill and Peter Montagnon
1969
5 volumes
Amazon
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 12:23 PM
The most remarkable aspect of this most remarkable documentary is the emotional weight it carries. Comprised almost solely of slow passes across old black and white still photos (now known as a Ken Burns move) this expertly narrated film makes you weep and cringe and sail with deep understanding. It reordered my notion of the deepest scar (the largest war ever) on this continent. At 11 hours it’s a long journey, but well worth it. It is hard to watch this series and not come to see it as your view of the Civil War. And it changed the language of documentary filmmaking, too.
By Ken Burns
1990
680 min
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 12:15 PM
Some threshold was crossed at Woodstock in 1969 when half a million kids appeared out of nowhere to govern themselves and listen to their favorite bands in the rain. The music (pretty great), the vibes, and the expectations and hope of this outburst of optimism are all captured on this remarkable film - which everyone agrees was much better than being there. The dreams of two decades are encapsulated into 4 hours.
By Michael Wadleigh
1970
228 min
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 11:45 AM
The missing power of color
It's eerie how the simple addition of color can utterly transform our notions of the past. The restoration of color to World War II takes it from a remote, starkly defined monument into an immediate, vibrant, contemporary experience. It's at once more shocking and more beautiful. Enough experimental color footage (digitally restored) was filmed by US, German, and Japanese photographers to provide this amazing three-hour account of the war from all sides. This is how the participants of Europe and the Pacific saw it. Their words and letters form the narration for this British product. Disturbing though it is, this is the version that one wants to remember of the last world war.
1999
165 minutes
$18
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 11:29 AM
The ultimate chain reaction
This supremely demented documentary by two German artists presents a continuous chain reaction than runs for the length of the film. Old tires, ladders, shoes, flames and explosions trigger the next piece of precariously balanced junk. This art-piece is greatly appreciated by nerds for the amazing chemistry and physics required to keep self-generated chaos on track. Science teachers play the video for lessons in equilibrium and causation, while artists roll the film at parties for an irresistible and mesmerizing spectacle. I like it for the illustration of the never-ending chain reaction that seems to take over the world. A Mr. Wizard science demonstration that takes on its own life.
-- KK
By Peter Fischli and David Weiss
1987
30 min
GreenCine
Amazon
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 11:01 AM
Director Penelope Spheeris, who was part of the LA punk scene, turns her cameras on punk bands and the club kids, giving an insider’s view of the peculiar vibrant moment of pop history, one so hot it burnt itself out fast, and now is gone except for this film.
-- Richard Kadrey
The Decline of Western Civilization
Director: Penelope Spheeris
$25
Amazon
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 01:44 PM
One of the great films about filmmaking and artistic obsession (the other is Heart of Darkness; see below) This film captures director Werner Herzog going quietly insane in the Amazon jungle while making his equally insane movie Fitzcarraldo. Herzog gradually becomes the very fictional character his movie is about, an obsessed madman determined to drag a riverboat over a mountain.
-- Richard Kadrey
Burden of Dreams
Director: Les Blank
1992
$60, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 01:24 PM
What started out as a British documentary exposing the role of class in a child’s destiny has turned into one of the most satisfying works of cultural anthropology and a showcase longitudinal study. Every seven years, starting at the age of seven, we visit the same group of children as they grow up, have dreams, are lost and remade, and in many cases see their lives take the unexpected turn as they age. Because each new film is created to be understood by itself, each recapitulates all the others before it, so there is a lot of repetition from issue to issue, but a lot missing if you only see the last one.
-- Kevin Kelly
The Up Series
Director: Michael Apted
2004, 576 min
$87 5 disc series
Amazon
GreenCine
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 01:19 PM
The concept is simple. Reveal what really happens as a world-class couture designer develops, in fits and starts, his fall line. Show the factual side of a fashion show. The result is both hilarious and mesmerizing. Unexpectedly I came to appreciate fashion designers as artists, even though I have zero fashion sense.
-- Kevin Kelly
Unzipped
Director: Douglas Keeve
1995, 73 min
$18
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 12:52 PM
A modern-day Rashamon, set in Texas. This version of the tale involves a real man, named Randall Adams, claiming innocence while stuck on death row. The film hypnotically plays out his alleged murder of a cop over and over, each time according to different witnesses, until the “evidence” of the crime collapses under the tainted weight of so many versions. This was a new form of nonfiction film and it helped free an innocent man from prison. How many films can claim that?
-- Richard Kadrey
Thin Blue Line
Director: Errol Morris
1988
$10, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 12:20 PM
Some lives need a movie. Russian inventor Leon Theremin created the world’s first electronic instrument, and it bore his name. He was an outstanding success in the 1920s and 30s, but in the 40s, he disappeared. This film looks at Theremin’s overlooked life and work, and reveals the reasons for his disappearance and brief reappearance in his 90s. Interviews include theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore and synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog.
-- Richard Kadrey
Theremin
Director: Steven M. Martin
1995, 82 min
$13
Amazon
GreenCine
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 12:15 PM
Spalding Gray’s cleverly staged monologue is both a tall tale and a reflection on acting in The Killing Fields, the fall of Cambodia (and subsequent genocide) and his own search for spirituality.
-- Richard Kadrey
Swimming to Cambodia
Director: Jonathan Demme
1987
$15, VHS
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 12:11 PM
Robot performance group Survival Research Laboratories stages scenarios of machine violence and conceptual madness. This recording is not a document of a public event, but a performance, shot on a set as SRL’s machines move through a Bosch-like landscape of fire and meat, wrecking havoc.
-- Richard Kadrey
Survival Research Laboratories: A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief
Directed by Jon Reiss, Fictional worlds, Mark Pauline, Matt Heckert
1988, 13 min
$18
SRL
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 12:04 PM
The life and death of 70s pop star Karen Carpenter is told as a bizarre shockumentary--with Barbie dolls standing in for actors. Halfway between a twisted after-school special and a vaguely obscene puppet show, this film offended more than just the Carpenter family. You can’t find it anywhere. Look for bootlegs where you can.
-- Richard Kadrey
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
By Todd Haynes
1985, 45 min.
$20
5 minutes to live
Posted on May 21, 2004 at 11:58 AM
Lying somewhere between a high-concept theater piece and a down and dirty rock show, Stop Making Sense captures the band Talking Heads at the height of their energy and inventiveness.
-- Richard Kadrey
Stop Making Sense
Director: Jonathan Demme
1984, 99 min
$25
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 05:13 PM
Rabble-rouser Michael Moore tosses out the ideal of journalistic “impartiality” and makes a documentary that’s more like guerilla theater than reportage. By turns, the film is funny, pathetic, ironic, and infuriating. Is it about General Motors? Flint, Michigan? Michael Moore? Who knows? It’s mostly about power and access to power. (Also worth catching is the film’s sequel, Pets or Meat.)
-- Richard Kadrey
Roger & Me
Director: Michael Moore
1989, 90 min
$15, VHS
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 05:03 PM
The best travel documentary series ever made. For ten years two brothers lived in, adventured throughout, and mastered the islands of Indonesia. They delve into this truly esoteric culture with reckless enthusiasm and true love. And they film a lot of bizarre events. This is travel as art.
-- Kevin Kelly
Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey
1999
$90, VHS Box set of 4
Amazon
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 04:58 PM
Proving that even an interview format can succeed if done with passion, this famous set of conversations between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers on the power of myths still delivers a very powerful punch.
-- Kevin Kelly
Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth
1988
$49
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 04:41 PM
A meditation on the power of images, place and the loss of the self in a digital culture. This cinematic journal by Wim Wenders centers on Japanese clothing designer Yoji Yamamoto, and explores how what we wear can define us as individuals.
-- Richard Kadrey
Notebook on Cities & Clothes
Director: Wim Wenders
1989, 81 min
$22
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 04:34 PM
One of the first film documentaries in history, and still unrivaled for clarity and amazement. Shows how Eskimo (Inuit) survived with traditional ways.
-- Kevin Kelly
Nanook of the North
Director: Robert J. Flaherty
1922, 79 min
$27
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 01:31 PM
The first and probably still greatest shockumentary ever made. More exploitive than the creepiest drive-in B movie, Mondo Cane snatches up forbidden images of human degradation and even death and throws them in the viewer’s face, all to an Italian pop music score. Unforgettable—though you may want to.
-- Richard Kadrey
Mondo Cane
Director: Gualtiero Jacopetti
1962, 108 min
$27
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 01:24 PM
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Lumiere brothers’ first movie, forty directors from around the world are invited to use one of the brothers’ handcranked cameras to make an original 52-second film (the length of the Lumieres’ original reels). The results from these modern artists range from pedestrian to stunning, with David Lynch, Peter Greenawy and Alain Corneau turning in especially memorable sequences.
-- Richard Kadrey
Lumiere & Co.
Director: David Lynch
1995, 88 min
$22
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 20, 2004 at 01:01 PM
The design approach to life
Design is hip these days. Long before it was hip, Charles and Ray Eames pioneered the design approach to life. Nowhere is their legacy so well represented as in this single-volume exhibit covering every project in their life's work. The Eameses were probably the tech-friendliest designers ever, without ever being hi-tech. They certainly were the first on the frontiers of exhibit, museum, and informational film design. They designed types of things that had never been designed before. This book, together with the multi-volume DVD of their brilliant short films, makes it clear that the Eames pursued their passions first. As design goes commercial in a big way, theirs is a mighty inspiring stance. This is the most comprehensive and graphic record of not only their work (3,500 images) but perhaps of any designer's work. I use this book to expand my notions of what can be designed.
-- KK
Eames Design
The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames
John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames
1989, 456 pages
$64
Amazon
The Films of Charles and Ray Eames
From Amazon, $22 each:
    
Vol. 1 "Powers of Ten" and "901: After 45 Years of Working." 21 minutes
Vol. 2 "Toccata for Toy Trains," "House: After Five Years of Living," "Lucia Chase Vignette," "Kaleidoscope Jazz Choir," "The Black Ships: and "Atlas." 62 minutes
Vol. 3 "The World of Franklin and Jefferson," "The Franklin and Jefferson Proposal Film" and "The Opening of an Exhibition."
Vol. 4 "Design Q&A," " IBM Mathematics Peep Shows," "SX-70," "Copernicus," "Fiberglass Chairs" and "Goods." 59 minutes
Vol. 5 "Tops," "IBM at the Fair," "A Computer Glossary," "Eames Lounge Chair," "The Expanding Airport," "Kepler's Laws," "Bread," "Polyorchis Halpus" and "Tops."
Rentable from Netflix
Also available from Eames Office
310/396-5991
Excerpt:
Young viewer watching a Mathematica Peep Show. These films were called "peep shows" because they were first shown in devices designed to accommodate one viewer. They were intended for a short attention span; each two-minute film explored one mathematical concept and could be seen as many times as a viewer needed to understand the idea.
The Moebius Band with its traveling red arrow. The arrow is started on its path by pushing a button. 1961.
A large drum made in the Eames Office demonstrated how calendar years and feast days are determined. The drum was divided into horizontal strips, each of which represented one solar year, with the succession of days and full moons marked. The drum charted certain seasonal celebrations--Christian Easter, Orthodox Easter, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan, Islamic New Year, winter and summer solstices, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Thanksgiving and leap-year day--and showed how their dates change from year to year.
Posted on May 19, 2004 at 02:15 PM
While preparing a production of Richard III, actor Al Pacino and his cast ask “Why do we perform Shakespeare anymore?” Scenes are ripped apart and history is dissected. A great glimpse of raw creativity by a stellar acting ensemble.
-- Richard Kadrey
Looking for Richard
Director: Al Pacino
1996
$27, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 06, 2004 at 03:14 PM
Not another band movie! No, not just another band movie. Mixing performance footage from The Band’s last concert together with interviews, director Martin Scorcese reinvents the concert film, bringing to it all the cinematic flair he used on movies such as Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
-- Richard Kadrey
The Last Waltz
Director: Martin Scorsese
1978, 117 min
$20
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 06, 2004 at 03:07 PM
The thrill of a really great factual is you don’t know how it is going to end. Here we follow young inner-city kids trying to escape their circumstances by making it big in basketball. We see how hard it is, and how big the dream can be. I came to root for them as if they were
family.
-- Kevin Kelly
Hoop Dreams
Director: Steve James (II)
1994
$22
Amazon
Posted on May 06, 2004 at 03:03 PM
A film is like an invasion. Vietnam War’s most memorable film, Apocalypse Now, like the war itself, nearly did in its creators. Francis Ford Cuppola’s wife filmed the director as his project sank deeper and deeper into sheer, irretrievable chaos. This is a strange case where the movie about the movie is just as good as the movie.
-- Kevin Kelly
Hearts of Darkness
Director: Eleanor Coppola
1991
$15, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 06, 2004 at 02:59 PM
Errol Morris’s 1978 documentary about pet cemeteries is so much more than that. Wrapped in layers of pathos, humor, and surprising candor, the film goes beyond mere novelty and becomes an examination of the power of love and the nature of life.
-- Richard Kadrey
Gates of Heaven
Directed by Errol Morris
1978
$33, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 05, 2004 at 10:52 AM
What do get when you take unedited footage of political candidates making glad-handing stops, and mix it with raw satellite feeds of them waiting to be interviewed on television? Surreal moments such as George Bush who, when asked to speak during a sound check, says “This is not Dana Carvey.”
-- Richard Kadrey
Feed
Directed by Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway
1992
$20, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 05, 2004 at 10:42 AM
Orson Welles was both a filmmaker and a stage magician and he uses all his visual and mental sleight-of-hand tricks in his free-form essay on the nature of lies and fakery. Primarily a portrait of an infamous art forger, it also features an interview with that other notorious faker (barely known at the time), Clifford Irving.
-- Richard Kadrey
F for Fake
Directed by Orson Welles
1973
$30, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 05, 2004 at 10:32 AM
As rough and ragged as its subject—Bob Dylan—this portrait of the already legendary musician changed the way we see pop idols. This is no press agent puff piece, but a down and dirty portrait of a cranky artist and an industry on the edge of transformation: Dylan, from a fuzzy folk hero into a cynical recluse, and the music biz from Tin Pan Alley into the machine it is today.
-- Richard Kadrey
Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back
Directed by D.A. Pennebaker
1967, 96 min
$20
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 04:11 PM
This has to be the most honest portrait of an artist ever. Robert Crumb, the 60s underground comic genius, is revealed in all his pathetic neuroses and glorious brilliance. The tipping point is being introduced to his eccentric family which suddenly explains all.
-- KK
Crumb
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
1994, 109 min
$24
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 03:52 PM
An offbeat, kinky, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the monstrous cane toad invasion of Australia and of the people who love the poisonous creatures and those who hate them. A nature film with attitude.
-- KK
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
Directed by Mark Lewis
1987
$22
Amazon
Netflix
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 03:35 PM
Bands and concerts lend themselves to documentaries easily; they’ve got a built in soundtrack. This one follows the rediscovery of forgotten Cuban musicians as they make a new best-selling album. What works is the insight it provides to contemporary Cuba.
-- KK
Buena Vista Social Club
Directed by Wim Wenders
1999, 101 min
$12
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 03:27 PM
This won’t help you with physics, like the book did, but it will give you a powerful portrait of what a brain trapped in a withering body can still accomplish. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s ability to imagine the universe is matched only by his disheartening disability to do the most ordinary activity, including talking. His life is amazing; this film quite inspiring.
-- KK
A Brief History of Time
Directed by Errol Morris
1992
$18 VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 03:21 PM
A Day in the Life of White Supremacist America, shot in Michigan in 1991. This film captures both the collective power of racist groups and the frightening banality of the beliefs of the groups’ individual members.
-- Richard Kadrey
Blood in the Face
Directed by Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway
1991
$20 VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 03:14 PM
No need to mock nuclear power and atomic weapons when the promoters do it so well themselves. This brilliant compilation of mostly government-funded atomic propaganda films is very campy. Imagine a nuclear version of Reefer Madness.
-- Richard kadrey
The Atomic Cafe
Directed by Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty
1982, 88 min
$22
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 04, 2004 at 02:58 PM
This is one of the all-time great visual anthropology pieces. It took the filmmakers two years to settle into a village of Pygmies and six months of warming up before they even began filming. All this care transforms exotic natives into next-door people. My favorite part is when the little boy tells his parent he wants them to send his newborn brother back from wherever it was that he came. Noble savages, this ain’t.
-- KK
Baka: The People of the Forest
Directed by Phil Agland
1990
$18, VHS
Click4Stuff
Posted on May 03, 2004 at 02:55 PM
The simplest are sometimes the best. This documentary is about one song, “Amazing Grace.” An amazing lot can be seen through this four-stanza song. Bill Moyers follows the origins and evolution of one of the world’s most famous hymns. It is part music history, part African-American history, and part song itself.
-- KK
Amazing Grace
1999, 70 min
Presented by Billl Moyers
$25, VHS
Amazon
Posted on May 02, 2004 at 10:45 AM
As he nears old age, a New York City artist decides to revisit the adventures of his youth in distant lands. In the 1950s, while on an art fellowship, Tobias Schneebaum walked alone and unguided into the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to make first contact with some Indian headhunters. He shed his clothes and old ways and went native with them. But after his clan raided a neighboring tribe, murdered the villagers, and then ate their enemies in a victory feast -- and he ate too, he decided to return. Later he ended up collecting the art of headhunters in New Guinea, where he lived with another tribe who were also cannibalistic, and subsequently fell in love with, and become partners with, one of the hunters. Forty years later he is persuaded, despite having an artificial hip, to leave his now well-worn routines in NYC to see if he can find the tribesmen in the Amazon and New Guinea again. He gets them to talk about their former eating habits. This is a complex weave of the weirdness of nostalgia, the subtleties of cross cultural communication, and the attraction of Otherness.
-- KK
Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
2000, 94 min.
Directed by: David Shapiro II, Laurie Shapiro
$22
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 01, 2004 at 11:56 AM
It ain't news that kids play the turntable as if it was a musical instrument but this fast-paced history of how DJ scratching was invented is pretty cool. Profiles of four famous "turntable-ists" give a clear picture of how remarkable their scratching skill is; they can essentially sing by deftly oscillating appropriate portions of several records. With fine detail the film reveals the scratchers extreme dedication to innovation, constant practice, and an obsessive knowledge of records. It's quite a trip, very geeky in many ways, but it increased my respect and admiration for this weird little achievement 1000%.
-- KK [recommended by Matt Vance and by Alexey J. Merz]
Scratch
2001, 92 min.
Directed by: Doug Pray
$23
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on May 01, 2004 at 11:53 AM
Poem about humanity
A cinematic poem celebrating the human relation to the eternal. Not a word is spoken, but every person alive in the twenty-four countries this was filmed in would understand it. It’s about Us on Earth Now. It’s the first truly sacred film I’ve seen (best viewed in DVD on as large a screen as possible). Next time they send a disc into space to be viewed by aliens, this is the disc they should send.
-- KK
Baraka
Ron Fricke
1992, 104 minutes
$15
MPI Media Group
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on April 09, 2004 at 09:59 AM
Competitive tinkering
An attempt to build a flying machine in 36 hours.
The TV show said to be the most commonly recorded on a TiVo is the hackers' special, Junkyard Wars. Two teams of tinkerers race against each other to construct a working submarine, or an airplane, or a cannon, or deep-sea diving gear, all assembled from scrap found in a junkyard, and all built within a day and a half. That both sides usually succeed at some level (although only one side wins) is the first surprise of this TV series. More amazing is the easy lesson in physics and engineering each episode brings. By watching how a pump is cobbled together from motorscooter tires, one gets a visceral sense of how a pump works. By watching how geeks think around impossible obstacles, one catches the confidence to tackle an impossible project. They are educational enough that some science classes show them.
--KK
Junkyard Wars
Episodes available, for example:
Junkyard Wars: Cannons Video #187435
Junkyard Wars: Flying Machines Video #187450
$20
The Discovery Store
 Amphibian dune buggy from scrap parts.
 Launching a homemade torpedo.
 The propeller end of the team's torpedo.
Posted on February 02, 2004 at 01:38 PM
PDF version
I released a small number of this self-published book on Amazon, but they are now sold out. Because of the demand for the book, I've now made an inexpensive PDF version available.
What it is: "True Films" contains the best 100 documentaries I've reviewed here as of December, 2004. I winnowed some from the larger list, and came up with an alphabetical collection of 100 documentaries I feel are worth your time. Most people will enjoy the majority included. There's been one private film club launched around this list.
What you get for your $3: a downloadable PDF file of a color version of the book (which was printed in B&W).
Enjoy, and let me know what great documentaries or factuals I've missed.
-- KK
True Films 1.1 -- PDF version
2004, 52 pages, 15 MB
$3
Available via PayPal
Posted on February 01, 2004 at 05:00 AM
Filmed more than 25 years ago, long before weight lifting was considered healthy and fashionable, this dramatic 16mm film introduced the world to professional muscle men. These misshapen guys were assumed to be outright freaks, whose fandom was fringe and tiny. But I was surprised how much appreciation for bodybuilding as art and sport I gained in just one watching. But most fascinating is the film's focus on an unknown young champion from Austria, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose ambitions and manipulations are naked and unbounded. Looking back now from his later destiny as governor of California and international movie star, this classic documentary is doubly mesmerizing.
-- KK
Pumping Iron
1976, 85 min.
Directed by: George Butler II, Robert Fiore
$15
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:50 AM
In the pre-dawn of the WWII, an ambitious outdoorsman convinces President Roosevelt to fund an elite army corp who are expert in mountain skills -- to compliment US water and amphibious forces. They round up all the ski bums, mountain climbers and wilderness die-hards in America at that time, long before such activities were mainstream. Among those who respond to this call is sierra club founder-to-be David Brower. The soldiers camp and train in Colorado, near the then unknown Aspen. They develop the snowmobile, the snow cat, early versions of modern camping, and modern ski techniques. Then off to the Alps in Italy where the US mountain unit defeats Nazi troops in a key mountain battle. Then they return to the US to invent the ski industry, Nike shoes, and run most of the ski resorts in the West. What holds all this together is the intense camaraderie of these outdoor fanatics. As one old soldier said, "This wasn't an Army unit. It was a fraternity."
-- KK
Fire on the Mountain
1996, 72 min.
Directed by: George Gage, Beth Gage
$27
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:45 AM
A sophisticated New York City filmmmaker meets a homeless woman in Central Park, and finds her to be unusually smart, vivacious, and seemingly happy to camp year-round with her dogs. How does she get by with so much enlightened contentment? It's soon obvious the attractive woman is certifiably crazy, operating on another plane of reality. Voices tell her she is Jupiter's wife. But rather than flee, as any sane person would do, the filmmaker decides to unravel her story. He does this by taking her irrational claims as coded messages which he learns to interpret from her outrageous clues. He uses his investigative skills in New York to piece together her submerged life, and he then tells the fascinating story she is no longer capable of telling. It is a remarkable achievement. Although he tries to help her, in the end she returns to the park. But the film completely changed my understanding of what the voices say to the afflicted: they are a code that tries to explain. In the middle of the film you'll want to bail because you are completely focused on someone's derangements, but its worth hanging through to the conclusion as the filmmaker completes his amazing decipherment.
-- KK [recommended by Jonathan Steigman]
Jupiter's Wife
1995, 78 min.
Directed by: Michel Negroponte
$17
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:34 AM
Of all of David Attenborough's famous and fabulous surveys of life, this one on the life of birds is his best -- perhaps because Attenborough loved birds the most. His look at winged creatures is quirky, intelligent, deep, and memorable. It nicely serves as a brilliant short course in ornithology, or as a mesmerizing way to keep restless young tamed for hours because he reveals one amazing thing after another. You can find nature films round the clock on cable; this series is simply in a class by itself, worth re-watching many times. Extreme Birds is how I think of it.
-- KK
The Life of Birds
1998, 540 min. (3 disc series)
Presented by: David Attenborough
$52
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:31 AM
A weird form of evangelism that is slowly gaining among fundamentalists. Churches in the midwest construct vast "hell houses" to scare visitors to Jesus. Originally begun as a response to Halloween haunted houses, these elaborate stagings, crammed with theatrical effects and high-school actors on October 31, try to outdo each other in their ultra-realistic depiction of sin and horror. This documentary follows one church as they embark on another year of creatively presenting depravity -- a labyrinth of rooms each seeded with a different sin (suicide, drug addiction, prostitution) realistically reenacted. Innocent kids scare themselves sick by how realistic they've made their own hell. The film works because it is sympathetic to those possessed by their enemy, and because it doesn't overdo the obvious irony that hell houses are so spooky in concept that they scare in the wrong direction. On the other hand, nobody creates such amazing haunted houses like they do.
-- KK
Hell House
2001, 86 min.
Directed by: George Ratliff
$22
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:20 AM
You simply have to see this one to believe it. A weekend fisherman in Oklahoma crawls along the bottom of a creek, head submerged under the muddy water, wiggling his fingers in dark holes and crevices. When a huge catfish hiding in the muck swallows his hand, the man yanks the 70 pound beast up out of the water, suckered to his fist. It's call noodling and your average Okie redneck thinks this insanity gives rednecks a bad name. The noodlers think its the only fair way to fish. The filmmakers decide to hold the first national Noodling Contest for cash, which brings to light more noodlers than anyone knew about. After a while, sticking your hand into a dark underwater hole to let a monstrous fish bite it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to fish.
-- KK [recommended by Matt Vance]
Okie Noodling
2001, 57 min.
Directed by: Bradley Beesley
$13
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on January 01, 2004 at 11:16 AM
The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance.” Created between 1975 and 1982, the narrative-free documentary is a strange and beautiful visual feast featuring hypnotic images illustrating civilization’s impact on Earth. With its haunting score by Philip Glass and stunning cinematography, Koyaanisqatsi takes the viewer on a wild flight from the tranquil deserts of the United States, through verdant planes and forests to cacophonous urban areas. The pace accelerates as the music and images show how modern life corrodes both planet and soul.
-- Jim Daley
Koyaanisqatsi
1983, 87 min
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
$18 DVD
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 30, 2003 at 01:41 PM
Home movies shot by six different Nazi youth as they marched toward the Russian front as German soldiers in World War II, some of it in color. They narrate the footage later as older men. What you get is the everyday details of their life then, and how they saw the world, what they found important, or new, and what they were thinking. It smells true.
-- KK
Mein Krieg - My Private War
English subtitles
1991, 90 minutes
By Harriet Eder & Thomas Kufus
$100 VHS or DVD
Amazon
Posted on December 29, 2003 at 03:21 PM
At the end of the Gulf War (no, the other one, back in the early 90s) German director and mad documentarian Werner Herzog went to Kuwait, to record the spectacularly burning oil fields, the families of torture victims and the weapons of war themselves. In the film, we enter from high above, and spend a good part of the film there, like God looking down and wondering why part of the world suddenly looks like Bosch’s image of Hell.
-- Richard Kadrey
Lessons of Darkness
(Lektionen in Finsternis)
1992, 50 min
by Werner Herzog
$27 DVD
GreenCine
Amazon
Posted on December 28, 2003 at 09:18 AM
A Canadian outdoorsman who fancies himself a survival expert crosses the wrong side of a grizzly bear. The grizzly begins to attack him, but our hero stares the bear down, nose to snout, inches apart. In that moment of eye contact, our hero has a cosmic connection with the bear and vows to return to meet grizzly face to face again. But he's no fool, so he decides to invent a grizzly-proof suit. For the next seven years he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars developing the whackiest series of full-body armour outfits, each one stronger, stranger, and more invincible, but less mobile. In an insane logic he tests the suits by having speeding trucks knock him down or by swinging half ton blocks of concrete into his head. In his obsession to face grizzly he becomes a deranged captain Ahab, and you are both horrified, uplifted and transfixed as you watch him sink. It's captured for real; you couldn't make this one up.
-- KK
Project Grizzly
Peter Lynch
1997, 72 min
$20, VHS only
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:55 PM
An amazingly spellbinding drama. You follow a dozen elementary school students who memorize the dictionary and beyond, practicing for years at all waking hours in order to spell words they -- and you! -- have never even heard of. Their ordinary parents are awestruck, the kids are driven, and the outcome is totally unpredictable. Only one kid will survive the National Spelling Bee. Will it be the one whose Indian parents have hired three foreign language coaches, or the girl whose dad does not even speak English? Or the boy with the stutter? It's a fantastic journey into a subculture that is uniquely American, yet invisible and marginal. Since you are on the edge of your seat most of the film, it even changes your ideas about spelling.
-- KK
Spellbound
Jeffrey Blitz
2002, 97 min
$19
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:52 PM
A crash course in string theory -- the possible theory of everything. Fast-paced, crammed with high-street graphics and the best visualizations money can buy, this four-part Nova series does a fantastic job of making sense of something which inherently doesn't make sense -- as everyone in this show will tell you. Great pains are taken to keep things as simple as the honor of physicists will allow, and the host Brian Greene, physicist and author of the book of the same title, offers state-of-the-art explanations for weird ideas. I learned a whole lot. It's the best science teaching format yet.
-- KK
The Elegant Universe (Nova)
Joseph McMaster, Julia Cort
2003, 180 min
$23
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:48 PM
The urban legend about cities of homeless living underground in the neglected corridors of New York City's subways was partly true. For about a decade in the 80s, a colony of extremely resourceful hobos built shelters in an underground section of Penn-Central railroad beneath New York. They had stolen electricity and a few even had cold running water; many worked outside as can collectors or street vendors. and rifled garbage for uneaten restaurant food. This film documents their routines, their squabbles with each other, and their fight with the city to keep their plywood homes, filled with TVs, beds, and mini--kitchens. It's a fight they lost. Homelessness, like everything else in life, is not uniform. These folks were exceptionally resourceful and ambitious, and the story follows them up as they leave their eccentric handmade homes to acquire subsidized housing.
-- KK
Dark Days
Marc Singer
2000, 88 min
$14
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:44 PM
Some people find this documentary depressing because it is about a man trapped by dreams larger than his resources. A 30-year-old slacker in a dead prairie town in Wisconsin dreams of making a horror flic. He has no money, no skills, no equipment, and no clue. Using beer money earned from delivery newspapers, he bullies his astoundingly drug-addled friends into acting while he ineptly directs, often getting his elderly mom to help out as incompetent gripper. These scenes are very funny. For years his film is only talk, while he lounges in front of a TV and fights with his girl friend in a trailer park or tries to wheedle money from his senile uncle. All riveting in their reality. You are utterly convinced his film will never be made. Yet scene by crazy scene, filmed in his kitchen or car over the seasons, he finally completes his non-masterpiece. When finished, his friends shrug like zombies. Was it worth the incredible determination it took given his situation? He is the only one who thinks so. I found his hurdles to be real, and his delusion of success inspiring.
-- KK
American Movie
Chris Smith
1999, 104 min
$25
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:41 PM
Science-fiction author William Gibson is locked inside a limo and driven around several cities while he muses improvisationally on the twilight between present and future. Pure talking-head, with a seat-belt. But the bizarre imprisonment gives a good dose of Gibson, who is often at his best in conversation.
-- KK
William Gibson
No Maps for these Territories
Mark Neale
2000, 88 min
$23
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:38 PM
Mild-mannered Norwegian bachelors living in a tiny fishing village north of the Arctic Circle find companionship and meaning in life by singing -- always singing -- especially in their local male choir. It's fish, sing, or leave. Hoping to become world famous they travel to the depressingly polluted Russian industrial town of Murmansk to give a concert. It's a lovely film about how one's spirit can soar even when constrained by a dying small town. The title refers ironically to mild hopes and quiet lives of these bachelors of ice. Their music, surprisingly spiritual, fills the screen.
-- KK
Cool & Crazy
Knut Erik Jensen
2001, 89 min
$27
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:34 PM
Michael Moore searches America (and Canada) for an answer to the question of why there are so many gun murders in the US. As a card-caring, gun-toting NRA member Moore reveals this quest to be more complex than you'd might expected. Always the coyote trickster, Moore investigates with great entertainment, and does here what he does best, pressing hard when people try to squirm out of honest answers. For a subject that should be ponderously serious and somber, this is a subtle, surreal and funny trip, and one that can change your mind.
-- KK
Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore
2002, 120 min
$15
Netflix
Amazon
Posted on December 27, 2003 at 02:22 PM
Life Inside Angola Prison
The Farm
Life Inside Angola Prison
1998, 100 min
By Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus
$26
Amazon
A straight-on view of the legendary lifer's prison on an old slave plantation in Louisiana, where few leave alive. It's more honest than the TV fictional show OZ in that here some lifers find truth and happiness inside. Depicts the hell inside (I'll be good, I promise) and of course stirs up outrage (expected) but what I find worth recommending is the inspiration it plants as you see humans blossom in the most inhumane place.
Posted on December 26, 2003 at 05:24 PM
The Cruise | 
