Change Your Image
phillip_wareham
Reviews
Why We Ride (2013)
One perspective on something that's hard to capture
Motorcycling came late to me, but after only a couple of years it's an important part of who I am. The makers of this movie (like a lot of other bikers) seem to feel the same way. They've tried to capture it and got close. The problem is that just like a photo of great scenery never captures the way it feels to be there, and the movie adaptation of your favourite book always disappoints, that feeling is difficult to nail down in
a documentary, especially as it's not the same feeling for each of us.
They did a great job of representing those for whom riding is something emotional, philosophical, and meaningful. Some of it was really touching. What it perhaps needed were some moments of comedy to provide balance; maybe some people for whom motorcycling is just about being wild or getting crazy with your buddies, who make you laugh, but that clearly isn't the voice of those who made this fillm. They love the flow state of being out on the road and the cameraderie amongst their fellow bikers.
Moment of Contact (2022)
A decade's work from James Fox
James Fox sets the benchmark for communicating on this topic with the way that he works like a dog to find the key witnesses and put them front of the camera, and then just lets them have their say. The witnesses are numerous and diverse, and together plot out in detail what appears to have been a crash of an anomalous craft and capture of the beings that occupied it. All of the witnesses seem like ordinary, honest people with no reason to lie. In one situation there were even three witnesses who testified about what they had seen together.
Like many people who have started following this topic in the last couple of years I'm nowhere near ready to make conclusions, but the evidence that there is a core of reality to this topic is now piled pretty high.
The Dawn Wall (2017)
Epic
Documentaries often stand or fall on the content. I don't really even have an opinion on how good a film this is, I just think that Tommy Caldwell is one of those people who changes your conception of what's achievable. He totally crossed the line into being obsessive about what he was doing, but so what? Pioneers are like that.
Edit: just to note that I hardly ever bother to write reviews; only when a film is relatively obscure and a bit special, and I want to help it get noticed. Says it all.
Pirates of the Care Free Being: A Personal Revolution (2014)
Worth watching
I'm surprised that this video didn't get at least a little more attention. There are a lot of themes to notice in it: men being drawn to the sea for adventure, people being able to do together what they couldn't do alone, the value of community, and how the modern economy makes people want to get out from the cycle of working and paying bills. You could also throw in some reference to Thoreau if you want. He built a little hut so that he could chill out and not work so hard and these guys went spearfishing for some of the same reasons. The sea doesn't just belong to people that are brought up sailing, and there's certainly a culture gap between these guys and folks who were brought up yachting.
There's a lack of self-awareness in here, where these guys really struggled at times for not having planned and prepared and many others have sailed further and faster, but these guys had at least as much fun and achieved what they wanted to, which was to just get out there.
Chasing Bubbles (2016)
Inspirational
A very well made film about a fascinating person. Sailing forums constantly feaure recommendations of this movie, but there's more to it than sailing. Alex Rust seems like he was a very impulsive person who had no reservations and just did stuff and lived much more in the three years of his trip than the rest of us can dream of doing in our whole lives. The boat got it's name ('Bubbles') because he empathised with the way that children look wondrously at bubbles blowing through the air and wanted to experience that kind of feeling again. The film is perfectly named and is really about this desire that many of us have to look for meaning and adventure. After watching this you'll probably feel like you're not doing enough with your life.
Threads (1984)
'The Road' filmed as a documentary in 1984
The bulletin of atomic scientists recently moved the doomsday clock closer to midnight than ever before. This set me off reading and researching and led me to this movie. My first impression was that it looked cheap, low budget, and dated so I skipped forward to when the war started. The way that things were displayed was exactly what experts say would happen, almost as if they had tried to lay out an academic report in film. There is immense research and attention to detail. Someone has put a lot of thought into how people would react in this situation and we see the grim reality: that in the event of nuclear weapons being used there is a good chance that the electricity grid would collapse along with most of what constitutes society and we would be left with a small minority of people surviving to begin farming the following spring. Stored food supplies in urban areas would keep the population going for only days or weeks. It's hard to give this film a score. Ten for research, realism and attention to detail, less for being dated and perhaps a bit inaccessible as a result. Call it an eight?
Westside vs the World (2019)
Inspiration & a warning
The day after watching this film my training partner was unavailable, so I equalled an old PB on the bench with no spotter. After watching what these guys put themselves through I couldn't quit. There's an interesting examination of the motivation these people have. They're as nuts as any elite athletes, and inspirational for how determined they are. One possible oversight is the lack of mention of performance enhancing drugs, but that topic can't be covered at the same time as a look at the inside of things.
Following Seas (2016)
Inspiring & well constructed film
This film will likely be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in sailing, but also by anyone who yearns for adventure. The character shown by this family is staggering and inspirational. As with so many other sailing adventures, you see that success mostly comes down to determination.
Disenchantment (2018)
I laughed a lot
It's got elements of previous Matt Groening shows about it, but is more modern and edgy. Like Futurama, the change of setting seems to have given the writers room to make original jokes. A wizard and a griffin having sex? Wouldn't get that in any of the previous shows, so you can't see the punchline coming.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
The other reviews are generous
The film started out a well-filmed western, but tailed off. The later parts were slow and repetitive, and the tribe were poorly conceived. Some of the violence was gratuitous without fitting into a plausible narrative. It could have been done a little better.
Blue Ruin (2013)
Intriguing and engrossing
I put this on thinking it wouldn't be great because it only got 7.1 from previous viewers, but now I don't understand why people didn't like it more. The pace of the film was perhaps slow for some, but it has momentum and I was engrossed in it. I turn films off if they're boring, and never came close. It's intelligently written and unpredictable. Many films seem to me like they're only different, unique or unpredictable when events are too dumb or implausible for you to see it coming, but in this case I think they didn't have money to burn, so just wrote and planned with precision. It reminds of Clerks in that respect: like someone has had an idea for a movie for a long time before they were able to make it, and put most of their best ideas into it.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Beautiful
Where to start? Along with the dated synthesiser stuff that might put off younger people, Queen produced genuinely timeless classics with a genius playing a guitar that he built with his dad, a flamboyant Iranian man with a stupendous voice, and moments of lyrical brilliance that deserve more recognition. Some lesser known songs like 'Love of my life' are subtly beautiful and barely remembered. A rock band that can produce piano ballads like is not really a rock band; they're composers. Seeing Freddie sat at the piano composing was incredible. I couldn't sleep after watching it and stayed up late singing along to my favourite songs. What does that tell you?
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Almost burned down the cinema to make it stop
It seems like there is some kind of inflationary process, whereby every explosion in a movie needs to be bigger than the last, and there need to be more and bigger monsters with more and greater powers. There is nowhere left for this garbage trend to go. Please, please stop.
The whole movie was black with things burning, so I couldn't see much, and every character seemed to have a near death experience every twenty-five seconds. All of the monsters died and then were miraculously reanimated on a similar timetable. The people who made this film need to watch Wall-E and all the other Disney/Pixar films to learn how to entertain adults and children at the same time, not just use ever bigger explosions and lazy plot devices. Did I mention that I hate 3D? Thank you.