The 2011 Milwaukee Film Festival is now on it's 5th day, and there are still a significant number of great movies yet to see. Today, I will highlight two of my film picks for Monday, September 26. Both films are documentaries, and I guess you can call them my Yin and Yang picks.
My Yin pick is the documentary "The Flaw," which takes a closer look at the financial meltdown in 2008. This flick is kind of downer (excuse the pun), but insightful. Instead of political talking points, sound bites and the 'point & blame' game that was going on in the media during the height of the financial meltdown of 2008, the film really tries to explain what really happened through interviews with economists, and clever animations.
In October 2008, a humbled Alan Greenspan admitted to the US Congress that he had been mistaken to put so much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and that he had failed to anticipate the self-destructive nature of wanton mortgage lending and the housing and credit bubble it generated. Taking for its title Greenspan's description that he'd found a flaw in his model of how the world worked, THE FLAW attempts to explain the underlying causes of the crisis in more depth than any documentary to date...
The film is directed by David Sington and will be screened tonight (9/26/11) at the Downer Theater a 7:45pm. Check out the trailer below.
On the yang side, my pick is a much happier flim (litterally). The documentary is simply called "Happy." "Happy" is a documentary that take a look at exactly what truly is happiness and what does it mean to be happy. The director, Roko Belic, takes a journey around the globe to see what make us as humans truly happy. The film combine real life interviews with everday people with scientists' physiological explanation of human contentment through 'happiness research.'
HAPPY combines cutting-edge science from the new field of “positive psychology” with real-life stories of people from around the world whose lives illustrate these findings. We see the story of a beautiful woman named Melissa Moody, a mother of three who had a “perfect life” until the day she was run over by a truck. Disabled for nine years and disfigured for life, amazingly she is happier now than before her accident. Manoj Singh, a rickshaw puller from the slums of Kolkata, India who lives in a hut made of plastic bags with his family, is found to be as happy as the average American. Through these and other stories HAPPY leads us toward a deeper understanding of how we can all live more fulfilling, healthy and happy lives.
The film will screened tonight at North Shore Theater tonight at 9:45pm, then on Thursday, September 29 at The Oriental at 7:30pm and finally at Ridge Cinema on Sunday, October 2 at Ridge Cinema. Check out the trailer below for the film "Happy."
