Change Your Image
Jesseree
Reviews
Ross Kemp in Search of Pirates (2009)
Title does the documentary justice
Brilliant documentary series, It has pretty much everything you would want from a documentary: a bit of history, current events, action, and human interest. Ross Kemp does a fantastic job in explaining the problem in an objective, understandable way.
We follow his journey from the African coast to the oil fields in Nigeria, to the waters of Singapore and Malaysia and then back to Somalia, in his quest to learn more about the problem and meet some pirates in the modern world. He talks with politicians in the areas, the soldiers that patrol the areas, as well as the people that are harmed directly and indirectly by the problem of piracy. I appreciated the lack of interviews with the companies that are harmed by piracy, since that is information that we can get on the regular news channels.
The whole documentary has a great flow to it, slowly building up to meeting real pirates and seeing first hand how they do what they do without really doing it. To the style: he is often talking to the camera, letting the viewer know what is happening while filming the action, this gives a great sense of really being there with him and taking part, the voice over is well done as are the interviews.
If you are interested in the subject of piracy in the 21st Century, I can only recommend it.
Like a wife of a pirate says they are naughty boys.
Freakonomics (2010)
Enjoyable and interesting
First I want to say that I have not read the book and can not compare the film to it, although I am familiar with these types of studies and find them all interesting. I found the film interesting and nicely made, with great animations that get the point across. Everything is explained very well.
They had an interesting order of the bits or chapters, since they kept the first few short and sweet, and then put the longer (for me a bit drawn out) chapters after. I think this is to keep the audiences attention, since I was thinking "well the first ones were short, it can't take much longer till the next one comes", and then some more short ones interspersed with another longer one in between. This is of course subjective, since I did not take my stopwatch out to time them.
All in all, I found the film well done. I hope they make more in the future, since I really enjoyed the little animations and the way it was done in general..
My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
A good documentary about a little girl and her family
This is a good film, depicting the story of a 4 year old girl who likes to paint and her rise to "Stardom" as an artist. She has parents that encourage her, and an art dealer who promotes her.
Intertwined with interviews, fly on the wall type footage and excerpts of media coverage, the documentary gives an almost nicely rounded view of the situation. The rise and fall of this little girl and intrinsically her family. What I did not quite like was that the film maker at one point gives his opinion, I thought that the film would have been better without it.
Another thing that I felt was missing is a definite time-line of her works, since I have painted with my siblings and watched them change their way of expressing themselves with painting, going from what the "art-world", as shown in this film, calls "mature adult paintings" (filling out the whole canvas) to the typically childish figurative type (and a lot of white) within a short time. Considering this I personally would not call her an artist nor her family fraudulent.
At some point in the film Bar-Lev mentions that at the beginning he wanted to make a film about modern art, in this objective I think he fails, since there are no experts on art (nor on child development) interviewed by him. Mainly Mom, Dad, art dealer, fans (art collectors) and a local media reporter are shown. A documentary on modern art that I find informative, especially in dealing with modern art dealing is "The Mona Lisa Curse" by Robert Hughs.
If you are interested in Marla's story, then this is a good film to watch. In my opinion this film is not about modern art, child development nor the media just Marla's story the way the Bar- Lev saw it, no more and no less.