Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

As a kid I did watch episodes of Mr. Roger Neighborhood, but it wasn’t a significant part of my childhood. I favored other shows I saw at the times like Power Rangers, Transformers, and Pokemon since they had cool things happening in them. Ironically I grew out of those series, and seeing this documentary made me realize Mr. Roger Neighborhood represents all the values I seek in great family entertainment. Showing through stock footage the show tackling issues like the Vietnam War, death, assassination, and other troubling subject matters that kids entertainment today commonly wouldn’t dare think about. Realizing that was just the surface of Fred Roger story made me appreciate Mr. Roger Neighborhood as a adult that I wouldn’t have as a kid.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor chronicles the life of Mr. Rogers, the tribulations he face during the making of the program, and the impact it had. If I wore a hat, it would be in salute of director Morgan Neville who managed to make a celebrate the life of Mr. Roger without mystifying him. The portrayal of Mr. Roger is earnest showing him as a man with strong values delivering what he felt were good messages to children. Further eye opening by the fact he was a Christian, yet never came across as someone who pushed his faith towards other.

Without altercations Neville lets the raw footage speak for itself, and set the tone appropriately. Much like Roger, Neville never strays from having viewers face the harsh reality without sugarcoating events. Seeping in honesty from beginning to end whether it’s Fred Roger interacting with children, or those interviewed speaking about him. All nicely conveying a picture of who he was without any cinematic flair.

The documentary is excellent in providing context, and setting up the era’s mindset of when Fred Roger decided to pursue television. To better illustrate Roger philosophy about television programs without demonizing television as a whole. Making it clear Roger saw it as a strong tool for teaching rather making consumers out of kids at a young age. Another instance of getting across the impact of Fred Roger series is when Neville intercuts a scene from the show with footage of White lifeguards pouring bleach into a pool where Black kids were swimming. In contrast to that, Neville splice in a now harmless clip from the show of Roger inviting Clemmons, a black officer, to wash his feet in a small pool. Nowadays that clip wouldn’t bat an eyebrow, but at the time it aired it made a bold statement.

When not exploring the impact, and subject matters touched on the series it provides a look into who Fred Roger was. Interviews provided from those he knew personally, and the rare appearance of someone who has been touched by his lessons are carefully selected for the movie. Each painting a positive image of Fred Roger in a modest manner. Some of the interviews touch on the difficult childhood Roger had, how it impacted him, and how he chose to deal with it. Further cementing his positive image in the eyes of fans. While those unfamiliar with his body of work will be drawn in the man’s life, and how used that in his career. In some surprise instance, you’ll get a laugh of some behind the scenes stories of Roger shenanigans, and at other times you could be equally touched by his kindness.

The documentary doesn’t shy from showing some of Roger’s less favorable aspects like his initial reluctance to accept homosexuality, and being unable to make the same connection with adults that he made with kids. An ongoing theme with Roger career is his commitment to share his values regardless what the outside world perceived of him. Failure is something he taught is okay to accept, and learn from it to better yourself. Chronicling his life he face the challenges, no matter how difficult, headfirst, and with commitment.

There’s a segment towards the end of the documentary that made me have a change of view. In short, it was hearing about how some people were happily proclaiming Fred Roger had died outside of the place where his funeral was held. Knowing such a thing happened after learning about Roger from others close to him, and stock footage of Roger himself was sad to take in. I fall into the trap of using hyperbole in some of my writing to describe my feelings despite my best intentions to avoid it. Reading, and talking to people make the claim “This is the kind of movie we need right now” I would usually react by rolling my eyes, and shrugging it off. This time I got to agree with this kind of statement.

The world is a different place from when Fred Roger started his program with the internet making it far easier to become more cynical, and jaded from the world around us. One example is perfectly given within the documentary with Fox News misconstruing his morals in order to blame someone for their life’s failure. In a chaotic world that easy to get lost in the negative shades of life. Someone who was everything he represented on camera, and away from it like Fred Roger is needed more than ever.

This documentary, regardless of your experience with Mr. Roger Neighborhood, is capable of pulling off touching moments. It’s a fantastic movie that celebrates a inspirational person life in the most earnest way possible. Usually when looking deeper into a person’s most of the time they are not the person we imagine them to be. Fred Roger is one of those individuals who the further you learn about him the more appreciation you’ll have towards him, and his body of work. If there’s anything to take away from Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is that there’s so many who value the lessons he taught, and are passing them on to other. That’s a legacy worth celebrating, and being happy about.

Rating: 10/10

Cinema-Maniac: Earthlings (2010) Review

Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. The documentary is not an easy one to watch especially it footage of animal cruelty. Never once shying away from showing graphic footage which can speak for itself even when taken out of context. Scenes showing factory farms, slaughterhouses, hunting, bullfights, puppy mills, and primates being used in head injury experiments will shock those who value all forms of life equally. These scenes aren’t easy to watch and powerful enough get it point across towards viewers without ever needing to complete the film. By letting the sometime graphic footage play out in its entirety it will challenge what the viewer is capable of stomaching. The footage shown in its “Food” segment can make anyone unaware of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse think differently about what they eat. Its most haunting scene is at a fur farm. A skinned animal, perhaps a fox, lies glistening with blood and white fat and muscle. The creature is still alive, lifting her skinless head and blinking at the camera. Those few seconds gets across the horrific emotion that this skinned fox is feeling, and connect a thought to the viewer of seeing its own species brutally murdered for our very own livelihood without ever telling us.

How Earthlings sets up it proposition is by it’s opening. By elaborating how over the years there existed racism, sexism, and speciesism. This is the idea of assigning different values or rights to members depending on their species, or in other words favoring one’s own species. It acknowledges its purpose, in that it is demonstrating how animals have come to serve humankind. Never does it compare these crimes in being directly connected to one another as much it attempts to draw parallels that drive those action. Instead of making a direct comparison to the Holocaust it decides to make correlations; the most significant relation being both are caused by humans with power abusing those without power. What nonsense right? There’s no way the Holocaust is similar to…well now that I think about it there’s truth to that. The target isn’t a single race or religion beliefs in this case, but instead an entire species which is being murdered for another specific purpose. Tackling different aspects of the subject in five segments; pets, food, clothes, entertainment, and scientific research. Each receive different amount of screen time and each use a similar tactic to get their point across. Drawing parallel to a crime alongside footage of that goes along with said segments.

As much Earthlings is consider the definitive animal rights film by animal rights organizations, much like PETA efforts, their delivery can be heavy handed and some aspects flimsy. One of the major flimsy aspects are it statistics on how many animals are killed by humans. Being blown over proportion to the point that makes you questioned how in the world a particular specie shown in the film hasn’t become instinct. These statistics go into the billions which holds true for fish, but with other animals just accepting the facts becomes a mind game of what’s true and fabricated. There is truth to be found in what’s it saying, but exaggerating on the facts partially fail to inform the audience and instead make them question more if the information given to them is true inspite of the footage being played. Another issue is the film becomes very heavy handed in it delivery towards the end. The film last ten minutes beats the “animals suffered for our livelihood, man is bad” point over the head that is gives off an anti-human vibe. Despite claiming that all lifeforms consider Earthlings and should not contain the mindset of speciesism. The music by Moby sets a somber tone without being intrusive, and the narration by Joaquin Phoenix is very matter of fact. Though the script at times seems a bit heavy-handed, even quoting Shakespeare’s King Lear at one point, Phoenix’s delivery is calm and measured, in contrast with the visual horrors unfolding on-screen.

Earthlings graphic footage of animal cruelty and the degree it shows it too warrant the content in this film is not for everyone. For that it message delivery becomes cloudy, but never is it point ever loss. It certainly heavy handed towards the final minutes, but even before reaching the end it’s capable of persuading.

8/10

Cinema-Maniac: Video Games: The Movie (2014) Review

When it comes to video games there’s various things I love about the industry from Atlus (specifically their Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series), Nintendo, Naughty Dog, and Hideo Kojima. There is also many things I absolutely loathe in the certain direction it’s taking from EA, Ubisoft, always online drm, and the pay to play model. It’s this general uncertainty about the industry that I rarely ever write about videogames or devote as much attention to them as I once used too. So when something simply called “Video Game: The Movie” is direct to the point of course I would see it since it’s history is one aspect I’ve held an interest towards. Sadly the film is only partially about videogames history which it does rather poorly in explaining certain contributions and when it comes right down to it this film just glorifies its culture.

Video Games: The Movie aims to educate audiences about how video games are made, marketed, and consumed by looking back at gaming history and culture through the eyes of game developers, publishers, and consumers. In the early goings of the documentary the slick plethora of animated infographics and an effective opening-credits sequence that details the evolution of games over time shows promise. Slowly explaining certain aspects like graphic bits and statistics on the average gamer. For the first eight minutes the presentation is slick and focused, but then as it progresses it’s made clear there’s no directed goal. This documentary biggest issue is in it structure. In the beginning the documentary looks at the history of videogames and makes it first fatal mistake of giving rushed summarization of significant contributions. In some cases overlooking some achievements from certain consoles. For example, it fails to mention the Sega’s Dreamcast contribution towards the industry for being the first home console to include a built-in modem, the first home console to support online gaming, and the first home console to support an MMORPG. If a non fully committed gamer like myself knows that fact without ever touching a Dreamcast console what makes you think this documentary will do a proper job of providing insight on videogames history. If removing quotes from Retamas Gandhi, Nicolas Tesla, and John F. Kennedy (who loved JFK: Reloaded) what the documentary aimed to achieve remains muddle. Over sighting important information causally in order to use to lesser effect later on. By not following a nonlinear format in its presentation of videogames history aspects of it will be loss to non-gamers coming across as shallow. How it presents it history will cause confusion in its constant jump from years to years. Poorly getting across what the technological differences from a Nintendo NES to a Sony’s Playstation among other things. The insights provided can be sometime insightful, but are too often glib and come at the expense of the film relaying the events at hand to the viewer. For example, you could come away from the section on game violence with no knowledge that the fight made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the documentary aimed to be one thing there wouldn’t be this full length review criticizing it. Unfortunately since it attempts to highlight certain aspects of videogame culture its aimed is bigger than what it grasped. Once again the usage of it timeline does a disservice to the structure and the viewers. In one moment the documentary is addressing the media blaming video games for violence and the next it’s celebrating vudeogames. It’s emotion is all over the place without feeling connected to each other. Another issue is it priorities when it comes to who’s speaking on the subject. Someone important as Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell whose contribution to videogames is very significant receives less screen time than actor Donald Faison who hasn’t contribute to videogames in any shape. All the interviews sadly focus more on big stars than actual known videgame developers. There are several montages of video game trailers and gameplay footage that can on for minutes which also constitute as bad transitions. If you happen to be interested in any of the games in the montages you won’t have their name listed anywhere in the film. If the director does anything correctly it is conveying the passion of the fans and game designers he interviewed. For many games are much more than just a hobby, and that love and enthusiasm shows through. However, that segment isn’t enough to make up for the rest of documentary that says “All area of gaming is great” in a propaganda manner. For non-gamers it’ll come across that way because the documentary is filled with nothing, but good words about video games therefore doing harm in not providing a fair view on the subject matter more negative aspects. Every area it wants to discuss on the subject either misses relaying information to the viewer or is sloppily delivered because of it poor choice of its own structure.

Video Games: The Movie is too glamorize in its poor representation of gaming culture that it’s slick production values make it come across as one giant commercial. The whole structure of the documentary is sloppy jumping from certain subjects and specific years that muddles it message. If one thing it does express correctly is conveying gamers passion for video games going beyond simply enjoying playing games and touching on the more social aspect of gaming. It’s just a shame that same passion wasn’t shared by its filmmakers to make an engaging film on the same subject matter these gamers care so much for.

4/10