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bmncaper
Reviews
The Dropout (2022)
Patchy, but the Seyfried-Andrews dynamic proves dramatically rewarding
My judgment is on the series as a compelling watch and not its historical accuracy. In this regard: The first half is sluggish. But the producers dedicate a lot of time to making sure you know the subplots count too (the work we see the WSJ journalist putting in makes us understand the importance when he & his boss finally meet face-to-face with the Theranos legal brigade).
But perhaps the best dramatic payoff is the evolution of the Liz-Sunny relationship told through the acting of Seyfried and Andrew's. Whether or not this is how their relationship played out in real life, it makes for strong viewing in this dramatization. The actors nail the dynamic of a relationship each knows is phony, the audience knows is phony and yet each remains convinced the *other person* in the relationship doesn't know is phony. It gives a lot of their dialogue a tense undertone of submeaning.
If you're willing to stick it out through some *less* believable dialogue early on and work to the halfway point where things really take off, you'll find it rewarding .
Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016)
A strange case of filmmaker (sort of) vs. inventor
I find it doubtful that anyone who does not already have an interest in the subject would watch this, and as such I find it disingenuous to rank it beneath six stars. If you seek it out, you'll find something of interest.
But the film is a weird paradox: It seems utterly focused on a single thesis (the cassette wouldn't survive without nostalgia) yet somehow meanders constantly (the sub-themes of that nostalgia are *all* over the place). If you make it to the end, you realize that nostaglia is maybe even a secondary theme to the subject of what I'd like to call "recreative labour." But it gets to that point very sloppily. And despite only being about 90 min, it feels like it goes on forever.
This is perhaps because the cassette inventor is at odds with the theme. He seems perfectly content with his life and memories and with being old but not only doesn't have interest in waxing nostaglic, he seems bemused that anyone else would.
As such, the storytelling sticks with that nostalgia far more than what *I* would have found interesting: how cassettes overtook albums as the most popular format, why eight-tracks failed in comparison, how long it took CDs to edge them out, etc. Etc. Etc. These are all minor details or storytelling casualties compared to the film insisting that you recognize "gosh, didn't we have something special here? Let's just bounce around from cassette aficionado or shopkeep to another with another random tale or tidbit. Then we'll go back to the inventor and see if his heart has softened any..."
That was what was frustrating for me: Any time the film picks up on an interesting thread, it drops it like a hot potato and retreats to the nostalgia subject.
Music Box: Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
More evenhanded than being portrayed here; more fit for mini-series than movie
While compelling & eminently re-watchable, I had to take a few stars off as the doc does pick up more threads than it can complete. It was begging to be mini-series length rather than movie-length, especially as it could have made a good way to move alongside the chronological storytelling (e.g. Three episodes for a three-day festival).
But contrary to some of the whiny aggro reviews here, this isn't solely a diatribe on the nu-metal white man. If that's all you take from the doc, you aren't watching the whole thing. You're wallowing a bit in ignorance to pretend that the grunge to frat-rage-rock transition didn't impact the culture of WS'99, I'd say you're as naive as the organizers were. But there's more to it, and more to this movie, than that.
The film is actually a story about convergence: generational angst, economic angst, and (yes) white male angst converge, stir in corporate cynicism and introduce it intentionally poor logistics.....and voila! What comes across in the footage put alongside the talking heads is that a lot of people seem to be masking a lot of mental and emotional distress under the guise of just yelling a lot. The organizers get a chance to say their piece.....and one seems a lot more eager to absolve himself of blame than any other participant.
Kudos to the doc though for not showing too much of the music to detract from the storytelling. If I want to watch the WS'99 performance as a whole, I can go straight to the event itself.