Matthew Brady's Movie Review of Side by Side (2012)

Enjoyable Documentary
Matthew Brady - wrote on 06/04/15

"Cinema is like going to church for some people".

Side by Side is a documentary about film - specifically explores the history and implementation of digital and photochemical film creation.

Side By Side is a documentary focusing on the evolution of film and it shows all different film directors, cinematographers and writers and they share their own thoughts on the film and if it's getting better or worse. There's loads of big name directors in this documentary that tell you all about the art of film and the different type of camera work they used and how it made they film much better.

What really got my interested in this documentary is well, it's about movies and I love movies so I thought I would check it out to see what it's like and I picked a good one here, because in this documentary you get to see how there make the movies and how movies should be made according to these film makers. The whole thing is pretty much a opinion base and they give some interesting and quite unique answers that makes you look at some movies in a different way.

I was interested from start to finish. I was never bored while watching it and I never know that Keanu Reeves was a good interviewer, I mean he's such a cool guy and at times when he met these director's he had that happy child face on him, full of joy and was interest on what they were going to say.

Now for problems: During the documentary James Cameron talked about 3D and CGI and he pretty much talk about how it was part of a art form and how it worked in he's film, but after he said all that the documentary cut to 2 or 3 directors who said that it's the worse thing to happen to movies, and how it becomes the highlight of the movie and not the story or character's, I found it a bit funny how Jame Cameron really went on for what seems to be like a speech about 3D and CG and how it's a groundbreaking master class, and then it get's shit on by other directors and it's really funny. I think I would call that bad timing.

I wouldn't really call this re-watchable. It's a one watch kind of documentary that I probably won't see again any time soon.

If you haven't seen Side By Side then I say check it out. It's got some interesting facts and hearing the directors talk about what's wrong with movies today and how they did it better is spot on enjoyable.