documentary | The Last Movie Guy

I Am Not Your Negro from Raoul Peck

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Hugo Pagan Soto

In 1979 an idea was born in the mind of James Baldwin. In a letter he explained to his agent that his next project, titled “Remember This House,” was going to encompass meetings with three of his closest friends: Medgar Evers (1925-1963), Malcolm X (1925-1965), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968). At the time of his death in 1987, Baldwin left behind an unfinished 30-page manuscript. With the documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016), filmmaker Raoul Peck seeks a kind of closure for the unfinished work.

A Cop Movie (2021)

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

There are two ways to shoot a scene and one of them is wrong.
David Fincher

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios could have approached his documentary A Cop Movie in multiple ways. The result brings us closer to the idea of the man from Seven (1995), there was only one correct way to approach this issue. The only thing that makes more headlines than corruption in Mexico is drug trafficking. We can argue that the two things are so closely linked that it is impossible to define where one begins and the other ends. Corruption was the yeast that fermented this idea of Ruizpalacios that in the end ended up focusing on a single institution within the entire political fabric.

The Rescue (2021) TIFF 2021

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

The Great Cave of the Sleeping Lady (Tham Luang Nang Non) is a cave located in a mountain system that marks the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Its maximum depth is 279 feet, and its total length is 10.3 kilometers. Prior to 2018 it was just a tourist spot frequented mainly by cave diving enthusiasts. On June 23, 2018, the whole world was going to know this remote place. The Rescue (2021) tells the odyssey of 12 children and their soccer coach after being trapped inside this cave system. The documentary is approached from the perspective of rescuers and personnel who worked to accomplish one of the most incredible rescue missions.

Val (2021)

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

We digest actors through the lens. We read them from the narrative that their characters dictate, and we think we understand them when they throw away their avatars to grant and interview. But the reality is that there is always a filter or an ulterior motive that prevents us from seeing beyond what they choose to show. Val (2021) demolishes paradigms and shows us an unadorned Val Kilmer, seeking to find his own voice by putting his life in perspective and building a retrospective of his career. Almost 40 years of career and more than 100 titles accompany the former Iceman, Doc Holliday, Simon Templar, Batman and even Jim Morrison himself.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021) TIFF 2021

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Hugo Pagan Soto

Time is an illusion.
Albert Einstein.

It was one day in 1938. David Kurtz began shooting everyday scenes with his camera in the town of Nasielsk in Poland. Just a memory to keep from a long-awaited vacation and a trivial reminiscence of his hometown is what Kurtz imagined. Impossible to envision that those minutes of film would be immortalized by that thing that Einstein defined as an illusion. It was time that was responsible for those celluloid rolls becoming the only testament of the Nasielsk inhabitants after the Holocaust. Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021) by Bianca Stigter combines the narration with a masterful editing to deliver a film of 1 hour and 9 minutes using only David Kurtz’s original recording as a visual resource, from which only three minutes could be rescued.