Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

The documentary style effectively grounds this one as a realistic crime story, but the horror elements continually surprise, sewing elements of supernatural doubt. 

Wim Wenders' Yasujiro Ozu documentary is a contemplative journey to Tokyo in search of people, places, and situations connected to the Japanese director.

Roddy Bogawa's 2004 documentary I Was Born, But is named after Yasujiro Ozu's 1934 silent film and mirrors that film in specifics of identity formation, particularly how class, culture, and nation inform who we are. The film is parts quiet meditation on Japanese American identity, including thoughts on Pearl Harbor, and the formative influence of the punk rock scene. Through additional reflection on his childhood in California and Hawaii and its impact, Bogawa creates an entrancing narrative that feels very different from Ozu but still tells a similar story on how art and identity shapes us.

A journey through the history of film, narrative, and genre through connections between Lynch's filmography and Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) . Sometimes academic and historical (Amy Nicholson, Karyn Kusama, and many of the six chapters) and other times humorous and self-referential (John Waters), the documentary has something for film fans, Lynch obsessives, and everyone in between.

Film Twenty Two: Vernon, Florida (1981). Errol Morris's quirky documentary captures the daily lives of citizens in a Florida town. Focusing on their stories, dreams, and philosophies, he creates a compelling portrait of small-town life and the larger-than-life, passionate characters that can inhabit out of the way places. Brief moments in the film with the turkey hunters, the police officer, or the man who collects various animals attests to the power of story telling and how human interaction can teach us a lot about how others see the world.

Film Eighteen: The Reagan Show (2017). A documentary that utilizes newsreel and video footage to cover Ronald Reagan's presidency. Since the former actor was one of the first presidents to regularly allow cameras in the White House, directors Pacho Velez and Sierra Pettengill had plenty of footage to choose from. The enjoyable documentary provides a somewhat balanced presentation of Reagan's media image that will please both his fans and detractors; however, a few gaffes show cracks in his media friendly facade. The tight focus on his interactions with Mikhail Gorbachev, while apt, leave this viewer wanting more and asking many questions about some of Reagan's other unsavory and beneficial policies.

An early Dave Markey Super-8, warts and all, documentary, capturing the '81-'82 Southern California hardcore scene. While not as well known as Decline of Western Civilization or Suburbia , it features live performances from the Circle Jerks, T.S.O.L, Fear, and Circle One among others. While the film does not have a real plot, Sin 34, a lesser known, but equally righteous band, appears in tour footage. While not as interesting as later Markey films like 1991: The Year Punk Broke, The Slog Movie is an interesting document of the period for punks who've seen them all and others just becoming interested in the genre.