DVD Review: The Act of Killing

Tim here. As Team Experience’s representative lover of The Act of Killing above all other movies in 2013 (if “love” is the right word for such an bleak portrait of humanity’s worst side), it naturally falls to me to trumpet the Good News that one of the year’s best-reviewed films that you probably haven’t had a chance to see yet is now on DVD and Blu-Ray. At just the right moment, too, in advance of the Oscar nomination that I’m honestly not expecting it to receive; the Documentary branch hasn’t been in the business of making me that happy, and it’s not fair to expect otherwise.

It’s not the kind of film that readily lends itself to breathless statements of the “you HAVE to see this!” sort. For it is, after all, a documentary about mass political killings, one of the unlikeliest subjects in the world to produce a frolicsome entertainment that everyone will enjoy. That being said, you probably do have to see this. It is unlike any other cinematic analysis of its subject that I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen, with the filmmakers (those being director Joshua Oppenheimer, co-director Christine Cynn, and another co-director remaining anonymous for reasons of personal safety) going straight to the men who headed the anti-Communist death squads in 1965 and ’66 (regarded as heroes in Indonesia), and offering them a chance to make their own cinematic interpretations of their past deeds.

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Oscar's Documentaries: Tales from the Shortlist (Part 2)

Glenn continues his 3 part look at the 15 finalists for Best Documentary. (Here is part one if you missed it). Watch along with us!

Blackfish
Synopsis: How do you solve a problem like SeaWorld? Animal cruelty is exposed at SeaWorld theme parks and others associated with it around the globe. Particularly of interest is that of Tilikum, a 5,400kg orca responsible for multiple deaths including trainer Dawn Brancheau.
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite (City Lax: Un Urban Lacrosse Story)
Festivals: AFI Docs, Athens, Hamburg, Hot Docs, Kosovo, Melbourne, Miami, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Sitges, Sundance, True/False
Awards: Best Documentary 2nd Place (Boston Film Critics), Best Documentary (Washington DC), Best Feature (Nominee, International Documentary Association)
Box Office: $2.07mil (max. 99 screens), out now on DVD/Blu-ray/VOD
Review: From my review back in July:

Its mission is similar to that of Oscar-winning eco-doc The Cove, and would make a curious companion to Jacques Audiard’s Rust & Bone. All it needed was more “Firework” by Katy Perry, obviously. … The secrecy surrounding [Brancheau’s death] forms the backbone of Cowperthwaite’s engaging documentary; inarguably an important and illuminating one that will hopefully lead to positive action against the torturous conditions that killer whales face in captivity. As a piece of filmmaking it’s traditionally assembled, but the topic and access to disturbing video footage makes for a potent and powerful indictment.

Oscar? Good to go! Animals and animal activism are popular in this branch with nominee Winged Migration and past winners March of the Penguins and the aforementioned The Cove. It’s proven successful in forcing change, plus we already know it has fans in Academy members like Kim Basinger and the folks at Pixar. If nominated I’d be tipping it for the win. They will be very impressed with themselves.

Dancing gangsters, wannabe Olympians and more after the jump...

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Oscar's Documentaries: Tales from the Shortlist (Part 1)

Glenn here with the first of three pieces looking at this year’s 15 finalists for Best Documentary. Watch along with us!

Prior to the announcement of the shortlist, I had seen roughly 30 of the 151 contenders. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have managed to catch up with all 15 of the shortlisted titles, which will be the first time that has ever happened. As Team Experience's apparent resident doc expert, I am determined to do it, although I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I couldn't catch even more of the longlist. 151 is a lot even for me.

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
Synopsis: Filmed over the course of 6 months, this documentary tells the incredible story of three young moments of Pussy Riot, a Russian activist punk band out to disrupt the status quo and bring attention to their homeland's injustices by the hand of Vladimir Putin.
Director: Mike Lerner (Oscar nominee, Hell and Back Again) and Maxim Pozdorovkin
Festivals: Bath, Brisbane, Cornwall, Eastend, GAZE LGBT, Melbourne, New Zealand, Seattle, Sheffield, Sundance, Sydney, Vancouver.
Awards: Special Jury Prize (Sundance), Best Documentary (British Independent Film Awards).
Box Office: N/A (qualifying run), available on HBOgo
Review: If TV networks had Christian Bale balls they would air this illuminating documentary on a never-ending loop parallel to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia. They don't and they won't - although maybe HBO, who screened it last summer alongside other long-listed titles such as Valentine Road and Gasland 2 - will. The film itself isn't particularly brilliant, but works as a perfect entry point into the story of Pussy Riot. A story, just by the way, that continues to evolve to this day. It's a very standard documentary, simply charting the story of the imprisonment and subsequent farce of a trial of three Pussy Riot members after they stormed a church alter and performed an anti-Putin anthem. I'm glad I watched it, although there are areas that the filmmakers could have expanded like Russia's growing feminist movement and the history of it.
Oscar: The branch could respond to the very timely subjects of not just artistic oppression and censorship, but also Russia's glaringly plummeting human rights record. The branch has gone with an unexpected music doc before - Tupac: Resurrection in 2003 - but even then, the music of Pussy Riot are a, shall we say, acquired taste. And they did just award Searching for Sugarman. A vote for this film would be more a vote for the issue than the film.

Four more contenders after the jump...

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Team FYC: Stories We Tell for Best Editing

In this series our contributors sound off on their favorite fringe contenders. Here's Jose Solis on "Stories We Tell" It's winning Best Documentary critics prizes but let's talk another category.

Sarah Polley’s brilliant Stories We Tell isn’t as much a “documentary” as it is a psychological thriller. As the film begins she teases you suggesting this will be a simple case of “let’s find the truth about my mother” kind of film, only to then pull the rug from under your feet and reveal that she’s not exactly interested in delivering a beautiful conclusion tied up with a pretty ribbon. Delivering more twists and turns than any other film this year, Stories We Tell owes much of its success to its byzantine editing (by Mike Munn), which takes us on what feels like an emotional roller coaster ride.

Earlier this year, I spoke to Polley who explained how and why this structure came to be:

[instead of going for a traditional linear structure] what if we’re revealing information that is from before this story starts and reveal it halfway through this story, so that it gives a whole new meaning to what we’ve seen and for me it felt like it would give the audience a sense that was similar to mine. You know you hit bottom and a trap door opens, then you hit bottom again and another trap door opens and you never really got solid ground under your feet, because the amount that you can learn about something and its context is infinite.”

The fact that she wanted audiences to share her experience the same way she had lived it is admirable and humble, the fact that she pulled it off by reminding us that memory might very well be the essence of cinema is nothing if not brilliant.

Previously on Team FYC

Oscar's Docs Down to 15

We will be taking a closer look at each of the 15 contenders for Best Documentary soon, but for now let's look at the films that Oscar's doc branch decided to shortlist from that gargantuan list of 151 contenders. All of the titles are rather high profile with a few left field contenders for fun. I was surprised to not see the likes of A River Changes Course, Let the Fire Burn (the only IDA nominee which didn't make it), At Berkeley, Call me Kuchu, and my personal favourite, The Missing Picture, but this looks like a fairly well representative list of films from what has arguably been one of the strongest years ever for documentaries.

The 15 contenders are:

• The Act of Killing
• The Armstrong Lie
• Blackfish
• The Crash Reel
• Cutie and the Boxer
• Dirty Wars
• First Cousin: Once Removed
• God Loves Uganda (Reviewed)
• Life According to Sam
• Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Reviewed)
• Stories We Tell, The Square (Reviewed)
• Tim's Vermeer
• Twenty Feet to Stardom
• Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

At this stage I'd be expecting The Act of Killing, Blackfish, Dirty Wars, The Square and Twenty Feet to Stardom, although I keep thinking that high-grossing doc will be left off (the Academy already gave an award to a documentary about back-up singers) in favour of something else, but it seems slightly foolish to bet against it. 

For now what are you guys thinking? How many have you seen?