CMN 650W Film Reviews Discussion

“Amy”;  (Netflix)
Academy award, 2016
The story of someone who was destroyed by fame. Amy Winehouse, even before she became famous, predicted that she would not fare well with all the pressures that go along with fame. In the end those pressures and the ways she reacted to them took the life of this gifted, tremendously talented young woman.

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

Describe in detail the ways in which Amy Winehouse was, on a certain level, “destroyed by fame”.

“Gimme Shelter”; (YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax_q6vp5FqU (Links to an external site.)OR rent & support the arts at YouTube or Amazon Prime – $3.99

Another Maysles Brothers (Grey Gardens) production.
This is more than a concert tour film. Something happened at the Stones free concert in Altamont, CA, in 1969 that forever marked the event itself, and the history of the band.

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

What event happens at the Altamont show while the Maysles Brothers are filming the Rolling Stones’ performance, and how does it effect the Stones after the show is over? Write a detailed discussion in response.

The Punk Singer; (YouTube –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTHg4SQNGE (Links to an external site.)OR, in case it is taken down OR you want to support the filmmakers by renting: Amazon Prime, or YouTube, $3.99)

Kathleen Hanna is a pioneer of the punk feminist movement of the 1990s known as “riot grrrl”. As songwriter and front person for bands such as Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and The Julie Ruin, she has forged her place in rock history. This profile has many revealing quotes about her and her convictions, as described by Kathleen, past bandmates, Adam Horowitz (her husband) of the Beastie Boys, and others.

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

Discuss Kathleen Hanna’s approach to feminism as she applied to her music and the formation of the riot grrrl movement.

What Happened Miss Simone?;  (NetFlix)
This is a Netflix doc that screened at such prestigious film tests as Sundance, and Berlin. Nina Simone was a great, hugely influential musician. She also was, as stated in the trailer, a civil rights “revolutionary”. She was noted as being someone who pulled no punches when she made a statement about something, but that is not a personality trait that our society has often dealt with in a respectful way (to put it mildly), particularly when it comes from a woman – especially an African American woman.

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

Discuss the ways in which Nina Simone could rightly be described as a “revolutionary”. Keep in mind the context of her time.

Don’t Look Back; (Amazon Prime, or YouTube, or iTunes; $3.99)

Another tour film that doesn’t just focus on concert performances. This one follows Bob Dylan on his last purely folk music tour, in England, 1965. (He would “go electric” right after this tour was over, releasing songs such as “Like A Rolling Stone”, outraging folk music purists, of which there were many at that time.

DA Pennebaker, another pioneer of Cinema Verite, filmed the performances and other Dylan activities, and created what is commonly acknowledged as on of the top two or three music documentaries in film history.

This from Wikipedia sums it up pretty nicely:

“In August 1967, a reviewer wrote:

‘Don’t Look Back is really about fame and how it menaces art, about the press and how it categorizes, bowdlerizes, sterilizes, universalizes or conventionalizes an original like Dylan into something it can dimly understand.’” ~ John Gilliland, Newsweek

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

Playing off of the film critic’s words, describe specific moments in the film that confirm his contentions regarding what the film is really about.

The Devil and Daniel Johnson; (Amazon Prime $3.99; YouTube $3.99)
Daniel Johnson was a relatively obscure songwriter and musician, who created a large body of work, most of which was critically acclaimed. He recorded for over 30 years, from the early 1980s into the early 2010s. There were two brief spikes toward fame for him; one was in 1992 when Kurt Cobain wore a t-shirt that had artwork from one of Johnson’s albums on it; the other was when this documentary came out in 2005, 14 years before Johnson’s death. Predating “Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405”, this doc also focuses on a relatively unknown artist and their struggles with mental illnesses.

Write a 1-2 page review of the film.

Compare the profile of Daniel Johnson in “The Devil and Daniel Johnson” with that of Mindy Alper in “Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405”. What are some of the similarities and differences that the filmmaker shows in the ways that each artist channels and perhaps gains inspiration from their mental illnesses, at the same time that they are often inhibited in different ways by those illnesses?