Don’t Stop Believin’:
Everyman’s Journey
Journey was in need of a new lead singer when the members
happened to click over to YouTube videos of Arnel Pineda, a forty-year-old Filipino
man, performing perfect replicas of their songs. Ramona S. Diaz’s
Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey
is a glossy, up-tempo showbiz documentary that follows the band’s most recent
tour from the focal point of their newest member. Arnel’s journey (pun sort of
intended) is a transcontinental Horatio Alger tale that took him from
impoverished childhood to homeless adolescence to a struggling (professionally
and musically) young adulthood. Then, out of the blue, came an offer from his
favorite band to fly to the U.S. to audition for the lead role in a proposed
new tour. Needless to say, the band accepts him with open arms, faithfully
helping him integrate into the group. For his part, he’s happy to help them
perform any way they want it (since that’s, after all, the way the fans need
it).
Though Arnel is a charming subject and Journey’s music is definitely
listenable, the film is overlong. Concert tour docs need not make us feel the
tedium and repetition of a band on the road quite so literally. But at least
the story told is a good one and the musicians and technicians we follow are
charismatic, largely likable, presences. The film’s approach is standard,
showing the band arriving at venue after venue, followed by a performance or
two and then on to the next stop. In amongst the set-ups and songs are quickly
told backstories of both Journey and Arnel, juxtaposing their timelines quite
nicely. The story the film tells is interesting and the music is booming and
sometimes that’s enough. Diaz carries the whole thing along with a solid,
professional shine that helps the documentary’s best qualities filter up
through the repetition and clutter.
Journey to Planet X
Journey to Planet X
follows a pair of intrepid D.I.Y. filmmakers, scientists and sci-fi fans who
make mini epics on their weekends. They've converted a storage space into a
blue screen room, bought a nice new camera, had a buddy draw up some
storyboards, and put a casting call on Craigslist. They're ready to go. The
documentary from Myles Kane and Josh Koury (of
We Are Wizards, a
Harry Potter
fandom doc) is a wonderfully heartfelt tribute to the creative impulse in this
pair's filmmaking passions and an earnest appreciation of the cheap-o results which
are about as unpolished as you'd expect but, like
The Room and
Birdemic,
shows heart and confidence in the face of severe creative limitations.
Much like Michel Gondry's underrated
Be
Kind, Rewind, this is a film that celebrates the art form by pointing a
lens at its most modest outsiders and, with determined amateurs and a sense of
community, scrambling all traditional expectations of "good" and
"bad" in cinematic expression.
The Revisionaries
The Revisionaries
is a documentary about a volatile subject that's so fair and evenhanded that
it's ultimately all the more thought provoking. Observing the Texas school
board’s deliberations over new curriculum standards, Scott Thurman’s cameras
catch Christian fundamentalists using semantic dances and head-on attacks to
get "godless secularism" out of their schoolbooks, while befuddled
experts look on, arguing logic that falls on deaf ears. Focusing on public
figures on both sides of the debate, the film allows the people to talk,
explaining themselves, their beliefs, and their ideologies. It’s a film about
thought processes, working towards some kind of comprehension as to why the
parties involved in this conflict appear to be talking past each other. In the
end, it’s a little bit easier to understand why, as one person interviewed in
the film states, ignorance and arrogance are a dangerous mix.
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