Oscars 2014 – Best Documentary Overview

A rundown of reviews of all the documentaries nominated for this year’s Oscars and a prediction of the future winner.

People love to rail on the Best Documentary category at the Oscars, and while it’s mind boggling that something as innovative and fresh as “Stories We Tell” couldn’t make the cut, it’s quite often that the final crop is never so terrible.

This year the branch diversified their picks with some crowd pleasers, profiles, surreal experiments and important political statements. And what’s really fortunate is that four of the five nominees (“20 Feet From Stardom” excluded) are all streaming on Netflix.

Here’s a brief rundown of each of the nominees and my own prediction of who might take Oscar gold.

The Act of Killing4 stars

One of the early great scenes in “The Act of Killing” shows Anwar Congo, a former gangster and executioner in Indonesia who alone murdered 1000 individuals and lives to boast about his former glory, demonstrating how to strangle a man while minimizing the blood splatter. It’s absolutely harrowing how casually he performs it with a spring in his step, but when Director Joshua Oppenheimer shows Congo the footage, he feels nothing and isn’t phased in the slightest. “The Act of Killing” takes us deeper down the rabbit hole by allowing these evil men to stage recreations of their horrible crimes. People act with bravado in surreal scenarios, and the film crosses the border between movie making fiction and reality. It’s darkly funny and disturbingly beautiful at times, and it pulls the miraculous trick of actually making us sympathize with this wretched man, someone we smiling and even petting ducklings. To see him purge his horror at the film’s end is magnificent.

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20 Feet From Stardom

“20 Feet From Stardom” is an American rockumentary about finding personal strength, identity and success through music.

“20 Feet From Stardom” documents the work and life of some of the most iconic pop culture figures you’ve never heard of. They’re the voices of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”, of David Bowie’s “Young Americans” and Tina and Ike Turner’s Ikettes. They’re the unheralded backup singers all throughout rock history.

Morgan Neville’s film is insightful because it does more than give a few people a platform to shine; it delves into the complicated nuances of this job, this industry and the effect it has on these individuals’ lives.

Neville is the producer behind such rock docs as “Pearl Jam Twenty” and “Johnny Cash’s America,” and he uses that clout to gain access to such rock royalty as Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder. Bruce explains at the film’s opening that the walk from the back of that stage to the front is a complicated one, and some of the best in the biz have flown under the radar not for lack of trying.

To be a backup singer, the job involves conforming to the sound, the voice and the need of the song. It inherently rejects individual expression such that you can be part of an ensemble. Continue reading “20 Feet From Stardom”