Les Blank's Burden of Dreams is an in-depth look at the filming of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, an incredibly challenging production which found Herzog filming on location in the Amazon rainforest of Peru.  While there have been many films and forays into capturing the filmmaking process, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams does so in a profound way, studying the eccentric Herzog as he fights tooth and nail for his vision, as everything around him seems to be crumbling apart.   While Burden of Dreams does document the intricate details and many moving parts that go into making a major film production, the film's greatest strength is the way it captures Herzog as an artist,  being borderline obsessive in nature - a perfectionist who has a very clear vision of exactly what he wants.  As disaster after disaster plagues the set of Fitzcarraldo, Blank captures the toll it begins to take on Herzog the filmmaker, a man who would rather perish than give up his dream project.   Dancing the line between art and megalomania, Burden of Dreams also captures the cultural pressures felt by Herzog, as he begins to become fearful that his filmset will infect the native culture of those people who are helping on the set.  Herzog values the importance of leaving the land and its people exactly how he left it, which becomes increasingly difficult, the more the film spirals out of control under the weight of a host of troubling setbacks.  Another interesting aspect is how Burden of Dreams has something to say about man's struggle with nature, capturing how the film productions' endless technology and resources were routinely thwarted by nature itself.  It is a reminder of just how small and insignificant we all can be against the primal aspects of nature, with Herzog's cranes and labor struggling to succeed against the challenges of the jungle themselves.  Certainly the gold standard when it comes to documentaries about the filmmaking process, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams captures the difficulty, abundance of moving parts,eye for detail, and toll on its creators a film like Fitzcarraldo can have.  

G.W. Pabst's Diary of A Lost Girl is a stunning melodrama of morality and perseverance, being a film of utter-darkness that ultimately finds the light.  The film is centered around Thymian, a young woman who finds her life in disarray when her governess, Elizabeth, is thrown out of the house due to a discovered pregnancy only to be found deceased days later.  Her father wastes no time finding a new governess in Meta, a woman who shows little moral sentiment.  Thymiane finds herself pregnant due to Meta's lack of nurturing and straight-up deception, and when Thymiane refuses to marry the father of her child she is thrown into a strict reform school.  Diary of A Lost Girl is a rather epic rags to riches story, a film of bleak narrative storytelling which inevitably leads to a powerful conclusion.  The film's is a harrowing testament to the importance of love and kindness, using a circular narrative as a great device to illustrate how in life all of us are susceptible on some level to great heights and deep, dark low points in life.  Pabst argues that love is the common denominator that should win out above all else, with the final line of the filming making a poignant statement - "If there was more love, no one would ever be lost.  Pabst's Diary of A Lost Girl focuses on the bourgeoisie to make many of its points, showing how their selfishness and desire for money ultimately leads them down a path where they have very little love to share.  This is perhaps best captured with the plight of Count Osdorff, a man who marries Thymiane after she escapes from the brother, only to eventually commit suicide himself when he learns that Thymiane has donated a vast amount of her inheritance to charity.  Through this story Pabst captures how characters are always pining for the next dollar, defined by the allure it brings, and through centered around the bourgeoisie, Pabst's statement about greed and money's control over societies's intentions certainly speaks to everyone.  One of my favorite scenes from both a technical and emotional perspective is when Thymiane sees her father at a party, unbeknownst to her that it will be the last time before his death.  The sequence itself is shot in a very simple yet effective way, as Pabst uses shot reverse shot to reveal the intense sadness in Thymiane who simply pines for her fathers love, but more importantly the sequence is able to capture the glimpses of regret felt by her father.  Featuring a stunning lead performance by the always expressive Louise Brooks, G.W. Pabst' Diary of A Lost Girl is a powerful melodrama about the importance of love in a world which often defines success by wealth.

Steve De Jarnatt's Miracle Mile begins like many other romantic comedies, introducing us to its main protagonist, Harry Washello, a bashful, reserved character who has very little luck when it comes to woman.  One day he meets Julie Peters, a waitress, and the two spend the day together, leaving Harry ecstatic, finally feeling that he met the woman of his dreams.  One night while preparing to call Julie from a payphone, Harry intercepts a frantic call from a soldier stationed at a missile silo in North Dakota who explains that nuclear warheads have been launched, and its only 70 minutes to the end of the world.  Steve De Jarnatt's Miracle Mile is indie filmmaking at its finest, being a film that uses a very simple narrative to offer up a nightmarish descent into the final hours of humanity.  While many films subvert expectations, none pulls it off quite like Miracle Mile which begins as a believable, light-hearted, quirky comedy, only to descend into a terrifying vision of the darker side of humanity.  Escalation is the name of the game with Miracle Mile's narrative, as chaos ensues around Harry as he desperately tries to find Julie before the end of the world.  As the film progresses, things get darker and more chaotic, as nearly every character around Harry shows an inherent selfishness in this time of panic, offering up little kindness or empathy for their fellow man.  Harry himself remains transfixed on finding and saving Julie, and this is the crux of the thematic weight of Steve De Jarnatt's film, as the filmmaker juxtaposes the love and kindness of Harry and Julie's relationship with the hatred and chaos of humanity around them.  Using this couples frantic struggle to save their future, Miracle Mile becomes a film that beautifully encapsulates Cold War paranoia, showing how as the clock ticks down to zero how quickly humanity falls completely into depravity when the sense of safety and control crumbles during the threat of the end.  At one point towards the end of the film Julie even asks Harry "people are going to help each other out, right?, a piece of dialogue that makes the filmmaker's intent quite clear.  Telling a powerful and deeply nightmarish film in a very simple, yet effective way, Steve De Jarnatt's Miracle Mile offers fascinating questions about humanity and soceity in times of chaos, being a poignant reminder of the importance of kindness and love over all things.  

Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace follows Father and Son, Bill and Karl, who have just been released from prison.  Returning to their small Brighton home, Bill and Karl have now set the sights on restoring a sense of order to their small crime family, one that has been plagued by minor disagreements, possible betrayal, and infighting since the two went to jail.  Set almost entirely in one location, the small, cramped house of these two patriarchs of a crime family, Ben Wheatley's debut feature, Down Terrace is a unique crime caper which blends the hostility, violence, and unpredictability of the crime-family drama with the observant eye of a relationship drama, delivering a truly unique dark comedy that is an impressive calling card for the first time filmmaker.  While Karl grows tired of his father's philosophizing and preaching, Bill finds Karl's dedication to the family business compromised when he decides to shack up with his estranged girlfriend, who claims to be pregnant with this son.  As Karl and Bill attempt to find an informant which they believe has infiltrated their family business, the two find both their business and family unit itself spiraling further and further out of control.   Bill and Karl are two characters who are running out of patience with each other, and one of Down Terrace most entertaining aspects is how it captures the temperament of these two characters, men who have incredibly short fuses when it comes to any minor inconveniences.  Wheatley uses this combustible temperament to his advantage, delivering quite a few hilarious moments throughout the film, perfectly capturing how the powerful lifestyle of these individuals have essentially made them brats who can't even grasp the idea of things not going their way.  It's very impressive how well Down Terrace blends kitchen-sink realism with black comedy, as Wheatley manages to deliver a film that is both extremely funny in moments while also offering moments of true poignancy.  The crime aspects of the film never supersede the character development, a problem that is quite common in young filmmakers, but luckily Wheatley manages to balance the elements beautifully, making Down terrace an audacious debut feature that is both tense, funny, and engaging.  

Jonas Govaerts' Cub is a grim, horror tale about a group of rambunctious scouts who finds their weekend in the woods turn deadly when they discover that they are being stalked in the woods by a violent, feral boy.  The story is centered around 12-year-old Sam, a socially awkward member of the scout group who becomes infatuated with the local stories of this killer "werewolf boy".  A loner who is routinely picked on by the other boys in the scout group, Sam spends much of his time alone in the woods, where he begins to catch glimpses of something in the wilderness watching over their camp ground.  As Sam begins to realize that Kai, a violent, feral boy may be the one behind the local legend, his attempts to warn his fellow scouts fall on deaf ears, leading to further carnage and an increasing body count.   Jonas Govaert's Cub is a Belgian horror film which is best described as some twisted combination of Jeff Lieberman's Just Before Dawn and Home Alone, having a decent amount of ingenuity but unfortunately failing to deliver a true sense of atmosphere and terror.  Cub's horror and violence should appease many junkies of the genre, but the films cynical viewpoint on humanity is what stands out, being a very grim tale of a young boy's transformation into a monster.  As its story progresses, it becomes clear that Sam and Kai, the feral child, have more in common than meets the eye, each being outcasts from society in one way or another.  Sam has never fit in among the other scouts and even finds himself tormented by one of the scout leaders, and his budding relationship with Kai offers up a very twisted story of acceptance, which inevitably leads Sam towards a similar path of violence and brutality, as it becomes one of the only things which Sam is familiar with.  The film's psychology isn't exactly profound but it's somewhat compelling, as by the end of the film Sam has transformed into a brutal character himself, with the filmmakers using this character to make a slight, albeit important statement of the importance of nurturing young, impressionable individuals.  While Cub wasn't quite the brooding, atmospheric horror film I was hoping for, the film's unique narrative and compelling setting make it a solid entry in the horror genre.  

Larry Clark's latest film, Marfa Girl, takes place in the small border town of Marfa, Texas, following the exploits of Adam, a directionless 16 year-old whose apathy for everything around him has left him cold and distant.  Following the exploits of Adam, his teenage girlfriend, a high school teacher, and a border patrol agent, Larry Clark's film is a flawed albeit fascinating portrait of a working class border town.  Anyone familiar with Larry Clark's work should know what they are getting into with Marfa Girl, as Clark's infatuation with using teenage sexuality is very much intact.  Clark never holds much back in depicting the budding sexuality of his young characters, as if he views sex as one of the few universal truths of humanity.  While the film does touch on the relationship between love & sex and the confusion which exists between the two, Marfa Girl's penchant for explicit content ends up distracting from the films ability to say so much more about this impoverished, rural community, disabling the film from touching on its more interesting elements.  All of Larry Clark's films are oddly compelling at times, with Marfa Girl's strengths lying in its ability to examine the humanistic qualities of its ensemble cast, capturing some profound insights into human nature and relationships.  Marfa Girl is a film that truly believes that humanity is kind-hearted and good-natured, arguing how experiences are often what shape us into how society perceives us.  There is no better example of this than the misogynstic, deeply-disturbed border patrol character, a man who we eventually learn has been shaped into a monster due to his dark childhood.  While the scene where he reveals his childhood issues feels hamfisted and forced, the scene is important in humanizing this character, letting the viewer understand that he was shaped into this monster by a father who showed little empathy.  Another scene which I thought was very compelling is a sequence between a border patrol officer and a young artist, who exchange in a verbal argument about the value of their respective professions.  Through this small sequence Clark speaks to how society is quickly to criticize and judge without ever attempting to fully understand where someone is coming from, with the young artist lacking the overall worldview to understand the complications of life.  While the film has moments of great truth and poignancy about life, humanity, and growing up, Marfa Girl unfortunately becomes too distracted with Clark's need to inject an unnecessary amount of sexuality into the film to make it truly special.  Larry Clark's Marfa Girl is a scattered film full of interesting ideas and themes, being too focused and uneven to ever fully develop itself as a study of humanity and the judgmental tendencies of society.