LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR MOREAU

(David Gregory, 2014)

Like an awful lot of modern documentaries, this is quite dull in the execution. Talking heads, still photos, the occasional piece of home video or camcorder footage - it's the default mode for narrative documentary these days. The obvious reason for that is pure efficiency; it works.
And in this case, the story director David Gregory is telling is fascinating enough that it doesn't really matter that he tells it in such an uninspired (if competent) way.
Richard Stanley is the main talking head for the first half of the film, and he is an interesting figure; very much a self-styled eccentric, his passion for his old project is still evident and endearing, despite his pretentiousness and sometime pomposity. He talks about his plans for The Island of Dr Moreau, his vision, what attracted him to the story, how it would work on screen. It all sounds convincing, an interesting little film from a young filmmaker. But as soon as other people begin giving their sides, the tale becomes more complex. Stanley was clearly talented but over his head on a major studio production; paranoid and insecure, the arrival of major egos in the form of Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer more or less ensured his exit from the production.
At this point, the documentary gets a shot in the arm as the tales from the shoot mount up and each successive outrage and anecdote gets more ridiculous than the last. Director John Frankenheimer could not cope with either Brando or Kilmer. Rob Morrow fled, replaced by David Thewlis (whose perspective is surely missed). Stanley disappeared into the jungle. Australian extras, hired for 3 weeks, were on set for 6 months, their mini-sociaety starting to reflect the one depicted in the movie. The crew detested Frankenheimer and worked against him. Brando made fun of everything about the film, something that is obvious in his actual performance. Kilmer acted every inch the movie star brat. And somehow a film got made; a bizarre mess with just enough of Stanley's vision still detectable (mainly in the make-up and creature effects) to keep it somewhat interesting, even if it is barely coherent and tonally erratic.
The documentary captures all this chaos but skimps on footage from the film, which would give it useful context. It ends up back with Stanley, bruised and older and only now really contemplating a return to filmmaking. Would make a great double bill with the finished product.

GOING CLEAR

(Alex Gibney, 2015)

Based on Lawrence Wright's book, Going Clear is a sober portrayal of the Church of Scientology from inception to the present day. That means it is often hilarious, often chilling and generally fascinating. Gibney's usual expository style is in place; mixing talking heads with archive footage and voiceover. The best material is in the first half, which portrays founder and pulp sic-fi writer L Ron Hubbard (LRH to his followers) as a cynical, troubled man who founded a religion because he saw it as the best way to make money and not have to give any away to the IRS. His foibles and sometime monstrous behaviour are part of this portrayal, which is lent credence by the testimony of people who served in his "Sea Org" back then and witnessed him in all his charismatic, cruel glory. His ex-wife's account of their relationship is utterly damning.
The second half shifts to an expose of the state of modern Scientology - run by a paranoid egomaniac, obsessed with enemies and money, and much of this half of the film is made up of interviews with the old members of the leadership of the Church, who now seem horrified about what they have done. Spread across both parts is an explanation of the practices of the religion - the various levels, "auditing", the actual belief in "Xenu" and the thetans. Much of this is delivered in a bemused state of exasperated embarrassment by ex-believers, though Gibney does well to never stoop to outright mockery. The odd cases of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, the two most high profile celebrity scientologists, are investigated, as is the organisation's long battle with the IRS to be recognised as an official church, thereby securing non-taxable status.
For all that there is an extraordinary density of material here, it feels a little workaday, especially in the second half, as the church begins to splinter at an executive level, and people explain why they left and what they have realised since. It's hard not to think that this should be more, should hit harder, should hurt it's subject more obviously.

MILIUS

(Joey Figueroa, Zak Knutson, 2013)

John Milius is a fascinating, important figure in New Hollywood cinema. Luckily for the directors of this documentary, he's also a charismatic, self-mythologising contrarian, whose life was filled with colourful anecdotes, interesting incidents and incredibly glamorous friends. He wrote the most famous speeches in the likes of Jaws ("Black eyes, dead eyes, like a doll's eyes"), and Dirty Harry ("You've gotta ask yourself the question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?") and latterly Sean Connery loved his writing so much he had Milius rewrite every one of his parts. He was part of the circle of Movie Brats whose work defined the 1970s - friends with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader and Francis Ford Coppola, all of whom are interviewed here - he was the first to find work in Hollywood and the best writer. His screenwriting allowed him to begin directing his own work, and his first four films are a startlingly consistent run of quality entertainments: Dillinger, The Wind & the Lion, Big Wednesday and Conan the Barbarian are all big, mythic, violent films, as was his fifth, the controversial Red Dawn.
Figueroa & Knutson concentrate on that period (indeed, his subsequent work, including the underrated Farewell to the King, is almost entirely ignored) but spend more time on Milius the eccentric; gun-toting, a right wing "zen anarchist"who commanded immense loyalty from his friends all his life, a dazzling line of directors and actors appear to discuss his persona and work (Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Michael Mann, Harrison Ford, Sam Elliot, etc). But that is the film's shortcoming. It shows and tells, but remains resolutely superficial for that reason, never really getting inside Milius' head.
What it does superbly well: makes you want to watch Milius' films...

BIG STAR: NOTHING CAN HURT ME

(Drew DiNicola & Olivia Mori, 2012)

Big Star are the cult American band, virtually unknown while they existed (though each of their records was glowingly reviewed) but developing a devout following of obsessives throughout the 80s and 90s until their status changed, and they now seem one of the most influential bands of the last few decades of rock music. That in itself wouldn't make for much of a film, but the fact that they were a fascinating mixture of personalities, and emerged from Memphis, a complex and interesting city in its own right, and one absolutely essential to the history of American popular music, makes their story a lot more enthralling. Then there is the music: DiNicola and Mori are wise enough to know that every ten minutes or so they need to stow the talking heads and just let the music tell the story - then Big Star do the rest, and they do it superbly.
Formed by Memphis rich kid Chris Bell and ex-Box Tops wunderkind Alex Chilton in the early '70s, Big Star emerged seemingly fully formed with the sublime Number One Record. The music on that album is almost perfect - exciting, muscular and precise, its melancholy heart jostling with an exhilarating appreciation for the possibilities inherent in the dynamics of rock music. It didn't sell. Bell, depressed by the way most of the credit went to Chilton, left the band, and Chilton drove them on to the even better second album, Radio City, before a shrinking line-up staggered through excess and self-indulgence to record their dark and fractured Third/Sister Lovers. After that Chilton squandered his talent in a series of jokey provocations, Bell tried in vain to get a deal and ended up working in a restaurant, and the legend of Big Star grew.
This film details the lifespan of the band, features lengthy interviews with bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, makes excellent use of some fine archive photos, and devotes a long time to the lives of the principals after Big Star ended. The recent reunion tours are depicted as a nice little reward to Chilton and Stephens, years after the fact, and a line of rock critics queue up to explain quite why they never had the success they deserved even as the film does a solid job of explaining the promotional and distribution issues responsible.
The early death of Bell - in a car accident at 27 - and Chilton's death in 2010 make this a story with two ghostly absences at its centre, though a couple of wry Chilton radio interviews feature, and producers, engineers, relatives and friends fill out many of the crucial details of the story. It is a sad story, really, one of potential left unfulfilled and thwarted ambition, but it is also full of humour and fascinating people.
It is never depressing, chiefly because the music is so good. For all that some time is devoted to Bell's issues with Christianity and his sexuality, every time a Big Star song plays loud, everything feels just fine. Such is the power of great art.

LA MORTE ROUGE

(Victor Erice, 2006)

The film essay as tone poem, Erice working his obsessions into a lovely contemplation of the power of art, memory and time, cinema and imagination.
It recalls Chris Marker in places as the filmmaker whispers his narration, sad and wise, over lovely black and white photographs of San Sebastian in the 1940s. We can just perceive Arvo Pärt on the soundtrack, and Erice's elegant mastery is obvious in how poetically he fits it all together; his voiceover, these tableau and the music eloquently, expressively suggest the themes he addresses.
The subject is his first encounter with cinema. In 1946, at the age of five, he saw Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw in a now-vanished palatial cinema near the beach in San Sebastian. He was terrified but enraptured, and he reflects on how time has treated that experience, what happened to the filmmakers, why that film was so resonant in a destroyed post-Civil War Spain, and how his memory has nurtured the whole experience.
It is a gently beautiful film, fascinating and moving; Erice is a master.

I KNEW IT WAS YOU

(Richard Shepard, 2009)

Nice little documentary on the career of John Cazale, whose body of work might be the most consistently high-quality of any actor ever. He co-starred in 5 films – The Godfather I & II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter, then died in 1978 before the last of those films had even been released. Shepard’s documentary is basically just a load of (excellent) clips of Cazale being brilliant cut with interviews with his many legendary co-stars and friends.

But it really does help that those friends include the likes of Al Pacino, Meryl Streep (Cazale’s girlfriend in the last years of his life), Robert DeNiro, Sydney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola and John Savage, and that the clips are from some of the greatest American movies of the 1970s. And it doesn’t hurt either that Shepard interviews articulate contemporary character actors like Sam Rockwell, Phillp Seymour Hoffman and Steve Buscemi on Cazale’s influence and impact.

It might feel a little like a glorified dvd special feature, but it does justice to the talent of an extraordinary actor and made me want to watch each of his flms again, which seems like mission accomplished.

GOOD CAKE BAD CAKE: THE STORY OF LIR

(Shimmy Marcus, 2012)

LiR were one of the many Dublin bands who swarmed in the city's clubs and bars in the 1980s and '90s, hoping to be - in commercial terms at least - the next U2.
It never happened, and Shimmy Marcus' film is partly an attempt to explain why. It's composed of a mix of archive footage - much of it vintage camcorder stuff, some taken from Irish tv - and contemporary interviews with the band members, now mainly pudgy and middle-aged in sharp contrast to their skinny youthful faces in the old photographs and clips. They trace a familar narrative of young boredom on the streets of Dublin's Donaghmede, a few failed attempts at starting a band, and the gradual rise to competence and local popularity. Dublin then was rife with kids in bands; a few great, some good, most pretty shocking. But the majority got record deals and made albums in London or the States, only to limp back home a few years later when fame and fortune refused to come calling. LiR, despite an impressive fanbase and their reputation as an awesome live act, failed to do so, and they still can't quite understand why.
And so the undercurrent is pronounced early on - this will ultimately be a story of a band of naive young men who believe they were let down and even exploited by their older, cannier manager. Eventually they will travel to America, where a series of grinding, mentally and physically exhausting tours and a record deal coincide with members leaving, managers quitting, lots of stress, and no success.
This is a question Marcus' funny, interesting film never really successfully grapples with: were LiR ever good enough? For all that the band members talk about how it was only the music that really mattered, only two songs are really lingered over and identified, and much of the rest, while well-played and nicely sung, sound pretty dull, which is how this Dublin boy remembers them. The only allusions to this possibility are an acknowledgement that Irish critics were unusually damning about the band - rejected delusionally by one band member in a rant about how much hate there is in such a small country - and their American Label boss claiming that they hated the first LiR record (resulting in a vastly different American version).
None of this prevents their story from being quietly compelling. They mostly make for charming, articulate interviewees in a very Dublin way, mixing earnest homilies about the joy of rock with cynical jokes about life on the road, and there is something quite touching about two old childhood friends roaming the drab suburban streets of their youth and sharing reminiscences, wondering where it all went and why it never quite worked out. Marcus uses his footage nicely, keeping a rambling story and large cast tight and ordered throughout.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT

(Patricio Guzmán, 2010) At first, it's easy to be skeptical about the analogies Patricio Guzmán draws in Nostalgia for the Light. This film essay takes on the seemingly disparate subjects of astronomy and the horrors of the Pinochet era in Chilean history. It suggests that the astronomers searching for the key to the existence of the universe in the observatories of the Atacama desert - the driest place on earth, but also one which gives them, and Guzmán's camera, incredibly clear images of the spinning cosmos - have something in common with the mothers and sisters of the "disappeared" political prisoners from Pinochet's Chile, still out digging in the arid ground of the Atacama for the bones of their loved ones. But Guzmán is so delicate in his poetry and so gentle in his thesis, layering his ideas slowly atop one another, that his film is utterly persuasive. Not only that; it is also luminously beautiful and extremely moving. Guzmán begins on a little personal note; describing his boyhood love of the stars in an isolated, innocent Chile, then moving on to touch upon his pride in the "revolution" which occurred later (presumably in reference to the Socialist era under Salvador Allende, subject of another Guzmán film) and which was ended by the coup which led to the dictatorship of General August Pinochet. The slow build to his central idea is crucial; the quiet, reasonable mournfulness of his narration tying in beautifully with Guzmán's fine imagery - unlike many documentary filmmakers, he has a real eye for a shot and a sense of rhythm in his editing - is almost hypnotic. He talks about the Atacama as an elemental place while his camera underlines it's alien immensity. His interview subjects - an Astronomer, then an archeologist - discuss the parallels between their professions, both digging through the past in search of a deeper truth. Here Guzmán allows his cosmic vision to become even more expansive, as the astronomer discusses the impossibility of the present, and the micro-fractional gaps between sensation and conscious thought. Then Guzmán moves onto the darker side of the Atacama, and how Chile has an upsetting reluctance to tackle the negative aspects of its history. His next interviewee is a survivor of one of Pinochet's concentration camps. From here Guzmán steadily allows more emotion into his film. Visually he contrasts shots of mummified human remains with views of constellations and galaxies, the grain of a human skull cut in between shots of the surface of the moon. He interviews the women who dig in the desert, and their bravery and hope are profoundly moving, especially when set against the shots of mass graves and the closing wall of faces of the dead. Finally he interviews an astronomer whose parents are among the disappeared, brought up by her Grandparents and given a love of stargazing by her Grandfather, and her life and spirit inject a note of optimism into the film. Not that it is a depressing experience; on the contrary, the articulate, completely human subjects Guzmán draws out of themselves all provide positive images of Chile and its people, and there is an odd universality to these subjects; Guzmán is examining mortality and our search for answers as much as anything, just locating his essay in a uniquely Chilean context. In other hands, such a subject might have been grim, or dull, or pretentious. But Guzmán is simply a masterful filmmaker - his epic documentary The Battle of Chile is a magnificent must-see - and he makes Nostalgia for the Light a film unlike any other; visionary, sublime and compelling from start to finish.

GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

(Martin Scorsese, 2011)

Following the success of his superb, epic Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, Scorsese addresses another icon of 1960s rock in this near three and a half hour film on the "quiet Beatle", George Harrison.
In general, it's masterfully executed, focusing intently on the spiritual quest that characterised Harrison both as artist and human being, filled with brilliant archive footage and previously unseen photographs, narrated by key players in interviews and soundtracked by some of Harrison's best music.
It appears to assume some level of knowledge about Harrison's career, often skipping exposition in favour of a more reflective, elliptical or poetic portrayal of an event or phase in his life and is roughly structured around a few key moments: the formation of the Beatles, their rise to superstardom, his discovery of Indian mysticism, the breakup of the band, the making of "All Things Must Pass", the Concert for Bangladesh, his involvement in film production, the Travelling Wilburys, the assault by a deranged intruder that nearly killed him, and his death from cancer. That's a fascinating, full life, and Scorsese fills in around it with some equally fascinating details and snippets. But there are frustrating exclusions and some things are absolutely fudged. Harrison's life as a rock star who "loved women" is kept tellingly vague (his widow is a Producer), and most of his post-"All Things Must Pass" material is ignored. As far as this film is concerned, Harrison spent the last three decades of his life noodling in the studio, gardening, going to parties and meditating.
Then there is the related structural problem. One decade in Harrison's life - the 60s, the time he spent with the Beatles - dominates his reputation and legacy, but it has been exhaustively chronicled, and is dealt with in the first half here, while the next three decades take up the remainder. And Harrison, as talented a songwriter and musician as he was, was only the third greatest writer in the Beatles, and the more compelling figures of Lennon and McCartney each warp the narrative with the magnetism of genius whenever they feature.
But there are some fabulous moments here, from McCartney's thick scouse impression of a childhood friend describe George's hair as "like a fookin turban" to Olivia Harrison's chilling, shocked description of their struggle with a crazed attacker, to sundry clips of Harrison's own dry wit. And the music, of course, is fantastic.

LA QUATTRO VOLTE

(Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010)

Slightly challenging in its nonchalant dismissal of traditional narrative, Frammartino's film is a unique piece. Part documentary, part poem, part essay, part movie, it coolly and precisely observes some characters around an Italian mountain village. Only one of those characters is human; an old goat farmer we follow for the first reel, observing his everyday routine. He walks his goats to a pasture, sits beneath a tree, brings them home, trades goats milk for dust from the town church, which he dissolves into a glass before bed at night, collects snails. The soundtrack is the bells round the necks of the goats and his worsening cough. The second character is a calf, born to one of his goats after his death, and whose early existence in sheds and upon mountainsides we witness. Then a huge fir tree becomes our lead, chopped down for use in a Spring festival, made into charcoal, and finally transformed into smoke from a village chimney. The goat farmers dog is the comic relief, responsible for a surprisingly deft comic sequence observed by Frammartino's camera from on high involving a truck, a hillside and a fence.
The camera is the real star here however, exquisitely capturing the skies above the town and the mountains through changing seasons, beautifully picking out a twisting swirl of dust motes turning in the light from a window in the gloom of a church, rarely moving, generally perfectly placed. The films attractive simplicity and even pacing invite the viewer to interpret it however they wish, and indeed one could wrest big statements about nature, time and space and life and death from its content. It is undeniably interested in all those themes and studies each to one extent or other. But it all seems too obvious, polite and even slightly too inarticulate to be regarded as profound, but it is the sort of film which becomes hypnotic if you surrender to its unique rhythm, and it is beautiful, funny, and never less than interesting.

SENNA

(Asif Kapadia, 2010)

Prior to seeing Senna, and with absolutely no interest in Formula One, I struggled to understand how an arresting documentary could be made on the life of a Racecar Driver. Well, Kapadia tackles that head-on (no tasteless pun intended) by plunging the viewer almost directly into Senna's career in F1 with only the barest of preambles. In what serves as a brief prologue, we see him as a go kart racer, leaving Brazil, and then he is a young and inexperienced F1 driver, and we are in. Soon he is winning his first Grand Prix in spectacular style, challenging Alain Prost and making his name. The ease of the storytelling is perhaps the films great glory; KapadIa brilliantly uses his archive footage, finding its cinematic quality by recontextualising it, or slowing down a moment of stark, previously unnoticed beauty, or editing cleverly so that it is by turnsviually beautiful, thrilling and telling.
Chiefly of course, it always advances the story. And that story is a very human one, of a charismatic, mysterious young man who was driven always to try and excel, who came from privilege, believed passionately in God, yet drove a car as if he saw himself as immortal. Along the way, his rivalry with Prost takes over for a while, and their contrasting characters and approaches makes for a riveting documentary. Kapadia strips away the technical jargon and mechanical explanations of racing to focus on two things that can not change; competition and speed. The people in the film are all aware of the presence of these forces, and footage like the several incredible in-cockpit scenes make speed a visceral character in the film, something Senna attacks remorselessly until it finally kills him.
The interviews are sensitively intercut, the ending nicely-judged.

ARMADILLO

(Janus Metz, 2010)

The series of conflicts which resulted from the events of 11 September 2001 have spawned a number of exceptional documentaries. The technology available to journalists and filmmakers today - the sort of technology which means anybody with a cellphone can film news footage in the street and see it on the Internet minutes later - makes possible an unprecedented level of access to events in the field of conflict. Lightweight digital cameras, in particular, mean that one man can make a movie. They also suggest a pleasing verisimilitude; to a certain extent, we associate the visual characteristics of material shot with a light handheld camera with modern warfare. This means that even fictional portrayals of warfare have partially adopted this shooting style as a shortcut to visual legitimacy. If it's shot this way, it looks more realistic, seems to be the thinking.
Well, Armadillo is real. It follows a Unit of the Danish army through a tour in the Helmand Province in Afghanistan, tightly focusing upon five soldiers within the group. We witness them leave home, saying goodbye to tearful relatives at the Airport, then observe them through months of boredom and terror until we see their return to Denmark to those same families. It contains strong storytelling: the focus on just five men allows their characters to be well-established and Metz cleverly crosscuts between them, contrasting their personalities and reactions to the same events, just as a novel or War movie would treat the material if it were fictional. The deliberate nature of the storytelling is one of the reasons Armadillo sometimes feels more like fiction than a documentary; the other is its visual beauty. Cinematographer Lars Skree captures some absolutely stunning imagery here, the sort of thing we don't see much of in most War Documentaries.
The content is quite familiar as we see these men endure hours of tedium - with porn, wrestling, video games - and then shattering bursts of terrifying violence. That violence is always frighteningly banal, which is an aspect fictional films never capture, and beyond the explosions and the rattle of automatic weapons fire the most frightening sight here is the vacant shock in the eyes of a Dane who has just been shot and is being treated by medics. This is how it really is, his eyes seem to say.
Sensitive and profoundly respectful of the men fighting in the field - there are no politics here - and both articulate of the horror and appreciative of the thrill of warfare, Armadillo is a terrific, provocative, complex, exhilaratingly cinematic documentary on modern Warfare, fit to rank alongside other recent classics Restrepo and Gunner Palace.

OJOS ROJOS

(Ismael Larrain , Juan Ignacio Sabatini & Juan Pablo Sallatto, 2010)
 
When Documentary-makers Larrain, Sabatini and Sallatto started filming behind the scenes with the Chilean National Football Team in 2005 they had a story of questionable drama and interest. This was a squad arguably lacking any truly outstanding players, who had enjoyed no recent competitive success, not reaching a World Cup Finals since 1998, been humiliated at successive Copa Americas, were Ill-disciplined, and full of players with big egos who kept their places despite their own poor form. Where was the story here?
The story was around the corner. After another miserable failure to qualify for a World Cup - Germany 2006 - Chile appointed Argentine Marclo Bielsa as National Team Coach. Bielsa, something of a visionary, revolutionised the Chilean squad, dropping most of the ageing under performers and replacing them with young, largely untested talent from the Youth Teams. He made them play a high tempo, high energy, high risk attacking football. At first, it didnt really work. This film records a few early defeats, Bielsa stoic in press conferences, the players heads hanging in the dressing room. Then it does work. Chile start to play well, and they start to win.
The film captures the growing confidence of this youthful squad and brilliantly records it's transmission to the stands as Chilean supporters start to believe and eventually to celebrate euphorically.
For a football fan, it's a treat, with plenty of great footage of games and peeks at what life is like in training, on the bus to matches, and in the tunnel heading out into a Cauldron of thousands of maniacal fans. But cinematically it's worthwhile too; elliptical and often poetic, funny in it's brief interviews with taxi drivers and men in the street and it's sidebar focus on an eccentric Football correspondent from a local radio station in Chile's Far South. There is also a crucial dose of serious consideration into why football means what it does in Chile, the political and social dimensions it has acquired, best articulated in interviews with football intellectuals like Eduardo Galeano and Jorge Valdano.
You even get to see Bielsa smile. Once.