I should begin this review by saying that I'm not a huge Muppets fan. I've seen the original movie and at least one of the other ones, but I saw them when I was so young that I don't have much memory of them. However, my dad played the soundtrack to The Muppet Movie a lot so I am very familiar with the songs that reappeared on this film.

My final verdict on this film is that it's lots of fun but it isn't much else. It was cool seeing actors from current sitcoms and some of the songs were fun, but overall the film is somewhat forgettable.

One thing this movie made me ponder: Is it possible to make another great Muppet movie? Without Jim Henson and some other key players, Muppet movies can only rely on nostalgia and celebrity cameos.

There is something entirely enchanting about watching a film with no narrative, just a bunch of different shots edited together. There's no way to explain or review it, it's more of a journey or personal experience. I was never bored throughout, the length was perfect. Simply put, The Man with a Movie Camera is like nothing I've ever seen, and will likely never see again.

What I find most fascinating about this film is that the titular man with the movie camera has his lens pointed at a time that seems so distant and foreign from our own, yet is less than 85 since past. It's easy to look at a classical or renaissance painting and know that the subject and artist were part of time long since past. It seems to be a rarity to have such an experience with a film, seeing as how the medium has only been used as means of artistic expression for just over a century.

There is something entirely enchanting about watching a film with no narrative, just a bunch of different shots edited together. There's no way to explain or review it, it's more of a journey or personal experience. I was never bored throughout, the length was perfect. Simply put, The Man with a Movie Camera is like nothing I've ever seen, and will likely never see again.

The editing in this 85 year old Russian gem is astonishing even for today's ultra fast paced world.

Koyannisqatsi's great grandfather.

Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov and his brother took three years to shoot this often-dizzying portrait of "A day in the life of a city"... actually three cities, Moscow, Kiev and Odessa. Many experimental and avant-garde techniques are used; Vertov wished to break down the linearity of film viewing.

This movie is notable for those techniques, but also as a fascinating time capsule, a record of everyday life in that particular time in that particular place - as that, it may be the most valuable.

There have been many soundtracks for this movie - I believe the version I saw had the Michael Nyman score (I may be amending this review later), which was, at time, very Glassian, and cemented Man With a Movie Camera as the direct forebear of Godfrey Reggio's "Qatsi" movies.

Influential and essential.

I have to admit that this film was sort of difficult to watch, because it had no plot, no characters, and no clear setting. The film basically goes like this: there is this cinematographer with a camera slung over his back, capturing all of the life around him in the most unique cinematic ways. I mostly watched this film to learn camera tricks, and cool angling and such, and for that sole purpose, it was an excellent film.

The greatest documentary on the subject of cinema ever made.

An artistic potential
Of a technological society
Of the human body
Of a new medium
And of an ideology.

(Slightly cheating by saying I am re-watching this, because I suddenly realized while viewing that I had seen the first hour a half-dozen times, but never the 2nd hour. This meant I missed all the athletic activity stuff, which recalls all the classical Muybridge tests, as well as the fantastic stuff in the cigarette factory and the mines. Also the stop motion sequence where the camera moves itself. Needless to say, a film that anyone who is interested in how cinema operates/functions in a society should be able to enjoy, as Vertov explores how society itself can be an artistic creation within itself. I prefer it to every other work of 1920s Soviet Cinema).

Revisiting Vertov after meantime watching Fahrenheit 451, Tree of Life, City of Sylvia, or just about any other film made after 1930, you start to understand that the visual language of film was pretty much in the bag for this guy; and that any advances of the last 80 years are just minor technical improvements most likely discovered through accident or coincidence.