1.
London (1994)
I just could not get into this one, a sort of walking tour of London, warts-n-all, juxtaposed with a somewhat fanciful narration that creates a kind of cognitive dissonance while watching it. I get what the filmmaker was going for, but something about it just agitated me.
2.
Un vivant qui passe a.k.a. A Visitor from the Living (1999)
3.
Sobibór, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (2001)
4.
Le rapport Karski a.k.a. The Karski Report (2010)
Nothing invigorates the soul like a trio of Claude Lanzmann Holocaust interviews, all basically footage shot for Shoah that Lanzmann decided to build out into features for various reasons. A Visitor from the Living finds Lanzmann interviewing a Red Cross worker who was given a tour of a concentration camp and wrote up a favorable report of what he saw, not realizing the Nazis has basically carefully staged conditions to appear much less awful than they actually were. It's fairly interesting but I have to wonder what the ultimate point was. Lanzmann toward the end begins to tell the worker what the conditions were really like in an attempt to... I don't know, shame the worker? But to his point, he was fooled. What could he have done? The main criticism I'd aim at the Red Cross worker is how he perceived the Jews imprisoned, calling them basically weak and unmotivated to do anything about their condition.
Which is actually a nice segue into the next doc where Lanzmann interviews one of the Jewish prisoners involved in the most successful concentration camp escape in WWII. The actual story that Yehuda Lerner recounts is incredibly fascinating and exciting, and Lanzmann has it conveyed it the least cinematic, most annoying way possible. He has Lerner tell the story is short chunks after which he has to stop and let a translator tell that portion of the story. And it's the translator, not Lerner himself, that is subtitled. So you see Lerner very animatedly describing something happening like splitting a guard's head open with ax with no subtitles for a couple minutes. Then he just stops and sits there while a female translator off-screen flatly repeats what he said in French, at which point you finally get the subtitles. Just very frustrating and very easily fixable in editing. This story deserves better.
The Karski Report is basically the second day of an interview with Jan Karski who acted as a message courier on secret missions for the Polish resistance. Shoah actually has the first half of his interview included describing his experiences in this capacity. This interview focuses on his experiences meeting various world leaders after escaping to England and his attempts to convey the atrocities he witnessed first hand. Sadly but not surprisingly, most of what he had to say fell on deaf ears as most he spoke with refused to believe what he was telling them thinking it was a gross exaggeration of events. He even meets with FDR at one point who seems to just want to talk in slogans and general sentiments and avoids discussing the more visceral horrors of the war. While Sobibor is certainly the most interesting story, it's the most incompetently filmed. The Karski Report on the other hand is both an interesting story that is much easier to watch due to Karski recounting the experience in English in a very precise, measured tone.
5a.
Monster Makeup (1989)
5b.
Hammer’s Lost Worlds (2017)
5c.
Producing Schlock: The Career of Al Adamson (2008)
5d.
Freud In Color: Guido Crepax (?)
5e.
May I Help You? Confessions of a Game Play Counselor (2020)
Monster Makeup is basically a nearly 40 minute How-To video with well-regarded make-up artist Dick Smith (The Exorcist, Scanners) as he walks through how to do some basic make-up effects using easy to acquire items. It wasn't the most enthralling thing to watch, but if you are into practical effects and want to know how they're done or actually want to learn, this is a pretty good starting point.
Hammer's Lost Worlds is a pretty neat featurette that discusses many of the legendary Hammer Studios' projects that never got made. Some of these I would've really like to have seen like a Children's fantasy film starring Vincent Price.
Producing Schlock is a short featurette that interviews producer Sam Sherman about director Al Adamson. It's fine but given there's a new much more comprehensive Al Adamson doc out (that I hope to get to later this month), I can't see returning to this again.
Freud in Color is a neat little featurette about comic artist Guido Crepax (the film Baba Yaga is based on his work) that attempts to show parallels in how Crepax drew panels with film editing. It's obviously an older doc (I would estimate probably early '70s) but I can't find any info online about when it was actually made.
May I Help You? is a nice little interview with one of the video game counselors that dolled out hints for 99 cents a minute back in the '80s for desperate kids needing to know how to find the 5th dungeon in Zelda or how to find the second warp whistle in Mario 3. It brought back memories (not that I was a game counselor but I was one of those kids... although my parents never let me call the helpline).
6.
Alaska: Silence & Solitude (2005)
As max would say, here's some primo wilderness porn for you. Important lesson I learned from a legit Alaskan ranger: "Don't let the porcupines eat your boat". Good advice indeed.
7.
A Musicares Tribute to Paul McCartney (2012)
This concert tribute to Paul McCartney was, like most tributes, something of a mixed bag. The performances from McCartney himself are solid but stuff like the flamboyant opener courtesy of Cirque du Soleil and a less than riveting Sergio Mendes (and I actually like early Mendes...this just felt lazy) performance left me cold.
8.
L'île au trésor a.k.a. Treasure Island (2018)
Here's a doc to chillax to as we watch the various comers and goers of an island waterpark going about their day. Teens exploring remote parts of the island and hanging out, kids trying to sneak in past security guards to the fee-based beach area for a nice swim, the guards themselves shooting the breeze and talking about whatever enters their head... It's a very laid-back doc that rarely actually gets boring despite the lack of any kind of cohesive narrative. Having said that, after it's over, it doesn't really leave much of a lasting impression either making me wonder what the point was to begin with.
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1. London (1994)
2. Un vivant qui passe a.k.a. A Visitor from the Living (1999)
3. Sobibór, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures (2001)
4. Le rapport Karski a.k.a. The Karski Report (2010)
5a. Monster Makeup (1989)
5b. Hammer’s Lost Worlds (2017)
5c. Producing Schlock: The Career of Al Adamson (2008)
5d. Freud In Color: Guido Crepax (?)
5e. May I Help You? Confessions of a Game Play Counselor (2020)
6. Alaska: Silence & Solitude (2005)
7. A Musicares Tribute to Paul McCartney (2012)
8. L'île au trésor a.k.a. Treasure Island (2018)
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