The San Feancisco International Film Festival kicks off tomorrow night, so this week’s video pick is from the 2016 SFFILMFestival. NUTS! is the persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans. Yes, a huckster named J.R. Brinkley really did surgically place goat testicles inside human scrota – and, more astonishingly, this actually became a craze in the 1920s. Now that’s enough of a forehead slapper, but there’s more, much more and that’s what makes NUTS! so fun.
Brinkley’s story is one that leads to celebrity mega wealth and a colossal miscalculation. Improbably, Brinkley’s wild ride touched Huey Long,William Jennings Bryan, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, June Carter Cash and Wolfman Jack. There’s a radio empire, a Gubernatorial election and a dramatic, climactic trial.
“Dr.” Brinkley at work in NUTS!
Director Penny Lane tells the story with animation (different animators for each chapter, but you can’t tell) seamlessly braided together with historical still photos, movies and a final heartbreaking recording. NUTS! tells a story that is too bizarre to be true – but really happened. It makes for a most entertaining movie.
NUTS! is available to stream from Amazon (free with Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Brothers in Arms is a documentary on the making of Platoon, directed by Paul Sanchez, who played Doc. Platoon, of course, won the Best Picture Oscar and launched the careers of many actors in its young cast. Except for Tom Berenger, this was the first movie job for most of them. including Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe.
Director Oliver Stone, a Vietnam vet himself, assembled the cast two weeks before filming and put them through basic military training in the Philippine jungle under real military trainers. The cast developed an usual bond during that process, as well as in coping with the mercurial Stone.
In Brothers in Arms, we get to hear from the actors (except for Dafoe, who was making a movie in South Africa) and the military advisers (but not from Oliver Stone). There plenty of entertaining anecdotes and some insights into the filmmaking.
In honor of Cinequest, this week’s video pick is The Brainwashing of My Dad, which had its US Premiere at the 2016 Cinequest.
Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant? In the documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko as she explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.
We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.
Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.
This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…
I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Storyis the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.
Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.
She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.
At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.
Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?
She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.
I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story this summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s coming to Bay Area theaters this weekend.
Dustin Cohen’s gentle documentary Flin Flon: A Hockey Town, without even a hint of condescension, paints a meticulous and revealing portrait of a remote Canadian hamlet and its beloved junior hockey team.
Flin Flon is a town of five thousand on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. The closest place that most of us have heard of is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and that’s a six-and-a-half hour drive from Flin Flon. There’s a mine in Flin Flon and a junior hockey team, and that’s about it.
As the movie opens, the morning radio station announces a high temperature of minus 19. Proud locals call their home “a great place to raise kids”, which is what locals say about every place that nobody else even wants to visit. For decades, the residents have bonded with their beloved hockey team, the Bombers.
18-20 year old hockey players come to Flin Flon, live in the homes of local families (“billeting”) and work hard, physical day jobs off-season. They are here to concentrate on hockey, although only 1-2 from each Bomber team are likely to significantly advance in the sport. However, over 40 NHL players have been Flin Flon Bombers, including Hall of Famers Bobby Clarke and Reggie Leach. Writer-director Dustin Cohen grew up in San Jose as a Sharks Fan. He stumbled on Flin Flon as he researched Canadian hockey. He needed more than just a small town for his subject, and he chose Flin Flon because of its hockey heritage.
Flin Flon is “the only city in the world named after a science fiction character (Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin in J.E. Preston Muddock’s The Sunless City). At Bomber games, the fans like to throw moose legs on to the ice. This could have been one of those documentaries that make us laugh at the quirky subjects. Or it could have been about unhealthily obsessed sports fans.
Instead, Flin Flon: A Hockey Town is an insightful and sympathetic study of the town and the kids on the team. Cohen is very observant, and he shows us seemingly mundane details – driving the bus, prepping the ice, cutting wood – that reveal much about the internal lives of the people in the film.
Cohen only lets us directly watch the hockey in snippets. Most of the time, we see it reflected through the reactions of teammates and the crowd. The photography (Soren Nielsen, Christine Ng) and the editing (Kathy Gatto) are superb.
The more I think about Flin Flon: A Hockey Town, the more I admire it. This is a very humane film.
What does it really mean to be a “fearless” or “uncompromising” artist? That’s the question explored by the documentary Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End. Mr. Fish is an extremely talented political cartoonist, filled with rage against social injustice. A gentle soul in person, especially with his delightful daughters, Mr. Fish’s profound anger is expressed in his brilliant work.
a Mr Fish cartoon in MR FISH: CARTOONING FROM THE DEEP END
Mr. Fish’s art is always intentionally provocative. And oft hilarious. And sometimes pornographic. And even heartbreaking, with two characters gazing at a portrait of John Lennon:
Uh oh- I think we’re fucked
Why?
Because give peace a chance seems nostalgic.
One would think that anyone as talented as Mr. Fish could afford to economically survive, if not to flourish, in modern America. But three things are holding Mr. Fish back from financial success. One is the declining market for newspaper-purchased cartoons as newspapers themselves melt out of existence. The second is that Mr. Fish’s principles don’t allow him to fine-tune his art to be more accessible to a commercial audience. Finally, Mr. Fish is oblivious to any opportunities to make money created through new media. He does toy with a television pilot and gets a part-time day job in commercial art, but he really isn’t comfortable with the word “paycheck”.
Asked about not having an audience, Mr. Fish calls it “heroic”. His wife brings home the bacon. She is totally in tune with his art (although she could do with fewer erect penises in it). But, weary of shouldering all the financial responsibility, she observes that not making money is all fine and good as long as you don’t expect to spend any.
The consequences of being admired by peers for living his principles but being not able to pay the family’s bills have been explored in Trumbo, among other recent narrative films. This is the real deal.
a Mr Fish cartoon in MR FISH: CARTOONING FROM THE DEEP END
Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End is the first feature for director Pablo Bryant, a veteran documentary cinematographer. Bryant knows a genius when he sees one and fills the film with Mr. Fish’s art; the effect is intoxicating. Stick around to the very end of the closing credits or you’ll miss some of Mr. Fish’s best.
This being the week that the Oscar nominations are released, here’s your chance to see three recent Oscar winning movies. Each was recognized as the year’s best documentary, and each is completely engrossing.
Amyis the heart-felt, engaging and innovative bio-pic of singer Amy Winehouse. DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play
Searching for Sugar Man is about a modest guy who didn’t know that he was a rock star. For real. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Undefeated is the story of a high school football coaching trying imbue some hope into kids living in crushing poverty. On DVD and streaming from Netflix; also streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
A scene from THE FINAL YEAR, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
In the documentary The Final Year, we get to peek inside the last year of the Obama foreign policy. Director Greg Barker’s cameras go behind the scenes to follow Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as they travel the globe to keep the peace and mitigate conflict.
We see a lot of movies about the military and the intelligence services, so it’s a rare and welcome treat to watch diplomacy in action.
The Final Year primarily depicts and references the Obama Administration’s signature accomplishments – the Iran nuclear deal, avoiding catastrophe in North Korea, the Paris climate accords – along with the challenges of Syria.
We tend to see these folks as talking heads on television, so it’s humanizing to see them in candid moments. However, this is hardly a warts-and-all expose, and sometimes the tone even reaches reverent or fawning. Rhodes even gets the chance to evade responsibility for a basic political mistake – letting a reporter exploit his words.
It’s impossible to watch The Final Year in early 2018 without comparing these folks with the current administration. Whatever their imperfections, Kerry, Power and Rhodes are serious, competent people trying to implement a coherent foreign policy in our national interest and, in the process, earning the respect of other nations. The juxtaposition with the clown show of the current Administration is alarming and profoundly sad.
[SPOILER: In the final shot before the closing credits, the very-soon-to-be-former President Obama says, “Are we done here? Okay, see you later.” and turns down a White House corridor with his security detail for perhaps the last time. It’s heartbreakingly wistful.]
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Storyis the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.
In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.
Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.
She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.
At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.
Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?
She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.
I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story this summer at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s coming to theaters this week.
Roger Stone in GET ME ROGER STONESo this week’s biggest news has been the indictment of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort. The indictment comes out of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe of the Russian hacking of last year’s presidential campaign. Earlier this year, Netflix released the documentary Get Me Roger Stone, and IMDb bills Paul Manafort third in the “cast”, right behind Roger Stone and Donald Trump.
Get Me Roger Stone is an insightful look at the career of political consultant/provocateur Roger Stone, one of the most outrageous characters on the American political scene. What’s especially relevant today is that Roger Stone and Paul Manafort together invented a new model of lobbying – where the political consultants who help get a candidate elected to high office, then sell their influence over said elected official.
Even without the Manafort angle, Get Me Roger Stone is an entertaining watch, although you might find Roger Stone himself too loathsome to watch. Stone will do anything – no matter how duplicitous – to win a political campaign. He will do anything to bring public attention (i.e., notoriety) upon himself. And he is utterly unapologetic about both. Stone is the political world’s version of a pro wrestling villain.
Roger Stone is the unmatched master of high jacking a news cycle with a preposterous smear. The man has a tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back, which tells you a whole lot about him.
Get Me Roger Stone also chronicles Stone’s decades-long quest to get Trump to run for president, and then Stone’s role as an unofficial/official/unofficial Trump strategist. The documentary also touches on a Roger Stone sex scandal.
Anyway, it’s ripped from the headlines, and you can stream it from Netflix Instant.
