Documentary

Once Were Brothers: Robby Robertson and The Band

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  • Title: Once Were Brothers: Robby Robertson and The Band
  • IMDb: link

Once Were Brothers: Robby Robertson and The Band Blu-ray reviewAs the documentary’s title suggests, Once Were Brothers: Robby Robertson and The Band focuses on Canadian-American rock group primarily through the lens of guitarist and songwriter Robby Robertson. Filled with terrific music, interviews, and some fun archival footage, the film by director Daniel Roher may not offer much in the way of surprises but does deliver a solid music documentary on how the group came to be.

From their time as a backup band to rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and later Bob Dylan to The Band’s mainstream success, we get the story behind the band’s inventive nature embracing a wide variety of influences to create their own sound which continues to influence musicians to this day. The film also covers the more common themes of drugs and the fallout of the group. Included here are interviews from Martin Scorsese (who shot the group’s 1978 concert film The Last Waltz), Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, and others.

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Slay the Dragon

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  • Title: Slay the Dragon
  • IMDb: link

“That’s an astonishing manipulation of democracy.”

Slay the Dragon DVD reviewGerrymandering, the process of taking advantage of redrawing voting districts to favor one political party’s interests, has been around for two centuries. Slay the Dragon takes a hard look at the Republican change in 2010 led by REDMAP which used modern technology to take the practice to extremes to remap states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin in ways that led to the disenfranchisement of voters. Rising to meet the challenge were groups created by private citizens focused on reclaiming their power by fighting the process of gerrymandering on both state and federal levels.

Directors Chris Durrance and Barak Goodman do a fairly good job of explaining both the practice of gerrymandering and its effects. While primarily looking at how private citizens such as Katie Fahey worked to organize against the practice, the documentary details the Tea Party’s wins in the 2010 election and the subsequent redrawing of the districts were just the first steps in a conservative agenda that included undercutting unions and suppressing voters prior to the 2016 general election.

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The Social Dilemma

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  • Title: The Social Dilemma
  • IMDb: link

The Social Dilemma movie reviewThe Social Dilemma takes a hard look at social media and how it is changing the way we live. With testimony from experts who worked at various social media cornerstones, the film examines how social media takes advantage of its users and distorts the world around them as it delves into social media affecting behavior and how someone can take advantage of the complex algorithms to affect change on a global scale.

Director Jeff Orlowski‘s documentary is a warning about how social media is changing us in both expected and unexpected ways as greed and capitalism continue to push development forward into even more questionable territories. How social media apps play on emotion to keep you online and play into reinforcing your own beliefs in creating separate clusters of people with their own facts, how social media has raised a generation who tie their own self worth to the likes of strangers online whose suicide rate is astronomically higher than the generation before it, and the idea of how easily these apps can be used to take advantage of the misinformed for nefarious purposes such as changing the outcome of an election are all truly frightening.

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Red Penguins

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  • Title: Red Penguins
  • IMDb: link

Red Penguins movie reviewRed Penguins looks back at the Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin bailing out the once great HC CSKA Moscow hockey team. Completely unprepared for what they were getting into in a country still struggling with replacing Communism with Capitalism, the Penguins hoped to lay the foundation for Russian players making their way to Pittsburgh and the NHL. A young marketer named Steven Warshaw was sent over to try and drum up support for the flagging team and bring a bit of capitalist know-how and 90s marketing to the former Soviet Union.

The engaging documentary is a bizarre tale including interviews from both American and Russians about the partnership which only lasted two years but involved a strip club under the hockey rink, free beer, a culture clash, the Russian mob, a potential business partnership with Disney, the Russian Army, corruption, and the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite the insanity and mismanagement, the Russian Penguins (as they were rebranded) were a short-term success only to be mismanaged leading to the end of the team and leaving behind a bizarre legacy and a legend of dazzling failure.

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Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful

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  • Title: Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
  • IMDb: link

Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful movie reviewAlthough the provocative photographer passed away more than a decade ago, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful showcases the work Helmut Newton left behind as it views his life and career through the lens of models, editors, publishers, and family who knew him best. The documentary by Gero von Boehm may not offer many surprises, but it does celebrate the decades of work from Newton and make good use of interview footage of the man prior to his death in 2004.

Without making any attempt to offer a linear structure, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful examines the roots of Newton who came of age in Germany during the rise of Nazism and the early influences in his life as a student for Yva and, in stark contrast, the work of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl whose strong blond female subjects would become a staple of Newton’s portfolio. The film also addresses the charges of misogyny against Newton painting him as a naughty boy who loved and respected women while still wishing to push boundaries as a provocateur.

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