Tyson

Sit down.
Are you there?
Because I have an announcement:

Mike Tyson is going to melt your cold, dark heart.

Don’t believe me? Then sit through this new documentary, Tyson. I promise you that you’ll find your heart filling with gooey Mike Tyson mush.

Mike Tyson isn’t easy to love – for most of my life I considered him just one step above a housetrained animal. After all, this was boxing’s bad boy who attacked his opponents with brutal ferocity, bit his rivals and raped women on the side. The Tyson documentary is a chance to look behind the headlines and understand what fueled Mike to make the choices he did.

He is so incredibly candid, humble and reflective in this documentary that you can’t help but find yourself in his proverbial corner. In talking about the tabloid frenzy that was his marriage to Robin Givens, Tyson sagely reminds us that in the end, they were just kids who didn’t have any business being married so young (age 20!).

Consisting only of direct interviews with Tyson and intermixed with photos and footage of his career, Tyson traces his blazing rise and furious descent from fame and glory. And I mean nothing is held back. He speaks about his personal life and his professional life with complete candor. All the machismo and charisma is stripped away and he doesn’t shy away from any subject, even coming to tears a few times and discussing the inherent fear that drove him to many of his bad decisions. And dare I say it; he speaks with great intelligence and even eloquence at points.

Although, I did do a double-take at one point when discussing his alleged rape of Desiree Washington (which he still denies), Mike said something to the effect of, “I’m not saying I never took advantage of other women, but I did not take advantage of her.”

Pause…
Head whip…
Did he just admit that he raped other women? Or maybe he just like drank milk out of their refrigerators while they were sleeping?

Hmmm….

In the end, I walked away feeling like Mike Tyson The Famous Boxer is now Mike Tyson The Very Humbled and Damaged Person. I for one am rooting for a second chance.

51 Birch Street

Have you ever walked in on your parents having sex?

Watching this documentary is a little bit like that. Deeply uncomfortable and something you're not likely to forget. In 51 Birch Street, the filmmaker, Doug Block, explores his parents' marriage after his father hastily marries his former secretary just weeks after his wife's unexpected death.

What follows is a brutally honest look inside a 54-year marriage, thanks in large part to the oh-so-detailed diaries left behind by the deceased wife, Mina. As he reads her diary, filmmaker and son has to reconcile the marriage he thought his parents had with the one written down on paper. And it's all there: his mother's depression, despair, affairs and indiscretions. Added to that is the lingering question about his father's quickie re-marriage. Was he having an affair with his secretary all along?

I'll let you find out for yourself. As for me? This was great reinforcement to my rule of never keeping a diary. When you die, someone is going to read them. So burn them, people. Burn them. Given what I learned in this film, your kids do not want to read the words "mom" and "fellatio" in the same sentence.

Air Guitar Nation

This documentary had so much potential. I mean really, could anything be better than a whole troupe of costume-laden overzealous losers—sorry, air guitar enthusiasts—and an international battle royale to snag the title of World Air Guitar Champion?

Turns out, yes. I actually balanced my checkbook during this film and found my check register to be loads more exciting. Deposits AND withdrawals! Riveting.

Air Guitar Nation was just a huge disappointment, and I can’t even really tell why it’s so bad. Perhaps I was turned off by the smug competitors who seemed all-too aware that they were always performing for the camera, even during personal interviews.

It is a sorry commentary when the best moment of the film is a two-second scene of a very pale and awfully naked European man enthusiastically flagellating his own penis a la a guitar neck. It showed an impressive lack of nerve sensitivity from what I understand of the male penis. But this is not an anatomy lesson, friends, this is a movie review. And I give it four very chafed and limp penises.

King Corn

“A documentary about CORN?” groaned Motley Husband upon seeing the telltale Netflix red envelope in our mailbox. Eye roll. Sigh. “Corn? Seriously?” His eyes had that furtive, escapist look a teenager gets when trapped with his grandparents at the Golden Corral during “All You Can Eat Soft Meat Tuesdays.”

I know, I know, corn doesn’t sound like the most exciting subject matter of all time, but bear with me because King Corn is a documentary every movie lover should see. It has all the best elements of a light-hearted documentary: an intriguing premise, affectionate characters, zippy storytelling and lovable storytellers.

King Corn is written by and stars Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, two genial East Coast college grads who set out to spend a year living in Iowa to raise an acre of corn and try to follow it through the American food chain. It doesn’t take a genius to see what comes next: the ills of mega-farm grain production and the impact of the prolific High Fructose Corn Syrup in American life. Let’s break it down:

-Mega farms equal the death of family homesteads
-Mass grain production equals feedlot cows with a deplorable quality of life
-Corn Syrup equals obesity, diabetes and, oh, hell, Satan

There, now you know. Corn Syrup is Satan. If you go down to hell you’re going to find a little red bottle of Karo with horns and a tail. Now please enjoy the rest of that corn syrup-soaked Frito you were just eating.

My point is that King Corn doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about the cancerous impact of mega farm production, but it tells it in a way that is humble and compelling. This isn’t a throw-acid-in-your-face and make-you-rescind-your-god kind of documentary. It has a gentle, loping pace reflective of the landscape in which it’s set. The salt-of-the-earth farmers who graciously and affectionately help Ian and Curtis farm their acre of corn are, of course, the victims in this race to make more food, faster and cheaper.

King Corn succeeds by telling their stories with simple humility. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the representative of the corn syrup association who appears in the film comes across as the very face of evil (you know, Karo bottle with horns). “Corn syrup is what makes a wonderful variety of food so affordable for American families.”

I suppose she has a point. After all, if it weren't for corn syrup, we wouldn't have such national treasures as Mountain Dew Baja Blast and Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick.

And yes, I've had them both.

Summercamp!

I had a college roommate who worked at a summer camp in New Hampshire. He claimed the biggest job he had to undertake was preventing the thirteen-year-old boys from dying of masturbation exhaustion. It’s not hard to imagine, given just a little taste of the hormonal teenage woes we saw in the documentary, Summercamp! Pair that with the bored, embittered counselors, the painfully awkward first-year campers and the “oh my god, how can you be this happy” camp owners and you have the stuff of a good documentary.

But somehow, it all fizzles in Summercamp.

Don’t get me wrong, there was great opportunity here. I was rapt with the bully who beat up other campers then cried every night because he missed his mommy. I loved seeing the camp counselors cockblocking lusty teenagers in the darkened shadows of the campfire. And who couldn’t be moved by the weird girl who carries around eight stuffed animals in her pockets to talk to when she gets lonely?

This was a movie of delicious subject matter put in what appears to be the hands of first-time film school students. It missed so much great opportunity to build a tantalizing story and the result felt like little more than a camcorder turned on and left in the corner.

But even inept film-making couldn’t dampen some moments of splendor in Summercamp, mostly captured through the unbidden moments of truth when campers spoke about life at home. Take the young boy saying he never wanted camp to end because when he goes back home, his dad is a lawyer so he’ll never see him much anyway. Or the girl who explains plainly that her parents want her to make friends at camp since she hasn’t been able to make any at home.

Such moments of innocent truth were heartbreakingly honest. I can only imagine how the parents of these children felt upon watching the film. I’d lay odds those kids got some big fat “mommy and daddy are sorry we’re a mess” presents under the Christmas tree that year.

My final take? Rent it if you’re just looking to feel mildly amused. You know, the same way you feel when you’re cruising through TV channels and you find yourself laughing at America’s Funniest Home Videos and then you’re overcome by shame and horror as you realize you were just watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. Don’t lie. We’ve all been there.

Week 45: DiG!

Music fan? Here's a documentary you have to see. DiG! follows the careers of two rising indy bands: The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Wharhols. What's great about the film is that both bands give a total-access view into their triumphs, failures and madness on the road to greatness (Big emphasis on madness). It really felt like the bands opened up all their dirty, crazy laundry for us to root through.

While the documentary starts out to chronicle both bands, most of the time is spent, appropriately so, on the insane and outlandish antics of musical genius-come-insane-heroin-addict, Anton Newcombe, the leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The Dandy Warhols come off looking a bit like the Brady Bunch by comparison to the lunacy over at BJM. Although, it should be noted that both band leaders have egos the size of a football field, which makes all the insanity even more fun to watch.

Anton is a musical genius and everyone hails him as the next great thing...if only he weren't so f*ing crazy. It's worth watching DiG! to see his antics alone, like when he starts a fistfight with his own bandmates in front of record execs who were planning to sign him to a contract. Brilliant.

Did both bands make it? Do they go on to fame and fortune? I won't ruin it for you but let's just say I haven't seen Anton or any of the Dandy Warhols on the cover of US Weekly. Yet.

Week 44: Small Town Gay Bar

And the winner for "Title Most Likely to Make Holly Rent a Movie" is...Small Town Gay Bar! By a landslide!

Gay bars hidden in rural Mississippi? Are you kidding me? I can't pass up on that. Too bad the movie itself didn't live up to the promise of the title. True, it does follow the lives of several patrons of a few gay bars in the back woods of Mississipi and Kansas, but STGB is pretty light fare. I was expecting much more grit about the conflict between the under-the-radar gays and the holier-than-thou bible-beaters hoping to purge their towns of such 'sinful' behavior. And while the documentary touches on the underlying hatred, fear and bigotry, it mostly focuses on the touchy-feely aspects of what a gay bar means to its patrons. The bars are the only outlet for most of these people to be free, open and truly themselves. It is touching to watch the bars' patrons express such a deep need to feel accepted and connected.

And let's talk about those patrons. My, oh, my. There are some slim pickins in the deep south. These are not the tanned, plucked and abdominally clenched gays of the North. Oh, no. These are the step-up-to-the-buffet, come back to my trailer, stroke my mullet gays. In short, I was very concerned about the amount of flannel going around.

The biggest question for me was wondering why gay people stay in the deep south. It is a hard and arduous life, and there is no doubt it is a very dangerous existence. But I suppose it's those small inroads of seeing gay people as neighbors, coworkers and friends that may begin to soften the bible-beating masses. Still, gay people of the South, naming your gay bar Rumors really doesn't help the situation. Might I make a few suggestions:

BAD names for a secret gay bar
1. Rumors
2. Whispers from the Closet
3. The Liza Minelli Fan Club
4. Big Gay Al's
5. The Delta (Drag) Queen

GOOD names for a secret gay bar
1. Hetero and Lovin' It
2. No Funny Business Here
3. Straight Harry's House of Brew and Bible Readings
4. Men Who Love to Hump Women
5. Church