What’s Up, Doc

After deciding to power watch Doc Martin on Netflix Instant Play and getting a few episodes into season two, the series, except for season one, abruptly disappeared without the usual week or two warning, causing lots of angry comments to be posted. So, I’ve added it to my library queue and have started watching Foyle’s War on Instant Play. The rest of what I have been watching is about half documentaries, and that’s the better half of a pretty unremarkable group.

I have finished entering all my Netflix movie ratings to my account at the IMDb and also added a few hundred more of the older Netflix ratings to my own movie database. At the end of the year, or maybe sooner, I plan to update the movie lists linked in the sidebar of this blog. When that happens, there will be a posting about the update. Going through the ratings and seeing all the old movies that I really liked, I am tempted to start watching some of them again to see if they still seem that great. They sure should be a lot better than most of the movies I have been watching over the last couple years.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

  

Doc Martin (Season One) – 2004 (3.2). After watching bits of episodes of this BBC series the last few years, I decided to start from the beginning. The Doc (Martin Clunes) leaves a London surgical practice to become GP for a scenic fishing village in Cornwall, where he finds a close knit community of somewhat eccentric locals. His aunt still lives there, but he has not seen her since childhood. There is an attractive school teacher for a possible love interest. He takes over the neglected office of the last GP, who died a while back, and is unfortunately saddled with his defiantly incompetent receptionist. Episodes move forward the story of his personal life as he engages with the locals and treats some illnesses which often turn out to be different from what they first seemed.

Woody Allen: A Documentary – 2011 (2.9). The American Masters TV version that I watched is twice as long as the theatrical version. The first part deals with Woody’s childhood and start in show business, phasing into movie making. The last part covers his movies through the years and some of his personal life. Lots of film clips, interviews with Woody and his sister and actors and film critics provide plenty of information on Woody, but nothing particularly new, though he does come across as much less eccentric than the media sometimes has portrayed him.

Guilty Pleasures – 2010 (2.9). Three women who read romance novels, a young Japanese wife and mother who is a ballroom dance competitor, an older remarried woman in England, and a young woman in India who is estranged from her romantic partner are followed in this documentary, as are two American men, a model who poses for pictures used on the covers of these books, an an older man who writes these novels under a pseudonym. I don’t know that I learned much about anything in particular from this movie, but I did enjoy the gentle approach of the young woman filmmaker and found the cutting back and forth between stories of the people to be excellent, whereas such editing is too often disruptive and confusing.

The President’s Photographer - 2010 (2.9). This National Geographic hour long documentary follows the official photographer for President Obama as he captures images of the President for posterity, offering an inside look at Presidential endeavors. The movie also interviews some past Presidents and their photographers. LBJ started this photographic practice and all Presidents since have embraced it, except Nixon who restricted it during his time in office. The thousands of photos these photographers take all become part of the National Archives.

Up Heartbreak Hill – 2011 (2.8). This documentary about the college aspirations of two high school senior track athletes (a boy and a girl) on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico was straightforward in covering the kids, their families and some of the school teachers, coaches and administrators, but it did not explore issues in much depth. We don’t see many movies about young people like these, so while the choice of subject adds to the rating, it could have been better covered.

Crude – 2009 (2.8). For decades, Chevron/Texaco drilled oil from the Ecuadorian Amazon region and then when the government of Ecuador refused to extend the right to drill, an Ecuadorian government sponsored company took over and Texaco conducted a superficial cleanup as part of a deal to hand over its facilities and get a complete release from any liability. Thousands of indigenous people have been involved for almost 20 years in class action litigation against the American company for the environmental, cultural and health calamity it created. This documentary follows a few years of the litigation, led by a young Ecuadorian lawyer aided by an American and funded by an American law firm. The movie includes some denial interviews with Chevron spokespeople, and scenes of the lawyers coming to the US for meetings seeking publicity and support, but most of the footage is of the jungle and village areas and people showing the damage that persists. The film does not explain any of the laws and rules involved in the dispute, nor is the litigation decided by the time the film ends.

Breaking the Maya Code – 2008 (2.8). This documentary is produced and directed very well and tells a fascinating story of the centuries long effort to decipher the abundant Mayan glyphs sculpted into the numerous structures which have been reclaimed from the Central American jungles. Narration, archival footage and some reconstructions combine with numerous interviews with experts to tell how scholars of all levels have contributed through the years to finally being able to understand the writings and learn the written history of the Mayan world. The Maya had significant libraries which were totally destroyed by the Spanish conquerors, except for three or four books that survived. This movie is so thorough in explaining the intricacies of the Mayan glyphs and the details of each step in the scientific quest that it comes across as a little too scholarly for general audiences.

Witness for the Prosecution – 1957 (2.8). Based on an Agatha Christie play, this movie directed by Billy Wilder has a clever script and crisp direction, but the acting and staging is too theatrical. This one is all about the story, which is clever enough to justify the “request from the theater management” during the closing credits not to reveal the outcome of the movie.

My Darling Clementine – 1946 (2.8). Director John Ford returned from the War and turned to his favorite genre for this film, the second time Wyatt Earp appears in the movies. Like most Earp stories, this one is about half true and it has all the classic hallmarks of Ford’s style, plus it mingles a romantic triangle with the expected OK Corral shootout. Henry Fonda is appropriately subtle as Wyatt and Walter Brennan is an effective villain as Old Man Clanton.

Warrior – 2011 (2.7). This movie about two brothers who became estranged when they each went with a different parent when the family split, shows the attention that was paid to getting the details right for the mixed martial arts fight scenes as the two men compete in an elite MMA tournament, with the alcoholic father training one son while desperately trying to make emotional connection with both of them. More attention should have been paid to the script though, which wanders a little aimlessly at first and never goes too far from the tension between wallowing in the past and stepping into the future. The contrast between the viciousness of MMA and the humanity of the fighters is shown, but not adequately explored.

The First Grader – 2010 (2.7). This BBC movie from National Geographic Entertainment about an 84 year old former Mau Mau freedom fighter in Kenya who wants to go to school to learn to read should have been better than it is. The script is the problem, starting slow and using too many flashbacks to tell of the tortures and abuse the man and his family endured in the fight against British colonial rule. The locations and children are authentic as is the story, but the conflict between the people from the different tribes and the fact that some fought for freedom while others served as British lackeys, and which differences were supposed to have been left behind after independence are not developed in a satisfactory way by the script even though they underlie the entire story.

Throw Down Your Heart – 2008 (2.7). The American banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck takes the instrument back to its native Africa in this documentary, travelling to a handful of nations to meet and play music with African musicians. The musical groups offer an interesting variety of sounds and characters, while the charming Fleck manages to blend in quite well, but overall the movie comes across as unorganized and not particularly informative.

The Cutting Edge – 1992 (2.7). A female figure skater is too temperamental to be satisfied with the various skating partners she has tried through the years, and then is matched up with a star college hockey player whose eye injury has ended his hockey career. Predictably, they clash and then develop togetherness. Formulaic, but good chemistry between Moira Kelly and D. B. Sweeney make it worth watching.