Movie review: Seaspiracy, dir Ali Tabrizi (2021)

An ambitious Millennial goes on the search of Truth. At least, as it relates to the sea. 

That’s a lot of ground to cover in 100 minutes, and the result is relatively breathless, fraught with a sense of the filmmaker’s own drama. 

It’s actually about five separate movies in one. Or else it could’ve been done as a series. Yet a film like this, for all its faults, is clearly necessary. Opponents would call it virtue signalling. Not me, it’s just a shame that it’s such a raw and undercooked production. 

The lesson with regards to commercial fishing is important and needs to be spoken. Having written a number of stories about fishing myself I knew a lot of the details the film retails in but still I learned new things, though I wonder at all of the graphs Tabrizi uses to illustrate the extent of the damage humanity’s made to the oceans’ fishing stocks. Where do they get the numbers from? 

Tabrizi doesn’t explain. For most people the lack of such clarifying information might pass unnoticed but I’ve written stories for magazines that have the same sense of discovery as Tabrizi’s film contains, so I know where he’s coming from. Like world population figures, Tabrizi’s fish stock numbers have to be taken as a given, as though God himself had written them down on tablets of stone. 

I would’ve liked more information but the lack of this crucial data is all of a piece with the film’s amateurish approach to its subject. A more mature editor might’ve underscored the importance of transparency. As it is, Tabrizi’s film seems destined for oblivion, yet the film is edited efficiently and the viewer’s interest never flags, Tabrizi covering a lot of ground in a short time. But, like his tendency to credit those whose ideas consone with his own, this is a weakness. He starts out looking at plastic in the oceans then skips to dolphins and their killing, and before long he’s concentrating his efforts of trawlers. If you stop and think you can see the downside in this magpie-like strategy. Jumping like a rock skipped across the surface of a calm body of water Tabrizi allows his youthful charm – look at this, do you see what I see?! – to beguile the watcher, but a more educated or discerning mind must pause and ask questions. 

The matter of numbers is one but there are others, too, not least the fleets of such developing economies as China. Tabrizi doesn’t talk enough about the mechanisms used to police compliance with regulations relating to the oceans. He stops short in covering the issue of slavery. He misses out on a lot of “angles”. He could spend his whole life making movies about how we treat the sea and still not tell the whole story. This film could’ve easily been made into a whole series of shorter episodes and I hope Tabrizi one day goes further.

TV review: Bronwyn Oliver: The Shadows Within, ABC (2021)

There are many things that connect me with Bronwyn Oliver and so I was deeply unhappy with the way that this program privileged her suicide, as though that one event determined the meaning of her life – though she was spiky and could be difficult to deal with. Having watched the show I still wonder what kind of person she was and I’m also led to wonder – because the show focuses on the woman more than on the art – what each of her striking works means.

I suspect that the truth is far more interesting and also more complex and wonderful than ‘The Shadows Within’ leads us to believe. The show is nevertheless rewarding for someone, like me, who is passionate about the visual arts. I never had the opportunity to study art as a young person – unlike Oliver (who was, in this respect, far more fortunate  than I was) – but I did spend time during one summer at the Alexander Mackie on South Dowling Street at the same time she was a student there. My short stay was not part of a full course of study, alas, but I enjoyed the experience and still have fond memories of painting classes, which included some with models that we used to sketch from life.

For art is about life, and perhaps because Oliver was so good at what she did we grieve her passing more strongly. Her ties to Cranbrook School – I was at Cranbrook from kindergarten through to the Higher School Certificate – forming a kind of link to life itself, the children giving her reasons to hold onto it and when that link was severed she drifted off into her own world, never to be seen again. As though she’d passed into a fourth dimension, such as you see when looking at one of her intricate works in copper, a place full of bright ideas that she twisted out of the fecund depths of her being like a Medieval mage. 

It was Cranbrook that put art and French in the timetable at the same time during the week, necessitating a decision on my part – or, rather, on my father’s part; for when I called him one day from the kitchen phone upstairs to ask him if I could drop French he resolutely said “No”, thus cementing in place a journey with words that I still trace with my own being, having been deprived of the opportunity to be an artist – which is what I’d wanted – by a man who was used to being obeyed.

Oliver on the other hand spent almost 50 years in that world. In fact it was a man associated with Roslyn Oxley, who I’d met somewhere in Sydney one day and who I brought to my house to see my paintings, who said, “It’s early days”, dismissing my oeuvre with a select few of his own words. I find I’m essentially envious of Oliver and thus find it puzzling why this show is so negative. Surely a woman who got to spend almost five decades doing what she loved should be celebrated as a chosen spirit, and not some poor unfortunate who, living with a tendency to obsession and her own thoughts (hardly a trial, believe me), in the end was overcome by sorrow because her lifestyle militated against health and wellbeing. She couldn’t be told what to do, and this was her strength. This was the reason why she was a great artist. Let’s applaud loudly on account of all that she achieved in her life. I won’t grieve anymore except for my own losses.

Movie review: The Social Dilemma, dir Jeff Orlowski (2020)

This movie was talked about on Twitter when it first appeared but since then its messages haven’t made much noise in the public sphere. To criticise the business model of companies such as Instagram and Facebook you need to use the same sorts of complexity and sophistication that these companies use, and this probably accounts for the relative silence. Complex ideas aren’t much commented on on sites such as Twitter, simple responses that are expressed in an extreme fashion get all the “likes” and retweets. Certainly, people haven't responded to the movie by stopping using their apps.

To talk about how Facebook engineers the news feed, or how YouTube engineers recommendations is to get to the core of the way these sites work: by rewarding the evolved systems the human body has developed over millions of years of development and refinement. We’re just not designed to cope with the addictiveness of the modern news feed with its constant appeals to our sympathies, its neverending search for the next response – just one more “like”, just another comment, or even a “share”. The dopamine rush we get from being recognised as we post and comment is what brings us back to the screen time after time.

The movie uses interviews as well as fictionalised enactments to get its message across. The people in front of the camera are mostly former employees of the companies involved. Many of them are still in the IT business, but others are fronting nonprofits. There are also the usual sort of talking head that current affairs programs bring on-camera to give their expert view of things. The package is neat and concise and entertaining. Well worth the time need to watch.

Movie review: The Minimalists: Less is Now, dir Matt D’Avella (2021)

Last month I watched this documentary’s companion piece, from the same director but coming out six years earlier. Both are good, and I don’t have a preference either way but the two movies are different though the message is the same. The earlier movie is more of a coming-of-age story, charting the emergence of the two men who are the subjects of the pieces.

‘Less is Now’ tells the same story but with more detail. Here you learn more about the childhoods of Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn, who are the Minimalists (they have a website you can visit for more information about their project). Millburn seems to have purchased a new Toyota to replace his old Toyota, which tells me that his idea has borne fruit in a material sense – though you don’t now get to see the outside of the car, the interior finishes are too new to go with the bodywork that was evident in the 2015 movie.

I watched the movie with friends, and the experience sparked controversy. This is a debate that we all must have even though, for many, the message of Nicodemus and Fields will be unnecessary. A point one of the interview subjects raised is that minimalism is really a first-world luxury. For recent migrants, the idea that you’d need to reduce the amount of belongings you own must seem like something strange, especially considering the fact that you might not have everything that you need to live life well. A spoiled society would find comfort from reducing the number of items owned and a struggling man might still need to buy his own vacuum cleaner or rice cooker.

The fact remains that we’re overtaxing the planet, the problem being that there’s no such thing as world government, so getting action on an issue as comprehensive as climate change is always going to cause us problems. Let the message of the Minimalists become more widespread and we might all have a common referent. I wonder how intrusive they really are, however. It seems to me that we’re more focused on the latest Netflix drama, the more recent Abba album, the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Movie review: Val, dirs Ting Poo and Leo Scott (2021)

This gentle and elegiac Amazon original production poses certain questions about identity and how to live a good life by examining that of Val Kilmer, the movie actor. Not too long ago Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer and after an operation he was able to retain his existence but his ability to speak – something that, for an actor, is of cardinal importance – was curtailed. To speak now Kilmer must use his finger to close a hole in his throat while he moves his lips and tongue and expels air through his mouth. Even if he does all these things in concert, however, his voice is hard to understand and his diction is cramped.

Kilmer’s financial situation is precarious. He underwrote some of his father’s property speculations so lost a good deal of money that way. Then there was his divorce. Because he declined a second ‘Batman’ movie he never entered the lists of mega-rich movie stars, and the culmination of the years has left the man with two children who love him (he lives next-door to his daughter) and a warehouse full of video tapes.

Here the directors had a treasure trove of material to draw on as they constructed a portrait of the man, and they took advantage of all of it when putting together this movie. What’s most decisive about it is the man himself, a kind of resigned jester who ekes out a living signing autographs at Comic Con and similar events held around the United States from time to time. These gatherings take their toll on a frail body and the pathos of Kilmer is striking, like Mickey Rourke in 2008’s ‘The Wrestler’, which chronicles the life of an ageing fighter. A singular difference divides the two portraits because Kilmer is close to his children whereas Randy "The Ram" Robinson doesn’t get along with his daughter. 

Kilmer’s son voiced the narration for Poo and Scott’s film, which I strongly recommend for your viewing hours. It runs to just over 90 minutes.

Movie review: Minimalism, dir Matt D’Avella (2015)

This is a quiet and discriminating Netflix documentary that charts some of the lives of two men who decided to give up – in the manner of the hero of ‘Fight Club’ – the trappings of success (high salaries, possessions) and to live their lives more simply. It’s a welcome antidote to the unceasing appeals to our cupidity screened every second on commercial TV, the endless ads for dishwashing liquid, jewellery, and car insurance that offer lures to a basic human need as, the makers of this film tell us, we are hard wired to want more.

The day before this show appeared on my TV downstairs in the living room (the TV upstairs in my bedroom isn’t digital) I watched a YouTube video a friend selected that showed electronic waste recycling in Ghana. A hellish scenario and one that ‘Minimalism’ might help us to better understand. Thinking about the contrast between the aspirational tone of this documentary compared to the journalistic grit of the YouTube video I am struck by the cognitive dissonance and I wonder how much change Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus can actually bring about with their measured approach to a problem that is so obvious once you look into it for even a day or so: that we produce and throw away more “stuff” than the environment can cope with.

Millburn and Nicodemus are prone to ending their conversations with a hug, and this is how the show leaves you feeling: as though you’ve been embraced by an emotion that only success can make. But this is confusing because we normally equate success in a certain way and these men are asking us to understand it differently. The two bags that Millburn packed for their nine-month trip around the US in an early-model Toyota sedan emblematise a desire but the growing sense that the men are gradually cutting through the noise in the public sphere offers its own kind of plenitude. Of course, once that peak is reached another issue comes along to divert the population, to engross its viewers, and to take precedence on the TV screens dotted around the United States like gems.

Movie review: Made You Look, dir Barry Avrich (2020)

This Netflix documentary chronicles the case of fake art made by a Chinese painter who masterfully copied the styles of leading American abstract expressionists (eg Pollock, Rothko). The art was sold by a reputable New York gallery for a total of $80 million, starting in the late 1990s. The FBI finally took the dealer to court but the gallerist who offloaded the works was only forced to retire.

The show is engrossing for anyone, like me, who is interested in art, because it makes you think about the value we place on this form of human expression. The object is therefore privileged, and ‘Made You Look’ asks us to question how it is that one production from one artist is worth so much when the work of another artist is relegated to obscurity.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this show. It was one of two shows I watched on the same day when, after about a year away from Netflix, I finally returned to sample what’s on offer to subscribers.

Movie review: Village without Women, dir Srdjan Šarenac (2010)

There’s no IMDB page for this lovely, quirky comedy but there is a page belonging to an organisation – Doc Alliance – where you can find a summary:

In Southwest Serbia, atop a mountain and four kilometres from the nearest road, the Jankovic brothers hold down the fort in the womanless village of Zabrdje. Dragan, Zoran, and Rodoljub, along with their neighbour, Velimir, represent the entire population of what was once a vibrant rural community. They live in tough conditions. No running water, no roads, not even a hint of a woman’s touch. Not to mention, the three brothers still share the same bedroom. Zoran, the eldest brother, dreams of marrying a woman capable of handling life in Zabrdje.

I hesitate to include even the above description as the beauty of this documentary is that, from the outset, you have little to orient yourself beyond the immediacy of a rooster, a herd of sheep and goats, and the green hills of the countryside surrounding the Jankovics’ homestead – perched atop a hill outside a small village – with its earthen floors and wooden outhouse.

To alleviate the effects of their isolation, the brothers cut pictures out of pornographic magazines and stick them (laboriously, using tape) to the whitewashed walls of their home. Like the rooster or the gate of the pen where the animals are kept (when they’re not grazing on the hillside), this dramatic element is stripped of all ornamentation, reduced to essentials, like the three brothers in their womanless lives. They carry on desultory conversations with each other, many of which revolve around the problem of finding a wife for Zoran. It’s not clear why the women have left the village but, as in the case of Albania – where the opposite problem (an excess of women) exists – doubtless has something to do with globalisation. The fact that it’s not spelled out is another of characteristics of this documentary.

The soundtrack, which comprises folk tunes played with traditional instruments, is also simple; it offers a comic counterpoint underscoring the filmmakers’ intent: to make a story about a modern-day Serbian hero.

Zoran wants an Albanian wife but Rodoljub, the youngest, is opposed to the idea of bringing a foreigner into the house, though a neighbour in a nearby village has an Albanian wife and Zoran goes, one day, to meet with the two of them and to talk about what you need to do to bring a potential bride across the border. Because not much happens in the film, when something does happen – as when Zoran goes to another town to get his passport, so that he can travel to Albania – you pay attention to small details. If ever a work of art embodied the idea of privileging the moment – finding the beauty in ordinary things – this film’d be it. 

Movie review: Voices, dir Gina Nemo (2016)

This is a documentary about the healing power of creativity. Writing poetry has helped – and continues to help – the poets featured in this film cope with what life has thrown at them, and given them away to understand their past, understand their feelings, and find community with people who share a need for closure and acceptance.

The film includes footage of a number of poets – seven in all – talking about themselves and about their art, and reciting a poem or two in front of the camera. The credits screen is shown below, but this is not representative of the film, which contains studio segments of to-camera speaking by each of the featured poets, as well as segments shot on location, for example on a suburban street in the US or elsewhere.

The film opens with Michael Ellis, a black man who suffered personal trauma in childhood. Then there’s Gina Nemo (the director), Johnny Olson (a former Marine who is involved with “Mad Swirl” poetry events – the name emblematic of the process, both outlandish and restorative, whereby poetry converts experience into something of beauty – in Dallas, Texas), Mishka Hoosen (a South African poet), Eddie Cousins (a man who is also a musician), Alonzo ‘Zo’ Gross (a black man who, in time, resolved a problem with addiction), and Salvador Murcia (from El Salvador) – each poet present in the film as a message, in their own persons, about the power of words when they are used with intent. 

I was blown away by this very practical film which, like a guide to good living, gives you access to other worlds in a way that is quite unlike anything else that I have sampled on Amazon Prime (where I saw it; I’ve come across nothing like it on Netflix, either). In your living room you’re able to experience first-hand – the editing is excellent – something that normally you can only get at open-mic readings where poets appear, something unique and precious. 

For those who are not fans of poetry, there is still a ton to enjoy due to the link that exists – has always existed – between poetry and music. In fact Cousins, from North Carolina, started out as a musician and got into poetry later on. Gross’ poetry has the feel of music because of his use of the style of spoken word – it’s exactly the same as rap. Murcia also uses rhyme (the love poem of his that closes out his segment is wonderful) as does Ellis.

Anyone who is into poetry will adore this film, which is not long at just on 80 minutes. Reach out and touch with your mind another person’s memories, their aspirations, their sense of justice, their hopes – their very dreams! My hope is that a second instalment will eventuate. 

Movie review: LA 92, dir Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin (2017)

This Netflix documentary looks at police misconduct in the context of racism in Los Angeles, so is (obviously) topical due to the Minnesota death of a young black man this year. In the film, a young black man was brutally beaten by police on account of a traffic violation, an event captured on video – on 3 April 1991 – as a man in an apartment nearby used a video camera he owned.

That the footage was made was serendipitous (unlike today, where the ubiquity of video cameras in mobile phones makes everyone a filmmaker) and other differences separate the two cases. For a start, even though in Rodney King’s case the video was aired on TV almost immediately, the ‘92 riots didn’t happen until the year following the event, while in the case, this year, of Minnesota man George Floyd the riots happened almost immediately.

This is because another thing is different between then and now: the speed of communication due to the absence, in 1991, of social media. Nowadays everyone is a publisher, whereas then the (mainly white) media sat as gatekeeper. The ‘92 riots – which were circumscribed by geography, and only happened in one city – happened only after the trial, in a local court, of the four police officers involved. The events in that case eerily similar to events that took place in 1965 in Watts, also in LA, and the filmmakers underscore this point by emphasising a view – expressed by some people alive in 1965 – that more such violence was inevitable given relations between authorities and the city’s black community.

The ‘92 trial was a travesty: in order to ensure a favourable verdict the venue for trial was not in LA but rather in a small, mainly white community nearby. Compounding the insult in the eyes of African Americans was an additional factor – another trial held at about the same time for which similar elements were in play. Rioting, looting and arson occurred over several days and the state governor called in soldiers. Korean Americans armed themselves, defending their businesses. Appearing on TV to talk about the riots, Bill Clinton capitalised on the president’s predicament.

To make this film, a wide variety of first-hand footage was sourced and edited in the studio so as to form a seamless narrative. It’s astonishing how much material was available. The soundtrack is excellent and mainly comprises orchestral pieces including (I guess) extracts of recordings of music from earlier eras (e.g. the 19th century). I was very impressed by this aspect of the film, though the subtitling in English was very poor – words spoken by people shown on the screen are sometimes displayed against the wrong parts, and lie on top of name straps, so even if they are timed correctly sometimes you can’t read either. In the end, I watched without subtitles.

TV review: Trial by Media, Netflix (2020)

This entertaining show deals with a range of events. Episode 1, ‘Talk Show Murder’, is about daytime talk shows and how “gotcha” journalism can have unwonted effects. But the role of the media in ep 2, ‘Subway Vigilante’, and ep 3, ’41 Shots’ – about shootings and the court cases that followed them – is at issue mainly because Bernhard Goetz (the “vigilante” in ep 2) and Amadou Diallo (the victim of police excess in ep 3) were widely discussed by the community. 

I’m not an expert in the laws of any US states, or of law that operates federally in that country, and even in the case of Australia, where I live, there are details about the legal process that are beyond my ken, but though this show is interesting – each episode a snapshot of America’s public sphere at a specific point in time, from the 80s and 90s to the noughts and the teens – I felt like the label at the top was employed a tad promiscuously. 

Each ep deals with different issues and, similarly, the way an expression like “trial by media” is used might, depending on the jurisdiction you live in, differ according to custom and habit. What I think about when I read these words is not necessarily the same as the meaning the filmmakers had in mind when they picked them to attach to their productions. For me, the expression “trial by media” refers to unwarranted (and, sometimes, illegal) exposure of facts salient to a court case that prejudices a jury, making the enactment of justice difficult or impossible. In the court cases featured in eps 2 and 3, the judge’s ability to find an untainted jury was indeed compromised, as it was in the case in ep 5, ‘Big Dan’s’, which followed a 1983 rape in New Haven, Massachusetts. 

But merely having trouble finding an untainted jury – something that is unremarkable – doesn’t automatically mean that there has been “trial by media”. While in all cases examined by the filmmakers stories communicated by the media operated on the minds of people – including jurors – in some cases, the defendant’s notoriety worked in his favour. This was true for Richard Scrushy, the CEO of a health insurance company, who was tried for fraud in his home state of Alabama; his case is dealt in ep 4, ‘King Richard’. This wasn’t always true of the case in the final ep, ‘Blago!’. Here, at times the media worked against the interests of the defendant, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, and at times it worked in his favour. 

Open justice – the idea that justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done – is the main thing at issue in all of the eps. The case shown in ep 5 – where the judge let broadcast media into the courtroom – is an extreme one, demonstrating that the legal process can materially suffer from too much exposure, depending on the degree to which it occurs. On the other hand constitutional protections in the US privilege the media in the legal process.

You might build, in your mind, reservations about such freedoms if you take the stories in this series to heart. While in recent years, “fake news” has become a watchword everywhere, this show demonstrates that the media has always operated in a contested space, and is often subjected to intense scrutiny by parts of the community. Perhaps this is what the filmmakers were trying to communicate by choosing the title they used to bind these stories together (it is often the media that is on trial). It’s a puzzle, though just putting the words “trial” and “media” together in the same clause brings to the fore certain ideas. 

There is plenty of drama especially if, like me, you are not American and have little memory of the stories told. The show in fact reflects a degree of parochialism; events are framed in ways that an American will understand but sometimes there is an elephant in the room. For example, discussions of ethnicity appear in eps 2, 3, and 5 but a more important issue struck me: in the first three episodes there’s a shooting as a result of which a person dies. Americans seem to find it less challenging to talk about racism than to talk realistically about easy access to firearms.

Movie review: Banking on Africa: The Bitcoin Revolution, dir Tamarin Gerriety (2020)

This documentary, which I saw on Amazon Prime,  is short – significantly less than an hour long – and I had the same reservations about it as another reviewer. On Cointelegraph, Jack Martin writes about the use of backgrounding – explanations of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – which are interspersed in the film with segments explaining how such containers of value are used in Africa. He writes:

To be fair, the film achieves this balance well, but leaves me wanting to discover more of the individual projects which are changing Africa for the better. Yes, the [printed] report has such information, but a majority of viewers probably won’t even realize that report exists.

The report he talks about (“The State of Cryptocurrency in Africa”) was given out by a sponsor of the documentary, a company called Luno which, writes Martin, “has a strong presence in Africa, having originally headquartered in Cape Town.” Cointelegraph’s reviewer was glad to see, however, that Luno didn’t feature in the movie. Watching from Australia, I was unaware of the company’s involvement until I read Martin’s article. If I hadn’t done so, I would’ve remained ignorant of a key facet of the movie.

Nevertheless, it is interesting on its own merits not only because it shows why, in a place such as Africa – excuse me while I stuff the whole vast continent into one short name – cryptocurrencies might actually be useful because infrastructure – banks, for example – might be unable to cope with the demands consumers place on it. For a start, people might not pay their bills on time, or even at all. But if a power company asks to receive payment in advance of electricity consumption, a family or an institution – such as a school (the example used in the film) – might not have the wherewithal to pay, in which case they simply go without. How about setting up a website to enable a person living in a European country to send money to pay for the electricity consumption of a school in South Africa or Botswana? This is what Uziso, a South African organisation, has done. It has even sourced special equipment that can be installed at the site where power is to be used.

A cryptocurrency’s ability of to be something other than a vehicle for speculation is explained, though I wasn’t thereby automatically swayed in its favour. The film also tries to go into detail about the mechanics of cryptocurrencies, but rather than becoming too abstract I felt, again, that the information delivered was too little; I didn’t learn much that I hadn’t already heard from other sources.

Like Martin, I wanted more information about how cryptocurrencies are actually being used in Africa, but such information requires time and effort to gather and, therefore, money. This movie is a good first draft, but a longer work is needed to deliver what is promised by the title.

Movie review: Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics, dir Donick Cary (2020)

Using a range of materials including interviews with actors (alive and dead), old public information films, cartoons, and interludes with a character named Captain Good Trips (played by Otis Cary) this Netflix documentary intends to be part of a wider debate about such things as LSD and magic mushrooms.

While it is informative the inclusion of Anthony Bourdain (who suicided two years ago) and Carrie Fisher (who died in 2016; she is known to have abused drugs) takes some of the shine off the product. And for someone of my generation – brought up in the 60s and 70s – there’s not a heck of a lot of new information to be found here. I dropped acid on one occasion in the mid-80s when I was in my twenties. I was at a sporting field in Leichhardt – in fact it was Taverners Hill, nearby – with an Englishman named Gary, who was a friend of mine in Sydney. Nothing happened and I never repeated the experiment but the problem with illicit substances is something I was aware of at the time: they can cause health problems. Drugs can lead to people being admitted to hospital, to spending time in mental institutions, to losing their jobs, to the breakdown of marriages, and to poverty. A "bad trip" might sound benign, but it can be traumatic.

Watching Cary’s film I wanted more viewpoints. Hearing about Sting’s trips is fun in a goofy way and Deepak Chopra is amusing on account of his willingness to ascribe to the use of psychedelic drugs all the achievements of the generations that brought us the post-war counterculture, yet more hard science is really needed to make the film truly reflect the range of viewpoints that are out there in the wider community. A psychiatry professor named Charles Grob adds some much-needed expertise but the filmmakers could’ve profitably located more of such people. Someone for example who’d advise against the use of psychedelics. Hacking in the odd segment from a dicky 80s anti-drug propaganda film doesn’t address the real issues, and just makes reservations – no matter how warranted – about such substances appear to be relics of the stone age. 

Movie review: Icarus, dir Bryan Fogel (2017)

This film about doping in sport won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2018, so it comes well recommended and can appeal to a wide range of people. There’s not an awful lot of chatter about the movie on Twitter, though I did find this from a person named Lee (with no indication on his profile as to where he lives):

The story starts when Fogel asks an American doping expert to help him improve his performance in advance of a gruelling bicycle road race. Fogel has had one go at the Haute Route – he doesn’t say which one, using the name of a series of races to stand in for one of them – and came 14th in the raking at the end of it. Now, he wants to improve his ranking at another Haute Route. In the event the Californian decides not to help Fogel achieve his goal, instead referring him to someone known to him by the name of Grigory Rodchenkov, who works at a lab in Moscow that provides testing services for athletes.

Rodchenkov starts to give Fogel advice on how to dope – which includes injecting substances into his thigh and buttocks – and Fogel gets advice, at this stage in the process, from a clinic in the US. But since, in order to compete, you must prove you are clean, he is taking urine samples, under Rodchenkov’s tutelage, and freezing them. The question then arises: where to get them tested? This is where things start to spiral out of control. What happens next will open up a pandora’s box and unleash forces that Fogel could never have imagined might have an interest in his bike race, or in his life.

To strengthen the points the movie wants to make about corruption, Fogel puts Rodchenkov on camera reading extracts from George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen eighty-four’ (1949). Rodchenkov’s history of depression and his bookishness compound the mystery embodied in the narrative. Some aspects of the drama have a veil drawn over them but even if the story seems incredible it is a compelling watch.

The film’s soundtrack is really interesting, adding impact at carefully chosen points. The editing is crisp and efficient, but it’s a bit hard to read subtitles as well as on-screen labels – the name straps used to identify a person being interviewed in front of the camera – so you need to pay close attention. Parts of the film are in foreign languages as media reports are used from time to time, and they originated in a number of different countries. There are also parts that are spoken in Russian by people close to the story, for example those who appear on Skype.

Stories continue to emerge in the public sphere that touch on the same points as are dealt with here. For many, sport must no longer be worth the time needed to watch.

Movie review: Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, dir Stanley Nelson (2019)

I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary though I felt, the next day, that the filmmakers lost some dramatic opportunities.

I'm not a big user of music and I have never been into jazz, but I am familiar with the kinds of music that Davis created because they are regularly used for soundtracks for movies and TV shows. If you knew nothing about Davis and decide to try this film, you would have already been prepared – whoever you are and wherever you live – for some of what you will see. You might know nothing about the events of the musician’s life but you will – without doubt – have heard his music at some point in your life. It’s that famous.

This explains the tendency of some of the interviewees to idolise the musician, despite his obvious faults. The movie uses a good deal of footage taken from videoed interviews conducted with people who were related to Davis, who worked with him, or who wrote about him. It also uses footage from other sources, including what was taken at concerts Davis gave at different locations in different countries. Then there’s archival footage – for example from when Davis would go on tour in Europe – that was filmed by people close to him at the time. All of this material is fused skilfully into a harmonious whole for the education and entertainment of the viewer.

Davis was no saint but the hushed tones that some people use when talking about him – people who knew him when he was alive – are off-putting. What happens to Davis’ first wife, Irene, is not clear, furthermore, though it appears that he had good relations with his children from that marriage. On the other hand, the film (as far as I, a complete novice, could discern) is factual or, at least, it’s thorough.

Like a colossus, Miles Davis straddled generations and was, like David Bowie, someone who was able to change his style quickly, unexpectedly and, sometimes, radically. But you can see the development, over time, of a stately oeuvre, something lasting and important. It wasn’t completed without a certain degree of disharmony. And the man himself, it is clear, was prone to suffering – as many people are – to alleviate which he used easily available means.

Perhaps the example of Miles Davis, or people like him, was behind my father’s decision to steer me away from the visual arts to a corporate career. I can never know. An unassailable truth, however, is that creative pursuits are highly rewarding, in a way that few activities in life are. It’s important to discover your true metier, your avocation. This film shows creativity in action in the life of one man. If you like music of any kind, watching this film will give you pleasure. If you are interested in creativity of any stamp, likewise. It can be profitably watched by a wide range of people, not just those who like jazz, bebop, funk, or pop music.

TV review: Wormwood, Netflix (2017)

An undeniably strange, subtle production, this compelling show tells a story about conscience, justice, and truth. It’s topical now as it deals with whistleblowers and biological warfare. In six episodes, the drama centres on a Maryland family, the Olsens, and involves interviews – mainly with Eric (the son of Frank, who was a scientist working in a secret biological weapons facility in the 1950s) – as well as reenactments and fictionalisations.

In the last two categories of content, Peter Sarsgaard plays Frank Olsen and Molly Parker plays his wife, Alice. Three people who worked with or were associated with Frank are Vincent Ruwet (Scott Shepherd), Sidney Gottlieb (Tim Blake Nelson), and Robert Lashbrook (Christian Camargo). There’s also a doctor named Harold Abramson (Bob Balaban), and a CIA operative whose name is not given but who plays a key role (Jimmi Simpson).

Since 1953, when he was a boy of about seven years, Eric’s had trouble dealing with his father’s death, and so his telling of his father’s story is both poignant and political involving, as it does, Cold War programs that, today, remain shrouded in mystery. In a world of secrets and death, the drama hinges on our seeming obsession with the clandestine, as though, since the decline of religion as an organising principle in the world, we had merely substituted one organisation – the state – for another – the church. Perhaps our tendency to see plots everywhere is innate to the species; it might be something about us, like an ability to perceive movement among the trees of a forest.

About all of us, not just Eric Olsen. The show will appeal to those who like true crime, but in addition to dramatic tactics stemming from such genres as the spy thriller, including the use of novel drugs, an obscure death, and conflicting accounts of events, ‘Wormwood’ takes you to the edge of the ever-present moment of becoming as time flows relentlessly on, transporting us into the future.

TV review: Abstract: The Art of Design, season 2, Netflix (2019)

This Netflix original is a documentary show that gives a look behind the scenes of design, each episode focusing on a different individual. The range of disciplines is broad: from a visual artist who is also involved in architecture (Olafur Eliasson) to the designer of Instagram’s user interface (Ian Spalter), and from a materials design guru (Neri Oxman) to a costume designer who works mainly with filmmakers (Ruth Carter).

In order to give an idea of the process each of them uses to arrive at his or her goal – it might be something people know that they need, or it might be a completely new type of object, the use of which is yet unknown – each episode has footage of the person speaking. There are also interviews with people associated with the subject, who might be family members or colleagues.

The trick with this kind of thing – as with all journalism – is to give enough detail to make the enterprise worthwhile, but to simplify it so that it will be digestible for the majority. You run the risk of either going too fast or of dumbing down the ideas that motivate your subject. I thought that the filmmakers did a good job in each case, though with Eliasson I would have liked more information about the artist’s ideas. The episode concerning Cas Holman, who designs toys for children, was very comprehensible and had an added facet addressing the subject’s gender preference. In Oxman’s case a bit too much emphasis is given to her role as a manager, and I would have liked to have learned more about the things the team actually makes in her lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Spalter’s case the mini-history of user interface design was very incomplete and missed out on a range of things that existed independent of or prior to the productisation, in the early 70s, of the PC; there is no mention of time-share computing, bulletin boards (BBs), automation and control systems, or even of the basic research that resulted in the introduction of such things as touchscreens.

On the other hand, Eliasson’s wry comment about the extended glosses that institutions such as galleries and museums sometimes attach to artworks was refreshing. I have often commented to friends, when talking about art, to the effect that a work of art should be able to communicate what is necessary to the viewer without any added commentary. In this sense, while watching the first ep in the season, I felt a deep affinity with the artist.

The language used by the inventors is something, in all episodes, I found fascinating. They are, I fact, word porn – in the case of New Yorker Jonathan Hoefler, letter porn (it’s a joke; he designs typefaces) – along with some incidental video. I’m kidding, obviously but, when you think about it, in order to come up with ideas and then make objects to embody them, the practitioner must employ a sophisticated vocabulary and attendant syntax which are able to delineate the outlines, and colour in the gaps between them, of something that has not yet appeared in the world. This is a kind of magic, a conjuring out of nothing, using materials and code, of something both original and useful.

That’s the challenge these people face in their jobs. Communication skills are just as important as technical competence because a lot of what happens is inexact. It is iterative and success is contingent on partial results; changes have to be made by a team at different points on the journey towards completion in order to make something beautiful, something that brings joy. Good art takes a lot of thought plus time and patience, and the same applies with design.

Hence the subtitle. The international flavour of this nerdy show is also entertaining. In Holman’s case an Asian link is uncovered when one of her designs is appropriated by an organisation in China. In Spalter’s case there is a strong Japanese connection. Eliasson is from Iceland but lives in Germany. Oxman is Israeli but works in the USA.

Season 2 started up automatically when I selected “play” at the program’s home page, but I’ll probably get around to watching the first season, too.

Movie review: Knock Down the House, dir Rachael Lears (2019)

This Netflix original documentary tracks the congressional campaigns of women aiming for the Democratic nomination for four lower house seats. The movie shows grassroots campaigns led by ordinary people – Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, for example, is a waitress at the beginning of the film – in order to bring real change to American politics. One of the main policy areas the women addressed in their campaigns was healthcare and a theme that recurs often is the influence of money on politics in the US.

‘Knock Down the House’ is, despite the drama contained in the title, a sensitive portrayal of ambition and shows how individuals must invest themselves in a venture of this nature; for these women – Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Cori Bush (Missouri), Paula Jean Swearingen (West Virginia), Amy Vilela (Nevada) – campaigning becomes personal and compulsive. Their reactions are honed to be fast; they have to be quick on the draw in order to effectively engage in such activities as doorknocking and public debates. Handing out leaflets on city streets is just as important as developing effective policies or as raising funds from donors contacted by telephone. In each case, the candidate is supported by a team of committed individuals. The movie helps to clarify what is involved in the process of politics. We often criticise politicians and, now with social media, such treatment is more visible than it has ever been, but we mostly don’t think about how it affects people who are, on a daily basis, intimately involved.

The movie does four things that are tied to the notion of ambition. Firstly, the movie is aspirational, both from the standpoint of the actors and of the filmmakers themselves. It is a kind of primer to a process of renewal, as well as being an act of witnessing the ceaseless striving, for authenticity and its attendant success, that takes years of hard, continuous work and that might end up with a defeat at a poll. When filming began, well before 2018, the year in which the elections took place, it was not at all clear who would win and who would lose. But even if none of the movie’s subjects had been successful, it is clear that such efforts can bear fruit after a delay of many years. (Michael Lewis’ ‘Trail Fever’ (1997) demonstrates how this was true of the ’96 Republican races; policies expressed at that time were echoed strongly in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.)

Secondly, the movie clarifies the dynamic that conditions relations between different political players: between the candidate and her staff, between the candidate and potential voters and sponsors, between two competing candidates (for Ocasio-Cortez the opposition was Joe Crowley, representing the establishment in the form of the “Queens Machine”).

Thirdly, ‘Knock Down the House’ serves to illustrate America’s extraordinary diversity. You get to see a range of different contexts in which politics is performed – from the bright green valleys of the Appalachians to the parched, brown streets of suburban Nevada; from the busy thoroughfares of the Bronx to the leafy avenues of suburban St Louis. The cinematography is excellent, adding charm to a product that, in itself, was always going to be very interesting. It must’ve helped that the director is a woman; the movie opens, for example, with Ocasio-Cortez putting on her makeup in preparation for an important event.

And always there’re the voters, average people with their own taste in clothes, a range of hairstyles; an entire inventory of middle America. For some readers of this post, the idea of democracy in the USA might seem old-fashioned due to known deficits that persist in many states, as well as at the federal level. Because people like the women shown in the movie are aware of such deficits, the movie’s title serves as a potent reminder of an ongoing struggle. So, fourthly (and, possibly, most importantly), ‘Knock Down the House’ shows how some form of representation of the individual – his or her wishes and aspirations, his or her problems and wants – can exist even under the most trying conditions.

I found this movie to be solid; it is also understated and careful: an appropriate response to a situation that deserves, because of the privileged position that the US maintains in the world, closer scrutiny both by Americans and by people living in other countries. Well worth the time needed to watch.

Movie review: LA Originals, dir Estevan Oriol (2020)

Starting its storytelling in the 1980s, this documentary film charts the lives of two Chicano (Mexican-American) men from Los Angeles. Mark Machado (Mister Cartoon) is a graphic artist who creates a name for himself making tattoos, and Estevan Oriol is a photographer who also makes videos. Their emergence as a creative force coincided with (and in fact depended on) the rise of hip hop.

LA gang culture has its own chroniclers, for example moviemakers. Such cultural products as ‘End of Watch’ (2012) and ‘Training Day’ (2001) illustrate, in a way that ‘LA Originals’ also does, the formation of an aesthetic argot, a demotic register born of a combination of drugs, music, and violence, particular to a specific place and time, that can have international appeal. Richard Poplak’s ‘The Sheikh’s Batmobile’ (2009) also describes how such things can take place in an era of global Capital.

The scenes in ‘LA Originals’ set in Iraq at the time of the 2003 US invasion – the second time in a generation such a war had been waged – are especially telling as to how this process can work. Such scenes made me mindful of George Gittoes, an Australian artist and filmmaker. In 2006 and 2007 on this blog I looked at his work, some of which is inspired by what he saw in the war zone.

Mr Cartoon’s art was readily absorbed, reified, and sold by big business. The influence of two people from a marginal US demographic achieving agency struck me as somehow emblematic of our times, even though their art perhaps represents more evolution than revolution. Migrants often turn out to be, either in themselves or through their children, among the most productive members of any pluralistic democracy they enter. But Tom Wolfe, in a 1963 essay included in his 1965 book ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’, chronicles the appearance of a similar type of art and its attendant subculture a generation before Estevan and Mr Cartoon started out on their respective trajectories.

Their kind of art combines kitsch with menace but its influence might, in the long term, be transient. The jury is still out as to its importance; time will tell. Nevertheless the movie, which uses thousands of photographs as well as clips of video footage, is worthwhile spending time with. It charts a phenomenon that sums up so much about today’s world and can be profitably watched by anyone interested in understanding how art and money can, under the right conditions, operate in tandem rather than (as usually happens) in parallel.

Before getting to the end of this review I want to quote a passage from journalist Michael Lewis’ ‘Trail Fever’ (1997; the book will be reviewed shortly on this blog). Here, Lewis is accompanying a failed Democratic presidential candidate on a working tour of Las Vegas. The man’s name: Jesse Jackson. At a hospital, where Jackson had gone to see Tupac Shakur, a hip hop artist who had been shot and who would die of his wounds, they meet promoter Don King.

Like Tupac Shakur, he wears not one but two gold watches, one on each wrist. An absurd display of wealth, on the one hand; on the other a funny parody of mainstream success culture: if you are going to turn your wristwatch into a status symbol, why have only one?

Most people under the age of 50 today, of course, know who Tupac Shakur was, but almost no-one would know, if pressed for an answer, that Bob Dole lost the presidential race in 1996. To underscore this point, on the day before this post was published, at around 11.05pm Pacific Time, a Californian resident with the Twitter handle @Andrew714 tweeted, in reference to this movie, “Can anyone tell me who does the song that starts at the 1hr 8min 16sec mark? It's not in the credits, been searching for days.”

Movie review: Lucha: Playing the Impossible, dir Ana Quiroga (2016)

A documentary that chronicles the emergence of a major force in women’s hockey, the Argentinian player Luciana Aymar, known in her native country as “Lucha”. The narrative alternates between preparations for contests that are part of the 2014 World Cup, sections of those matches, and footage taken from newscasts detailing earlier parts of Lucha’s career. Interspersed between these are sections of interviews with exponents of the game, with Lucha herself, and with former players who know her.

Behind the platitudes delivered to journalists at the post-match press conferences, behind the bland commentary included in the interviews, behind the scenes of the team going to a match in the Hague in the Netherlands on the official bus, what really stood out for me is a sense of the burden of responsibility that was placed on Lucha and the way that she carried it. With teams from the US, the Netherlands, and Australia the main foes, national pride depended largely on Lucha’s on-field performances.

Seen in an ensemble like this, what is in fact anodyne verbiage releases hidden meanings, and you feel how the front that Lucha put on for her audience – for the whole country, in fact – protected her core from scrutiny that might have hampered her ability to function properly. The impossibility the subtitle points to is perhaps the job of shouldering the weight of the community’s aspirations, something that some politicians and some creative artists are also asked to carry.

Sport is a type of affair where the self-regard of the collective plays out over an individual’s personality and character. What is the distance between the psychological state of a player about to run onto the field and the feelings of each spectator in the stands, or of someone sitting in front of the TV at home watching a match? What cost accrues due to an action deriving from this misalignment? Who pays? Who benefits?

This film has clues to the answers of such questions though there are no interviews with official sponsors or with people representing the Argentinian government. There’s also no mention of a romance; perhaps Lucha asked for it to be left out. You couldn’t blame her if she wanted some privacy but the complete absence of such information in a film specifically about her merits at least a remark. Mercifully a low-key affair the film yet feels a bit more like encomium than biography.