Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)

The full title of the film makes it pretty self explanatory. The film is a look inside The New York Times newspaper at a time when newspapers are a dying breed. Considered a front runner for an Oscar nomination I felt that the film had the perfect scope on an interesting subject matter. That being said, I'm writing this review after finding out that it did not even make the 15 film short list for the Oscar.

The film starts with us meeting some of the staff and they explain the process behind determining what will make it on the cover of the newspaper. We look at some of the important moments in the paper's history and how they have been a national if not world leader in news. The film isn't like some of these "band" documentaries where they ignore the negatives, there is actually discussion on the WMD [Weapons of Mass Destruction] fiasco and how the Times reporter pushed false information. They also defend her, in that, the information to was given by a government source was wrong.

The most interesting and scary thing about the documentary is that the newsroom venue of collective minds deciding was is important news is dying. It looks at internet sites that take Times articles and plug in search engine keywords to retool the titles to get more internet hits. It looks at the fact that without newspapers credible field reports are going to be hard to come by.

Oscar or not, this is a documentary you should watch. Informative, interesting, and important.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787777/

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Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (2011)

After watching documentaries on Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam this year I thought it would be interesting to watch a documentary on a musical group that I DIDN'T group up liking. I know of this hip-hop group and heard a few of there song in CMJ [College Music Journal] back in 1993 when Midnight Marauders came out.

The documentary looks at who influenced the group, how they came to stardom their their connections to DJ Red Alert and their formation of the Native Tongues. A pretty cool concept of collaborating with fellow artists like, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, and Jungle Brothers. The thing I think the documentary hinted at but did not discuss very much was hip-hop being "killed" by rap. At least this is my opinion. The unofficial death was really about the time I started listening to a range of music ironically and was in 1993 when Midnight Marauders came out the same week as Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter Wu-Tang." That same year Snoop Dogg, 2-Pac, and Easy E all came out with albums. Soon enough the fun loving hip-hop artists were overshadowed by gangster rap.

A look at the history of hip-hop and the rise of rap would have been much more entertaining to me, but that isn't what they were going for here. The end of the film goes into the bickering that broke the group up and was not exciting at all. I think Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters documentaries were both better, maybe because both bands are still creating music and getting along.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613023/

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

A dangerous formula of combining Werner Herzog and documentary leads to the first film I've fallen asleep in this year. Considered a potential Oscar documentary contender I thought I'd get a jump on the eligible films knowing that some won't get shortlisted. Of all the ones I watched early, this is the only one I regret watching. Originally shot in 3D, it had a pretty decent box office run, and the non-3D is not great.

The film is about a cave that was found in the south of France in 1994 by a couple of explorers. They found that it contains wall paintings that date back 20,000 years. The oldest preserved wall writings and the film is an exclusive look at a very contained site. Honestly it was pretty cool for about 15 minutes, and I think this would have made an excellent documentary short film. The content just seems to run out after 30 minutes and we get interviews with scientists who talk about how the cave "might" have smelled, what dreams the people "might" have had.

The problem was that the scope of the documentary was so limited that scenes of a toy plane flying around the valley [pandering to the 3D I'm sure] seemed out of place. The valley probably looked completely different 20,000 years ago so what are you showing me. This wasn't for me, to each his own, but I'm glad this one wasn't shortlisted.

Vote: 3/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664894/

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Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

In a pretty weak year for animated films look for this average film to get an Oscar nomination. A sequel to the 2008 Oscar nominated film with the same director, writer, and star put it in line for another nomination. In 2009 they lost to the far superior Wall-E, but with no Pixar front runner this year you never know.

I can't say that I remember all of the detail from the first film, but they came back to me pretty quick in the first ten minutes. Po [Jack Black] is the "chosen one" and leader of the kung fu masters now. Tigress [Angelina Jolie] has warmed up to Po and the team of animals protects the city. We get a story of a crane who has harnessed gun powder for weapons instead of fireworks and is starting to conquering cities. Kung Fu is thought to be dead and the Kung Fu Masters have to prove that it is not.

On a scare factor rating I'd say that the violence alone gets a 3. If your kids are old enough for that, this film is very kid friendly. We'll see how it does against a slew of animated sequels in awards season. I liked it a lot more than I thought, but it wasn't something I'll buy for my kids.

KSF: 3/5
Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302011/

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Pearl Jam Twenty (2011)

Directed by Cameron Crowe, this film documents the twenty years that the band Pearl Jam has been together. Lead singer Eddie Vedder was greatly influenced by The Who, and Crowe who is fan of The Who and their documentary The Kids Are Alright (1979) constructed this film partially as an homage to them.

The band, who started in the Seattle grunge scene after the death of Andrew Wood broke up Mother Love Bone. They came onto the scene with the album Ten, and in many respects rivaled Nirvana for air time and publicity. The film touches on Cobain's dislike of Vedder and his band, then goes into their feud with Ticketmaster.

I have been a Pearl Jam fan for a very long time. The hard part for me is that I really like their angry and passionate music from Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy. When the band took a step back and "reinvented" themselves... sometime that bands have to do to stay interested and interesting I lost some interest. No Code was not my favorite and I felt I made myself like it. Yield was just ok, and I had lost interest by Riot Act, Self-Titled (2006), and Backspacer. I listened to them all at least once, and I bought the b-sides "Lost Dogs" a couple of years ago and felt that was a mistake.

I have a lot of respect for how the band handles themselves. They are very unified in their stances on Tibet, Choice, government, and how to act in public. It is rare for a band to get along so well and probably part of the reason they have managed to stay together so long. I recommend this to anyone who likes the band, but even if you don't know much about them it is still a good documentary.

Vote: 9/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1417592/

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The Host: Gwoemul (2006)

The film starts at an American lab where the boss is telling the Japanese assistant to go ahead an dump all of the chemicals down the drain. The water empties into the river and the chemicals create a sea creature that attacks the people. The family in the story run convenience stall next to the river and the creature runs off with their daughter. I'm not sure what to call this movie. Labeled at a horror or a comedy... I don't really see either. More along the lines of a bad science fiction than anything.

The film is not well known, and one that I saved for horror month because of the mislabeling as horror. It is one of the films that the 1001 movie book added on a revision, then removed a year later. It is kinda frustrating that a list of 1001 movies changes so much, but I'll digress from that argument.

Not worth you time, and hard to find.

Vote: 5/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468492/

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Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (2011)

Michael Bay is back with his third installment of the surprisingly successful [box office-wise] series. The first one made Megan Fox a star, the 2nd one showed she isn't a very nice person, the 3rd one drops her completely.

I have to say that I did like the first film, it was really good, especially since there were no expectations. The 2nd one was just awful and Bay's camera rotations made it almost unwatchable at times. This one however was quite a bit better. Shia LaBeouf's character is now trying to have a normal life after his adventures in the first two films. He has a model for a girlfriend [Rosie Huntington-Whiteley] who replaced Fox, and when the Decepticons attack he works his way back to work with the government to help out.

This film was much better than the last but still lacked a lot of editing. They do realize that scenes can be cut completely right? All of the interactions with LaBeouf's parents were unnecessary. They added a lot of unnecessary runtime to the film, and none of it was funny or relevant to the plot. That lack of editing keeps these films at an unnecessary 2 and a half hours.

Overall, a big improvement from the last, I'm glad I gave it a shot but 6/10 is about right.

Vote: 6/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1399103/

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