A genuinely interesting story whose telling transmogrifies into a painful set of confessionals from the Real World. It's absolutely not a documentary. It is an exhausting, overwrought slog through prison 'romance', in a painful reality television style. Yes - has a really interesting and compelling backstory of the extremes of parental neglect and abuse, tragic consequences, etc. But you end up with so many unanswered questions about the crimes, the people involved and the actual important and relevant facts that it is totally unfulfilling as any sort of storytelling - let alone a documentary. Such a potentially sympathetic person and story squandered.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Scumbag
(2017)
Not quite...
4 January 2021
Interesting 'pieces' but damn, it seems like there are a few hundred ancillary characters to keep track of to make it challenging? Weird subplots (well not enough development to call them plots), narrator bits, actors breaking out in song.
Tedious but potentially good, but tedious.
Tedious but potentially good, but tedious.
Context is everything
9 June 2020
I'm a but surprised by the low overall rating for this episode. I liked it, but then again, I also liked Let's Get Lost, so maybe it's just me.
During the shelter-in-place I've been re-watching Documentary Now! episodes paired with their inspirational documentaries.
Let's Get Lost is a beautiful melancholy film whose mood is mostly captured in Long Gone. Here we have Fred Amisan playing a Baker-inspired Rex Logan and Natasha Lyonne serves as the film's Ruth Young,
It seems that it would be rough to make a knee slapping parody of the original. At the same time there's a tension in dealing with Chet Baker's decline and death that is carefully avoided. Furthermore, it would be pretty simple to just parody the drug-addled slowness of Baker and friends, and. luckily, that gets played down. There is a good play on his 'disappearance' from the US scene and they go for matching the cinematography and direction instead. I wish they could have fit Jack Sheldon's stories in there somewhere.
It's a nice episode. Given that folks are relatively divided on the original, it's probably no surprise that the evaluations of the parody are similarly mixed. I think it's better than it's ratings here. But your opinion may vary.
"I'm always losing my lighter..."
During the shelter-in-place I've been re-watching Documentary Now! episodes paired with their inspirational documentaries.
Let's Get Lost is a beautiful melancholy film whose mood is mostly captured in Long Gone. Here we have Fred Amisan playing a Baker-inspired Rex Logan and Natasha Lyonne serves as the film's Ruth Young,
It seems that it would be rough to make a knee slapping parody of the original. At the same time there's a tension in dealing with Chet Baker's decline and death that is carefully avoided. Furthermore, it would be pretty simple to just parody the drug-addled slowness of Baker and friends, and. luckily, that gets played down. There is a good play on his 'disappearance' from the US scene and they go for matching the cinematography and direction instead. I wish they could have fit Jack Sheldon's stories in there somewhere.
It's a nice episode. Given that folks are relatively divided on the original, it's probably no surprise that the evaluations of the parody are similarly mixed. I think it's better than it's ratings here. But your opinion may vary.
"I'm always losing my lighter..."
Tell Your Friends