American Movie

Pros: Engaging personalities, enough passion to choke a horse
Cons: Are the filmmakers making fun of these people? Just a bit, methinks...

Mark Borchardt is a terrible filmmaker. He has no ear for dialogue, no idea how to tell a story, and can't frame a shot to save his life. When he gets in front of the camera, his acting is over-the-top, unreal, and uncomfortable to watch (not to...

Pros: Hysterical and charming, a remarkable portrait of a slice of Americana
Cons: Can get a bit depressing, especially with Uncle Bill

American Movie is a documentary about Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker from a small town in Wisconsin. Like many children, Mark grew up enamored with the movies, making Super-8 films with his buddies. Like a smaller segment of those kids,...

Pros: Always enjoyable, always profound
Cons: One plot thread is curiously left untied

You can imagine, as virgins do sex, what making a movie is like, but until you do it, you'll never really know. In film school, I directed a couple of shorts, nothing you've seen, but that's beside the point: American Movie reminded me why I hate making...

Pros: A warm-hearted, funny and touching look at one man's passion
Cons: - - -

You gotta hand it to Mark Borchardt. He has a dream. “The American Dream,” as it were, to make an American Movie (hence the title). A movie about his life…about every American’s life. About the ups and downs, trials and tribulations…but first,...

Pros: Great humor layered through, interesting documentary concept
Cons: Gets quite awkward

There aren't many films out there like American Movie, which I think can really rise about the perception that a documentary as viewed by the regular moviegoer that a documentary isn't anything exceptional. I talk about people likely to spend their money ...

Pros: Heartwarming Look at an American's Dream
Cons: Some Details Sketchy

Successful, rich people on the Charlie Rose show are always talking about how they achieved fame and fortune by "following their bliss." You don't want to know what Joe Paycheck would think about that. Suffice it to say that most people spend...

Pros: Insight into the vision of a "film maker" wannabe
Cons: Do we really need this insight?

I can think of plenty of other movies with American in the title that you should rent before you rent this, this, this...THING!

American Pie, An American Werewolf in London, even American Beauty all seem like better choices.

But,...

Pros: powerful, passionate, interesting story
Cons: none

What is the essence of true human passion? This is a question that film makers have been trying to answer for decades. Usually, the end result is a steamy passionate romance, or a desire and love between two people that is so strong, words are not...

Pros: Inspirational, Provides lots of laughs
Cons: Sad in some places

It started out with my parents renting a video camera for my fourteenth birthday. Every year after I held video slumber parties on my birthdays that turned out to be anything but slumber parties. With the camera in one hand and a script in the other, I...

Pros: Engaging portrayal of real people in real circumstances
Cons: Clunky title doesn't get to the heart of the matter

In thinking about this documentary, I invariably apply the wrong moniker of "American Dream," which I think would have been truer than the somewhat clunky "American Movie."

It's time to retire the musty notion of the...

Pros: Hilarious ode to a pathetic filmmaker wannabe
Cons: Viewers who equate documentaries with "boring" will miss out

Winner of the 1999 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, “American Movie” documents the efforts of a downwardly mobile yet eager beaver young filmmaker wannabe, Mark Borchardt. The film is a funny, touching ode to Borchardt’s vision of achieving the...

Pros: Funny, touching, amazing to watch...
Cons: We need more Mike!

That's what my friend Robyn said to me after watching this movie. She was sure it was some kind of a joke or hoax and she couldn't believe it when I assured her it was not.

Watching this movie was hilariously entertaining but also a breath of...

Pros: Tapping the passion to make movies
Cons: Overly long and, at times, painfully, embarrassingly awful

This is film-making the "American" way or, as Hillary Clinton would put it, it takes a village to make a movie. In this case, the village is Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where self-destructive film-maker Mark Borchardt fights his way...

Pros: So funny!
Cons: I'm not sure if they are really supposed to be funny.

Milwalkee, Wisconsin is where the magic of movie making begins,apparently. Mark Borchardt of Milwalkee wants to be a filmmaker, and American Movie is the documentary that details Mark's life, and the making of his first feature film.

Yes,...

Pros: great filmmaking; Mark Borchardt is a true character
Cons: bad language, adult situations

Four years ago, I wrote down the first sentence of my novel and have been working on it ever since-but there have been times when I just want to chuck it and give up because I feel like it's going nowhere. Something always saves me: A friend gives...