Ricky J

Ricky J was about the magician, Ricky Jay, his climb to fame, and the heroes that inspired him. It is done in the genre of biography/portrait and the role of the filmmaker is chronicler. I really like biographies about magicians for some reasons. Also, I knew I recognized him from somewhere besides his own show. He played the camera operator on Boogie Nights. I thought that was kind of interesting. My burning question is what ever happened to Ricky J? I haven't seen him in a long time, and without doing any research, I'm assuming this documentary was made a few years ago. I thought the visual imagery was really cool. It felt like I was on in the front row of one of his magic shows. I also really liked the old footage with the older magicians. I think the theme was, or at least what I got out of it, was that we're never too old to stop believing in magic. Ok, maybe that was a little corny. Another theme could be, if you really want to achieve your goals, work hard and never give up. I'm not sure if there were any stakes. I mean, nothing worth calling a "stake" at any rate. Maybe, if he ever worries about his tricks becoming revealed. The editing style was done with a lot of flowing narrative that occurred chronologically. I want to know how did he perform those tricks, and will he ever reveal how he did them?

Cove

This was one of the most gut-wrenching, saddest movies I've ever seen. It seems today that sad documentaries are on the rise. I first heard about this film when it was at Sundance a few years ago, garnering critical acclaim, and now I see why. This film was done in the style of both Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema. They show direct evidence of the killing and maiming of dolphins which makes it kind of hard to prove otherwise. The role of the filmmaker was guerrilla. They had to be sneaky to evade Japanese police and fishermen. The burning question at the beginning was will they caught and be arrested? At the end, I think it was will the world put a stop to these inhumane catastrophes? The visual imagery used in this doc. was the use of interview, underwater shots, thermal shots, etc. They had to go out at night so as not to be detected. The theme was simple, stop animal cruelty. Some of the stakes were unlike any I've seen in other docs. They could have been arrested without charge and held in prison for 28 days according to Ric O'Barry. The editing style incorporated old footage from Flipper, interviews, thermal shots, etc. This movie will stay with me for awhile.

La Mancha

I first saw La Mancha a couple of years ago because for one, Terry Gilliam is a huge inspiration to me, and two it is about the process of making a film, and the sometimes problems that arise. The genre for this film is Direct Cinema or Observational because the filmmaker or even the camera have very little effect on the people in the movie. The role of the filmmaker is observer, again because they don't really interact with the subjects or the story in anyway. The burning question for me at the beginning and the end of the film is, "will this film ever get made?" I guess we answered that today though as Amazon is putting up the money to finance the project. Some of the visual imagery I noticed was old footage used to describe and illustrate the previous failed versions of the La Mancha. I think the theme of this movie was to show the audience just how difficult a process it is to make a movie, even with talent as great as Terry Gilliam or Johnny Depp. One stake was will Terry Gilliam prove worthy enough to beat the "curse" of this project and finally finish making it, where so many others failed. The editing style was kind of slow paced. I didn't get grabbed right away. But many times, I find that to not necessarily be a bad thing. All in all, it was a pretty good movie. I would highly recommend it to any film buff, but perhaps not to any regular Joe.