This Is Spinal Tap

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Rob Reiner
Screenplay:  Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner
Starring:  Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, June Chadwick, Tony Hendra, Bruno Kirby
Running Time:  82 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

Filmmaker Marty Di Bergi (Reiner) makes a documentary (or, if you will, "Rockumentary") following English heavy metal band Spinal Tap on their 1982 concert tour of the United States to promote their latest album "Smell the Glove".  Comprising childhood friends David St. Hubbins (Mckean) and Nigel Tufnell (Guest) on vocals and guitar, bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer), keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and Mick Shrimpton (R. J. Parnell) the latest in a long line of ill-fated drummers, alongside manager Ian Faith (Hendra), the band find their tour beset by disasters on stage, cancelled tours, complaints about their album cover art and internal strife, which is intensified when David's New Age devotee girlfriend Jeanine (Chadwick) joins them.

This Is Spinal Tap must be one of the funniest films ever made, full of memorable lines ("This one goes up to eleven!"; "It's a very thin line between stupid and clever") and hilarious set pieces.  It works because it really looks and sounds like a documentary, with the mumbled, criss-crossing dialogue and handheld camera.  It's not the first "mockumentary" but it is one of the best examples.  although the band is fictional, the music is very well done, and they do sound like a genuine band of the time, in fact outside the actors have played as Spinal Tap and released some albums, and since the film's release, several rock stars have claimed that it really is not far from reality.  The film is cleverly made and well cast with several fun cameos, it's also consistently hilarious and definitely repays  repeated vieweings.

Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean in This Is Spinal Tap

 

Zelig

Year of Release:  1983
Director:  Woody Allen
Screenplay:  Woody Allen
Starring:  Woody Allen, Mia Farrow
Running Time:  72 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, mockumentary

The film is structured as a documentary, exploring the phenomenon of Leonard Zelig (Allen), a nondescript individual who develops an ability to take on the personality and even the physical traits of people around him.  As the "Human Chameleon" Zelig unwittingly becomes one of the biggest sensations of the 1920s and 30s. 

This is one of the most innovative films Allen has made.  The film has the appearance and style of the newsreels of the 1920s and 30s, interspersed with interviews from contemporary intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow.  Similar to Forrest Gump (1994), at various points throughout the film the actors are edited into contemporary photographs and footage from the 1920s and 30s enabling Zelig to appear with everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald, to Charlie Chaplin, to Adolf Hitler.  The effects are quite astonishing, looking extremely convincing throughout, and the documentary format works well.  The film is pretty funny throughout, and there is a lot of fun to be had with the novelty songs about Zelig at the height of his popularity.  Leonard Zelig really just wants to be accepted and loved, but the cost of that is he drowns his own personality and identity to take on those of the people around him, and the film does have a point to make about the dangers of being too eager to be part of the crowd that you lose who you are.  One of the problems with the film is that so much of it seems to take second place to the technical aspects.  Mia Farrow never really gets to make much of an impression as the kindly psychiatrist who helps Zelig, neither really does Allen as Zelig, who of course is supposed to be kind of a blank slate.  It is one of Allen's most impressive films, if not one of his best.

Mia Farrow and Woody Allen in Zelig 

The Last Exorcism

Year: 2010
Director: Daniel Stamm
Screenplay: Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland
Starring: Patrick Fabian, Iris Bahr, Louis Herthum, Ashley Bell
Running Time: 99 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural, mockumentary

Summary: In present day Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Reverend Cotton Marcus (Fabian) is an evangelical preacher who is beginning to lose his faith. He has also performed a number of exorcisms, despite not believing in demonic possession or in any benefits of exorcism itself. Deciding to quit, Marcus invites a documentary film crew, consisting of producer/director Iris Reisen (Bahr) and cameraman Daniel Moskowitz (Adam Grimes), to record his last exorcism in order to expose exorcism as a fraud. He responds to a letter from a devout farmer, Louis Sweetzer (Herthum) who believes that his sixteen year old daughter Nell (Bell) is possessed. Travelling to the remote Sweetzer farm, Marcus performs his usual fake ritual, complete with special effects. However, it soon becomes apparent that this is not the end of the matter as Nell's condition worsens and Marcus comes to believe that they may be dealing with real dark forces.

Opinions: This movie is shot in a kind of "mockumentary" style similar to films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), Cloverfield (2007) and Paranormal Activity (2009), with a shaky hand-held camera. This method tens to be pretty contorverisal with some poeple likeing the technique and some people finding it alomost unwatchable. Personally I think if it is done well it can really add to the veracity of the movie. The problem is that it is a technique that has been overused so much in recent years. It works quite well here but the ever-present music score really detracts from the impact of the documentary technique. The film has a slow build-up which makes the horror all the more effective when it does arrive. The largely unknown cast do well in their roles, but the real standout is Ashley Bell as the tormented teen, going from sweet farm girl to contorting, dead-eyed killer (incidentally Ashley Bell is double-jointed and did all the contortion scenes herself without any special effects). The main problem with the movie is that it lacks originality and provides very little that horror fans won't have seen before. The worst part of the movie was the end, and the final twist just really did not work. There is enough good stuff here to make it worth watching but there's not much worth going out of your way for.




Ashley Bell in The Last Exorcism