Category Archives: Documentary

Documentary

Burzysnki -Cancer is Serious Business

Leave a comment

Note: I have recently published a slightly edited version of this review on Devtome.

Burzynski is a controversial documentary about an alternative cancer cure. More specifically, it’s about the work of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, who has allegedly found an effective cure for many types of cancers while facing persecution from the FDA and other arms of the medical establishment.

This is a movie that has gotten lots of grass roots support, and very little attention from mainstream critics. In fact, the majority of the “professional” reviews I read were extremely hostile, no doubt causing the conspiracy minded to wonder if there are powerful forces at work to suppress this film and the topic.

The movie itself is well done, persuasive and yet completely one-sided. There is no attempt to show things from the FDA’s point of view. This won’t bother people who are firmly entrenched in the “alternative” side of things (I’d have to include myself in that category, to be honest), but is unlikely to win many new converts.

All of this, however, should be secondary to the real question -has Dr. Burzynski actually found a cure for cancer? After watching this film, I wasn’t completely persuaded. It certainly seems that he’s cured many people who were deemed incurable by conventional doctors, yet even the film admits his success rate is only around 25%. The film, of course, only focuses on cases that were successful.

Does this justify the FDA and the Texas Medical Board spending years trying to revoke his medical license, prevent him from treating patients, and even trying to get him put in prison? Of course not. The film is far more successful at exposing the corruption, mindless bureaucracy and ultimate heartlessness of the medical establishment than it is in showing us that Burzysnki has found a viable cure.

As the movie shows, many conventional chemotherapy treatments are deadly in themselves, some even causing other types of cancer, such as leukemia. Burzynski’s treatments, meanwhile, apparently have no harmful side effects. So, even if his methods haven’t (yet?) been perfected, what possible justification can there be to call him a quack or charlatan, while hospitals routinely administer such blatantly toxic treatments every day?

The documentary also is quick to point out the real motive behind the suppression of alternative cures -pharmaceutical company profits. The fact that these giant companies work in league with the FDA is far beyond a conspiracy theory, as it’s practically done out in the open. For these reasons, I’m a bit perplexed at the reaction of some reviewers who seem all too quick to trust establishment medicine and condemn anyone who’s an outsider.

My ultimate reaction to Burzynski is little ambivalent. I think the film would have been more effective if it has been a bit more balanced. For example, to show one success story after another, as emotionally effective as this is (in some cases they are young children with brain tumors), gives the impression that Burzysnki’s methods are always effective, when in fact they’re not.

Overall, Burzynski is well worth watching, especially as it gives some disturbing insights into how the FDA and pharmaceutical companies operate.



Related Blogs

    Documentary

    Free Documentary Films

    Leave a comment

    If you’re a lover of documentaries, you may be interested to know of a website called Top Documentary Films, where you can watch all kinds of documentaries for free. This is not a very well known resource -at least I didn’t know about it until I happened to find it when doing research for this site.

    These may not be the best known documentaries around, but there’s a good selection of topics, including science, history and biographies. They’re currently featuring the popular Mythbusters TV series. According to the site’s guidelines, you can watch any films for free, but you’re only allowed to download ones that are public domain, which makes sense. Top Documentary Films also has links to other resources where you can find even more documentaries, so this site is a goldmine for anyone who appreciates this genre!

    Related Blogs

      Documentary

      Catfish -Facebook vs. Reality

      3 Comments

      Like other reviewers of Catfish, I have the problem of talking about this film without revealing spoilers. While I won’t get too specific, it’s hard to discuss this movie without giving away, at least in a general way, the direction it moves in. Yet I think this problem has been exaggerated, as it’s not really a suspense film as much as a psychological and cultural study. You could know all of the main conclusions up front and still enjoy it.

      Catfish is a documentary by New Yorkers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman that chronicles a series of events involving Ariel’s brother Nev, who corresponds with a strange family in rural Michigan. Nev is first contacted by the youngest member of the family, an 8 year old girl named Abby, who is apparently a child prodigy who paints. Later, Nev starts chatting with Abby’s older sister Megan, and the two begin an online romance. Soon, however, Nev becomes suspicious about the whole family and the whole crew descends on the family’s home in Michigan to find out the truth.

      Reading the reviews, both professional and by customers, is almost as interesting as the film itself. While Catfish has won it’s share of praise, it’s also provoked quite a bit of hostility, for reasons that range from reverse class snobbery to a misunderstanding about what the film is supposed to be. Reading some of the reviews on Netflix, for example, it becomes clear that many people thought this was going to be a suspense, or even a horror film. There’s one scene where this is hinted at, when the film crew discovers the family’s farm late at night and there’s a Blair Witch Project-like atmosphere. But that really has nothing to do with the movie as a whole. I’m not familiar with the original marketing of this film, and some have charged that the filmmakers deliberately tried to trick people into believing it was going to be a horror movie. If this is true, then this was certainly a poor decision, but it still doesn’t detract from the actual film. When reading customer reviews, you also have to keep in mind that the average modern moviegoer isn’t a fan of documentaries.

      Another criticism that has been leveled against Catfish is that it’s fake. This is something I obviously can’t verify one way or the other, but strangely enough, it makes no real difference, as the whole point of the film is to make us think about “what is real?” on social networks like Facebook. To me, everything seemed real and if the directors faked it, they did a good job of it.

      It really seems doubtful to me that Catfish was staged or faked in any substantial way (all documentaries use a certain amount of staging, just like reality TV, to create a certain atmosphere and reaction in the audience, but that’s not the same as saying the main theme was made up. Nev, the young man who begins corresponding with, first a young girl who paints, and then her mother and sister, begins to have doubts about the family’s truthfulness quite early on. Unlike what some critics have said, it wasn’t presented as though it was supposed to be a major twist late in the film. So the suspense factor, while present, isn’t really the point here at all. It’s more of a psychological study of how people in the modern age communicate, and the impact certain online actions can have on others.

      While the customer reviewers who hated Catfish were mainly disappointed that the Michigan family didn’t turn out to be something out of Deliverance, or perhaps The Hills Have Eyes, the professional critics turned on it in another, more interesting way. The average high profile movie reviewer is, almost by definition, well educated, affluent and urban. They also tend to be very eager to portray themselves as liberal, politically correct and anti-elitist. So many of these reviewers were made distinctly uncomfortable by the interaction between the filmmakers, who appear to represent the educated elite of Manhattan, and a poor middle America family. To make matters worse, there are two severely handicapped children in the house, so one could easily read a “Haves vs. Have-nots” subtext into this film if one were so inclined.

      The reviewers who took this track were quite vehement in condemning the insensitivity of the filmmakers, and seemed strangely eager to embrace a member of the family who displays clearly delusional-bordering-on- psychotic tendencies. Yet the film itself maintains an admirable equilibrium, and helps to bring about an unlikely conclusion where no one is demonized and everyone comes clean. The fact is, class and geographic distinctions play a relatively minor role (if any) in Catfish, which is really about truth and identity in the digital age.

      If you’re philosophically inclined, you could even look at Catfish as a study in topics as deep as the meanings of truth and identity in general, not just online. I highly recommend Catfish to anyone who wants to look at some of the cultural consequences of Facebook and other modern forms of communication.

      Related Blogs

      Documentary

      Edge of Dreaming -Are Dreams Prophetic?

      1 Comment

      Edge of Dreaming is a fascinating documentary about a woman who has a possibly prophetic dream of her own death. Amy Hardie is a 48 year old Scottish woman, a wife and mother as well as a documentary filmmaker. Her films are scientific and she doesn’t seem to believe in anything beyond the material. At one point, she confesses to believing that death is simply the end.

      Yet when Amy dreams that her horse will die and he is indeed dead when she awakes, she is disturbed. Even more disconcerting is another dream, where her deceased ex-husband tells her she will die before her next birthday. So she films her life for the next year, as she ominously develops a serious lung disease that the doctors can’t diagnose.

      As she struggles with her health issues and the memory of the dream lurking in the background, Amy talks to scientists about what happens to the brain when we dream.

      In the latter part of the film, Amy visits a Brazilian shaman, who tells her that it’s possible to change the outcome of a dream by re-entering it. This is also related to the concept of lucid dreaming, though that phrase is never mentioned in the film. When Amy goes into a shamanic trance, it’s never mentioned if she was given any type of mind altering substance of if the shaman simply leads her into an altered state. In either case, this is a fascinating path for someone of a scientific bent to take.

      Edge of Dreaming can be found at Amazon.com, and is available for instant viewing on Netflix. It’s definitely recommended to anyone interested in dreams, psychic phenomena or shamanism.

      Related Blogs

      Documentary, Shorts

      Idiot With A Tripod

      Leave a comment

      Idiot With A Tripod is not exactly an indie film, but a very short documentary about the recent blizzard in New York. Created by Jamie Stuart, it’s gotten quite a bit of attention. Critic Roger Ebert has helped it go viral by praising it. See Roger Ebert’s Blog. Over at YouTube, some of the comments said it was boring, pointless, etc., but it seems like no matter what anybody uploads there you have lots of nasty comments! It’s really just a very well done study in minimalism and captures the simple beauty of everyday life in a snowstorm.


      Related Blogs

      Documentary, movie reviews

      Exit Through the Gift Shop

      2 Comments

      No one seems to know for sure if Exit Through the Gift Shop is a real documentary or a prank played by street artist Banksy. Either way, it’s a fascinating portrayal of both the street art movement, pop culture and the strange point where the two meet.

      The film starts out with Frenchman Thiery Guetta, the cousin of street artist Space Invader, filming various street artists in Paris, Los Angeles and other locations. Street art was the next phase of graffiti that became popular in the 1990s, and we see leading practitioners of this art, such as Shephard Fairey at work, painting their elaborate creations in prominent locations around cities. While some people label graffiti and street art simply as vandalism, and on one level it is -and I doubt that few street artists themselves would argue with this- much of it is also undeniably creative and original. While it’s sort of redundant to say it’s subversive, it may be one of the few statements that can be made nowadays that this could truly be said about, as there’s no commercial intent behind it. Or so it would seem.

      Yet Exit Through the Gift Shop ends up being more about the commercialization of art than street art per se. When Thiery finally meets the mysterious English street artist Banksy, we watch him leave his mark around Los Angeles, London and, most daringly, on the infamous wall in the West Bank, right under the noses of military patrols. When Banksy pressures Thiery to put together an actual documentary, however, the result is a disaster and it’s revealed that Thiery knows nothing about filmmaking, so Banksy takes over the project and the focus turns on Thiery. That’s at least the official story, which hasn’t been confirmed to this day.

      The denouement of the film comes when Thiery reinvents himself as Mister Brainwash and has a major opening in L.A. that turns him into a celebrity. At this point, a man who starts out as an amiable eccentric is transformed into a near megalomaniac who proclaims himself the next Andy Warhol. Indeed, many of his paintings are variations on Warhol’s themes, with lots of giant Campbell’s Soup cans, Elvis renditions and distortions of famous paintings. Despite the obviously derivative nature of his work, his opening is a huge success, and he goes on to design one of Madonna’s album covers. The people Thiery filmed earlier, from Fairey to Banksy are now less than enthralled with him, and the implication is that he is a sellout while the art critics and general public are gullible fools.

      Taken at face value, the film doesn’t quite add up. Why would the anarchic Banksy put his name behind the film if he truly despised the result? The fact that we see Banksy himself with a very public art opening earlier in the film proves he isn’t as adverse to publicity as he pretends. Still, whatever we might suspect about Banksy’s intentions or honesty, he undoubtedly has real talent. In a review in the English paper The Sunday Times, Wendy Ide mentions that she once interviewed Banksy, and he revealed that It’s A Beautiful Life is his favorite film. Probably not coincidentally, that’s the name Thiery/Mister Brainwash gives to his art exhibit that Banksy allegedly had nothing to do with.

      Exit Through the Gift Shop [Blu-ray] is a truly postmodern film about contemporary culture, which means its ultimate veracity, or lack thereof is of secondary importance at most. It causes the viewer to contemplate that ancient question, “What is art?” This makes it more meaningful than 99% of other contemporary films.

      Related Blogs

      Documentary

      Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story review

      Leave a comment

      Note: A slightly edited version of this review has recently been published on Devtome.

      You can’t deny that Michael Moore has mastered the art of creating documentaries that are persuasive, entertaining and informative. Well, the first two at least; the informative part is a little murky in some ways. He hits you with a series of interesting and usually infuriating or depressing facts, adds personal anecdotes and then draws some very broad conclusions. Capitalism: A Love Story is an extreme example of this style.

      This documentary goes from one outrage to another: heartless banks, the Bank of America plays a large role as villain, repossess the homes of struggling families; a loyal workers are fired with three days notice, a corrupt, privately owned juvenile home bribes a judge to incarcerate innocent teens; commercial pilots are paid less than fast food workers, giant corporations are bailed out while the poor are neglected…it goes on and on. By the time you’ve watched all this, you are ready to join the revolution. But what revolution, exactly?

      Michael Moore is a propagandist par excellence. He knows exactly how to pull at the heartstrings and evoke the maximum amount of rage and class resentment in his viewers. The problem is, the target in this case, “capitalism” is ultimately an abstraction. The particular cases Moore focuses on are real, and they are examples of injustice, corruption and ignorance. However, to blame an ideology for such things is a kind of simplistic and naive conclusion that doesn’t really solve anything.

      For philosophical ammunition, Moore curiously turns to an institution that is at least as tainted as capitalism –the Catholic church. He quotes priests and a bishop, who assure us that capitalism is evil and that Jesus would not have endorsed it. Now when right wing Christians try to invoke the widely satirized, “What would Jesus do?” we can smirk at the silliness of it; apparently liberals are allowed to do it, though.

      Moore could just as easily have done a 2 hour expose of the Church’s many evils (which happen to be in the headlines right now). Moore could have done a polemic, perhaps following in the footsteps of fanatical atheists like Richard Dawson, against religion. This, however, would be out of line with his populist image. He is betting that the masses in America are more likely to turn against capitalism than God. Nor would such an anti-Church message have been any more accurate. However, at least the Church is a discrete institution; capitalism is really just a word; the exploitation and robbing of average people by the rich and powerful is not dependent on the current economic system.

      How, exactly, is Capitalism: A Love Story a distortion? Because, like all propaganda, it simplifies and gets you to make a mental leap from particular cases to broad generalizations. Exploitation and injustice are as old as civilization, while capitalism is a mere few centuries old. In what may be the best part of the film -the very beginning- Moore shows scenes from the Roman Empire, using the familiar but still effective analogy between that empire’s decline and our own. The problem is, the Romans weren’t capitalists.

      Libertarians and fiscal conservatives will, no doubt, argue that Moore is wrong because the actions he condemns are not really capitalism at all in the pure sense. After all, bailing out a failing company is not an example of the free market. This is true, but all this does is show how murky words and semantics can be. The truth is, banks who operate like loan sharks, corrupt politicians and special interest groups are not really ideological creatures at all; their kind has always been around, and they are able to wear any sort of political mask that the times demand.

      In another of the film’s sneaky ideological gimmicks, Moore associates the Obama election with a populist revolt against the status quo. There is, no doubt, truth to this. He does not, however, show exactly how Obama has done anything differently. Obama, it turns out, has been just as complicit when it comes to corporate bailouts as Bush.

      Like all of Moore’s documentaries, Capitalism: A Love Story is worth seeing even if you don’t accept all of its conclusions and implications. The outrages it portrays are real enough. The problem with associating them with such a broad target is that it makes it all too easy for someone to come along with the right banner, such as “socialism” and play out the same agenda.

      The fact is, we are living in, or on the verge of a post-ideological, post-industrial and probably post-political era. There will probably never be a purely capitalist or socialist economy again (if there ever was, which is unlikely). Moore evokes FDR’s New Deal as a paradigm of benevolent government, but looking to a past era, with completely different economic conditions, is not really a solution. Another thing worshippers of the New Deal fail to consider is that many of the cultural and environmental woes of today, such as suburban sprawl, the proliferation of automobiles and the rise of the permanent war economy and military industrial complex follow directly from that era.

      Capitalism: A Love story may move you and remind you how greedy people can be, but it ultimately fails to suggest a viable solution.

      Related Blogs

      Reviews, news and information related to independent films.