Fast Film Reviews

My Octopus Teacher, Summer of Soul, and now Navalny. On March 12, the submission officially joined fellow recent Oscar winners when it received the award for Best Documentary. The win wasn’t a huge surprise. It was slightly favored to win over the other nominees. The feature had already won the top award at the Producers Guild and the BAFTAs. The picture is a political portrait centered around Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his crusade against an authoritarian regime. Given the current affairs surrounding Ukraine, its relevance as an exposé of Russian politics makes it a particularly timely selection.

The film recounts the events related to Navalny’s poisoning and the subsequent investigation. On August 20, 2020, he got sick during a flight to Moscow. The activist was hospitalized in serious condition. He was taken to a hospital in Russia after an emergency landing and put in a coma. Two days later, under accusations he wasn’t receiving treatment with his best interest in mind, he was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany. It was later confirmed he had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Navalny blamed president Vladimir Putin for his poisoning, while the Kremlin repeatedly denied involvement.

The high point is a jaw-dropping “gotcha” moment. Navalny, along with investigative journalist Christo Grozev and Maria Pevchikh, the head investigator for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, are all on the phone. They’ve identified a list of potential Kremlin agents likely responsible for his sickness. Adopting the persona of one of Putin’s accomplices, Navalny demands to know why the assassination failed. To everyone’s shock, the voice on the line attempts to provide an answer. While the rest of the documentary is adequate, nothing else comes close to this development.

Navalny ultimately got better in Germany. He flew back to Russia, where government officials greeted him at the airport and detained him for violating parole conditions. In February 2022, Navalny was charged with fraud and sentenced to a nine-year term at a maximum-security penal colony. Amnesty International has described the trials as a politically motivated sham. His fate remains uncertain. Meanwhile, this account remains a testament to his life and work.

03-01-23

Katia and Maurice are a married couple who share a passion. They’re volcanologists from France. As you probably can deduce, that’s a scientist that studies volcanoes. The Kraffts are geologists that focus on their incendiary formation and explosive activity. They travel the world looking for the next eruption. The beauty of this documentary is twofold. (1) It profiles two idiosyncratic individuals who together risk their lives doing something they love. (2) It highlights some of the most awe-inspiring footage of active volcanoes I have ever seen. This is where the program excels.

Images and music artfully combine in this hypnotic record. Assembling the Kraffts’ archival material, director Sara Dosa (The Last Season) presents breathtaking closeups of fiery mountains and rivers of fire. This is a loving tribute to the pair who truly cherish each other and I’d speculate volcanoes even more. Given its somewhat cheesy title, you fully expect to hear Jody Reynolds’ 1958 rockabilly hit (later covered by The Gun Club) pop up somewhere. That tune never appears, but the soundtrack does include an original score by Nicolas Godin, half of the French duo Air. The group’s songs “Clouds Up” and “Casanova 70” also appear.

“Curiosity is stronger than fear.” Filmmaker / performance artist Miranda July provides the narration. Her words prepare us for the inevitable. The work of Katia and Maurice started in the late 1960s and abruptly ended in 1991. A pyroclastic flow on Japan’s Mount Unzen wiped them out, along with 41 others. Yet it’s apparent in every frame that they were fully aware of the danger in which they willingly placed themselves. Maurice mentions a desire to row a titanium canoe down a river of lava. He wasn’t kidding. Maurice never did that, but he and Katia do things that defy death many times over. At one point, they enter an active volcano site and walk on black lava. The magma oozes from the underground depths of the earth and hardens, but it still emits fire from the cracks. Anyone witnessing their startingly closeup video of blazing eruptions as their backdrop will be amazed. “How in the world did they shoot this?” is a question I asked myself repeatedly throughout the 94-minute runtime. I could’ve watched a feature twice in length. As such, the rewatchability quotient is exceptionally high.

Fire of Love is currently streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. The movie received a limited release (191 U.S. theaters) by National Geographic Films in July 2022. It will compete for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12.

01-29-23

The Val of the title is actor Val Kilmer. You know his films: Top Gun (1986), Willow (1988), Tombstone (1993), True Romance (1993), Heat (1995), The Saint (1997) are just a few. The star appeared in some of the biggest Hollywood movies during the late 80s and on through the 1990s. He perhaps achieved the apex of celebrity when he played Batman in Batman Forever in 1995. He may have never received an Oscar nomination, but many thought his role as Jim Morrison in The Doors was worthy of one.

Val is a documentary assembled from 40 years of 16mm home movies of his life shot by the entertainer himself and saved over a lifetime. This includes thousands of hours of footage, everything from time spent with his family to the on-set experiences on his many productions. This is the first-person narrative of a celebrated performer as told through his cinematography. Filmmakers Ting Poo and Leo Scott are producers, directors, and editors of the feature. What they’ve done is the impossible. They’ve scrutinized over four decades of material and put together an insider’s view of what it’s like to be him. The task had to have been daunting, but the filmmakers are successful in distilling a coherent and interesting movie from that footage.

The best moments are little vignettes that shine a light on his interactions with other people. Throughout his life, Val Kilmer has always been known as intensely dedicated to his craft. However, his reputation for being a moody and demanding personality often preceded his renown as a gifted thespian. Some labeled him difficult. In 1996, Kilmer appeared in a remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau with his idol Marlon Brando. It was a notoriously troubled production. Kilmer’s strained relationship with director John Frankenheimer is captured. This is painful to watch but oh so transfixing. At one point, he refuses to act or take direction. Instead, he turns his camera on the director and videotapes him while voicing his disapproval. I wish there were more candid episodes like this. The acrimony is a rare exception.

Val is a largely sympatric portrait. It is a most heartbreaking coda that Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. Following radiation and chemotherapy treatments, along with a tracheostomy, he is now cancer-free. However, he has great difficulty speaking. The movie uses captions when he talks. His son Jack is his voice as the narrator for much of the documentary. His participation is deeply poetic. In a more recent development, Kilmer travels to Texas for a public appearance at a screening of Tombstone. He is warmly greeted by a large gathering of enthusiastic and idolizing fans. Addressing the viewer directly, he admits “I don’t look great and I’m selling basically my old self, my old career.” Yet the image of the actor today in front of an adoring crowd is so poignant. It’s scenes like this that make Val such a fascinating watch.

08-09-21