SIFF 2015 - the short post

[tiggymalvern]

Well, it turned out I only went to see one more film. I had planned to go and see a Pakistani road trip film on Thursday, but the day was so beautiful I spent it out in the sun instead. Saturday I missed a film I really wanted to see because I had to work :-(

Racing Extinction is a documentary on the rate at which species are currently going extinct, and the different ways in which human activity can cause it. It focuses on a number of different species to illustrate its points, andn particular on the attmpts to the get the manta ray listed on CITES Appendix II.

The main problem with this documentary is that it tries to cover too much. Illegal fishing, climate change, ocean acidification - each one of these would fill a documentary on its own, and in spreading itself too thinly, everything remains rather superficial. There's no real depth to the coverage of most issues, there was no information here that I didn't already know, and I felt it could have done more if it had tried to do less. It finally made an impact towards the end with a focus on one specific action that really showed how people reacted to being informed. 7/10

Comments

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I have indeed seen it - posted a review at the time. One of the many reasons I didn't like the film was because I was pretty much on the side of the bad guy - he was totally right, and had come up with a good scheme to save the world/save humanity/save everything, and he got turned into fireworks. When you've got no reason for the good guys to win it makes it hard to root for them...

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I think Sam Jackson's methodology was flawed. There are better ways for a megalomaniac to deal with the problem - I mean, think of all the rotting corpses lying around, there just aren't enough vultures in the world to cope.

For a cleaner take, try the British Channel 4 TV series Utopia. Very violent, very good, and features a bunch of geeks.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2384811/