SoftStcks1717 Reviews

Griselda (2024)

White Man Bad

[4/10 · 28 January 2024]

I have always been fascinated with the 80s Miami drug trade, and especially the story of Griselda Blanco. When I heard Netflix was creating a series about it I couldn't wait to see it. I also love antihero films, because they usually create three dimensional, complex characters.

This let me down. It's more concerned with the identity politics of 2024 than it is with the history of the 80s drug trade. When looking at the main characters, the number of redeemable qualities a character has directly correlates to how privileged or oppressed their identity is. The more oppressed the person, the more redeemable qualities they have. The more privileged the person, the more repugnant they are.

Frontline (1983– )

Violates Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking

[1/10 · 3 February 2023]

In recent years Frontline has severely damaged it's credibility due to it's evident left leaning bias. In a country (USA) so divided politically on every issue, viewers should be skeptical when they watch documentaries where every interview subject agrees, and there's no contention that reflects nation's divide on these complex issues that we deal with. Watching Frontline in 2023, someone who doesn't know any better would imagine the US as a nation united on these issues, because Frontline crafts their narrative by using viewpoints on only the left side of the debate. Because of that it would not be an exaggeration to label Frontline documentaries in 2023 as political propaganda.

Frontline: Putin and the Presidents (2023) Season 41, Episode 8

Violates Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking

[1/10 · 28 January 2023]

Severely biased. All of the interviewees that form the narrative for this piece are on the same side of the aisle. The interviewees treat Obama's handling of the invasion of Crimea as a small mistake and quickly move passed it. The section on former president Trump is a total beat down, even though he's the only president in this piece under who's watch Russia hasn't invaded another country. The filmmakers then quickly skip over Biden's handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which seems like an extremely relevant topic to cover. I'm no fan of Trump but what I am a fan of his the responsibility documentary filmmakers have in upholding democracy. Start interviewing people with differing perspectives and let the viewer decide.

Money, Explained (2021)

Violates Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking

[1/10 · 10 December 2022]

As someone who works in public higher education and studied the history, ethics, and process of documentary filmmaking, I can say that this miniseries doesn't even attempt to be unbiased. For example, in the episode about student loan debt, they interviewed representative Ilhan Omar, a self described Democratic Socialist who provided the majority of the narrative for the episode. It almost goes without saying that someone who identifies as a Democratic Socialist falls on the far left side of the political spectrum, so the ethical thing to do as a documentary filmmaker would be to balance out the piece with another politician from the other side of the isle. They didn't do that. In film school methods like this were referred to as propaganda, which is what this is.