Paul Williams -- Still Alive (Sunday, June 10, 2012) (54)

Paul Williams was one of the most active singer-songwriter-actor-personalities of the 1970s. He wrote or co-wrote some of the most romantic and well-loved songs of that era, from "The Rainbow Connection" and "Rainy Days and Mondays" to "We've Only Just Begun" and "An Old Fashioned Love Song." His high camp and thick sugar style probably peaked with his collaboration 1974 with Brian De Palma in Phantom of the Paradise, a film for which he wrote the music and starred in as a slightly sexier, more powerful version of himself.

But since the mid-1980s, Williams has been somewhat invisible and largely forgotten by the younger generation. He fought addictions to drugs and alcohol (natch) and has been touring on a much smaller basis for the past twenty years or so.

Stephen Kessler's film, Paul Williams -- Still Alive is a love song to the man who wrote so many love songs. That is, Kessler confesses early in the documentary that he was a weird, fat kid growing up in the '60s and '70s and that Williams' music spoke to him in a deep way. Now in the present day, as a self-concerned documentarian, Kessler goes out to connect with his idol and make a movie about how far he's fallen -- at least that's exactly what he tells us.

When the two meet, Williams seems a bit nervous and unsure about Kessler's motives. He hopes to tell his life story, beginning with his troubled relationship with his father in Nebraska as a kid... but Kessler doesn't let him do this, saying it will be boring. Already the two seem to approach this film project differently. We see them interact over the course of several months, growing closer as time moves along, as the filmmaker follows the singer on a tour of various smallish shows around the country (and into the Philippines). They build a friendship as they learn to accept one another for who they are. To Williams, Kessler is a nice guy who has an unrealistic, nostalgic idea stuck in his head; to Kessler, Williams is a fallen idol, who is making it in the music biz his own way.

The biggest problem with this film is Kessler himself. I appreciate that this film functions as a form of psychotherapy for him, coming to terms with his own childhood and his own failure (Stephen Kessler is not really a household name, after all), but I don't really care to watch a movie all about him and his feelings and his view of Paul Williams. On the other hand, Williams is a super charming performer who shows a deep and interesting insight into his life and career. I could watch him on state and onscreen for hours. He's funny and self-effacing, self-aware and unapologetic.

So many times, just as Williams is about to say or do something interesting, Kessler inserts himself (or his directoral/editing touch) to change the course of events. This is one of the most unnatural fly-on-the-wall documentaries I've ever seen. Kessler has no qualms about pushing and prodding Williams to get him to do what he wants. Thank god Williams mostly pushes back. Kessler is desperate for Williams to be a broken man, suffering in his fading glow of decades ago, but Williams, thankfully, won't have that. He's aware he's fallen a bit, but not unset about it (this seems to have something to do with his involvement in AA, or the like, although that's never totally investigated).

Williams only looks forward, and doesn't live in the past, the way Kessler does. This is the most interesting element of the film, although I'm not sure this isn't an example of a broken clock being right twice a day. Kessler seems to be totally unaware of the film he's making and the subject he's looking at and seems to trip into this interesting duality of "forward and backward". That he does hit it means this movie is not really a failure, but the way he gets there is really messy.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Last Days Here (Tuesday, March 6, 2012) (24)

The documentary Last Days Here opens with an old man sitting on a shity couch lighting a crack pipe. "Did you see where that rock of crack fell?" he asks as he searches beneath the cushions for a bit more drugs. This is Bobby Liebling, the once and future lead man for the heavy metal band Pentagram -- the best hard rock band you've never heard of.

The film follows Liebling and his friend, manager and number-one fan Sean 'Pellet' Pelletier, who discovered the band several years ago and has been trying to get Bobby to make a new record or go on tour ever since. Bobby is a life-long drug addict (heroin, meth, crack ... you name it) and has some significant clinical paranoia (or something) that makes him think his skin is infected... which leads him to pick at it until he draws blood. He's also one of the great American heavy metal artists, bridging the space between Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols, as one person in the film put it.

Not only do we see the history of Pentagram - a band from suburban Washington, D.C. who could have made it had Bobby been easier to deal with in the early '70s - but we also see how Bobby's life is today. In his mid-50s, he lives in the basement (or "sub-basement") of his parents' suburban row house and he basically does nothing with his time aside from sleep and do drugs. His parents seem aloof to his situation and his Jewish mother hopes he'll find a nice woman to help him out. Good luck with that.

But his life does appear to turn around for a moment, as he gets hospitalized and clean and then connects with a fan (a really hot young fan!) for whom he moves to Philadelphia to be near. But, as with most addicts and young girls who fall in love with sick old men, things fall apart and Bobby seems to be on the brink of death yet again.

There is always an element to a movie like this where you worry as a viewer that you are taking part in the exploitation of such a man. It's hard to avoid that fact that he is deeply sick and damaged and the "objective film crew" seems to do nothing to help him (though in this case, directors Don Argott and Demian Fenton do seem to help, inasmuch as Bobby does get help from Pellet and others). It's not easy to sit and watch a man slowly burn his wick almost to the end (several times).

Bobby is tremendously charismatic, even in his drugged haze -- a bit reminiscent of Lemmy from Motorhead (and his documentary from last year). He has a magnetic personality, and seems to be a master of performance, which is clearly part of the problem for him. One could blame his parents or his friends (Pellet, specifically) for letting him get so bad, but ultimately it's clearly a hard situation for them too (his parents seem to wash their hands of him, and of the movie at some point).

This is the most recent in a rash of heavy metal documentaries, including Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Iron Maiden: Flight 666, Until the Light Takes Us and Lemmy, and this is a solid one. It's fun to learn about the detailed history of something that nobody knows and Bobby's contemporary drug story is interesting and sometimes tragic, without being too cutesy or precious. I'm pretty sure I'll never buy a Pentagram record in my life, but I'm glad I know more about them now.

Stars: 3 of 4

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune (2011) (Thursday, January 26, 2012) (147)

There But for Fortune is a very good biodoc about the life and career of the great folk singer and Lefty activist Phil Ochs. It shows how he came up in the late-'50s Greenwich Village folk scene, how he was friendly and competitive with Dylan and how he got involved in the various civil rights and anti-war movements of the Left. The third act, about his fall into manic-depression and his ultimate suicide is a bit rocky as it features less music and, as a result of his doing fewer interviews, more speculation by his friends.

Still, the music throughout the film is, of course, fantastic, and this really shows Ochs as the musical and cultural genius and firebrand that he was. It's sad that he's not thought of by most in the same way Seeger, Dylan and Baez are, but his work clearly stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any of theirs.

Stars: 3 of 4

Beats, Rhymes & Life:The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (Sunday, July 31, 2011) (62)

Actor Michael Rapaport directs Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, a documentary about the history of the hip hop group and their current struggles to stay together. It's a documentary with a similar feeling to Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, that is not only about the biographical look at the band, but also an evaluation of a beef between two leaders that they're having a hard time settling.

Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, the two MCs of the group were childhood best friends, but always had a different view of their craft. For Tip it was always a serious job that demanded the most accurate attention. His passion has always laid in finding amazing music to sample on each track and knowing exactly how the layers of sounds would would perfectly together. For Phife (aka, the Funky Diabetic), he was always more interested in amazing rhymes and the more poetic aspects of the art. This always worked well for them, as they made six albums in about 12 years, including The Low End Theory, one of the best rap/hip hop albums of all time.

By the late 1990s, however, they were fighting more and more and seemed less interested in keeping the group together. They had already lost one of the original members, Jarobi, who seemed to be less into the touring thing than the others, and their DJ, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, seemed to not be interested in fighting the two titans he worked with. The band melted away, but they remained friendly. Sort of.

Phife was always upset that Tip became known as the "leader" of the band and didn't like how he would run things; Tip didn't like that Phife was never as serious about the work as he felt it necessary to be. When they got together for a reunion in 2008 at the Rock the Bells show (to help Phife pay for medical issues relating to his juvenile diabetes), they ended up fighting constantly and not speaking to one another by the end.

Rapaport talks to most of the important rappers whose styles either were influenced by Tribe or developed at the same time. Interviews include members of De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, Prince Paul, Common, Questlove, Black Thought and Pharrell Williams, to say nothing of appearances by Mary J. Blige, Busta Rhymes and Mos Def. They all talk about how important Tribe's music was to them. Common has what is probably the most important comment that they all had access to the old vinyl that Tribe found their beats and samples from, but Tribe were the first guys to actually listen to those albums and use them.

Rapaport, as passionate as he clearly is about Tribe, is not a great documentarian and the film loses some power with a very sloppy style and inconsistent pace. There are some frustrating transitions and at least two albums (of the six they released) are barely discussed at all.

This is a good documentary from the point of view of telling a story of a band and getting a generally good understanding about their history. Unfortunately the issue of Phife and Tip not liking one another is not really dug into very deeply. Rapaport presents the fight they're having in it's basic terms, but doesn't really get deep into why they are fighting (unlike how Berlinger and Sinofsky handled a similar event in Some Kind of Monster). This is not a very deep movie, but it does have great music... which Rapaport can't take credit for, of course.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Tuesday, March 8, 2011) (187)

This is an interesting biodoc about the great and eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. It tells his life, in great detail, from his childhood in music school to his breaking out as a star in Canada, to his early tour in Soviet Russia and then his debut in New York City. It shows how he was always a bit unusual, and how he got more and more isolated and weird as time went on.

This is a very, very long movie and feels like it's at least 20-30 minutes too long. I think there's a lot of detail that could have been cut out. It's not really about his "inner" life, as the title would suggest, but rather about how the world saw him and how he responded to the pressure. I guess when you're a genius and an eccentric, it's not totally fair to expect that we would see inside his soul.

Strangely there's very little mention of his psychological situation and the directors Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont barely address the fact that he was a paranoid, obsessive-compulsive person who might have been sociopathic and was hardly able to make many connections with many people. It's possible that his mental state led him to become the artist he was, but it would still have been interesting to see an analysis of his mind.

Most of the film is told with still pictures of Gould, along with film footage of his interviews (he was always being interviewed and filmed) and radio shows as well as interviews with his associates and few friends looking back at his life. One thing the directors do that I didn't like is in the final third of the film, they have an actor walking around aimlessly wrapped up in a coat and scarf (the way we had seen Gould do earlier in his life) and suggest this is him. It is not him - it's just a stand-in for him. This is not really necessary and adds a bizarre layer of non-reality to the film that doesn't help tell his story.

This is an interesting movie because Gould's life was interesting, but it does not work well from a script point of view. Some of the detail of his later, non-performing life should have been cut down as should some of background on his one big love affair (which doesn't really fit in to the film).

Stars: 2 of 4

Lemmy (Friday, February 18, 2011) (8)

Lemmy Kilmister is just like you and me. When he goes to the record store to buy the Beatles box-set in mono (a band he claims is his all-time favorite) he's politely told by the clerk that they're sold out of that. He laughs and says he's not surprised. Oh - but then the store manager comes out with a set that she had put aside for herself. You see, Lemmy is not at all like you or me. He's a heavy metal god, or more appropriately THE heavy metal god.

For the past 36 years Lemmy has been the leader and bassist for Motorhead, one of the first heavy metal bands and one of the creators of the musical form. He basically single-handedly invented the genre and has never stopped recording, touring and drinking for the past 45-or-so years. Now at 66 he lives much like he did when he was 36 (possibly taking less speed than he did then). He's a friend to all in the music world in LA, he's never met a fan he wouldn't take a picture with or give an autograph to and he is always happy to share a story about being a roadie for Hendrix or trading girlfriends with John Lennon (or his son!).

Lemmy, the documentary by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski, is a biodoc in the vein of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or Anvil! The Story of Anvil. We get to know Lemmy as a guy now, living in a rather humble rent-stabilized apartment packed with shit in West Hollywood, touring with several bands and looking back on his life and his music; we see just about every major heavy metal musician alive today talk about him and how much of an influence he was to them (and how much he likes to drink Jack and Cokes); we learn about where he came from and how he came to the genre that has become heavy metal.

Nothing is incredibly deep here (unlike, say, Some Kind of Monster, which was pretty deep), there are no major life events that happen to him or any of his bands and, all in all, Lemmy seems like a pretty nice, genuine guy. He records some songs with Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and The Foo Fighters), plays onstage with Metallica and, or course, with Motorhead.

The film is very rationally organized, but runs very long. There is a section about Lemmy's obsession with World War II stuff, including a fascination with Nazi weapons and uniforms (he says he's purely into them for their sartorial beauty, and I totally believe him... but then he never explains the swastika flags in his apartment.. but, to be clear, there is never a suggestion that he's any sort of Nazi- lover... just a lover of Nazi things... weird), a section on his love of Jack and Cokes (in spite of his Type 2 diabetes), a section on his son and his view of parents, a section on his own upbringing being raised by his mom and grandmother, a section on his love of gambling. These things are all very interesting, but each runs a bit too long and might be a bit too segregated into it's own area. I think it all could have been written and edited better and should have been cut by 30 minutes.

This movie is a ton of fun. Lemmy is a wonderful guy and a great interview subject. He's totally likable and a guy you really want to hang out with. If it had been a bit tighter it would have been much better, I think.

Stars: 3 of 4

When You're Strange (Thursday, August 5, 2010) (93)

This documentary by Tom DiCillo uses nothing but archival footage (much of it never-before-seen) of The Doors to document their rise from nowhere in 1965, to super stardom in the late '60s, to their ultimate demise with the death of Jim Morrison in 1971. There are no interviews with any band members, historians, producers or fans. It's simply the footage with a very smoldery voice-over narration by Johnny Depp.


The film is really just about Morrison and shows clearly how he was basically constantly high from when they started to when he died. He was high for every single interview he did and for most of those he was totally incomprehensible. Most of the band was also high most of the time too, for that matter. Morrison liked acid, pills and ultimately alcohol. He fancied himself a poet (though I admit I find his poetry overdone and much too psychedelic for my tastes).


The film has wonderful likes, like "some people say Jim was a poet caught between heaven and hell." Really? Who are those assholes who think that? Jim was a talented guy who overused drugs and drink and had a gravely, untrained voice that fit the carnivalesque music he wrote with his band. That's about it. He was not a divine power.


Ultimately this film is a very good history, but is much too glowing about Morrison and really just a fancy Wikipedia entry, beginning at the start and ending at the finish. It seems that some of the footage is important because it's new to our eyes, though that doesn't mean much to me because I don't know much about Doors footage that's out there - other than the Ed Sullivan clip of him saying "girl, we couldn't get much higher." (Apparently it is also important that this footage shows that he didn't expose himself in a show in Miami for which he was charged with exposing himself, which made touring difficult for the band.) Oh, well - I don't really care. This is a good enough movie, but nothing too amazing.


Stars: 2 of 4

The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector (Tuesday, July 6, 2010) (68)

The Agony and The Ecstasy of Phil Spector is a very complicated documentary about the great music producer, the early part and heyday of his career and the amazing music he wrote and produced, all set over the background of his recent murder trial. Annoyingly the film does not really do a full treatment of any of these aspects to items and we are left with a bit of a biodoc, a bit of a historical look at the music scene in the '60s and '70s and a bit of a doc about the trial. None of these parts really come out as a main focus of the piece, which is very frustrating.

Most of the film is an interview with Spector done in his LA home around the time of his first trial in 2007. He generally speaks frankly about how he got into writing and performing music and his thoughts on some performers (he seems to weirdly hate Tony Bennett and has mixed, but somewhat bitter feelings about Bob Dylan). We see chronologically how he moved along writing primarily teeny pop songs about love and breakups and marriage and how he ultimately hooked up with bigger stars like the Beatles.

As we hear him talk about each song we hear that song played in the background and sometimes see footage of the performer singing it. As this is happening, we see a critic's take on each song, describing the sound and the broader impact of the music in the greater recording world.

Meanwhile, as these things are happening, we see clips from the courtroom video tape recordings of his murder trial. In many cases we see the music subtitles beneath the trial scenes - sometimes we see the subtitles as the song is playing over people talking during the trial.

To say this is an ineffective way of presenting material would be an understatement. It is basically impossible to get all the information presented (at least in the theater - at home on DVD, it might be easier). To make matters even more complicated, most of the critical subtitles come on the screen for a very short time so that even if you are only reading the titles, it is still hard to get through the whole thing before it is off the screen.

By far the highlight of the film are Ike and Tina Turner (well, really just Tina) performing the song Mountain High, River Deep on stage. Tina kills the song - she's amazing. I have never seen this footage before. She is so good here it reminds me of her amazing performance in the Maysels' film Gimme Shelter of I've Been Loving You So Long, where she equally steals the show and leaves us gasping for air. She's an amazing talent. (Spector weirdly seems to take some credit for her, which makes no sense at all).

One other very funny moment in the film is when Spector talks about his i

Still Bill (Saturday, January 30, 2010) (6)

OK - let's face it - Bill Withers is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the 20th Century. He basically didn't write any bad songs and most of his work is excellent. Ain't No Sunshine, Lovely Day, Sweet Wanomi, Grandma's Hands, Use Me, Lean on Me and Just the Two of Us are just a few of the amazing songs he wrote and performed for more than a decade. This documentary tells his story from being raised in rural West Virgina, to making aircraft toilets in California, to hitting big in the 1970s and ultimately moving out of the music business in the 1980s. Now in his 70s, he talks here frankly about his life choices and his career.

Withers has many deep thoughts throughout the film, talking about his dislike of the music industry white 'blacksperts' who think they understand R&B music better than black people do themselves and talking about his aversion to the 'fame game'. He says how 'on the way to wonderful you might pass through alright - and that might be as far as you go'. How clear and concise! He seems to lead a comfortable life in the hills above Los Angeles and certainly makes a good amount of money each year from publishing rights. He is a family man who has two kids that he loves dearly.

The film, directed by Damani Baker and Alex Vlack, sadly lacks any real structure and flails about with small episodes that don't totally connect well. This is especially apparent as it bounces back and forth between the past and the present. A strictly chronological narrative would have been much easier - even inter-cut with contemporary interviews.

The big questions for Withers since his departure from the music world has been whether or not he would write another hit song. In this film, he works with a young Latin artist, Raul Midon, to write a Spanglish song dedicated to a Cuban friend of his. The song is really not very good and this sequence is actually pretty annoying and they write this turd. This scene is especially bad in light of one that shortly follows it where Withers' daughter Kori sings a song she has written. She totally blows him out of the water as she sings a fantastic piece.

All of this seems to add up to nothing. Yes, it does illuminate stuff about a lesser known man, but it's not easy to get through and is frequently frustrating. I think the directors would have been well advised to start with a general idea of a structure and worked from there. It seems like they threw random scenes on screen with no regard for the flow or our reactions. It's very disappointing for a film about such a great musician. The best part of the movie is Withers' music. I think one would be better served by listening to his records rather than watching this movie.

Stars: 2 of 4

Until the Light Takes Us (Saturday, December 5, 2009) (186)

This is a documentary about the Norwegian so-called Black Metal scene - a genre of heavy metal that reached it's apex in the early-to-mid-1990s. Similar to 'Death Metal', the bands and style are an extension of a horror-movie aesthetic with almost all of the songs about death, ghosts, zombies, pain, suffering and blood. Unlike Death Metal, though, the genre is specifically low-budget purposely using the poorest-quality sound equipment and specifically rejecting polished production values of more mainstream music. In addition, each musician takes on a ghoulish persona onstage and many paint their faces with makeup to look like corpses. Basically it's the French New Wave of heavy metal music.

It seems like all of the music is in English, and though they are fluent in the language, the Norwegians create wonderfully unironic and garish names for their bands: Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum (I don't know, but it sounds dark and evil), Immortal, Satyricon, Ulmer.

In the early 1990s, as the sound was taking shape, one band rose to the top of the mountain: Mayhem. Their singer, Death (that's his real name - really!), pioneered the corpse persona and would go onstage singing about murder and mayhem (get it?!) and mutilate himself with real knives. Fun! The guitarist and leader of the band, Euronymous (is that a mix of Europe and anonymous? I'll go with it!), also helped to create the band's dark image on stage and in his Oslo record shop, surprisingly called Hell. His most notorious act in this period was after Death (who was clinically depressed) shot himself to death in his bed, Euronymous took a picture of the bloody scene before calling the cops - then put the picture on the cover of his next album. Sweet!

Euronymous became a local legend and school kids from far and wide would pay tribute to him by visiting him in Hell. Always looking to impress their idol, they would follow his anarchic orders for destruction and mayhem, ultimately setting fire to dozens of churches in the country as part of a nationalistic, anti-Christian teen sentiment. The media at the time, saw these acts, and their ties to Death Metal as satanic, which it really wasn't. It was more a reflection of a supreme malaise in the small corner of youth culture and rejection of the processed, commercial and international zeitgeist they saw pervading their culture and heritage.

This film follows the history of the movement through interviews with the musicians in the movement. It shows how the scene went from a small, local one to a much bigger one with some global appeal, inside the world of heavy metal, at least. It also shows how the themes and history of the genre have been appropriated by artists in recent years (including Bjarne Melgaard and Harmony Korine) as the aesthetics of the movement have become rather co-opted for commercial purposes. (Incidentally, I saw one shot of a Black Metal musician at the Brooklyn Museum's 'Who Shot Rock & Roll' exhibition - though maybe this isn't totally commercial.)

The movie is very interesting, though probably not good for someone who doesn't have at least a passing curiosity or tolerance for heavy metal. I love how this sub-genre of music has an entire universe of stars, villains and mythology. The film gets this across very well, using first-person interviews along side videos from rehearsals, concerts and still photographs. The interviewees are very frank as they talk about their own lives and histories, but also speak directly about their anti-Christian, almost-anti-Semitic views. At one point, one of the musicians talks, a propos of nothing, about how he hates 'that Central American (sic.) artist woman with the bushy eyebrows'. Hilarious!

The directors, Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, are either fans or respectful observers (much more respectful than I'm being here). They tell the stories of this movement as if it was about feuds between band-mates and artistic rivals in American classic rock of the 1970s. The story is ultimately very universal: boys from a rural place move to a big city, hit it big and gain followers. Things start going wrong, churches get burned and a few people die - all this and a lot of t-shirts and make-up!

Stars: 2.5 of 4

This is It (Friday, October 30, 2009) (154)

When I first saw the trailer for this documentary, about seven weeks after Michael Jackson died, I had a bad feeling about it. I didn't understand why I would want to see rehearsal footage from an erstwhile concert that never took place. I figured Jackson would be as much a 'past-star' on stage as he was at the end of his life; I worried that his voice and body would not sound or look very good. As it turns out, my worries were somewhat confirmed and somewhat wrong. This is not a good movie, but Jackson was much more physical and mobile than I expected.

The biggest problem with the film is that it would seem (based on the look of the footage and an opening title) that the film was shot for internal use only and edited together to make it as 'concerty' a movie possible. But the movie is not a concert. It is rehearsal footage. Most of the 'songs' in the film are just run-throughs of the dancers' blocking with some dancing. MJ sings only about half of the songs, relying on pre-recorded vocals (with live band music) on most tracks. On some songs he sings at bit more, but the mix is strangely very quiet on the vocals and stronger on the the band (I can only imagine that this has something to do with the bad quality of the vocals available).

This is all very frustrating. I feel like the footage we see is not good enough for a documentary; I feel ripped off. There is great footage of Jackson dancing (he seems to still be a great dancer in the months leading up to his death), but not enough substantive stuff for a feature film. We get the outlines of most songs - all the big hits: Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror, Human Nature, Bad, etc. - but none of the soul of these songs. I would rather have sat in my living room and listened to a CD of Thriller or Off the Wall - or even HIStory, disc 1.

Making everything more strange is that there are brief interviews with some of the dancers and band members where they talk about how *amazing* Jackson is. (I mean, he's paying their salaries - so I don't know why they would say anything else.) This hagiography is no big surprise (I don't really expect them to raise questions about his pedophilia or obsession with plastic surgery), but it sort of feels like they're all forcing the issue too much. I'm sick of the revisionist history on the man. He was once brilliant and beautiful and became a physical and social freak show. This was not our misunderstanding of him; he was the problem himself.

A few surprises and observations in the film: Beat It is a song that does not age well. It sounds very dated now and the guitar solo bridge is trite and silly; Human Nature is really a beautiful song - possibly Jackson's most beautiful; At times, Jackson looks like a kabuki dancer with a face covered in make-up, even when he's not wearing make-up; The moment when he talks about his in-ear monitor being a 'fist in his ear' is hilarious - but only for the dirty joke that comes to mind; It's not clear that Jackson is a nice person to work with - not that he's a jerk, but his personality does not really come through in the film.

I think the saddest part of the film and the biggest problem with the fact that it is simply rehearsal footage, is that Jackson never speaks for himself about his feelings and never talks directly to the camera about what is going on. He speaks to the director of the show (and the movie), Kenny Ortega, and he speaks to the band and the dancers, but he never speaks to us (or to a director off-camera in an interview, as it typical for a doc like this). This made me think that he is a man (animal) in a cage. We see him doing stuff and interacting with people, but we never hear from him. Maybe this is the deepest part of the film - after all, this is who he was at the end of his life.

Stars: 1 of 4