Capturing the Friedmans

Pros: Compelling, riveting, disturbing
Cons: Disturbing, though in a compelling and riveting way

How many times does a person have to tell a lie before, for them, it becomes the truth? 50? 100? 1000? The human psyche is a powerful thing, letting a lot of people make reality into what they want it to be, truth be damned. I supposed everyone does ...

Pros: Family footage, format of the documentary
Cons: No conclusions and very incomplete explanations of outcomes and motives

Reading the other reviews, I’m not really sure what I missed. I found the documentary neither riveting nor compelling in any real way. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. The director, Andrew Jarecki, does tell the story in a masterful ...

Pros: many
Cons: slightly biased but that's not the point

The function, and subsequently the construction, of the contemporary documentary has consistently tended to fulfill some sort of social-political agenda by presenting kinds of cautionary tales usually under banners of allegedly unflinching, unbiased ...

Pros: Powerful in its depiction of a family before, after, and during its greatest crisis.
Cons: Sometimes stagy, goes for big laughs at inappropriate times.

Andrew Jarecki wanted to make a documentary on New York's top kiddie party clowns. A pretty innocuo ...

Pros: Gripping from beginning to end.
Cons: Frustrating because not everything is wrapped up all nice & tidy.

If the Friedman's hadn't been obsessed with capturing their own lives on 8mm (and video tape and audio tape), this riveting documentary wouldn't exist.The film explores a once highly-sensational case (I remember seeing reports on shows like ...

Pros: Engrossing, shocking true story
Cons: May mean more to those familiar with the case/family

**** Spoiler Alert **** It’s probably best to save this review for after the film, folks, even though I don’t explicitly state any major spoilers, and the film and it’s real-life case are fairly old news, but you never know, so ...

Pros: A compelling and multi-faceted look at a family caught in a legal maelstrom
Cons: I suppose it's somewhat wanting as a look into the case itself.

Capturing The Friedmans is a shocker of a film for a day and age that prefers to perceive demons as demons and allow them no breathing room to be seen as anything else -- and pedophiles as worse. Arnold Friedman was certainly, provably, a pedophile. One ...

Pros: Compelling story with amazing footage
Cons: No one to root for

Capturing The Friedmans reminded me of Sidney Lumet’s classic courtroom drama, Twelve Angry Men. Both films present a third person account of a crime that has apparently taken place, in which the case against the accused initially seems insurmountable, ...