Movies
A couple of days in the lives of door-to-door salesmen. Salesman is a bare-bones documentary, a doc in the truest sense of the word, as the director and his crew never intervene. They merely document. A noble undertaking, except that I wasn't really all that interested in this tiny cultural niche. Paul Brennan and three others are touring America, trying to sell luxury versions of the bible to working-class Americans. They don't have the money to spend on such a book, but there lies their challenge. They will go to great lengths to convince their potential victims to shell out anyway. The salesmen are sleazy, their victims are rather gullible, and the endless back-and-forth between the two becomes tiresome after a while. The setup is interesting for maybe 30 minutes, but there's not enough material here to fill an entire documentary. Unless you have a thing for salesmen.Read all
One of those films where you can't help but wonder whether the documentary makers shouldn't have protected their subjects against themselves. The two protagonists are eccentric ladies, but they also seem a little too aware of the camera and I wouldn't vouch for their sanity. The two are related to Jackie O, they live in a big mansion in East Hampton, but the place is completely in ruins. The mother and daughter don't seem to care too much, though they love complaining and shouting at each other. It's more their way of communicating though. And so you're watching two women make an absolute nuisance of themselves. It's not my idea of a good time, I also don't see the point of building an entire doc around people like that. Instead of helping them, they're put on display, which I found neither funny, nor fascinating, nor enjoyable.Read all