Pick of the Litter

First Hit: It was an fantastic and interesting way to learn about how guide dogs are taught to be amazing caretakers for the blind.

I’d seen many “guide dog in training” vests on dogs in San Rafael, CA. By seeing this film I learned something about the families that help raise these dogs before they go into their rigorous formal guide dog training. This film takes us all the way through their final testing and assignment to their blind owner.

The film opens with a set of five Labrador Retriever puppies being born to a black lab mother. Two of the puppies are beige in color the other three are black. We follow the dogs as they get farmed out to families who will care for them and record their behavior, before the remaining dogs are given intensive guide dog training.

Each dog in the same litter is named with the same starting letter, and in this film, it is “P”. Patriot, Primrose, Potomac, Poppet, and Phil. We see these cute baby puppies meet their puppy raisers, who in turn, teach them manners, foundational training, and expose them to the world. There are certain criteria the dogs must adhere to if they are to receive final guide dog training. Guide Dogs for the Blind monitors the puppy's progress and keep a detailed spreadsheet of their behaviors, strengths and weaknesses for being a guide dog. If a dog doesn’t meet the required standards, like being too rambunctious and inquisitive and cannot stop exploring the world around them, then they get re-assigned. They will either go to a good home, or be bread to birth more possible puppies.

When the puppies are given to the puppy raisers, the audience gets a chance to learn something about these families. Funny side story, I was recently in Seattle for a writers conference and I saw a cute puppy with the green guide dog in training harness. I told the owner, that I’d seen this great film, and she circled her face with her finger and smiled and, although she'd colored her hair, I realized that she was one of the women puppy raisers in the film. She was there training a new puppy to be mindful in a large conference, with lots of noise and to be quiet in seminar rooms.

After the puppy training, the dogs meeting the criteria will go through intense guide dog training. This will include knowing when to obey or not-obey a command given by their owner. They learn how to keep their chosen person safe while navigating the world around them. How to walk on sidewalks, streets without sidewalks, stop at a corners, know then the light is green, how to avoid a moving car in the street or in a parking lot, how to stop their owner from moving forward into danger, and mostly how to be their owner’s eyes in navigating the world.

There is a final test and it is rigorous and only the Pick of the Litter prevail to become guide dogs.

Dana Nachman and Don Hardy Jr. wrote and directed this amazing and revealing film.

Overall: Having seen the process, when I see a guide dog, my point of view and reference is far more complete and filled with awe.

Dark Money

First Hit: A fantastic view of how the Supreme Court’s Citizens United VS F.E.C. decision changed the course of politics to; whomever has the most money behind them wins.

This film uses the State of Montana’s experience with corporations taking control of the government to make its point.

In the early 1900’s Montana was the epicenter for copper production in the United States. Anaconda Copper company started excavating the beginning of the worlds largest open mine pit which also turned into one of worst environmental calamities in the world. As this pit grew, money was made, and the interests of the company started butting up against the people of Montana who wanted to be safe from the poisoned mine pit. To keep control large sums of money was used to bribe government officials to look past the destruction of the communities affected by the mines. Soon, Montana’s government was controlled by mining companies.

The citizens revolted and wrote the strongest legislation possible against this sort of government control by corporations and their money. Other states followed because citizens everywhere were getting the short end of the stick through corporation abuse of legislation that supported their profits.

This film follows John S. Adams investigative reporting through modern day events in Montana where the Koch brothers and others like them are attempting to control local and state government agendas by having candidates who meet their criteria, sign up for their campaign programs, and vote the way the financiers want. All these events are the result on the Supreme Court decision to allow, for profit, not for profit, and other groups and corporations to donate money and resources to political elections.

To me the irony of this is that the “Citizens United” name sort of implies individual citizens, it doesn’t it is about wealthy groups of individuals and companies to control government for their monetary gains.

My favorite part of the film was watching State Senator Art Wittich R-Bozeman stand on the Montana Senate floor threatening other senators who want to create a law to restrict corporate campaign donations by saying “the worm will turn.” What happens is that he gets convicted for illegal contributions. I couldn't help but think the worm did turn.

Kimberly Reed and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg wrote a powerful story and Reed’s direction was fantastic by bringing the past and present together to show why we’ve not learned well enough from our past mistakes.

Overall: This was a powerful film about how corruption by money is killing a true democracy.

Three Identical Strangers

First Hit: A truly amazing story about how sciences curiosity didn't take into account the effects on human beings.

This film starts out in a very lighthearted fun filled way. The audience, including myself, were out-loud laughing as Bobby Shafran heads to college and despite this being the first time he was on campus, everyone says hi to him and calls him “Eddy.”

As a shy young man this is both overwhelming and shocking but when his roommate figures out that Bobby is a different person from Eddy, they call Eddy on the phone.

When Bobby and Eddy meet and discover they were born as twins, were separated at birth, and adopted by separate families. This becomes a hot news story and gets published in all the newspapers. Then David Kellerman sees this story, meets up with Bobby and Eddy and they now realize that they were triplets, separated at birth, and given up for adoption.

The film goes on to show all the television programs they were on and all the articles that were written about the triplet boys, who at age 19, found each other together, again. At this point in the film I sensed that everyone, me included, thought this was going to be a completely happy film.

However, as one can expect, after we are fully entertained by how the young men discover their lost years together, their respective parents have questions about the adoption agency and if they knew that they had separated triplets and why they didn’t tell the respective parents.

As the film moves along the audience learns that David, Eddie and Bobby learn that they were part of an experiment by Dr. Peter B. Neubauer. He was attempting to determine the answer to an age-old question, Nature or Nurture? What determines human development. In the quest of this goal he designed an experiment to find unwed mothers that are expecting twins or more, that want to give the children up, and have them adopted through an adoption agency. Then he sent teams of individuals out to interview, test, and write up a synopsis of the development of each child.

At no time, did they publish the results of the study, nor did they tell the families, nor did they tell the children. The data, is still unpublished today and the angst in the families and the two remaining boys is prevalent.

Director Tim Wardle did a fantastic job of putting an engaging and interesting story together.

Overall: This real-life story was amazing to learn about and watch.

Whitney

First Hit: Although the film is strong, I didn’t learn much about Whitney and learned a fair amount about her enabling family and supporters whom she financially supported.

One doesn’t need to be a Whitney Huston fan to acknowledge her amazing voice. It is also true that not everyone who has an amazing talent also has the ability and presence to manage their life in a productive mindful way. This film shows this.

The film states that her mother (Cissy) pushed her hard, as a young girl, to learn to use her voice. Music ran throughout her family and extended family with relatives Dionne Warwick and her sister Dee Dee Warwick. At family gatherings the interviewees discussed having singalongs instead of conversations.

Religion was also a backdrop in their lives as both Cissy and Whitney sang in the church choir.

The film shares some Whitney’s early singing as well as her adult singing and when it shows one of her last concerts, where her bloated body tried to belt out “I Will Always Love You” with her tired drug addled cigarette hampered raspy voice, the sadness of her life and her lack of preparedness, for life itself, was astoundingly sad.

As the story is told, Whitney’s parents were gone a lot and that meant they, Whitney and her siblings, were not raised in an environment that allowed them to grow mindful of the workings of the world. When her brother Gary bragged about how he and Whitney could out drug use Bobby Brown, he was stating it with pride – really, he felt good about this. That both Gary and Whitney indicated they were abused by a woman at very young ages only tells part of why they were ill prepared to deal with the complexity of wealth and fame.

What the film lacked was depth and maybe this was because Whitney lacked depth. The film stated, she liked to party, she liked to sleep, she liked sex, and she liked that she was fawned over. Maybe that was the point, Whitney had a talent that she didn’t have to work at and then rode this talent into the depths of insolvency. Her lack of practiced effort to be in-charge of her talent and life was born out by how the film showed that her amazing rendition of the Star Spangle Banner at the Super Bowl was the first time she ever sang it. What made this notable was that her arranger had the music switched from 3/4 time to 4/4 time to take advantage of her voice. Although an amazing rendition and feat to sing it for first time in this way, it also showed that she didn’t work at her gift and relied on it to make her money to support her lifestyle which was loaded with hangers on who ended up bankrupting her.

Proof of this such greed by her team was when her father sued her for $100 million dollars for his part in securing a record deal. Everybody ignored her rampant and public drug use. Her father even told her she didn’t have to go into a treatment center.

Her real only friend, Robyn Crawford, with whom she had an intimate relationship with, was canned because her overbearing and measly talented husband Bobby Brown was jealous and gave Whitney an ultimatum.

What the film didn’t show, and it could have been true, that Whitney was capable of anything much more than singing. Proved out by the people she kept around to do things for her and she even farmed off parenting of her daughter Bobby Kristina.

We all know the end. It was very sad and an end to the life of a major powerful singing talent. However, as this film unfolded, seeing her life as was filmed it could have only ended this way.

All told, the film was well done. Great intersperses of Whitney singing brought some joy and reflective pauses to a film about self-destruction. The interviews were to the point and allowed for and showed the interviewees emotive pauses. When Bobby Brown was asked about drug use, he stated that this film wasn’t supposed to explore this and had nothing to do with Whitney’s life. Bobby’s objective stupidity and his harm on Whitney and their now dead daughter, reign as proof.

Kevin McDonald did a great job of splicing together interesting material about this incredibly voiced person. But who was Whitney? I’m still left with that question.

Overall: I liked the film and the opportunity to hear Whitney’s talent, but who was she?

RBG

First Hit: Excellent film about a woman who lives within her strength and defined and changed U.S. law.

When I learn something in a documentary that has me still thinking about it days later, gratitude to the filmmakers is in order. To Julie Cohen and Betsy West, I bow to you for bringing RBG to light.

"The Notorious RBG", as Ruth Bader Ginsberg is sometimes called in social media is a small frail looking quiet woman who has done more for women’s equal rights in this country than almost anyone else.

She ranks up there with Susan B. Anthony, yet when you type in “Women’s rights leaders” in Google search her name doesn’t come up. The reason, she’s the person behind the curtain doing her great work quietly.

The film takes you on a journey of Ginsberg’s life. The audience learns a bit about her upbringing, her mother dying when she was only 14, how she was as a mother by the interviews with he son and daughter, and her first and only love Martin who was a law student as well.

You see how different she was from Martin who was gregarious, funny and extremely supportive of Ruth’s life and love of the law.

Ruth became a Law Professor at Rutgers School of Law. Then she became part of the ACLU by co-founding the Women’s Rights Project.

In this role, Ginsberg argued six gender discrimination cases in the U.S. Supreme Court winning five of them. It was here that her voice became the law voice for the women’s equal rights movement.

The film covers most of these cases and the narration and interviews with congressmen, her family, and others (including Gloria Steinem)  share just how clear and strong her voice was for the equal rights of women. The film also covers her nomination to become a Supreme Court Justice and just how dedicated she is to the law, by her work ethic, often working through the night, to write the court’s majority or dissenting opinions.

Cohen and West did a sparkling and magnificent job of teaching me about one of the most important judges to ever sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Overall: This film is a must for every law student and politician.