| Brian De Palma. |
Brian De Palma was a controversial director that takes important and/or fun topics and heighten to a whole other level with combinations of violence, sex, drugs and music. This documentary only has De Palma himself talking about his movies and topics surrounding the behind-the-scenes of his beloved films and his not-so-beloved films. It is a movie for cinephiles to watch and behold and make you want to revisit some of his classics and maybe look at a few scenes from his bad movies because some of the filmmaking is spectacular. If you are a fan of the director, you'll love this. If not, you'll still be interested and will be grown to appreciate him and his work.
From the time he saw Alfred Hitchock's masterpiece, Vertigo, when he was 18, it set the stage for his entire life. Directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow interview him without any of his actors, directors and filmmakers backing him up to tell other stories. It is just him and his anecdotes are fascinating to listen. It is like a TED talk that you want to be a part of because his wry and honest personality is based on how he feels if he made the right or wrong decision towards a scene in a movie and whether if it is a bad movie overall.
He wrote some alternative material regarding some scenes of his beloved films that thankfully did not get on-screen and also he reviles and gossips a bit of Cliff Robertson's material and personality and makeup preferences that it seemed that he did not get along with him during the shoot. We may never know because it's between them. But, that reveals how personal he can get to engage us into that conversation.
After the movie was over, I wanted to revisit some of his movies such as The Untouchables, Scarface, Carrie, Mission Impossible and the opening sequence of Snake Eyes. But, unfortunately his later films have not much the successful fruition that he wanted audiences to take away from. This documentary treats him as an insightful ingenue of cinema that will get you to study why De Palma did what he wanted to do mixed with humor and revolt. It's a fascinating portrait of a filmmaker that is both classical and controversial in his own right.
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