47. Perestroika (Sarah Turner, 2010)
In 1987, Turner took the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Irkutsk with a guide, Thomas, who tragically died in a cycling accident six years later. In 2009, she re-enacted this journey, channelling her grief into an experimental video essay on time, memory and loss. Under the persona of "Sarah Turner", a filmmaker who has suffered retrograde amnesia, she documents these re-tread steps, as though following footprints in the snow, by filming her view from the train window. It's bleak, beautiful...and just the teeniest bit pretentious. The view is a never-ending wallpaper of white fields and rusting industrial parks, landscapes that feel begrudgingly explored, reluctantly revealed. Smoke rises from rivers, snow falls forever and distant houselights spark into life as though stars born into the night sky. And yet, Turner practically ignores all of this to offer a running commentary, in a stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness, given the woozy word soup brought on by a migraine), that proves the film's only misstep. Mixing footage from both journeys, Turner (both of them?) has created a curiously compelling study of catharsis.
46. The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005)
A man walks into a talent agent's office. He describes his act, a sketch that involves him and his family in the sickest, most offensive assault to decency ever conceived. Incest, necrophilia, bestiality...you name it. After hearing such filth in its entirety, the agent breathlessly asks, "And what do you call the act?" The man replies with the punchline: "The Aristocrats!" It's a joke that has, until now, been neatly tucked in comedy's back pocket. Everyone knows it; indeed, making the joke your own has become every aspiring comic's rite of passage. Over a hundred comedians take the above template to either develop or deconstruct the joke, as well as question the nature of taboo. Often improvised, and with only the punchline remaining constant, each retelling veers off into all manner of grotesque, hyperbolic obscenity. The fact that the joke may not necessarily improve with repetition is irrelevant; it's more of a competition to see who can stoop the lowest. And as for Martin Mull's contribution, well, you'll never see Mr. Kraft in the same way again...
45. Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
Documenting Dylans 1965 tour of the United Kingdom, we see the fledgling folk troubadour develop his musical style and public persona, both of which strike the wrong chord with the press and public. As fans and music historians know, these three weeks across the pond saw something of a turning point; his subsequent flirtation with the electric guitar made this his last acoustic tour. As divisive as this decision may have been, its the man behind the music that grates the most. An endless supply of music journalists provide Dylan with a verbal punching bag, his interview responses ranging from the mystifying to malicious. At one point he tells a Time magazine reporter, I know more about what you do just by looking at you than you'll ever be able to know about me, which deflates the poor fellow entirely. Anyone who gravitates towards Dylan is pushed away. Joan Baez, his girlfriend at the time, floats in and out of the film like a ghost. Aside from some beautiful scenes of her and Dylan singing in a hotel room, her presence is overlooked. Donovan, too, seems entranced with this emergent superstar, yet their meeting only serves to feed the latters publicity. What rescues the film (or, more crucially, its subject) from its own ego is, unquestionably, the music itself. Opening with the iconic music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues (an apposite number for the jet-lagged singer), we follow him through taxis, limos, hotel corridors and backstage gigs as though giddy competition winners, but if the distance ever grows between Dylan and us, remember that it was he who lost us.
44. Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994)
Robert Crumb is the underground cartoonist who, since the Sixties, has turned jazz, sex and satire into his trademark. While some consider him a pioneer, others are less than complimentary; women are typically portrayed as disproportionate Amazons, and his take on ethnic stereotypes can no longer be shrugged off as a sign of the times. Yet, he insists his drawings simply reflect the hypocrisy of the modern age. Whether or not you agree, there can be no denying that the "controversial recluse" angle has definite documentary potential. It's to Zwigoff's credit that his film neither excuses nor exploits his subject. Crumb tackles taboos by putting pen to paper, yet the almost-obligatory delve into his upbringing reveals this to be a deeply therapeutic process. As he admits, I'd be in jail or a mental institution by now if I didn't draw that stuff ''. While he has emerged relatively intact, one wonders if he isn't the only one; his sisters refuse to be interviewed, and the glimpses we get of his brothers Maxon and Charles paint an altogether bleaker picture.