From legendary documentary film maker Werner Herzog comes Frome One Second to the Next, an unflinching look at the consequences of texting and driving.
This documentary is really about content. Herzog tries to jazz it up with some stylized shots of people kneeling thoughtfully beside crash sites, or the empty hand of someone who was once holding on to a child for safety, but these shots are glaringly unnecessary in a film that already has an impactful message.
Of course we hear from victims, or victims’ families, but these accounts are as predictable as they are tragic. It sounds like testimony, like victim impact statements. We find more connection in other moments, like a police officer choking up over an infant’s fatal injuries, or the blank stare of a woman so traumatized she registers no emotion hearing her sister list the extensive damages incurred to her both physically and financially, but suddenly engages when recalling her dog, also a victim in the acciddent, who flew violently threw the air before landing where he would ultimately die, but not before seeing his owner into an ambulance.
I was glad to hear from a couple of the perpetrators (and angry to not hear from all). Their regret is palpable even if their sentences are underwhelming. For the most part, the film keeps its focus appropriately on the victims, always with the distinct undercurrent of the complete preventability of their deaths.
This film is available on Netflix.
Life Itself (although the title of Ebert’s memoir) explores the nature of Ebert’s criticism. He was a populist who wanted to like every movie he saw, and he saw an enormous amount (although probably not as many as we watch – we don’t technically get paid to watch movies, but we mostly get paid while watching them, which is almost as good). He took his job seriously and defended his position vehemently. He sometimes introduced new voices to the world. He championed Scorsese, who probably didn’t need it but seemed to really value it nonetheless, is his early, unknown days as a budding film director. Werner Herzog says of him “He reinforced my courage.” He measured movies against his own moral code and if they violated it needlessly, he could be ruthless. But he also believed in reviewing movies within a context, which is something I hope we’ll replicate here. We’re part of the fan culture that he helped create with his accessible reviews. We aren’t trained critics, but neither was he (he started out as a sports writer, apparently). He wanted his reviews to be only the starting point, and that’s what we’re hoping for here too – to have a conversation with whomever wanders in and reads the blog. Write us comments. Let’s discuss.
available to him at the time. What’s that, you ask? And I’m glad you did. It’s astonishingly simple: a mirror. A fucking mirror. It becomes possible to project a living image directly onto a canvas and to match colour and light exactly. Exactly! It’s astonishing to see Jenison whip up an oil painting using this technique. So Jenison, who has a whole lot of money, decides to reconstruct one of Vermeer’s most-used rooms to see if you can reproduce one of his paintings. And Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller), a personal friend of his, becomes his documentarian.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 