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Val (12): A fascinating video diary like no other.

#onemannsmovies review of "Val” (2021). A fascinating view of the life and career of actor Val Kilmer, from his extensive video archive. 4/5.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “Val” (2021). Another of my Australia-flight films, “Val” is not the sticky-back-plastic biopic of Valerie Singleton all Brits have longed for, but an intimate and thoughtful autobiography of the actor Val Kilmer. It’s available to stream (e.g. on Amazon Prime). Bob the Movie Man Rating(s): Plot Summary: Actor Val Kilmer trawls through his extensive archive of…

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Val - Documentary Poster

Streaming August 6, 2021 (Prime Video)

#val #val kilmer #Ting Poo #Leo Scott #celebs #documentary posters #documentaries #documentary

Powerful Trailer For Val Kilmer Documentary VAL

From when he first came to prominence in the 1980s, Val Kilmer has always been an actor who was difficult to pin down. From Real Genius and Top Secret! to Top Gun, The Doors and Batman Forever and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Kilmer has always made bold character choices and delivered note perfect performances across a variety of genres. Even a serious battle with throat cancer has stopped him…

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#A24 #amazon #batman #batman forever #cannes #documentary #jack kilmer #kiss kiss bang bang #leo scott #real genius #the doors #top gun #top gun: maverick #top secret!#trailer #val kilmer

Movie Reviews - Val / Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love and Rage

This week I got to review two docs that look back at pieces of 90s pop culture, i.e. my wheelhouse!

Val

In recent years there has been a proliferation of documentaries in which the subject was actually documenting themselves. This has a lot to do with the advent of the home video camcorder (hi-8 or VHS) in the 80s and 90s. In recent years I’ve noticed the documentaries on L7, Shannon Hoon and Soleil Moon Frye’s recent Kid 90 have all been subjects who were documenting themselves with their camcorder and now decades later their story was able to be told with that footage. Actor Val Kilmer was among the first people he knew to have a camcorder in the early 80s just as he was becoming a notable actor on stage and then film. His story is now being told with all of his footage he has kept over the years in Val, being released in theaters this week from A24 and on Amazon Prime Video on August. 6.

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I first became aware of Kilmer from his 80s comedies like Top Secret and Real Genius. I was actually surprised he made the transition to drama and never made comedies like those again considering what great comic timing he had. But after playing Ice Man in Top Gun, he was going for leading man drama and action roles. I actually had his action figure from Willow when I was a kid too. His portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film The Doors is one of the great music biopic performances of all time. If ever there was a performance that should have been Oscar nominated and wasn’t, this was it. The fact that years later you saw actors winning Oscars for playing the likes of Ray Charles and Freddie Mercury but Kilmer wasn’t even nominated for his lived-in performance is astounding to me. Kilmer also played Elvis in a small scene-stealing role in True Romance too. As he became a bigger star in the 90s, the stories about Kilmer were legendary: he was difficult to work with, he caused Joel Schumacher to push him on Batman Forever, yada yada yada. At a certain point, he started doing more smaller indies and supporting roles. But there’s no denying the strong performances he has delivered.

Val Kilmer in Top Secret

The documentary begins with Val’s grown son Jack narrating Val’s words. As we see Val modern-day he speaks with a voice box and his dialogue is entirely subtitled, after a procedure for throat cancer. This is Val’s chance to tell his story. He has lead a very sad life after enduring a tragic loss as a teen, something he never quite got over. He also gets into his complicated relationship with his parents, who divorced when he was a kid. He addresses the rumors about him being difficult to work with, but for him he sees it as being a perfectionist and not being a hostile collaborator. He also gets into his marriage to ex-wife Joanne Whalley, who is the mother of his children Mercedes and Jack. In recent years, he has gone to conventions and done meet-and-greet screening events even with his health issues.

Kilmer today

Kilmer aspired to work with genius filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick (we see his audition tape for Full Metal Jacket) and finally got to work with his acting hero Marlon Brando on the doomed production of The Island of Dr. Moreau. The most poignant moment in this (and there are many) is when Kilmer talks about meeting fans today and how he is signing autographs of Batman, Top Gun, and Tombstone posters and how he is selling the person he used to be, even thought he looks and sounds nothing like him anymore. At the age of 61 he’s already looking back and not forward. This does present a fascinating deep dive into the complicated man himself. Much like the aforementioned docs about L7, Shannon Hoon and Soleil Moon Frye, this also stands as a time capsule of the time Kilmer was documenting. Worth watching!

For info: https://www.amazon.com/VAL-Val-Kilmer/dp/B09888KKZK

4 out of 5 stars

Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage

About five years after the massive success of the Woodstock ’94 concert in Upstate, NY, in early 1999 they announced Woodstock ’99, a big concert festival taking place in Upstate NY to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the historic Woodstock concert, which was three days of peace and music. The 1969 concert was a cultural touchstone for Baby Boomers, and to a lesser degree the 1994 concert was a milestone for Gen-Xers. So in the name of commerce, the promoters decided to see if lightning would strike thrice. I was a music geek in college in 1999 and frequently attended concerts. I had already gone to multiple Lollapalooza’s and radio station festivals, so I was intrigued when I heard about Woodstock ’99. At first I was into it, but in the months leading up to the concert when bands like Aerosmith (who played ’94) and Foo Fighters pulled out of ’99, I bailed. Throughout the weekend of Woodstock ’99 there was reports of violence at the festival. I remember watching MTV News’s coverage and in the weeks that followed they had a roundtable discussion with Kurt Loder, Carson Daly, Serena Altschul and Chris Connelly trying to understand what happened and how it could have been handled differently. Now decades later, there is a new doc Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage that is premiering on HBO Max today, that attempts to unpack the events of that weekend.

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Director Garret Price deep dived a moving portrait of actor Anton Yelchin with the 2019 doc Love, Antosha (read my review here), and now he brought that same passion for archival footage of Yelchin to Woodstock ’99. On the weekend of July 22-25, 1999, the Woodstock ’99 festival took place in Rome, NY at Griffiss Air Force Base, a former air force base that closed a few years earlier. The doc does not hold back the irony of having a peace-loving rock festival at an air force base. The base itself had little in the way or trees or shade, which created issues for the 400,000 fans who attended and didn’t have a place to cool off like the ’69 and ’94 locations did. The fact that water bottles were $4 only added to the extreme conditions. There were not enough resources to keep up with the porta-potties either. There were also several rapes reported and several more assaults that went unreported. By the end of the festival there were some deaths and then there were fires, looting and riots. Was it the toxic masculinity of the mostly white male audience that caused this sexist environment? Was it the extreme heat and lack of hydration? Was it the under-prepared security crew? Was it the aggressive music from performers like Insane Clown Posse, Korn, Kid Rock, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, and Megadeth? This doc looks into all sides.

the audience of Woodstock ‘99

What’s interesting is that there are some interviews with Woodstock ’99 performers like Moby, Jewel and Creed’s Scott Stapp, but there’s actually more interviews with concert attendees and journalists. Its as if this documentary wasn’t so much framed as a music doc as it was a true crime doc, in which its looking at all sides of a crime scene. It would have been interesting if it had looked at some of the diversity of the performers a little more. For example, it wasn’t all rap-metal as people remembers, artists like George Clinton, James Brown (yes, THE James Brown), Los Lobos, The Chemical Brothers, Rusted Root, Our Lady Peace, and Elvis Costello also performed at the event as well. They get into that a little, but Moby talks about how he felt out of place with the show and wouldn’t have played had he known it was going to go down the way it did. Of all the artists I saw on the TV broadcast, Rage Against the Machine was the highlight of the festival IMHO.

the Woodstock ‘99 live album cover

This doc did a good job of putting this festival into the historical context. It was an age before everyone had cell phones, but it was also a time period shortly after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, just before Y2K and Millennium anxiety ensuing, and violent films like The Matrix and Fight Club. It was also an interesting time in music, where MTV was giving equal time to both rap-metal and teen pop. The one part I felt was shoe-horned in was addressing Metallica’s war on Napster, which happened the following year. Unless they just wanted to show that Metallica was out of touch with the young audience, I don’t see what that had to do with Woodstock ’99. But in the end, it’s fascinating to look at this event from the perspective of 2021 and how different the culture has changed since then. This is the kind of doc I wish I could see at a festival with an audience and hear the post-screening Q&A discussions. I guess I’ll have to settle for twitter instead!

For info on Woodstock ’99: https://www.hbo.com/music-box/woodstock-99-peace-love-and-rage

4 out of 5 stars