TristramShandy Reviews

May December (2023)

didn't quite stick the landing

[8/10 · 19 January 2024]

At the two-thirds point in the film, I wondered to myself if the film was going to be able to stick the landing. It didn't, but I'm not sure if there would have been an ending that would have made me feel that way. The first two-thirds of the movie is excellent as you see how trauma reverberates through all of the victims (which, quite possibly, includes the perpetrator). But because of how many characters there are, it made the last third of the movie hard to tie up, not just in terms of plot but with theme as well.

With that being said, it's a film that seems destined to stick with me. As with other Todd Haynes films that I've seen, the style is engaging with slightly offbeat choices (sound, palette, fictive time). I saw a variety of connections to Far From Heaven in both style and theme, to be sure. That film is one that I've revisited periodically; I think this one will be no different.

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (2023)

wish TLC was taken more to task as well

[8/10 · 7 June 2023]

The documentary fairly hammers the Duggar parents and this abominable ministry movement, but I wish TLC (which has as much to do with "learning" as MTV has to do with "music" in the 21st century) got ripped as much as well. Shame on them for looking the other way with the Duggar parents and eldest son until they couldn't anymore. I get that they aren't the focus of the documentary on the whole, but they are a morally liable entity in this sordid tale.

Meanwhile, those who are saying that this is anti-Christian . . . To think that any of the whistle blowers are "anti-Christian" is laughable. They are anti-cult, anti-predators. If you are equating Christianity to IBLP, I'm worried for you.

Meltdown: Three Mile Island (2022)

look at all of the nuclear scientists weighing in!

[7/10 · 1 August 2022]

I'm sure they were all virologists this morning and climate scientists in the afternoon.

I was eight years old when TMI happened. We lived in Mechanicsburg, PA, 18 miles away - - can remember getting picked up from school out of the blue by my parents and riding to my aunt and uncle's in Allentown. Part of the documentary is about that unknown and just how worrisome it was for those who lived in South Central PA.

For those who say there weren't any "experts" heard from in the documentary, I'm not sure what they were watching. It's pot calling kettle black for everyone who is claiming bias with the film - - multiple experts are interviewed, but obviously not ones such reviewers want to hear from. It does spend most of the time in the later episodes with the whistleblower. It has a point of view. Other than that, the complaints are what is overblown, not the story of TMI as rendered here.

Menudo: Forever Young (2022)

successfully provokes empathy

[7/10 · 10 July 2022]

I will watch documentaries on practically anything, even subjects I'd otherwise have no contact with. Menudo is a great case in point; it's not my style of music whatsoever, but the series interested me a lot. I see complaints of over-long documentary series by posters here all the time, but this felt well paced to me. For a band that had a concept of replaceable parts with its members, the director did a really good job of making every member who appeared on camera feel as distinct individuals. The purpose of the series was to shine a light on the exploitative manager of the band's management (and it does a very good job of that), but I would have liked a little more information about the band itself in places (there is almost no information about the songs themselves. Did any of them reach the Top 40? Did each iteration of the band perform the same songs or did they keep making new music?).

I Used to Go Here (2020)

slight but enjoyable

[7/10 · 23 June 2022]

It's hard to do sweet without being saccharine (which, apparently, is a problem with Kate's book), but I think this accomplished walking that line. If you need to have an antagonist to enjoy a movie, this probably isn't for you. The characters are all likable. This isn't trying to win awards, and it isn't accidentally going to accomplish that, but if your desires are watching an enjoyable film with characters that you'll like, this meets that criteria.

Smithereens (1982)

the interesting things about this film . . .

[4/10 · 3 June 2022]

1) Lots of great Feelies songs off of the perfect Crazy Rhythms album. Definitely the highlight of the movie.

2) Chris Noth plays a transvestite hooker. Guess you've got to start somewhere.

3) Somehow both the Roy Cohn and Robert Durst's brother get thanked at the end.

It's less ridiculous than Penelope Spheeris's Suburbia, so I'll give it that. It's cool to see the early 80s NYC too. But if you care about little things like plot and character - - try something else.

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. (2022)

not enough Schadenfreude

[7/10 · 22 May 2022]

One of the things that bothers me about the ratings that happen on this site is that many times the dislike for the people in a documentary gets transferred to dislike for the documentary itself. I enjoyed it - - I didn't enjoy them. Any of them. Even the workers who got swindled. They got hired for new jobs and then went right back to Sarma. Why should I have sympathy for you? Any of you? The con is so stupid (300 pound special forces guy who says he can make a dog immortal - - Penn's college rankings should drop ten fold for accepting such an imbecile). I just want all of them to pay . . . And yet nobody really did. It's very annoying.

But is that the documentarian's fault? No. I was entertained through out. Just wish there was more karmic justice.

Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story (2022)

not sure what other reviewers were watching

[8/10 · 30 April 2022]

Multiple posts here talk about how nobody else got blamed but Saville himself - - what were you watching? The BBC, media, police, and colleagues all are set up to be judged for letting this happen. Seems like a lot of reviewers had short attention spans and bad critical interpretive skills.

M*A*S*H (1970)

completely plotless

[6/10 · 15 April 2022]

What a bizarre movie. I think this movie is immune to spoilers because to be spoiled, you'd have to have a storyline. And . . . There isn't one to be seen. Anywhere. Catch-22 is very episodic, but at least you have a storyline with Yossarian. There's nothing like that with Hawkeye, Trapper, and the bunch. It still is enjoyable despite that fact, but make no mistake, there is no deep theme to this film.

Breathless (1960)

all style, awful story

[4/10 · 4 April 2022]

It's beautifully filmed but a complete mess of a story. It's probably best to watch it without subtitles - - to know what they're saying only makes it worse.

Music Box: Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage (2021) Season 1, Episode 1

how much changes in 22 years

[8/10 · 5 December 2021]

What most seem to dislike is what I liked the most: seeing 1999 through the lens of 2021. Having been 29 in '99, I remember the time very well, and yet it is so easy to forget how different that time was, from the changing (and relevance) of MTV to how attending anything was different before 9/11 to how blatantly misogynistic society was to how experiencing an event pre-cell phone changed anything from documenting one's time at an event to not having any way to connect to a friend who wandered away in a sea of 100s of 1000s of people. Yeah, some of the commentators are woke to the extreme, and, yeah, the producers seem to want to have it both ways (rail against showing women's naked breasts while constantly showing women's naked breasts), but I was mesmerized by the whole documentary, gobsmacked by realizing that was just two decades ago.

Westworld (1973)

where nothing can possibl-I go wrong

[7/10 · 18 August 2021]

Ah, when you get a Simpsons reference 27 years after the fact.

This is a weird little movie, and I'm not talking about the plot. The tone of the movie is all over the place, with some parts being really hokey. So is Richard Benjamin's acting (or lack thereof over the film's final 15 minutes where he doesn't seem to be bothered by anything that is going on). And yet I was entertained consistently and didn't want to take my eyes off the screen. Certainly it could have been made better, but it was 100% enjoyable.

JFK (1991)

all the scenery is chewed

[5/10 · 8 July 2021]

The amount of melodramatic overacting, highlighted by Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones in over-the-top awful performances (but given runs for the money by John Candy, Ed Asner, and Kevin Bacon) is jaw dropping. If it can be done loud and theatrically, then, damn, that's how it's going to be acted in this one. Would be so much better as a documentary; instead it comes off as a very well-funded A&E or USA true crime re-enactment series.

Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists (2018)

elegy for journalism

[8/10 · 17 June 2021]

I didn't grow up or ever live in NYC. I only really knew Hamill for his memoir A Drinking Life and Breslin was just a name to me. But this documentary really moved me due to the two journalists' craft and humanity and the sweep of history that they covered. As the documentary covers towards the end, it's a type of journalism that no longer exists anymore because the business model has been permanently altered. It's beyond a shame - - communities deserve to have writers like them covering the stories of their time and place.

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech (2009)

74 minutes can't really do the subject justice

[6/10 · 11 June 2021]

It's a very important topic and a very interesting one, but at 74 minutes in length, this is too rushed and scattered to be a great documentary. Really any one of about ten different threads in the documentary could be teased out for a more thorough documentary by itself (I'd love to see one connected to academia and the first amendment, for example). As such, it comes off more as a good appetizer than a fulfilling meal.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

what were people expecting?

[8/10 · 12 April 2021]

It's an adaptation of a play (one of Wilson's best, along with Fences and. The Piano Lesson); of course it is going to be dialogue heavy. That's true of 12 Angry Men, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Doubt, too, all of which are great plays and films. As a movie, this isn't quite those, but the acting of Davis and Boseman is superb, as are the other three musicians as well. If you have a short attention span, it's probably not the film for you. Personally, I loved the play, and Wilson's dialogue and themes still work here because of how close it is to the original play itself.

The World According to Garp (1982)

too episodic to work

[5/10 · 7 January 2021]

Yes, that's part of the purpose of the film, but with a book that was over 600 pages long, much had to be taken out for the film adaptation. Out of nowhere come two minute vignettes which may or may not connect to something essential later in the movie. The stuff that doesn't connect can't really be called "spoilers" because they don't get built upon (a plane crashing into a house, a babysitter being brought back home, etc). It makes large swaths of the movie feel pretty pointless.

Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

not sure anything has made me understand child abuse more than this

[8/10 · 11 September 2020]

If there was a Q&A session after seeing this film, I'd either want it to go on for ten hours or skip it all together. There are so many specifics that I want to know but when it comes to getting a sense of what child abuse is, these two brothers' faces and voices explained it better than anything else could. It's nothing like Capturing the Friedmans and yet it is too. I actually have it as an 8.5. The visuals could be better in the situations where the brothers aren't on the screen; in those instances when they are there, you can't look away.

Punishment Park (1971)

not as smart as it thinks it is

[5/10 · 15 August 2020]

Let's just say that it's a movie that lacks subtlety. Everybody is a caricature; nothing has nuance. It's a polemic, and not a very interesting one at that. The concept has merit and the faux documentary style would have been much more revolutionary for its time, but it needed a better writer, director, and actors to succeed in any appreciable way..

Suburbia (1983)

ridiculously awful

[2/10 · 23 July 2020]

If Mystery Science 3000 used crappy melodramas rather than science fiction movies to spoof, this would have been used decades ago. Every plot point can be seen coming five minutes before it happens. You could pull fifteen people off the street, give them the script for five minutes, and have more emotion and believability in their acting than these losers do. You can't get more wooden or laconic in performances. Add to the fact that it is blatantly sexist, racist, and homophobic within the first ten minutes, and you have a completely irredeemable movie. I grew up on SST, Dischord, Touch and Go and the like, but the punkers are no better than the townies in this dud.

AKA Jane Roe (2020 TV Movie)

hard to defend anyone here

[7/10 · 24 May 2020]

I won't call these people "trash people" but you end up being conflicted with everybody involved in this story - - which does make the documentary intriguing. At one point McCorvey says "you can't con a con" and that's what everybody in the documentary is.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

from the beginning of watching this . . .

[7/10 · 15 May 2020]

It felt like the grandson of Stephen Crane's "The Blue Hotel". The really, really bloodthirsty grandson of "The Blue Hotel".

How to Fix a Drug Scandal (2020)

defense attorneys as heroes

[7/10 · 19 April 2020]

It's a much maligned group by many Americans, but I cannot imagine somebody watching this documentary series and not at the very least judging Luke Ryan as a hero.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)

Hypnotic Pictures indeed

[8/10 · 3 April 2020]

Director Bill Morrison's company is called Hypnotic Pictures, and never was there a more apt name. Most of this movie comes over you like a fever dream. Others may act to it differently, but to me it was the film equivalent of Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida. All of this film which by all rights could have been lost forever, never to be known, miraculously saved.

There's a scene towards the end of the film where we learn that even with the miracle, much of these old silent movies had been ravaged by water damage. Morrison then shows some of the film that has this damage, and one of the clips is a man dressed nicely who reaches out to another on the right side of the screen. We can never see this presumptive woman; it's just an arm that reaches out of the vibrating water damaged film, teasing the viewer with what is lost to time. It's a haunting symbol which makes me mourn all that was thrown into the Yukon River, never to be seen again or that which exploded in nitrate fire after nitrate fire. This is the type of film that will stay with me for a long time.

Studio 54 (2018)

isn't hero worship

[8/10 · 31 August 2019]

I've seen a lot of documentaries on Studio 54. For the most part, they have been exercises in schadenfreude (I'm way more punk rock in my musical tastes than disco). I've always disliked Studio 54 for how it discriminated against "the common" person. This documentary, however, really humanizes Ian Schraeger. This is not a documentary of hero worship, and I appreciate how Rubell and Schraeger are portrayed, with both their talents and warts. Overall, I very well done documentary.