Voir

Billed rather grandly as a series of video essays some offer genuine insite into movies and some are just an axe grinding excercise or a requiem for disfunctional childhoods. Skip the first episode. My favourites were episode 2 which examines revenge movies, episode 3 which looks at unlikeable protagonists and episode 5, a discussion of the difference between movies and TV. Episode 4 is about animation, so kid's stuff.

I wanted to love this. I easily could have if it wasn't edited so choppily. The clips are rammed together so quickly I can barely follow. It's highly irritating and is a disservice to the content. Moving at a breakneck speed has its place, but a documentary about film isn't the place for it. For crying out loud let us savor what we're watching.

If you're a fan of video essays than this is an obvious choice. I'm pretty used to settling down to a nice hour plus long video essay with dinner but was pleasantly surprised with these 20 minute bite sized episodes. The editing and visuals really carried it for me and kept me watching. It really felt like the narrators and visuals told a story together instead of, as so often happens, the visuals being secondary to the discussion.

A large part of the appeal of online visual essays is the personal touch of the writer and narrator. Something which could be lost when switching to a platform like Netflix. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of these stories hold on to that important personal element. When someone really loves a topic it shows and grabs your attention.

If your thinking of checking it out, pick an episode that sounds appealing and try it out. If you can't choose I recommend episode 3 "But I don't like him" narrated by Drew McWeeny. Villains are a favorite topic of mine so this was an easy one to start out with.

This has 5 entirely different episodes done by 5 different people on 5 different film topics. A montage. Oh - they are shorts in the literal term. Around 17 minutes each, so easy to watch.

Some are thoughtful and thorough. Others seem to thing you need to be bombarded with titles and clips. And their opinions. Well, they all give you their opinions, but some do it more forcefully than others.

Some I likes a lot, some better than others and one - not at all because I needed Dramamine to watch it. BUT - that's me.

You need to watch and listen and decide for yourself. No matter what you decided, I bet you will learn something from this quick study.

This isn't a "celebration" of movies - no fluff, no catering to those who watch a film to entertainingly kill a couple of hours. This series is for those who like to look deeply into the crystal ball that is modern cinema. Best of the six episodes in my opinion is "But I Don't Like Him," hosted by Drew McWeeny, a look at the film antihero, in which are combined hero and villain using elements from the protagonist's own psyche. The other episodes are good too, and well worth seeing as they investigate aspects of film that are often overlooked. Each episode is basically a short, lasting from seventeen to twenty-three minutes each, so they're easy to fit into your viewlist.