mikemckiernan

Wow, what an incredible deep-dive into two actors' lives and careers. And what an interesting concept - to take thousands of pages of interview transcripts, because Newman burned the audio tapes, and have various actors play a part. I didn't think I'd like the Zoom format, but for this documentary, in which Ethan Hawke asked several of his colleagues to play the roles in the interview transcripts, I think it works perfectly. And the countless clips of the two actors in their films, making the films, home movies, and on talk shows is impressive. Just a perfect bio-documentary. I have only seen Joanne Woodward in a few films, but after seeing her performances shown in this documentary, IMHO, she was a much better actor than her husband! Seriously. She was phenomenal. (Btw, she's still alive. But has been living with Alzheimer's disease for about 15 years now. 😢). Ethan is an odd dude, though, for sure, but in a good way. He's on camera, here, over the course of, I'm guessing, a year or two, and he NEVER looks the same. Long hair, scraggly, facial hair, hat, glasses, etc. I just thought that was pretty funny. Some reviewers here found it gross, which is also funny.

Wow, this surprised the hell out of me. One of my favorite modern Christmas movies is a documentary titled, "Becoming Santa," which follows one man who decides to go to Santa training school and be a "mall Santa" for the first time (except he goes to just about everywhere except a mall). This one is sort of like a modern sequel, focusing on the lack of diversity with mall Santas and how the Old School Santas feel about it (some are open and some are not). It's a tear-jerker if you can empathize with what some of these newbies have to put up with. Too many people in our country want to live and die in the past, it's pretty pathetic. In the end, the message is a positive one and I highly recommend it for everyone who loves Christmas and has an open mind (and I also recommend it to those who don't, actually).

A mixed bag of a documentary, which is mostly an MGM clip show. There's some interesting behind-the-scenes clips about the making of movies, but it mostly focuses on the history of MGM, starting with a live auction of some iconic props from classic films and some footage of the deteriorating backlot. It's an easy watch, though, at less than an hour, so I'd recommend it for die-hard movie history buffs, especially MGM fans. The best thing about this short documentary is that it (presumably) inspired the much longer, better, and better-looking That's Entertainment series, in which the first one premiered two years later.