Documentaries – Page 23 – Everything Nonfiction

Review of More Than a Game

My goal with this blog has been to help bring attention to books, films, and documentaries that don’t always get a lot of attention. If I get just one person to see this film after reading about it here, then I will have accomplished this goal. This is a superb film from start to finish. Hollywood can spend gazillions of dollars cranking out mind numbing films like the Transformersmovies and the countless superhero flicks, but I’ll take a good documentary like this over those time-wasters anytime.

Review of The Botany of Desire DVD

This film was a PBS special. They could not have done a better job. Michael Pollan’s book covers the domestication of four plants: the apple tree, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. This documentary takes the stories told in the book and brings them to life through interviews, images, and animation. Michael Pollan serves as the narrator. I liked Food, Inc. I liked this film even more.

Review of It Might Get Loud

This film covers three iconic guitar players from their childhoods to present day. The three guitar players are Jimmy Page, former lead guitar player for Led Zeppelin, The Edge, lead guitarist for U2, and Jack White, singer and guitar player for the White Stripes. I am very familiar with Jimmy Page’s work. I wasn’t familiar with the other two. I never was into U2, and the White Stripes I’ve never heard of.

Review of Moon Over Broadway

This is another behind the scenes look at the making of a broadway show. A few weeks ago I reviewed Every Little Step. That film was about the auditioning process for the musical A Chorus Line. While that film touched on the genesis behind A Chorus Line, its focus was on the auditions. This film goes into a lot more detail about the creative process that goes into staging a Broadway play.

Review of The Cove

I thought this was an exceptional documentary from start to finish. The film is about the slaughtering of dolphins in Taiji, Japan and the efforts by a group of animal rights activists to document the slaughter. The film also touches on a number of other important topics such as over fishing, marine ecology, the International Whale Commission (IWC), and the environmental impact that humans are having on the mercury levels of fish.

Review of Trouble the Water

Kimberly and Scott Roberts lived in one of the flooded wards of New Orleans. They were a couple forced to live a life where opportunity didn’t exist. They are black and poorly educated. Their only choice for survival was drugs and crime, which only hampered any attempts to improve their situation. So when the order came to evacuate New Orleans they, like many others, were unable to do so. They didn’t have the resources.