Documentaries
Hot Coffee
As you can tell by the title, this film starts by examining the infamous “I spilled my coffee and sued McDonald’s for $2million” case. Except, it turns out, that lawsuit is a whole lot less funny than you think - and definitely not “frivolous”.
In total, Hot Coffee examines four lawsuits - all of them incredibly distressing, fair warning - in order to illustrate how the pro-business lobby in the US is “buying” justice. The result is a very well-made film that’s likely to make you very, very angry. Recommended.
Food Matters
By contrast, this is a much less well-made film. It feels extremely biased (and it’s not a little irritating that one of the main talking heads has a range of books he wants to sell). The over-reliance on stock footage makes the whole thing look amateurish, too.
That said, the film’s central point - that nutrition should form a much bigger part of medicine - is a very good one. The impact of high doses of vitamins administered to cancer patients is genuinely extraordinary - even if those cases are only part of the story.
I’m in the process of trying to transition from eating most of the right things to eating all of the right things, and this film definitely helped to inspire me.
12th and Delaware
Although less in-your-face shocking than the filmmakers’ last doc, Jesus Camp, this “tale of two crisis clinics” (one pro-life, one pro-choice) is nonetheless quietly impactful. It’s a beautifully-shot film, with a recurrent motif of half-obscured shots and figures peering through blinds. It brings home the idea of this single, unremarkable street in Florida being turned into a warzone, as well as evoking the film’s themes of furtiveness and subterfuge.
The most heart-breaking and memorable scene of the movie is an interview with a 7-months-pregnant teenage girl (one of the pro-life clinic’s “success stories”), who reveals she’s drunk vinegar in order to try and miscarry. No matter your feelings on abortion, it undeniably drives home a central point: you can’t force someone to want their baby.
As you can tell by the title, this film starts by examining the infamous “I spilled my coffee and sued McDonald’s for $2million” case. Except, it turns out, that lawsuit is a whole lot less funny than you think - and definitely not “frivolous”.
In total, Hot Coffee examines four lawsuits - all of them incredibly distressing, fair warning - in order to illustrate how the pro-business lobby in the US is “buying” justice. The result is a very well-made film that’s likely to make you very, very angry. Recommended.
Food Matters
By contrast, this is a much less well-made film. It feels extremely biased (and it’s not a little irritating that one of the main talking heads has a range of books he wants to sell). The over-reliance on stock footage makes the whole thing look amateurish, too.
That said, the film’s central point - that nutrition should form a much bigger part of medicine - is a very good one. The impact of high doses of vitamins administered to cancer patients is genuinely extraordinary - even if those cases are only part of the story.
I’m in the process of trying to transition from eating most of the right things to eating all of the right things, and this film definitely helped to inspire me.
12th and Delaware
Although less in-your-face shocking than the filmmakers’ last doc, Jesus Camp, this “tale of two crisis clinics” (one pro-life, one pro-choice) is nonetheless quietly impactful. It’s a beautifully-shot film, with a recurrent motif of half-obscured shots and figures peering through blinds. It brings home the idea of this single, unremarkable street in Florida being turned into a warzone, as well as evoking the film’s themes of furtiveness and subterfuge.
The most heart-breaking and memorable scene of the movie is an interview with a 7-months-pregnant teenage girl (one of the pro-life clinic’s “success stories”), who reveals she’s drunk vinegar in order to try and miscarry. No matter your feelings on abortion, it undeniably drives home a central point: you can’t force someone to want their baby.