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Planet Earth II (2016)
Amazing footage & amazing animals
Planet Earth returns to the series it did a a decade ago, with new technology and opportunities, to film an even better and more compelling look into the planet. This documentary takes us all over the world: to deserts, islands, mountains, jungles, grasslands, and even the city, we get to see the living conditions of each and all the animals that are able to live in each environment. I grew up always a fan of animals and the world around me and its potential beauty and uniqueness. This documentary took me back to those roots and was able to enjoy this documentary immensely.
A lot of camera work and different cameras were used for all the captured footage: drone shots, helicopter shots, triggered-set cameras, and set cameras in certain spaces, they probably used hundreds and hundreds of different cameras for all the captured footage- which is crazy to think about. One of the most appealing type of shots they would use was the up-close shot of each animal's portrait features- there, we could see all of its detail and even add some personality too each creature. When I really sit down to think about it, the footage for this is unreal and must've taken a massive team all around the world and so many weeks and months of work in capturing the footage by itself. I imagine that the key to recording these type of nature/animal documentaries is patience and knowing when and how to capture moments that are important and hold an interesting beauty and sight to behold. I thoroughly enjoyed this!
Navalny (2022)
An eye-opener
I watched this documentary with no knowledge who Alexi Navalny was. Given how much of a public figure he was shown to be, I was surprised how I had not heard of him before. He was the Russian political candidate against Putin who has ever had the most traction. The documentary follows Navalny himself and his story on his return to Moscow, Russia.
Navalny had been poisoned by a group of men working for the Kremlin, the Russian government. This was an assassination attempt on a political figure and since he had miraculously survived, he was able to take his survival and turn it into a story of redemption and never giving up. I truly felt attached to him and his standing up to against the Kremlin by the end of the documentary as we literally followed his story through the lense of the documenter.
Speaking of, the person who recorded this documentary got such good footage to use as a story on his recovery, plan to get back, and message he wanted to tell. We were living with Navalny the whole time and fighting his struggles and winning his small battles with me, which I found very impactful. We were able to see such compelling footage, footage I'd never think could've been captured for such a paramount figure of happening. Not only that, but in the interview scenes with Navalny, the lighting was especially outstanding and caught my attention several times to appreciate how that was set up.
Overall, this story was one that has the potential to give insight on to what happened not too long ago (2020-2021) as well as what continues to happen with Russia and their government's possible workings as a whole now. This was one of my favorite documentaries that I walked into blindly and walked out with an eye-opening experience.
The Matrix (1999)
A classic dystopian tale
The Matrix is an all-time classic movie which focuses on Neo, The One (Mr Anderson). The movie incorporates a lot of themes of a dystopian tale which always catch my interest. The story follows Neo, into a future where robots have taken over and breed humans for energy, as the humans are tossed into "the matrix" where they live in a dream-like world- separate from reality. It's all-in-all, a very compelling and engaging story which leaves you always at the edge of your seat to see what will happen next.
One of the coolest aspects of this movie is that it incorporates several new-found techniques of capturing slow-motion-like movement; such as the famous scene where Neo leans back to dodge bullets- this scene uses this technique to swing the camera around and capture the movement slowly. The coloring of the movie is also very fitting for the dystopian movie, both for the reality as well as the matrix. A lot of the colors in the matrix are more colorful than the reality- which give a more grayscale and dark green color scheme which emits a gritty and deserted wasteland of a world left behind.
This movie was certainly a special movie of its time, which I believe still stands the rest of time, with only a few outdated or overly-cliche moments; I quite enjoyed it.
Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much (2017)
A great insight into the game show
This documentary focuses on a past contestant on the Price is Right. The contestant, Theodore, was fascinated by the game show from a young age and ended up using his fascination with the show to train himself into becoming the best contestant in the show who knew the most. The way the documentary follows him really makes you want him to win big-time when his actual appearance on the show comes. And he does well, but gets unlucky at the one part which requires luck over memorization. After that, the documentary follows him a decade later where his path with the game show once again crosses, and leads to one of the most interesting moments in the game show's history- which I won't spoil.
One thing I really liked about this documentary is that they used both interview footage as well as footage from the game show itself from the past and it was used to great ability as it went back and forth from the two times. One perhaps usually unnoticed thing I really enjoyed about the movie was the movie soundtrack bringing us back to the time of the show and was reminiscent of the game show itself as well.
Despite how simple the documentary was, I very much thoroughly enjoyed the film. I would recommended this to anyone I know who really enjoyed the game show, The Price is Right. And the topic covered in the show was very interesting, I think that was the strongest and most compelling aspect!
Knives Out (2019)
Twists & Turns abound
I watched this Knives Out movie after the Glass Onion's Knives Out, and was happy to see the semi-main character, Benoit Blanc, star again in this one (for the first time). Firstly, I found all the characters very interesting in their own way. So that made me feel even more engaged in the murder mystery. As the focus of the story is figuring out who the killer is of a murder shown at the start of the film, a lot of the movie includes flashbacks. Piecing together all these flashbacks is what makes the film really interesting to see all put together. As I mentioned before, Benoit Blanc is the semi-main character, the other main character, Marta, is a girl whose story we follow from her eyes. So it was a plot twist narratively to see that halfway through the film, that via flashback, we find out she is the murderer, and at that point, the audience now is instead of trying to figure out who the killer is, they are trying to figure out how Marta will get out of this. The film, at this point switches moreso from a neutral 3rd party view, to a distinct focal view on Marta and we follow her for the rest of the movie.
One of my favorite scenes was the the car chase scene as I was thinking what could possibly happen to get Marta out of the woods here, and during this scenes, there is a really cool shot montage of her driving and all the differing views they were able to get during this car scene chase to make it more dynamically active as the climatic scene for the movie. Finally, I won't spoil the big big plot twist at the end, but it was very satisfying to see how it played out at the end as we get emotionally invested in Marta toward the second half of the movie. I would say this movie had a lot going for it right, so I would recommend this to anyone looking for a semi-lighthearted mystery murder movie.
Glass Onion (2022)
A fun following
I watched this before the initial Knives Out movie, but was still able to follow along just perfectly fine which I think was the goal- so, job well done there. The movie was quite enjoyable for me and kept me interested almost the whole time to see what people's motives were, how things would play out, as well as to see the reactions of certain characters as some twists and turns played out. The movie's main character was a detective and he was the highlight of the whole movie, making everything more interesting and everything very fun and dramatic. His character added the most to the show's dynamic of the murder mystery. I saw the big twist coming very very soon, but it still was explained in retrospect quite well and included things I didn't catch as well. The only thing(s) I disliked about the movie was that a lot of moments felt ruined by cheesey, overly-comedic or just cringey moments toward the resolution. But at its core, it was a fun & comedic mystery follow the great detective Benoit Blanc. One technical thing I enjoyed seeing was the use of camera angles to hide important happenings to only show the same scene again from a different angle to reveal how something was done- I enjoyed that. I would recommend this movie to others as well and I very much agree that you don't need to see the first Knives Out movie to enjoy this one to its fullest potential.
A Trip to Infinity (2022)
A unique take on a concept
A Trip to Infinity is a documentary about the concept of infinity. Which seems like a daunting and intimidating topic to make a documentary on- which is a reason why I was curious to watch it and see what would be said and explained about it. The documentary divided the concept into segments of explanations as well as examples to explain the concept. My favorite aspect of the explanations would be the usage of old-fashioned cartoon-like animations as the thematic string to tie all the segments together. While I did enjoy these moments, the other moment did the documentary fell a bit flat in comparison and I found myself wanting to just watch the animated segmented for the documentary. One unique aspect I liked was how the different interviewees knew the other interviewees and referenced each other, I found that fun and different. Overall, this documentary was okay with keeping interest on something I thought could have been portrayed a bit more interestingly.
Inception (2010)
Mind-Boggling Sequence
This movie had me intrigued from the very beginning, and I had high hopes for the movie (in most aspects, it did not disappoint). The concept of accessing dreams and established laws and rules of a dream that are different than our own was something I quickly got behind. I was invested into the story of Mr. Cobb and what he was doing, why he was doing things, and most of all: his past with Mal. At some parts of the movie though, I found it hard to follow why something was happening and most often, "how something was happening." The movie was very long, but also very fast-paced, if I missed a line of dialogue or a scene flew over my head, I could see myself being lost for a portion of the movie. That being said, I still feel I grasped the movie and got to enjoy it for what it was. One of my favorite technical portrayals was the depiction of time. As the characters were going through dreams and different layers of dreams, time worked differently through them. The movie made great use of slow motion and scene-cutting to show what all was happening in synchrony and in simultaneous happenings. Overall, I enjoyed this movie and the way it kept me thinking about what could or may happen, as well as leaving me guessing on its clever and ambiguous ending.
Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021)
Greed ruins all
Growing up, I knew very little of Bob Ross, but I did know he was a very popular painter and that he did a lot of painting shows on PBS. As I was looking through some documentaries to watch, this one caught my eye, because I wanted to learn more about this popular figure that I never quite got to know. After watching, there ended up being so much more to his story than what most media knows. And I think the documentary did a great job capturing these facts and stories from those close to Bob Ross. One specific thing in particular I enjoyed I noticed is that they hired a very stylistic artist to draw some scenes that the interviewees were explaining. It was really captivating to see these drawn scenes as the interviewee would describe what was happening in little anecdotes- these really boosted the story-telling in my opinion. I also noticed the documentary did not use a narrator, they only used text and the voice of those they interviewed, which I liked, as we basically were told the story just from the people's voices of those close to Bob across (or that knew him). If I was to ever make a documentary, I think I would want to do a similar approach of a narrartor-less style as the story is told itself through the interviews of people around my subject matter. All-in-all, I really enjoyed this documentary hence the high rating! I am saddened for the famous painter to have had gone through so much especially toward the latter end of his career and last few years in life, but the documentary did a fine job capturing and portraying that emotion for me to feel- it did its job.
Interstellar (2014)
A Great Journey
This story brought forth compelling and interesting concepts- namely the concept of time. The story follows Cooper who is on a mission to find a safe haven, a new planet, for his future generations to live. He constantly is battling against the concept of time: time lost with his children, time away from home, sleeping time away in cryosleep, and the time limit of Earth's atmosphere being livable. Pulling together these struggles against time together into such a fascinating and captivating story really got my attention and retained my attention as well. The film's production blew me away, really. Especially with the time skips, I think that the actors and actor selection for the grown-up versions of characters worked really well. And when any movie takes place in space, they have to really sell it, and I feel they really did in this movie. I remember one specific instance when they first were going into space. They were leaving the atmosphere and as soon as they were into space and floating away from Earth, the music cut and all we heard was subtle breathing if the astronauts and the shifting of the rocket ship. This was great use of silence to really drive home the feeling and impact of being alone and separate from everything that Cooper just left behind at Earth. In reflection, I can't do anything as grand as they did in this film, but I can certainly take certain elements into consideration for my future video projects, such as using the audio to further tell the story as this one did in the aforementioned (and unmentioned) examples in the movie. I loved this movie a lot!