Tag: Documentary

Movie Review: Mr Nobody Against Putin (2025)

~ Liam ~ 2 Comments

Last year after the Academy Awards ceremony, I watched and reviewed the Best Picture winner.  This year I decided I’d also watch and review Best Animated Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature Film, and Best International Feature Film.  Since I’ve already reviewed KPop Demon Hunters, I’m skipping ahead to Best Documentary.  

Title: Mr Nobody Against Putin
Release Date: June 10, 2025
Director: David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin
Production Company: Made in Copenhagen | Produced by PINK | ZDF/Arte
Main Cast:

  • Pavel Talankin
  • Vladimir Putin

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

As Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools across Russia’s hinterlands are transformed into recruitment stages for the war. Facing the ethical dilemma of working in a system defined by propaganda and violence, a brave teacher goes undercover to film what’s really happening in his own school.

My Thoughts:

In a small industrial city in Russia, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin works at the local school as an events coordinator and videographer.  His practice of filming around the school becomes and advantage after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in capturing how the teachers and students are forced to engaged in patriotic displays and lessons.  In fact, Pasha is required to film the classes to send to the Putin government as evidence of compliance.  Pasha also films farewell parties of former students capturing the ambiguous feelings of fighting an unjust war and fear of death.  As an outspoken opponent of the war, Pasha soon finds himself under surveillance by the police.  After two years, he escaped to asylum in Europe with all of his video footage that was used to make this movie.

The style of this movie is reminiscent of early Michael Moore, although with less bombast and higher personal stakes.  It’s also a very personal movie with Pasha’s uneasy lifelong relationship with the people of his town as significant as the global-political matters.  I feel this movie is also a parallel to the road we’re already heading down in the U.S. in teaching children to be “patriotic” and “correct history.”

Rating: ***1/2

Anniversary Year Movie Review: Moana (1926)

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All throughout this year I will be reviewing movies celebrating an anniversary year.  Happy 100th birthday to Moana!

Title: Moana
Release Date: January 7, 1926
Director: Robert J. Flaherty
Production Company:  Robert Flaherty Productions
Main Cast:

  • Ta’avale – Moana
  • Fa’amgase – Moana’s fiance
  • Tama – Moana’s father
  • T’ugaita – Moana’s mother
  • Pe’a – Moana’s younger brother
  • Leupenga – Moana’s older brother

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Robert J. Flaherty’s follow-up to Nanook of the North shifts from the Arctic to the South Seas, portraying Samoan village life with a painterly eye. Blending ethnographic detail with a romanticized “Gauguin idyll,” the film celebrates daily rituals, communal traditions, and the passage into adulthood, suffused with what Flaherty called “pride of beauty, pride of strength.”

My Thoughts:

Moana is the second of Robert Flaherty’s trilogy of ethnographic feature films that also includes Nanook of the North and Man of Aran, and was filmed in a village in Samoa.  In all three films Flaherty depicts traditional lifeways of isolated peoples, but in reality has has locals acting out practices that may have been abandoned a generation or more earlier.  There’s some value in seeing people recreate the practices of their ancestors, but something deceptive in portraying as verisimilitude of actual life.  Ironically, a reviewer of this movie coined the word “documentary” to describe it.  Moana is named for the young man whose coming-of-age ritual is central to the film’s narrative. I watched a restoration of this film on Kanopy which features sound recorded by Flaherty’s daughter Monica in the 1970s

Rating: **1/2

365 Movies in 365 Days: La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe (1977)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe 
Release Date: October 1, 1977
Director: Werner Herzog
Production Company:Werner Herzog Filmproduktion | Süddeutscher Rundfunk
Main Cast:

  • Werner Herzog – Narrator
  • Edward Lachman – Self
  • Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein – Self

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave.

My Thoughts:

A volcano on Guadeloupe gives every indication that it will erupt, leading to the evacuation of all 72,000 inhabitants.  Werner Herzog and his crew film the empty city streets and go up to the steaming caldera.  It’s very beautiful but also so foolhardy it irritates me.  The latter half of the film is spent with one man who is comfortable meeting his death and refuses to leave the island.  In the end, they all survive out of pure luck.

Rating: ***

365 Movies in 365 Days: Incident (2023)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Incident
Release Date: April 25, 2023
Director: Bill Morrison
Production Company: Hypnotic Pictures | Invisible Institute
Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Chicago, 2018. A man is killed by police on the street. Through a composite montage of images from surveillance and security footage as well as police body-cams, Incident recreates the event and its consequences, featuring vain justifications, altercations and attempts to avoid blame. Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation in search of the truth.

My Thoughts:

This documentary depicts the all-too-common “incident” of police shooting and killing a Black man who was no threat to anyone.  The film is made up of footage from traffic cameras and the Chicago police’s dashcam and bodycams, edited together in a split screen to show multiple perspectives simultaneously. The thing that stands out most is the contemptible behavior of the police after the shooting who whisk away the offending officer and constantly reassure him that he did nothing wrong when they all clearly know they did something wrong.

Rating: ****

365 Movies in 365 Days: In the Absence (2018)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: In the Absence
Release Date: November 8, 2018
Director: Yi Seung-jun
Production Company: Field of Vision | Bluebird Pictures
Main Cast:

  • Park Geun-hye
  • Yoo An-sil
  • Kim Sung-mook
  • Jeon Gwang-geun
  • Jeong Bu-ja
  • Kim Soo-hyun
  • Kim Kyung-il
  • Kim Seok-kyun
  • Park Young-sun
  • Kim Ki-chun
  • Kim Gwan-hong
  • Kim Hye-yeon
  • Park Joo-min

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

When the MV Sewol ferry sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.

My Thoughts:

This harrowing documentary captures the shipwreck of a long-distance passenger ferry off the coast of South Korea in 2014.  304 of the 476 people on board, the majority of them students and teachers on a school field trip.  The company that owned the ship maintained it poorly and carried excessive cargo that was improperly secured contributing to the ship capsizing.  Passengers were instructed to remain in their cabins even as the captain and many crew escaped the ship. While fishing boat crews and civilian divers worked to rescue passengers, the South Korean Coast Guard was slow to respond. The government under Park Geun-hye also failed to address the crisis and responded to misinformation, a factor that contributed to President Park’s impeachment three years later. The film stands as an accounting of a terrible tragedy that wouldn’t have happened but for greed and incompetence.

Rating: ****

365 Movies in 365 Days: They Do Not Exist (1974)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: They Do Not Exist
Release Date: June 1, 1974
Director: Mustafa Abu Ali
Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Shooting under extraordinary conditions, the director, who worked with Godard on his “Ici et Ailleurs” (“Here and Elsewhere”) – this film was shot on the same 16mm camera – and founded the PLO’s film division, covers conditions in Lebanon’s refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the lives of guerrillas in training camps. “They Do Not Exist” is a stylistically unique work which explodes at the intersection between the political and the aesthetic.

My Thoughts:

This harrowing documentary depicts life in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon before and after an airstrike by Israeli air forces.  The images on the screen are contrasted with the words of Israeli leaders, including Golda Meir’s assertion ““There were no such things as the Palestinians … They did not exist!” I could not help but wonder if any of the people we see in this film are still alive, and how long did they survive after the film was made.  Nevertheless, we know that Palestinians exist and continue to exist and it’s goddam infuriating that 50 years later we’re still seeing atrocities against that existence.

Rating: A rating would not suffice for this film.

365 Movies in 365 Days: Lift (2000)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Lift
Release Date:August 12, 2001
Director: Marc Isaacs
Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Director Marc Isaacs installs himself in the lift of a typical English tower block. People start talking to him, and we discover their lives.

My Thoughts:

Put a camera in the elevator of an apartment building and see what happens.  It helps if you live in a building full of eccentrics.  Or more likely this is what results after paring down several days/weeks worth of footage to the best parts.  It’s also very diverse building, but it sure sounded like every person who spoke had a different accent.  Anyhow, I liked when Lily turned the tables on Marc Isaacs and started asking him questions.

I can’t help but wonder if this is the same building as in Attack the Block?

Rating: ***

365 Movies in 365 Days: Partido Alto (1976)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Partido Alto
Release Date: August 18, 1976
Director: Leon Hirszman
Production Company: Embrafilme
Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

The history of Partido-Alto, a musical subgenre derived from Samba, with roots in the batucada of Bahia.

My Thoughts:

The majority of this short film features Samba musicians performing in the Partido-Alto style in a community fashion on Brazilian sidewalks.  There’s very little commentary and I couldn’t get the subtitles to work well, but it didn’t matter.  The music and the vibes were so good and I’m glad Leon Hirszman made this little document of the time and place.

Rating: ***1/2

365 Movies in 365 Days: Betty Tells Her Story (1972)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Betty Tells Her Story
Release Date: October 13, 1972
Director: Liane Brandon
Production Company:
Main Cast:

  • Elizabeth Murray – Self

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

A woman tells the story of how she bought an expensive dress that she never got to wear, and then tells the story again focusing on her feelings about the events she described.

My Thoughts:

A Connecticut schoolteacher is invited to a formal event and reluctantly purchases an expensive dress.  She is flattered by the attention she receives from her friends when she tries it on, but then in an unfortunate sequence of events she ends up losing the dress.  In this simple film, Betty tells the story directly to the camera.  Twice.  Director Liane Brandon just wanted two takes but there are differences in how Betty tells the story.  In the first take, she has a twinkle in her eye and appears to interpret the story as a lesson about the important things in life.  On the second telling, she is more somber and admits that she still doesn’t know what to feel about what happened.  It’s a deceptively simple film that is heartbreaking and says so much about one ordinary person in its 20 minutes.

Rating: ****1/2

365 Movies in 365 Days: Fire in Castilla (Tactilvision from the Moor of Fright) (1961)

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This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Fire in Castilla (Tactilvision from the Moor of Fright)
Release Date: April 30, 1961
Director: José Val del Omar
Production Company: Hermic Films
Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

A short, experimental documentary featuring sculptures by Alonso de Berruguete and Juan de Juni. Shot within the Valladolid National Museum, the film is an excercise in what Val de Omar called “Tactile vision”.

My Thoughts:

This film captures Christian sculptures and through changes of lighting, double exposures, and editing makes them appear animated. The effect is somewhere between body horror or the erotic (or both, if you’re into that kind of thing).  The unsettling sound effects and music add to the sense of menace of the film.

Rating: ****