24 Hour Party People - Michael Winterbottom (2002, DVD)
Dramatized biography of Tony Wilson and the rise and fall of the Factory Records label, roughly covering the decade of the 1980s, bookended by the formation of Joy Division on one end and the whimper-and-bang failure of Happy Mondays to deliver a bestselling album to the label in time to avoid bankruptcy on the other. The film cleverly interweaves stock footage (closeups of the Sex Pistols in performance) and new (long shots of stand-ins recreating the same performance). Steve Coogan portrays Wilson as a fool you can't help liking, if not exactly admiring. About half the major characters portrayed actually get cameos in the movie, and Coogan/Wilson points them out through fourth-wall-breaking narration which somehow manages to amuse more than irritate. Interesting, entertaining.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (627) | link me | February 2003

Kurt and Courtney - Nick Broomfield (1998, DVD)
Frequently irritating and occasionally appalling documentary on the death of Kurt Cobain. Almost everyone in the movie, director/interviewer Broomfield included, comes off as some flavor of maniac and/or asshole. If I had Cobain's wife and 'best friend', I'd probably fellate a shotgun too.
| Comments (4) | TrackBack (610) | link me | February 2003

Walking with Dinosaurs - Tim Haines, Jaspar James (1999, DVD)
Semi-documentary on the lives of several aspects of dinosaur life. Good stuff if you're into natural history, the science-TV thing, or just big lizards. Clearly done on a lower budget than, say, Jurassic Park, but it looks like the money was better-spent here.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (176) | link me | January 2002

Pollock - Ed Harris (2000, DVD)
A biographical drama of the famous painter. While the acting was good and individual scenes were powerful, I thought there were problems with the structure of the movie. For example, after years struggling with alcoholism, we see Pollock clean up his act and get sober, then at the height of his success, he starts drinking again (going from cold sober to drunken ass in about 60 seconds, remarkably), and the movie skips ahead 5 years, to find Pollock at rock bottom. After investing so much time in chronicling his rise, it seems weird to skip the details of the fall.
| Comments (16) | TrackBack (278) | link me | September 2001

Man On The Moon - Milos Forman (1999, DVD)
Dramatized biography of comedian Andy Kaufman. Admittedly, 95% of my knowledge of Kaufman's work was his role as Latka on Taxi, so I can't be sure, but it felt like I was getting a bit more of Jim Carrey and less of Andy Kaufman than I really wanted — contrast this to Dustin Hoffman's Lenny Bruce, for example. This isn't to say that there was a better casting choice available than Carrey. Lenny seemed to me to be more about the comedic material, while MOTM was trying to be about Kaufman; ironically, the reason this didn't work for me can be summed up in a few lines of dialogue from the movie itself:

Andy Kaufman: You don't know the real me.
Lynne Margulies: There isn't a real you.
Andy Kaufman: Oh yeah, I forgot.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (258) | link me | June 2001

Lenny - Bob Fosse (1974, VHS)
Life story of controversial comedian Lenny Bruce, whose act prepared audiences for Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and all those other potty-mouths. I hadn't known much about him, and this did a pretty good job of cataloguing his rise and fall. I thought Dustin Hoffman was excellent in the lead role, and I usually don't like him that much.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (104) | link me | March 2001