shiningwizard

[shiningwizard]

The Beatles: the First U.S. Visit (Kathy Dougherty, Susan Froemke & Albert Maysles, 1991)

It feels apt and I’m very grateful that the Maysles and their documentary philosophy were on site for this momentous event in human history. Provided so much footage for later, more expansive documentaries, allowed these affable dorks to speak for themselves, but above all turned the camera as much on the mania itself and the maniacal within i.e teenage girls with those divinely drawling accents sneaking around hotels or exclaiming “Darn!!” when their petitions aren’t passed to the group. The music’s ok.

[shiningwizard]

Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968)

One of the better studio-era Beatles movies, near entirely due to non-Beatle involvement. The design and the mind lull it conjures is something to behold. The jokey pun and reference-heavy dialogue not so much. The music's ok.

[shiningwizard]

Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

Put this in the maybe it's me pile. Either i have to get a mind for comic books/video games or horror (=> genre) movies need to stop aiming so palpably and administratively at "elevation" and actually achieve elevation the way they're meant to, through risk, weirdness, shock, texture, a drive to entertain not placate, trust, etc. This became promising when it became stupid, but then became too stupid to hold that promise.

[shiningwizard]

Magical Mystery Tour (The Beatles, 1967)

I don't get the hate/shame for this, especially after watching Imagine. Like that, it's just a short publicity vehicle for some songs, only here the songs are far better and at least this has jokes.

[shiningwizard]

Imagine (John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1972)

The deepest of self indulgences but if these two don’t indulge in themselves then it’s left to dull dullard media and regular folk to decide who they are for them, and that won’t do. This whole thing (and the whole thing beyond this movie) smells of over-compensation, like love songs written to assuage domestic violence. Eh they look happy together. Yoko’s songs blow away John’s as usual. I used to be a big defender of hers but i do think i’m circling around again, not for being the skirt who broke up the Beatles but just for general well-heeled, soft-touch art vacuity. Her clothes look nice.

[shiningwizard]

Nowhere Boy (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2009)

[shiningwizard]

Birth of the Beatles (Richard Marquand, 1979)

Simulacrum, and somewhat painful. Everything targets truth a little too much and through the approximation of well known events, places and milestones, the put on accents and the Beatles tribute band supplying the soundtrack just highlight a disappointing distance. The Beatles aren’t getting back together. Don’t remind people of things they’ll never have again but through reproductions. But this is more than competently made, especially for a tv movie. It’s just in that useless biopic mode where aims for accuracy stifle freedom, creativity and risk I.e. the real path to truth

[shiningwizard]

Yesterday (Ivan Andonov, 1988)

My thought that the Beatles need not existing as a real band made of real people now extends to that immaterial concept need not falling on the ears and eyes of the English-speaking world. Here: Bulgaria, where through all effect they may as well have been a concept. CIA radio beaming in rock’n’roll, long hair, small rebellion and hope for kids. Eternal teenage unrest and love finding its bottled essence. A decent movie on that. A very downbeat processing of nostalgia.

[shiningwizard]

George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

I'm really going through something here. Does an appreciated thing of skirting through the Beatle years (if an hour could be considered skirting) and focussing on hs life and music and schemes and fortune post all that. Yet it didn't once mention his Moog album! Nice time exploring the life of a from-all-accounts nice man. Was this really directed by Martin Scorsese? Really?

[shiningwizard]

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert Zemeckis, 1978)

Documentaries are fine and all, but the true measure of this band needs to be seen in reflection, in impact, in mania. The Beatles need not even be a band made of flesh and blood people. They could be dealt with in the abstract of what they stirred. Was hoping this movie would concern itself more with that, but apart from a fine, brief shot of Nancy Allen clutching her dress between her legs, it's mostly a fun caper featuring accents i'm not sure exist anymore but i could hear forever.

[shiningwizard]

The Beatles Anthology (Kevin Godley, Bob Smeaton & Geoff Wonfor, 1995)

It's me, the world's newest Beatles fan. Perfect for what it is. Requisitely so. Helps to be an extremely well-documented band made up of endearing, care-free people. Could have been 8 years long instead of 8 parts.

[shiningwizard]

The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson, 2021)

From some experience with band practice: - come with your songs fully written. No dick-around jamming - it is not a courteous thing to bring your girl/boy/otherwise friend, because there is no more boring a place - keep it short and go out together afterwards. - you both do and do not want a John Lennon in your band. I don’t think any of that would have saved the Beatles, though. Saving them seems to be an underlying longing inbuilt to this project. Every smile, every time they’re having fun together, every ease of tension - it’s that exhilaration of seeing someone almost make it, of a potentially rewritten history. It worked on me, the world’s newest Beatles fan. It’s long, it’s repetitive, it’s their worst songs, it’s a lot, it’s process, but then there are those smiles or scenes like Ringo showing George his Octopus’ Garden idea and it makes me think yes, if all rock music before and contemporaneous needed to filter through one band, achieve perfection and filter out to every band after, if the world’s head had to be up one band’s arse (band members included), if there were to be one transcendent ideal, then let it be this tired, distracted foursome.

[shiningwizard]

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)

[shiningwizard]

Here to be Heard: The Story of The Slits (William E. Badgley, 2017)

I feel like a whole movie could be made of the gulf between Cut and Return of the Giant Slits rather than the 5 minutes it's afforded here, because i've always felt some significant, earthly-realm abandoning journey went on there. Something that could be found in a Jane Arden movie for example. But that's not this. This is a music documentary. One that offers a much preferrable experience of listening to (and living for a short time with) middle-aged women punks over their male contemporaries. Unless they're academics.

[shiningwizard]

Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024)

Those estates landed on ancient fields and forests, so it follows that modern life is suffused with magic and myths, runes and waystones, and heroes still. Or is deprived still. I came away from this considering it a major work but maybe it’s just nice to actually watch a movie again. A Penda’s Fen update maybe. I worried as it opened that Andrea Arnold’s aesthetic and affect hadn’t seemed to update one bit. How’s she going to win over fickle fault-finders with something so apparently dated? But it came together nicely. Why chase when you’re already there and have been from the start.

[shiningwizard]

Punk the Capital: Building a Sound Movement (Paul Bishow & James June Schneider, 2019)

Better than the other DC one, for being slightly less of a rote documentary, conveying a better sense of place, and for going more outside of and prior to Dischord (and how much archival material there was for that. It must run in the place). But still, not much, could have been a lot better. I’m going to start gauging these things on how much I cringe should my girlfriend overhear some of the naffer interview subjects. Henry Rollins was a major cause of that here. Stopped at the best part

[shiningwizard]

Angel's Share (Tsuji Jinsei, 1995)

My fondness for this lies squarely in the floaty, gauzey experimental documentary interstitial sequences far more than any dramatic plot concerns it has. It's a good idea - goodtime angel call girl and pimp finding a dangerous game in soothing people's misery - but did feel pedestrianly offbeat.