As We Speak

This one flick at Sundance

(I killed to get in),

As We Speak it was called,

about rap as a sin.

About rap as a tool

to impeach and imprison;

and not as reflection,

creation, or vision.

It showed us the law,

prosecutors precise,

who twist up a lyric

just thinkin’ they nice.

That man who was shot?

At that store down the block?

Well Kemba once said:

All my competition’s dead…

So isn’t it clear?

He looks like he did it…

But that’s not PC so

let’s look at his lyrics.

Follow pattern, you see,

which is way way way old,

contra human responses

like blues jazz and soul.

So with Kemba we travel

to the poetry cradles:

libraries, floors,

of course diner tables;

to those jesters performing,

to those jokers locked up,

asking what happened?

and who gave a fuck?

And we see it’s just people,

calmness and eyes.

Jokes, explanations,

just done to survive.

So long story short,

this doc is a fluid:

factfiction blurring like

ain’t nothin’ to it.

One moment we’re student,

one moment on trial.

One moment we crumble,

another we smile.

So rap is on trial.

As we speak

yes right now.

Speech is on trial.

As We Speak

shows us how.

Holding Back the Tide

Holding Back the Tide is a fascinating but slippery documentary.

It wants to teach us some things about oysters—and just maybe, ourselves. As with eating the things, I think opinions will differ.

By interviews and interludes we learn. Did you know that a New York-oyster made oysters famous? That they’ll float until they find community, or that they’re gender-fluid? Interesting!

And yet, the movie’s free-form nature makes it hard for us to grab onto anything for long. We learn a thing, then we move on to a recital, or some performance art, then we move on again. And so on. Any idea we’d like to stick with we find floating away all too soon.

If you’re here to feel, welcome! But if you’re here to learn more about oysters or the trans community, you might feel at the end, like I did, that we could’ve learned a heck of a lot more.

A pearl; a thing transformed; an object of beauty and desire.

And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine

Wow, Fantastic Machine is PURE DANG FUN! Think of it as a clip show—of the most wonderful and goofy and disquieting moments that humans have ever recorded with a camera.

I mean, do you know how many thousands of generations couldn’t re-live their baby’s first steps? Couldn’t see the Earth for the pale blue dot it is? We have context and comfort now, thanks to this fantastic machine.

Does a horse at gallop always have one leg on the ground? Only with the camera could we settle the (rich man’s) bet.

And just as beautifully, it’s helped us laugh. If you don’t believe me, here, take this teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Look at how silly this woman is, hanging off the world’s tallest building with one arm to take the perfect pic. And when you’re done we can watch bloopers from a terrorist recruitment video—you know, the one that models its explosions on Hollywood movie trailers(?!).

Of course, we’ve done terrible, awful things with the camera, too, and the moviemakers force us to reckon with that fact. Like when that movienerd talks, completely enthralled, about her art—and not about how she was the pawn of a murderous dictator. Like when we see a deceased young girl swarmed by paparazzi. Yes, the camera can commodify even death.

What becomes clear is that as much as we’ve evolved this fantastic machine, it has evolved us. In reminding us of this, and in having us think about whether it’s OK, Fantastic Machine is a treasure.

The Arc of Oblivion

The Arc of Oblivion wonders if humans are dumb. (After all, we do try to preserve things in a universe in which seemingly everything decays.) It is a playful documentary, full of connections.

For example: The director/narrator decides to build a big ol’ boat on mom and dad’s land-locked property, because, why not?

Yep. And with each step things become more curious. See this cement? Well, apparently you can’t make it without limestone, which apparently you can’t make without a million seashells being pressure-crushed at the bottom of the ocean. And by the way the phrase “in the limelight” is somehow related to this. And did you know that tree rings are like a permanent record? Like bat poop?

Look at my Ark, me Mommy, and despair!

The narrated adventures we embark upon start at our director’s curiosity (or concern?), and are many. But the movie’s best parts are when the people we meet along the way share their thoughts. Tree-ring scientists and poets, carpenters and neuroscientists; all are invited to see the ark and chit chat. And if that sounds boring, don’t worry, we go to the Alps and the Sahara and the Antarctic, too.

Sure the topic is morbid, but the movie watches light. It’s like a visual diary from that smart kid from the fourth grade trying to think through a timeless and complex problem that the teacher knows they won’t be able to answer—but that’ll be fun, interesting, and perhaps just the tiniest bit insightful to follow along with anyway.

No commentary necessary here; completely straightforward.

Angel Applicant

Hi. I’m glad you’re here, because you deserve to watch Angel Applicant.

It’s nothing less than a non-religious religious experience. Like crying into your grandma’s arms and feeling better. Heck, like confronting all of life with gentleness and curiosity and hope.

But I’m waxing philosophic about it way more than Ken would—and this is Ken’s movie. He’s our subject, narrator, and director, and he’s the one living with a disease that tightens his skin like plastic wrap. Maybe his organs, too. Might be why his speech is so soft.

If this sounds morbid, it’s not. Sure, he’ll tell us what it’s like to be mistaken for a mannequin or be unrecognizable to his niece, but he’ll also tell us about how he came across—serendipitously—an artist from 100 years ago whose work seems to capture the very essence of what Ken has been feeling with his disease, even as his feelings change. The coincidence is almost unbelievable.

Ken went to art school before his corporate job and before getting sick, so he has an eye for things. The way he presents this newfound art to us, the way he looks at it with us and asks questions with us, is every bit as gorgeous as the world-class art itself. The movie is perhaps the most patient, deliberate, meaningful montage you’ll ever see, created by two minds and bodies years and cultures apart.

Angel Applicant is poetry and philosophy, tenderness and wonder.

Ken August Meyer, observing art by Paul Klee. Or, Paul Klee, speaking to the future.

Loan Wolves

You are forgiven—unless you took a loan to pay for your education, in which case you are very not forgiven. In which case, you are unforgivable.

Silly, right? But according to Loan Wolves, this is largely how United States law conceives of student-loan debt.

If you’re wondering how that’s possible, so was Blake, our documentary’s director and overall guide. Luckily for us he asked around.

Economists, journalists, civil servants, politicians; even regular folk answer. It all started with the quiet addition of two lines to a 1998 congressional education bill. What followed was 45 million Americans with student debt. Less marriages, less homeownership, less spending in the community. Vivian the OB-GYN having to work at a higher-paying job rather than at the low-income-community health center that was her dream. Scott, with a wife and two children, contemplating suicide. The more we learn the more the student-loan system seems predatory and hopeless.

Mercifully, the movie’s tone is much more upbeat. Blake’s thinking-out-loud narration is curious, not accusatory; his humor, just as practiced as his Washington, D.C. connections. Potshots aside this moviemaker (and investigative journalist, and former political staffer) has a knack for being likeable.

If you’re looking for drama, comedy, adventure, and mystery that’s real, you could do worse than to watch Loan Wolves. (A line that’s all my own, for the record.)

Blake amused—I mean, Blake following it all.

Retrograde

I hadn’t thought about it before. Then I saw, and knew. Souls can scream.

Retrograde, a documentary about the American retreat from a decades-long war in Afghanistan, is proof. Its moviemakers have snuck us into a theatre of war and exposed all its intimacy and apathy.

First we meet the Green Berets, a selection of exceptional American soldiers. They train Afghans on fighting the common enemy. What we see in these faces and hear in these voices, though, is true care. Family.

Then the bad news arrives. We have been ordered to leave you. Afghans and Americans alike remain seated, hardly moving, but their eyes can’t hide the truth deep down in their souls. You are leaving us to pain, punishment, death. Little yellow birds chirp around the room for some reason as a couple Afghans ceremonially play music—to celebrate the closeness that’ll soon vanish. It’s the human condition in one scene: We came, we tried, we know we’re going to die.

For the rest of the movie we sit, stand, crawl, and stress with General Sami Sadat. The native Afghan tells his story. But mostly, he leads. It is a strange thing to watch with him in realtime the latest news that the enemy is regaining territory that it took allied forces years to capture.

It’s all simple, but scary. The moviemakers squeeze us into the cockpit of that bomb helicopter, push us face-to-face with the innocent translator who is begging to escape the impending nightmare—while the twenty-year-old new American recruit must shout back with the weight of decisions made thousands of miles away.

Retrograde does not opine. It simply and beautifully exists in places and allows us, for a few moments, to exist there too. If documentaries were made for anything, they were made for this.

One of many indescribable moments that Retrograde’s moviemakers somehow managed to capture.

Finding Sandler

What’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made? And what if you could make it right?

In the documentary Finding Sandler, David answers these questions. Apparently he once turned down movie star Adam Sandler’s invitation to chat; so years later—while living his thirties in grandma’s basement and working on local TV instead of on pop movie production—David makes another decision: track down Adam and finally have that drink. It’s an outlandish and impractical idea—realized in a believable and heartwarming fashion.

As (budget but effective) computer animation illustrates that past, David narrates. He said “no” to networking because other people were depending on him to do his job. He explains how he never could forget that moment, and that how now, he has formulated an offer that Adam won’t be able to refuse. Friends and loved ones share their thoughts—all on grainy video captured before cell phones had cameras. Grandma is adorable and supportive; the parents have mixed emotions. It’s all so real, and really, uplifting.

David himself adds entertainment to the already curious story. He’s witty and earnest, whatever height he lacks being made up for with personality and verve. Watching him convince himself, then his loved ones, then random strangers—again and again—is just plain fun. The journey of body and mind takes him and others to places nobody would have seen coming.

Finding Sandler’s production value might not be taught in film school, but its oh-so-painfully-modern hero’s journey might be worthy of that honor. In a world that makes it easy to dwell on past decisions, this movie shows us the value of making a new one.

So, what’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made? Ready to make a movie about it?

Adam chasing his dreams! By following his dreams! To Hollywood!

Sweet Adventure

What’s adventure to you?

Maybe it’s something simple you can do on a whim, like saying hi to a stranger. Or maybe it’s a bit more involved, like jumping out of a helicopter into the ocean off the coast of a country you’ve never been to before which houses a language you don’t understand and a nature so unmarred by humans that you can sit and stare at it for hours, to surf. Either way, I think you’ll like Sweet Adventure.

At its most basic it’s a surf movie. Montages with humans doing dope things on planks in the ocean—these magnetize and invigorate us in equal measure. And all that good stuff, that natural beauty, is captured in crisp detail. Awesome.

The moviemakers elevate the experience, though. They personalize it.

We learn about our cast of characters (three surfers) as their adventure unfolds (traveling from Hawaii to El Salvador to ride waves). Taut but familiar narration from Selema reminds us that world class athletes and adventure-seekers are just like you and me. Watching this, then, becomes a bit like listening to an elderly parent explaining what made each of their children special. So Nora might be a decorated pro skateboarder, but did you know what she thinks about sloths? Let’s see. Do you know what her hometown looks like? Here’s a photo. Had you any concept about how drawing an arrow on a compound bow can make Matt feel? Let’s watch him do it. Right now, we have time for it; it’s all part of it.

Relaxed like a Saturday afternoon and sweet as summer watermelon, Sweet Adventure is full of detours and poignant moments. It’ll help you soak in another sunset, for sure. But it’s also a contemplation of those times in our lives that somehow feel different and memorable. Having watched it, I feel the urge to embark on a new adventure myself.

Yep. Sweet Adventure is definitely your typical surf movie.

The Art of Making It

Art, amirite? We all have our opinions. And this is why The Art of Making It is such an ambitious project.

It’s a documentary about the art world, but a story, too. Its underdogs are . . . the vast majority of artists alive today. They create (and sometimes go into massive debt to learn how to create) art because they cannot imagine doing otherwise. Many make no money from their passion, subsisting on unrelated jobs. The only way to better their situation seems to be when a rich, connected hand of a university/museum/gallery decides that this human is now worthy of making it money.

But maybe that’s a cynic’s view. In this one, we hear all sorts of opinions about the state of things. Artists and thinkers; curators, gallerists, and teachers share their thoughts. Sometimes contrasted in back-to-back scenes, any theoretical disagreement becomes for us a fun kind of cringe-worthy.

So do we care about any of this? And is watching this like doing philosophy homework? Well, art, like any other profession or expression, is a funnel for human thought. Without it the soup of our world would be less rich. As an exploration of whether that particular funnel might be clogging right now, this movie does us all a service.

As for watchability, you’ll find everything from light to heavy in this one; personal moments with sympathetic people, but so too ideas about history and the future of us all, often presented in a visually-engaging way. Interesting, patient, and informative, The Art of Making It is a work of art all its own.

shoutout to my main meme jerrygogosian — you da beast!

Aftershock

Being Black and pregnant in the United States? Like being a Black man pulled over at a traffic stop. Scary.

An expecting mother tells us so. The story here is many, but at its simplest, Aftershock is about Black American women dying around childbirth; how; why; and what their loved ones and community are doing about it. It is without a doubt a distressing topic.

But just as a good parent does when speaking with their child about the facts of life, this movie delivers its message to us with empathy and stoicism. Its subjects—our stars in a cold, seemingly unforgiving space—shine bright. Their reactions to tumult are creating positive energy; power for the powerless. Stars indeed.

The statistics are appalling and scary: Black American mothers die around childbirth at an alarmingly high rate, at a disproportionately high rate compared to other women in the United States, and in a country which itself already has disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality around childbirth compared to other rich nations.

That’s a lot to take in. First, we spend time with Shamony. With Amber Rose. These two young women were ready to raise the future, and home video captures some intimate moments of their family and promise. What a joy life can be!

And then we lose them.

Why? Experts at medical schools, hospitals, and non-hospital birthing centers weigh in. A bit of old-fashioned interpersonal racism here, a bit of a healthcare complex that incentivizes faulty algorithms, quick turnaround, and drug-induced surgeries there. A big business which (rather like a fast food chain) advertises happiness while providing product that’s cheap, quick, and unhealthy.

So is it all sadness? No. We follow Omari and Kevin, who Shamony and Amber Rose left behind. They create art and spread the word, respectively. They help other people process and grieve and learn and be held accountable. Shamony’s mother, Shawnee—herself a healthcare professional—speaks in a manner so composed and powerful and insightful. Helena Grant, CNM and Dr. Neel Shah teach us about empathy and history and paths forward. Seeing these people is inspiring and makes me proud.

How lovely, to see people create power out of pain. And yet, the better thing would’ve been that this pain never happened. Death is natural, but negligence is preventable. To make sure none of this happens again, then, we need to first listen. And so Aftershock is for us a gift.

Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind

I remember most her eyes. Those big, almost perfect circles vacuuming it all in like her life depended on it. Sometimes they’d widen and it felt like she was pleading with me. But that one time, when they closed and she giggled . . . I felt, I saw pure joy.

This is no infant I speak of. This is one of the United States’ most celebrated and prolific writers, decades into life. This is Joyce Carol Oates.

Simply mesmerizing she is. How she talks, what she has to say. The moviemakers know it and so feature Joyce and just Joyce. We sit with her in her sanctuary, the writing room. The place where she spends ten hours a day.

Then the comfortable, soft silence is broken by a question. How did a household without books or high school diplomas produce you? Joyce answers, words flow and eyes dart. I swear you can hear her mind whirring.

Though she has written millions of words over the years, none of her story is stale. Each question for her becomes a terribly interesting response for us. Riots in Detroit. Beatings and murder at home. Misery, mystery, yearning.

The voice-over language captures it all so beautifully. Of course it does. These are the words of Joyce by way of one of her characters, from one of her novels. Whatever we just learned about her life, one of her creations has experienced something similar. This blending of history, fiction, and memory is as much a respectful homage as it is a powerful moviemaking technique. Thank goodness director Stig Björkman persisted for years asking to document his friend.

And so, watching Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind feels like getting away with something. Humble genius has sat down with us, so that we may know it. But such genius can only carry its shield of articulation for so long; at a certain point it melts under the weight of deepest emotion. And it is in these precious few moments of complete vulnerability that the true treasure of this movie is revealed.

Objects

Have you ever taken a shell from the beach?

Vincent wants to know. As writer, producer, cinematographer, and director of Objects, he’s trying to understand why some people cherish things and others don’t.

Like that famous journalist who fills his books with hunks of dead grass. Or that writer whose desk might as well be an archeological site. He finds keepers like these and asks them why they do what they do.

Their answers are vivid and touching, recounted with such conviction that it’s hard not to smile. By explaining to us—heck, just by their laying eyes on that ancient party favor or faucet handle—our subjects (re)live deep emotions of a lifetime.

Is this unhealthy attachment, or are the non-keepers out there the broken ones? The movie explores these ideas, too. Clips from popular downsizers and minimalists confront our keepers. But they don’t blink. Over time, their stories seem to present to us a picture of deep feelers—not hoarders or materialists.

It’s sweet stuff. And smart moviemaking maintains a nostalgic, whimsical vibe throughout. Flashbacks blend focus and dimensions because sharp here, fuzzy there is much like memory.

Objects will assuredly fade into nothingness someday, as all things do. How lucky I am for experiencing it first.

Boycott

Let’s pretend for a minute that Boycott isn’t for you. You’ve seen the trailer, read the reviews, and prefer not to watch.

It happens. And it’s usually not a problem. But now, let’s pretend that your decision to skip watching is against the law.

Sound ridiculous? You might be interested in Boycott after all. It’s about how anti-boycotting mechanisms are being written into law all across the United States.

And so this is the one where a Texan Muslim speech pathologist, a Scotch-Irish Arkansan redneck, and a Californian public servant walk into a courtroom. Though they seem to have little in common, they each value the freedom of speech. Rather than sign anything that included anti-Israeli-boycott language, they sued.

Hearing about these prohibitive laws is quite frankly shocking enough to keep our attention, but the moral rectitude of our three subjects is even more riveting. These are ordinary folk putting their livelihoods on the line.

We listen to their stories from the source while lawyers, think tank and advocacy group interviewees pepper in context. Apparently, boycotting has been around since the beginning of the country. So too religion and politics. And this is where the doc gets bogged down in bias.

Moviemaking techniques like fast editing and montages with ominous music set the tone that rights are being attacked. Hurting people (and thinkers who agree with them) are given the sole spotlight. Opponents receive minor screen time, and are either unprepared or not as thoughtful as the other interviewees. Even the pro-boycott experts—whose job it is to rely on reason rather than emotion to convince people—are exasperated when they try to summarize their opponents’ positions. The moviemakers of course made sure to justify this one-sidedness in the credits (by explaining that several people it had requested to interview declined to do so). None of these things alone is fatal, but put together in the manner that they were, they’re suspect.

An uneven hand does its cause no favors—even if that cause is just. By already having its mind made up on the issue, Boycott doesn’t allow its viewers to make up their own. It’s a head-scratchingly disappointing technique for a movie which otherwise heroizes people who think for themselves.

And yet all that said, Boycott is worth your watch. At worst the issues presented are real and compelling. And at best, these ideas (and lawsuits) might better the lives of people living all across the globe.

Users

I was at a loss even as the credits ended. Users was a movie so beautiful and sad; its parts so basic but its whole so unique. Only some time later did I realize: This movie made me grateful that movies exist. It was a learning experience unlike any I have had.

Looking at the story one way, it’s nothing special. Not a story at all, in fact. Just a narrator thinking out loud about the world technology is creating for her child. Thoughts we’ve all had before.

But Momma’s musings—her questions and concerns—are not about what the next generation of cell phone might look like. She is thinking about the very core of human interaction with this container we call Earth. And she is speaking to us.

See these cold, uninviting spaces? This is life now. These iced shoeboxes are the new womb. In this factory we grow plants without soil or sunlight. All our memories and communications? Instantly accessible, everywhere, but kept on quarter-inch-thick cable surrounded by millions of gallons of murky green water at the bottom of the ocean. Good luck restarting.

In pondering what life might look like, our narrator (the director) takes the time to show us what life does look like. And in doing so she spotlights how technology has already changed the course of humanity. For example, thinking about a baby being raised by a computer without its mother’s touch is scary, but so too is a scene where hundreds of TV screens glow in the faces of airline passengers. The perspective out the window—the perspective from the miracle of flight—has become so commonplace that we ignore it. Comparisons like these are powerful and plenty.

The scenes are simple, usually static, rarely showing more than one thing to focus on at a time, and yet the movie is an overwhelming sensory experience. A masterclass in direction, editing, camera- and sound-work, music.

Sure, a minutes-long rainstorm of recycled motherboard chips will have you feeling bad about the excess of our world. But the moviemakers pass no judgement here; rather than illustrating our “forgotten” connection with nature, they remind us that it is multi-faceted and ever-changing. We pass from the warm electricity of a baby at its mother’s teat to a computer assuring its child at play in the forest that it is safe. (Computers do not forget.) Each scene is beautiful; each ultimately reminding us that we are just animals trying our best in the universe.

From beginning to end, the imagery is crisp, incisive, and breathtakingly gorgeous. Tides of life and breath, water and memory, geometry and physics take turns washing over us.

I won’t tell you to watch this before you die. If there’s anything to take away from it, it’s that watching the world around you is what’s important. But if you’d like to do that from a new perspective—or if you need a reminder of how to do so, or whether it’s even worth it—then you’ll want to add this experience to your bucket list.

Paper & Glue

Art is a racket. Unnecessary and ostentatious. When’s the last time it fed the hungry, housed the unhoused—heck, even changed a mind?

It’s easy to think this way with the world burning. Maybe even intuitive. But Paper & Glue will make you think twice about that.

A young JR sure wouldn’t have guessed it, though. Growing up in a French ghetto, he found that art did nothing for anyone. Even after taking things into his own hands—tagging his name around Paris to tell the world that yes, he had a place in it—nothing.

And yet years later, we meet JR as a world-famous artist—one who has directed a movie that spotlights the practical, positive impact which art can have. And the story is simply incredible.

JR walks up to dangerous, forgotten areas (a favela in Rio or a maximum-security prison in the United States, for example), asks the social outcasts who live there if he can photograph them, and then pastes giant posters of their black-and-white photos all over the area. These are massive exhibitions, using whole or even multiple buildings. And seeing their effect can bring you to tears.

When a widow sings; when a Swastika-faced inmate reaches across racial gang lines; when a child who walks through machine gun violence every day says that a picture makes him happy, it’s hard to deny that art changes lives. And because JR documents his projects along the way, we watch realtime photo and video reactions to it all. Normal people who usually deal with more pressing concerns now look at their lives in a different way. They are changed profoundly by these experiences.

This, together with smart storytelling and JR’s charmingly unassuming demeanor, make for an entertaining and reassuring watch. Before you say art can do no good, come take a look at this. It just might be art in its highest form.

Max Richter's Sleep

Please take a moment. Try and remember how it was to be rocked to sleep. How it felt when your parent sang you a lullaby, or read you a story as you dozed off.

Did you feel safe? Comfortable? Or were you not really there, moving between worlds? Max Richter’s Sleep explores all of this and more.

And that’s impressive considering Sleep is just a song. Well, a song eight hours long, whose overnight performances transform event spaces into giant public bedrooms . . . But perhaps even more affecting is that the thinkers behind this experience—and the many attendees—were willing to do this kind of thing. A stubbornly long lullaby shared with strangers while you are at your most vulnerable? It flies in the face of an always-on, self-protective culture.

And yet it’s not a new idea, Max explains. Long songs and performances have been found throughout cultures and history. The difference here, though, is the focus: This meticulously planned event means to speak to your mind precisely as it moves in and out of consciousness. It sounds trippy, but it’s a largely comforting experience, and one that calls back to the simple (and powerful) act of letting go which humankind seems to forget as it ages.

Watching the performance and hearing the music is therefore refreshingly calming. So too is its origin story beautiful.

Interviews tell us that Max and his wife Yulia often went to bed with empty stomachs; the starving artists always fed their children first. But their desire to create and connect with a broad audience kept them firmly at the low-paying fringes of society. Even if Max performed somewhere afar, Yulia would tune in at the end of a long day—and inevitably fall asleep. A thoughtful and perceptive person herself, she found that listening while dozing was an experience unlike any other. And when Max responded to this observation with a secret composition years in the making, their lightbulbs burned in unison. We need to do something with this.

The two make an adorable couple, and their dedication and creativity are on full display in this movie. So, too, are the stories of certain spectators and performance planners. We learn a bit about what drew people to this unintuitive experience. It all makes for an interesting watch, and thanks to remarkably consistent camerawork and lighting, an experience you can safely doze off to.

This is typically not the highest praise for a movie. But here, it is. It’s a testament to the respect and understanding the moviemakers have for these creators, their hard work and goals.

So take a moment. Get comfy, turn those lights down and that volume up. You’ll be glad you did.

The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story

The thrill of this movie may be lost on Generation Z; its members can access endless, personalized entertainment at any time. But Millennial viewers who had even sporadic access to the Nickelodeon channel growing up will know: It is special to experience something just-for-kids in an overwhelmingly adult world.

This nostalgia is made for the in-crowd, but even so, The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story is an uplifting watch.

One reason is its people. So many of them, it seems, were genuinely passionate about creating entertainment that nodded to the inherent unfairness, loneliness, and helplessness of being a kid. Executives, creators, and performers alike sit down with us to describe just how moving that was—and still is—to them. Nobody around was doing what they tried to do.

And not only does it uplift, it excites. We hear tales of underdogs from different fields banding together to fight for yet other underdogs—and in short order, hear snippets of success.

The movie unleashes all this goodness in order. First comes the small-time, Ohio public access inspiration. Then, the slow, deliberate focus on figuring out what it really means to be a kid. Then, the journey; its twists, turns, and hit shows.

Even if you don’t care how Nickelodeon got its name, or why it picked an orange logo, or why so many of its early shows were successful, you’ll likely enjoy the positivity and resilience on display in this documentary.

Val

What to do, what to do?

How about pretend to be someone else? Get dressed up, be silly, and get paid for it?

Val Kilmer has had a rather successful career doing just that. But this Hollywood actor’s life hasn’t been about money, it’s been about the things he doesn’t have. So don’t let Hollywood fool you: This is a true story that’ll tug at your heartstrings again and again.

One of the first things we learn is that this guy has always enjoyed capturing video. Thanks to thousands of hours of his own archived footage, we can see how he has acted (on and off screen) throughout the years. This was excellent raw material for the editors Ting Poo, Leo Scott, and Tyler Pharo (the former two of which also directed), and they’ve used it well. The years changed, but the man didn’t: He appears sensitive, humorous, and misunderstood since the beginning.

You could argue that this story is a pretentious self-advertisement. But I think you’d be wrong. There are too many genuinely tender and vulnerable moments here to think that this is born of pure self-aggrandizement. The way the man looks adoringly at his two grown children; the way he jokes with people; the way he speaks about his mother is likely to start your waterworks more than once.

So what actually happens? Well, we watch home movies of kid Val and his brothers making movies themselves; of young-adult Val on stages and movie sets; of middle-aged Val at home with the kids; of current-day Val doing something creative, while voice-over Val explains what we’re witnessing. These stories are the building blocks, and can teach us the power of storytelling; of seizures; of cancer.

These blocks create what Val would call the big picture: an explanation for his desire to act, to find the truth behind illusion and the illusion within truth. Though it sounds fanciful, these concepts are brought down to earth—heck, they never even leave it—because of how genuine everything laid before us seems to be.

Even the ways Val talks to us throughout the story—through past movies, in voice-over and addressing us in realtime—are poignant, and introduced in poignant ways. This movie is the work of many creative minds—and at the very least, one more than I had previously thought.