Tag Archives: Documentary

by - 2 Comments

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story (2017) – Review

Review Can't Stop Won't Stop A Bad Boy Story
During the nineties you could not ignore Puff Daddy and his music label Bad Boy Records. The label scored hit after hit and the videos were mini movies with budgets that many directors would kill for. With artists like Total, 112, Craig Mack, Ma$e, Faith Evans and The Notorious B.I.G. Puffy had an impressive lineup and he was at the top of his game. When in the second half of the nineties a rivalry arose between 2Pac and Biggie, Bad Boy Records and Death Row (where 2Pac had a contract) were also pulled into it, which eventually resulted in the death of both rappers. It also meant a huge setback for Puff Daddy, not just because B.I.G. a good friend, but also one of his most successful artists who, due to his appearance on singles by other artists, ensured that sales were higher.

And although he scored a big hit with “I’ll Be Missing You” after that, the best days of the label were over. Diddy, however, had turned himself into a businessman who looked beyond music and built an empire worth $820 million. This documentary shows how Puffy brings everyone back together for two Bad Boy Reunion concerts in 2016 and how the preparations go. It tries to dive into history and show how P.Diddy made his label so successful. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

The Defiant Ones (2017) – Review

Recensie The Defiant Ones

Dr.Dre and Jimmy Iovine, who both started their music careers producing music and having a lot of succes with it, sold the company which they started together, Beats Electronics, to Apple in 2014. Their company, which sells headphones and speakers and also had its own music streaming service, sold for 3 billion dollars. It was a deal which could have fallen through though. While the negotiations were still going on Dr.Dre, while drunk in the studio with Tyrese Gibson, made a video boasting about the fact he would become the first hip hop billionaire. This four-part documentary opens with that moment and shows how the son of an Italian immigrant and a boy who grew up in Compton became successful together. Despite their, sometimes controversial, but also influential past. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

American Anarchist (2016) – Review

Recensie American Anarchist
I can still remember the time when I first got on the internet. It was at the end of the nineties and the web was a completely different place from the one it is now. For most it was new and exciting and almost everyone I was in class with spent so much time on it that they had to redo the year. We were all at an age where we were looking for the extremes, where we were playing a game of cat and mouse with the system administrators, making sure that we could get online and onto message boards at moments when we weren’t supposed to. Anything you could think of was easy to find, even more extreme stuff and one of the was The Anarchist Cookbook, written by William Powell. Fortunately no one actually did anything with the information, but it was just cool to show others you had found something like that. But this infamous book has been used a lot since its publication in the seventies. It has recipes for bombs, making silencers, drugs and other things to attack others. In this documentary director Charlie Siskel talks to the writer of the book. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

Saving Banksy (2017) – Review

Review Saving Banksy

There doesn’t seem to come an end to the number of documentaries which have something to do with street artist Banksy. Everyone seems to know his name and he is popular, so using it should be enough to get some interest. Unfortunately not all films which have something to do with his work are of the same quality. Exit Through the Gift Shop was fantastic and is a title I’ve watched several times. Banksy Does New York showed how he took residence in New York for a month and placed a new piece each day, looking at the reactions of the public to them. How to Sell a Banksy was a horrible documentary to watch (in which someone tries to sell one of his pieces he removed from a wall). And now this documentary showed up on Netflix, in which an admirer of Banksy’s work wants to save one of the pieces he made in San Francisco and donate it to a museum. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

The Mars Generation (2017) – Review

Review The Mars Generation

It’s already more than fifty years ago that Lance Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time. Thanks to the cold war America wanted to prove it was superior, which drove it to innovate. If you look at the period afterward you’ll notice that there have been some developments, but the human race really hasn’t reached a new goal when it comes to space. Yes, the ISS space station was built and private companies like Elon Musks SpaceX have made big strides to make it all cheaper, but we haven’t made a journey further into space. But there are a lot of young people who think they will be the first people who will be on a mission to Mars. In this documentary a group of them is followed while they participate in Space Camp at NASA. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) – Review

Review I Am Not Your Negro

James Baldwin was an American writer who didn’t only write books, but also plays and poems. Besides this he also spoke out about various issues in American society, like race and sex. Het wanted to make the Afro-American experience clear to other and because of that he came into contact with (and befriended) Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. At the end of the eighties he was planning to write a book about his experiences with these men who were important for the civil rights movement. He wrote letters about what he was planning to write about and had started a manuscript. He passed away in 1987 from stomach cancer and thus the book was never written. Recently this documentary played in a local theater in Rotterdam, where director Raoul Peck was present. He told the audience how Baldwin’s books have been inspiring him for years. He wanted to make a film which would introduce him to a wider audience. He didn’t know yet in which way he would do it, until he got his hands on the manuscript. He decided to use that to make this documentary. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

T-Rex (2015) – Review

Review T-Rex
Making a documentary always is a gamble, as you never know what the thing your filming will bring you. Sometimes you start following a clown in New York and you end up making Capturing the Friedmans. If you decide to film a 17-year-old boxer, Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields, from Flint, Michigan who has set a goal for herself to become the first female boxer to win gold at the Olympic games, you can wonder how big the chance is that she’ll make that. In 2012 boxing for women at the Olympic Games in London is introduced and the documentary T-Rex starts when she is training hard to qualify. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

What is Cinema? (2013) – Review

Review What is cinema

For more than 20 years Chuck Workman was editor for the Oscars. He was responsible for the various montages celebrating the medium of film. So in those years he has seen a lot of imagery and with this documentary he has created a visual essay in which he takes a look at the history of film, the development it has gone through while various directors are interviewed, like Alfred Hitchcock/Robert Altman (archival footage), David Lynch and Michael Moore, who tell what it means to them. All the while you are shown footage from maybe hundreds of movies. Continue reading →

by - 0 comments

Tower (2016) – Review

Recensie Tower

Although documentaries are about everyday life, this doesn’t have to mean that they have to be realistic in the way they are presented. Waltz with Bashir was one which was mainly animated, allowing it show surrealistic imagery. For the shocking events that took place at the university of Austin, Texas Tower also chooses to use animation, which results in a very special film. Continue reading →