What do an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer, a man fascinated by mole rats, and a cutting-edge robotics designer have in common? Both nothing and everything in this ... See full summary »
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Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the ... See full summary »
Director:
Errol Morris
Stars:
Albert Bitterling,
Roscoe Collins,
George Harris
Documentary about an aspiring filmmaker's attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before.
Director:
Chris Smith
Stars:
Mark Borchardt,
Tom Schimmels,
Monica Borchardt
Documentary that chronicles how Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now was plagued by extraordinary script, shooting, budget, and casting problems--nearly destroying the life and career of the celebrated director.
A documentary on the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's epic Fitzcarraldo, showing how the film managed to get made despite problems that would have floored a less obsessively driven ... See full summary »
Director:
Les Blank
Stars:
Werner Herzog,
Klaus Kinski,
Claudia Cardinale
Four relentless door-to-door salesmen deal with constant rejection, homesickness and inevitable burnout as they go across the country selling very expensive bibles to low-income Catholic families.
Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project (which has never been resurrected).
THE WHITE DIAMOND is a film about the daring adventure of exploring rainforest canopy with a novel flying device-the Jungle Airship. Airship engineer Dr.Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip ... See full summary »
Director:
Werner Herzog
Stars:
Werner Herzog,
Graham Dorrington,
Dieter Plage
What do an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer, a man fascinated by mole rats, and a cutting-edge robotics designer have in common? Both nothing and everything in this unconventional documentary directed by Erroll Morris. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Referring to the robot specialist's strange philosophy of robot design structure, not Erroll Morris's documentary techniques!) interplays, overlaps, and interrelates these four separate and highly specialized documentary subjects in order to in truth study all of humanity, raising questions about the future of mankind. Written by
Matthew F. Griffin
Discussed in Episode 97 of the popular radio program This American Life. The subject was "Death to Wacky" and it originally aired on March 20, 1998. See more »
Quotes
[On pointing the four legs of a chair in a lion's face]
Dave Hoover:
His mind now has been completely distracted from his original thought: "Eat the man in the white pants."
See more »
Hiding within this movie are four fairly interesting mini-documentaries about four men, each with a vision - perhaps even an obsession - about one particular facet of life. The common thread uniting them is that each of the four is fascinated by the ways in which animals, men, plants, and even machines evolve, learn, and grow. A recurring theme is training or control.
Unfortunately, these four interesting stories are chopped up and interwoven in ways that often seem arbitrary and pointless. Plus, about 25% of the movie is made up of clips from other, mostly bad, movies... and the soundtrack music is often intrusive and annoying. So I'm mystified why a number of critics thought this was the best documentary of 1997. Maybe there were just a lot of bad documentaries that year!
Worth watching if you have nothing else to do, but nowhere near great.
12 of 19 people found this review helpful.
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Hiding within this movie are four fairly interesting mini-documentaries about four men, each with a vision - perhaps even an obsession - about one particular facet of life. The common thread uniting them is that each of the four is fascinated by the ways in which animals, men, plants, and even machines evolve, learn, and grow. A recurring theme is training or control.
Unfortunately, these four interesting stories are chopped up and interwoven in ways that often seem arbitrary and pointless. Plus, about 25% of the movie is made up of clips from other, mostly bad, movies... and the soundtrack music is often intrusive and annoying. So I'm mystified why a number of critics thought this was the best documentary of 1997. Maybe there were just a lot of bad documentaries that year!
Worth watching if you have nothing else to do, but nowhere near great.