Every year is basically a good film year. Why? Because there will always be more films than you’ll ever have the time to watch (one of the best reasons to believe in/ascribe to reincarnation theories). If there’s not enough stimulation in the contemporary spheres, just backtrack to film history.
That said, I found 2018 an unusually good year. This probably just means that I was more attentive and curious. My own revitalized pathology/neurosis vis-à-vis film in general and documentary film in particular simply contributed to a stronger hunger. And to me watching a lot of good stuff.
What follows here is not necessarily a best-of-the-year list but just an un-ranked group of films I’ve watched pretty recently this year and that I can highly recommend. All films are either streaming or available on DVD/BluRay (or both). Enjoy!
Fahrenheit 11/9 (Michael Moore, USA, 2018)
Somewhat predictable but highly entertaining sweep of the post-election American trauma. How a vulgar cretin like Donald Trump could become president is no longer a mystery but still highly mystifying. Michael Moore, ever the emotional demagog, does a great job exposing not only this American Antichrist but also the lies, confusion and deceit within the Democratic Party environment that paradoxically helped this distinctly un-American force take charge. The American political system now seems utterly defunct, and because of that a diagnosis cluster with a way too long necktie can grab even more media attention and thereby daily make an entire world laugh in disbelief and dread. Unfortunately, the future doesn’t look so bright for the US, and this film will definitely be a key to understanding how a once great nation could fail and fall so quickly. House of Cards, indeed.
Scotty and the secret history of Hollywood (Matt Tyrnauer, USA, 2017)
Meet Scotty Bowers, sexual matchmaker extraordinaire. Never a pimp, but always there to make people feel good together. This film is the unlikely story of a good looking ex-soldier who came back after WW2 to become Hollywood’s best kept secret. You think the heyday stars had weird sexual appetites and tastes? You’re absolutely right. And Scotty Bowers was right in the middle of it (and them) all.
More here on this fascinating character…
PS. Tyrnauer’s most recent documentary, Studio 54 (2018), is also worth watching. Great New York decadence/madness and cocaine-fuelled tax evasions!
They’ll love me when I’m dead (Morgan Neville, USA, 2018)
A remarkable and intelligent documentary about Orson Welles’s final film project, The other side of the wind. The project as such was never finished and became somewhat of a ball and chain for Welles in his autumn years. Plenty of accolades but no funding, and especially not from Hollywood proper. The documentary displays a wealth of interviews, material and lots of clips from the original footage. Amazing stuff, and perhaps the final piece of the puzzle that is spelled G-E-N-I-U-S.
The other side of the wind (Orson Welles et al, USA, 2018)
And here it actually is… Orson Welles’s final masterpiece! To market the documentary about the film, or vice versa? This film has been edited together by people who worked closely with Welles on the shooting of a bizarre epic about an old and disgruntled director trying to finish his final film, and that certainly seems meta-Wellesean enough (thematically as well as stylistically). If you take Welles’s preceding film F for Fake into then recent account, the full frontal assault of chaotic, psychedelic editing and the rapid dialogues of The other side of the wind make perfect sense. Well, perhaps not sense, but it certainly makes for an intriguing mosaic and insight into a creative mind that was going super strong right up to the very end. Perhaps Welles would have made the final film differently on some levels, but that we will never know for sure. I fully respect the people who finished this film for him though. It’s a respectful, audacious, chaotic, and cinematically celebratory kicking against some Hollywood pricks, while still a declaration of love for the medium itself. Welles wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The sunshine makers (Cosmo Feilding-Mellen, USA, 2015)
A great film about the early days of LSD-making. As LSD was made illegal in the US in the mid 1960s, some truly courageous cookers stepped forth. Owsley Stanley, Tim Scully, and Nick Sand, aided by the distribution network/hippie mafia The Brotherhood of Eternal Love all changed people’s minds and lives to a degree that America (or the rest of the world) hadn’t experienced before. As much of the official LSD lore focuses on the cultural manifestations (Leary, the Beats, hippies, acid rock, experimental movies, etc) The Sunshine Makers offers something else. This film is about the larger than life destinies of the people who made all of that possible on a chemical level.
Wild wild country (Chapman & Maclain Way, USA, 2018)
An Indian meditation guru/cult leader, a scheming second in charge, a huge compound in Oregon with its own armed police force, thousands of cult members involved in free love and meditation while the leaders showed more and more draconian sides in petty power struggles… And then, the money… Yes, it’s a classic cult story, but one of massive proportions. And it’s all true! This excellent seven hour documentary about Bhagwan and the Osho movement is positively mind boggling. One is left wondering: why did these people shoot so much weird and incriminating material on video? Hubris and naiveté in an amazing mix that makes us jump with joy. Sexual orgies, power struggles and weird, alternative therapies… You just can’t beat that!
Quincy (Alan Hicks & Rashida Jones, USA, 2018)
A straightforward film about an absolute giant of American culture. Quincy Jones’s work as composer, arranger, producer and artist throughout more than half a century is totally without parallel. Sui Generis par excellence. This film makes that uniqueness very clear, and takes us deep into Jones’s creative worlds from the 1940s and onwards, as well as into intimate and family-related twists and turns. What a great life, and what an impressive contribution to (American) musical history!
Struggle (Irineusz Dobrowolski, USA, 2018)
This film tells the story of American-Polish sculptor/artist Stanislav Szukalski (1893-1987). His sternly majestic sculptures, weird psychedelic paintings and drawings, and strange concepts of Easter Island origins and Yetis must have been a treasure trove for art collector Glenn Bray and his cronies (like Robert Williams) when they discovered the Pole living amidst them in Los Angeles in the 1970s… As they dug deeper and systematically interviewed this oddball outsider artist, they unearthed slightly more than they bargained for. The man’s ardent Polish nationalism contained streaks of “idealistic” anti-semitism in the 1930s, but it seemed to have calmed down after most of his art was destroyed in Poland during WW2. Had his great friend and super-Sionist Ben Hecht known about this anti-semitism when they hung out in Chicago and Los Angeles, it would probably have been the end of that friendship. Szukalski retracted into a weird but undoubtedly creative kind of autism which eventually led to his rediscovery via a new generation of artists and art lovers. A fascinating story and a great film about a truly unique mind.
