I've been on a bit of a documentary kick lately. I watched Searching for Sugar Man the day that it won the Oscar for Best Documentary, so yeah, my finger is on the pulse of. . . the only documentaries of which average folks are aware.
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011)
I am currently reading Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking and 80% of the names mentioned in the book go right over my head. If I weren't such an uncivilized numb nut, I would probably be blown away by the literary superstars that the author references. It could be that Diana Vreeland and Joan Didion have absolutely nothing in common, but part of what I took away from The Eye Has to Travel and A Year of Magical Thinking is that Vreeland and Didion were talented, respected, and lived lives that are crazy foreign to me. As a gal with no interest in fashion, I was not the target demo for this movie about a fashion editor. It was fine, but it didn't stick with me like the best documentaries do. 3 out of 5
How to Survive a Plague (2012)
When my parents or The Dude call me and ask what I'm doing and I respond with, "I'm watching a documentary about AIDS" (this is the second one I've watched in a year), they wonder about my leisure time choices. This was a powerful movie, but I liked We Were Here (2011) more. How to Survive a Plague focused on the activism and political work of groups such as Act Up and was mostly based in New York. We Were Here was based in San Francisco and felt a little more personal. I would give the first a 3 and the second a 4.
Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
The mystery part of this documentary was engaging and the musician himself, Rodriguez, was an interesting character. After I watched this I had a lot of questions and when I did a little internet sleuthing, I started to think that the information in this movie had been tweaked a bit for maximum impact. That was a bit of a bummer. 4 out of 5
A Small Act (2010)
This was flat-out inspiring. I really liked A Small Act a lot. (Thanks for the recommendation, Netflix.) A teacher in Sweden decides to sponsor the education of a child in Kenya. The child grows up to attend Harvard and work as a Human Rights Commissioner at the U.N. The background of his Swedish sponsor, a stranger to him until he sought her out as an adult, and the ripple effects that one person can have on the world were genuinely amazing. I gave it a 4 after watching it, but a month later it may be creeping toward a 5.
The Queen of Versailles (2012)
This was pure entertainment. A billionaire businessman and his pageant wife are in the middle of building the largest home in the United States when the market collapses. The beauty queen wife, Jackie, is fun to watch. Although the Siegels are beyond loaded, I was able to relate to them better than I was Ms. Vreeland. 4 out of 5
