Posts Tagged ‘film’

I watched loads of ultra-endurance documentaries over lockdown and beyond and compiled a big list of them. This has been sat in my drafts for years so I am just going to hit publish. If you are looking for some running and cycling documentaries, here are the ones I’ve watched.

Iron Cowboy

One of my favourite documentaries. James Lawrence tries to complete the 50-50-50: 50 Ironmans, in 50 days, in all 50 US states. If you are ever going to do an Ironman, watch this first as you cannot help but coming out of it thinking “if James Lawrence can do that, I can do one Ironman”.

Brittany Runs a Marathon

This is a comedy drama and it’s a lot of fun.

3100: Run And Become

This documentary follows runners on around the 3100, a 5,000 kilometre race that takes place in New York named the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race. They use a 883-metre loop that runners loop for 18 hours a day for nearly two months.

Safety to Nome

The Iditarod Trail Invitational is a 1,000-mile race that follows the Iditarod dog sledge course on either foot or fat bike.

The Race That Eats Its Young

Possibly the best Barkley Marathons documentary out there, following the 2012 race where Brett Maune set the course record and the only year ever to have three finishers.

Where Dreams Go To Die

Follows Gary Robbins in his attempt to complete the Barkley Marathons.

Last Woman Standing

Yorkshire’s own Nicky Spinks attempts to be the first woman to complete the Barkley Marathons.

Kim Swims

Kimberley Chambers attempts to become the third person ever, and the first woman, to swim from Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Running The Wainrights

This is a feel-good running story as Paul Tierney attempts to set a new FKT for running the 214 summits of the Lake District as described by Alfred Wainwright. It’s a little over 510 km of fell running in less than seven days.

Icarus

Bryan Fogel attempts to make a documentary about doping in cycling and finds himself in the middle of Grigory Rodchenkov, head of the Russian anti-doping lab and mastermind behind the Russian state-sponsored doping of Olympic athletes, exposing the Russian scheme.

Stop At Nothing

This documentary looks at Lance Armstrong and how the widespread doping in the US Postal Service cycling team came out.

The Least Expected Day

It follows the Movistar team through their 2019 cycling season, where Richard Carapaz took a surprise win at the Giro d’Italia. It is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Once Is Enough

Jeffrey James Binney presents his experience going from non-runner to 100-mile ultra runner in a film that is half documentary and half live comedy show talking about what happened.

From Fat to Finish Line

A group of overweight individuals who found running come together to complete a Ragnar relay race.

Running for Good

Follows Fiona Oakes as she attempts to complete the Marathon des Sables to raise money for her animal sanctuary.

Inspired to Ride

Follows the Trans America bike race, an unsupported race across America (not to be confused with RAM).

London Edinburgh London

Follows the London-Edinburgh-London audax, and features A-Soc’s Chris Tedd!

Dragon’s Back Race

Follows the second-ever running of the Dragon’s Back race. Originally run in 1992.

Running for Freedom

Follows Gerald Tabios, a Filipino runner, as he attempts to complete his 5th Badwater 135 ultra.

Skid Row Marathon

Follows a running club started by a judge.

Being Unstoppable

Follows several first-time Ironman athletes.

Finding Traction

Nikki Kimball attempts to complete the Long Trail.

Tugende

Documents the 1,000 km unsupported race around Rwanda. Lots of beautiful scenery but difficult to follow at times as everything is explained by brief title cards.

The Longest Journey

RAM, also Race Across America and 3089 Miles Across America. I don’t even know what I wrote here. Are these separate documentary names?

Ultimate Triathlon

Follows Luke Tyburski as he attempts to complete a 2,000-kilometre triathlon from Morocco to Monaco. it has an irritating voiceover that you find on Channel 5 documentaries.

The Bill Chill

This documentary follows Gary Robbins’s attempt to be the first to link up multiple trials around his home in Chilliwack.

Wild Man to Ironman

This documentary follows Mat Pritchard doing a ultra-distance triathlon around the entire border of Wales.

As some of you know, my film interests are predominantly films about rats than can cook. So, I watch Ratatouille. And not really anything else. But I also watch TV, and when I watch TV, I watch The Good Place. Anyone who has seen A Good Place will understand why: once you have seen the best TV show, why would you settle for watching something less good?

In one of the episodes, John makes a quick reference to a film about Sarah Michelle Gellar as a chef. I hadn’t heard of that so I went investigating whether it was a real thing and it turns out that it is: Simply Irresistible is a 1999 film about Buffy working in a struggling restaurant while falling in love with the manager of a fancy department store. There are no vampires but there is something much better: a magic crab that gives her the power to pour her emotions into the food.

Finding this film has opened my eyes. Maybe I am not solely interested in films about rats than can cook, but open to any films about non-human animals with magic cooking abilities!

Looking for things to do over the Easter weekend, Elina found that View Cinemas were running a film called Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience. This seemed a great chance to introduce Venla to the cinema, although why we would want to do that I am not sure.

We purchased some refreshments before going in. I asked for a Coke, but all they had was cherry flavour, and what I was actually sold was a Coke Zero, without being asked to consent to the substitute product. This and some sweets was about £5.

We arrived when the film was due to start. We were the only people there. Eventually, two other families turned up, and one man who looked to be in his 50s who was alone. He was just a huge aficionado of Peppa Pig, I’m sure.

I foolishly thought that given it was a “first cinema experience”, they wouldn’t make young children sit through loads of adverts. But I was wrong. There were 19 minutes of them.

It turns out that an hour of Peppa Pig is too much Peppa Pig, even for a toddler who loves Peppa Pig.

And finally home, stopping by the toilets to admire the broken hand driers.

It’s hard to understand why cinemas are losing ground to iTunes and piracy. Why would I want to watch it on my large Apple TV with my Sonos soundbar and clean bathroom, when I can spend a morning watching adverts, dodging paedophiles and paying over-the-odds for substitute drinks?

Dr Dre

He may be an awesome wrapper, but he doesn’t have a PhD in music. Or in anything.

Dr Evil

There is no such place as evil medical school. It’s just made up.

Dr Pepper

The drink was created by pharmacist Charles Alderton and named by Wade Morrison. Neither of them are doctors.

The Doctor

Sure, he’s a Time Lord with more knowledge of human physiology than probably any human alive. But he’s not registered with the General Medical Council and therefore it doesn’t exist.

Gillian McKeith

Gillian McKeith used to tell people she was a doctor, and use it in advertising until the Advertising Standards Authority told her not to. That’s because the qualification she had could be bought on the internet. Ben Goldacre bought one for his cat.

Dr Fox

More musicians (or in this case DJs) pretending to be doctors. He studied management at the University of Bath and has no higher qualifications.

Dr Seuss

Of all the pretenders, Dr Seuss may well have the best case. He did go to Oxford University to pursue a PhD in English literature. However, he never completed it.

I was in a furniture shop in South Leeds called SLATE last week. They had a selection of media available for sale, too, including some VHS cassettes. Such as this one, featuring “over 130 spectacular crashes”.

I don’t know how anyone can look a this and not think about Alan Partridges “Crash! Bang! Wallop! What a video!”

Even the knowledge that this was a Hilary Duff film was insufficient to set my expectations low enough.

This supposed exploration of the mind of a troubled young girl is dull, predictable and uninsightful. I did not even make it to the end. It’s only one redeeming feature is that some bits of it are so embarrassing that it may be an incredibly clever parody that only the writer was in on.

Joe Berlinger is a film maker known for his documentary series Paradise Lost. He also made Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, a film that I really enjoyed, once I understood just how the studio had butchered it after it left Berlinger’s hands. His latest film is a documentary about motivational speaker Tony Robbins’s Date With Destiny events.

It is interesting to see inside the event. But that is where the interest stops. A review in Variety earlier this year pretty much hits the nail on the heat. It is a completely uncritical look at the whole show, with no interesting journalistic merit to be found.

For example, there is no mention that I noticed of the price tag. It is around $5,000 for the basic package and goes up from there. There is plenty of footage of Robbins transforming people’s lives though, at least for the few minutes they were on camera. Still, I am sure Penn & Teller are completely wrong about these type of events being complete bullshit that never sticks. Especially at that price.

Far from Robbins graciously granting access to a documentary crew for the first time, it seems to be that he simply allowed them to make an infomercial for him.

To be fair to Berlinger, he doesn’t pretend that it is anything other than that. He decided to make the film after being invited to a Date With Destiny event and said in an interview that this was more of a “concert film”.

If you want to watch it, it’s on Netflix.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is a 2011 book by Michael Lewis. It is one of his best, perhaps second only to Flash Boys. I reviewed it in 2014. I recently watched the film adaptation. Coupled with The Blind Side makes me look like I am on kind of Michael Lewis-film binge, which I only noticed afterwards.

It is a reasonably good retelling of how it happened in the book. Not that you can do it justice in a two-hour film, but it is a good summary. Occasionally one of the characters would break the fourth wall and introduce celebrities offering sarcastic explanations of how the banks fucked us.

Speaking of fucking, the one thing that draws my attention was the phone call between Mark Baum and Greg Lippmann. I’m sure in the book Lippmann actually told Baum how he was going to fuck him, rather than the watered-down reconciliation in the film.

The film even had a moral point at the end, discussing how basically nothing has changed and we are just repeating the same old patterns. And that is why I am moving to Iceland in two weeks…

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a 2007 book by Michael Lewis. I reviewed it in 2014 and in another post discussed my thoughts about the story.

In 2009, it was made into a film, which, after a recommendation from someone, I finally got round to watching. It shares quite a bit in common with the book, while at the same time concentrating exclusively on the relationship between Michael and Leigh Anne.

That is the whole thing. It is not, to Elina’s relief, a film about American football. Nor is it, to my disappointment, a film about economic theory. It is a drama revolving around those two characters, with almost everything else cut out.

I thought having read the book helped me out on a number of occasions during the film. A lot of things made sense to me because I had read the details in the book. You would miss them if you had not, but maybe you just wouldn’t notice.

The Revenant is a film based on the Michael Punke’s novel of the same title. That in itself is based on the true story of someone called Hugh Glass in 1823, though exactly how much historical truth there actually is in it I am not sure. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio.

I was not aware of this when I watched the film. I did so off a recommendation, so I didn’t really know what it was about. I had seen the trailer during the screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens but it is hardly enlightening.

The problem is that this leaves you without really knowing what is going on. There isn’t much in the way of a plot to follow. Some people get killed, some guy is injured, he doesn’t die, he somehow makes it home to take revenge on someone else. It’s not very clear.

Nor is the dialogue. The actors attempt to use authentic accents which makes it almost intelligible to Elina.

Some of it seems simply unbelievable. I can accept that you can survive being attacked by a grizzly bear. Elina questions whether you would have all your limbs in tact though. The survival after this is where it breaks down for me though. If he was too ill to stop his son being murdered, how did he then recover enough to find food? How did his leg heal so quickly? How do you spend so much time in a river running through snow-covered mountains, with no change of clothes, and not die of hypothermia?

All of that said, I did actually quite enjoy the movie.