Home :: DVD :: Musicals & Performing Arts :: Documentary  

Ballet & Dance
Biography
Broadway
Classical
Documentary

General
Instructional
Jazz
Musicals
Opera
World Music
Kurt & Courtney

Kurt & Courtney

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I did a high school report on it...
Review: ...and I got an A, so it's informative! Unfortunately, it's not real high in entertainment value. In fact, I kept falling asleep during it, because nothing much happened. Also, the entire DVD is not "new", just the "R" version. Origionally it was unrated. My guess is that the entirely pointless satan-worshipping-orgy segment was cut out. I'll explain: The CD "In Utero" was inspired by a cult in California. The director found it neccessary to include a video-taping of a..."meeting" of the cult in the video. A body is sacrificed and the cult bathes in its blood. (This was also the only reason why I couldn't show it to the whole school in the auditorium.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Interesting techniques and material
Review: This is by no means the best documentary I've seen, but is well worth watching for fans of Mr. Cobain. The credibility of many of the interviewees is highly suspect, but interesting and revealing kernels of information are available. Cobain's old "school master" with whom he lived sheds light on his much remarked on difficult childhood. The juxtoposition of Cobain's surgically-enhanced widow Courtney and his first love, Tracy Marander is amazing. It makes you wonder what might have been if he had stayed with Marander. And the interviews with Cobain's Aunt are extremely interesting--especially as they are intersperced with her recordings of the child Kurt singing bits of "Hey Jude" and what she calls "early Niravana." The last image of Cobain in a film footage provided by his Aunt is both lovely and haunting.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great gonzo documentary about burnouts and losers!
Review: Nick Broomfield is the best documentarian working today. Instead of adopting a ruse of objectivity, he jumps head first into the middle of the action, paying off interview subjects and arguing with his financial backers over the phone while the camera is rolling. While many people scoff at such "tabloid" antics, I find it refreshing, considering that most major news organizations do the same thing, but are too arrogant to admit it.

Broomfield's "Kurt and Courtney" attempts to answer the question "Who killed Kurt Cobain?" Broomfield more than implies that while Courtney Love may not have killed Cobain, she played a big part in "driving" Cobain to kill himself. Whether this is true or not, nobody will ever know.

But you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist (or even a fan of Cobain or Love) to enjoy this documentary. To answer his questions about the death of Cobain, Broomfield interviews every burnout and loser (as well as a few normal people, like Cobain's aunt, who comes off as so sweet and endearing, she appears to have walked in to the wrong movie) on the West Coast, resulting in some of the most side-splitting and horrifying interviews ever caught on film. Among the subjects: an ex-boyfriend of Love's who is extremely bitter over their relationship from more than a decade before (even though he claims he isn't); El Duce (the deceased former lead singer of "porn rock" legends the Mentors) whose bug-eyed, drunken antics should have been captured on film more often (preferably in his own sitcom on Fox); a couple of extraordinarly inept interview terrorists (known as "stalkerazzis") who appear to have even lower I.Q.'s than the average Howard Stern phony phone caller; and Love's Dad, who is even more bitter than the ex-boyfriend and has written not one, but TWO books denigrating his daughter.

"Kurt and Courtney" is a great movie, not only about the underbelly of society, but also of the documentary process.

Also highly recommended: Nick Broomfield's "Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam," which is just as sleazy, scary, and funny as "Kurt and Courtney."

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The visual equivalent of a an African famine
Review: When I think of this movie, "deprived" is the first word to come to my mind. Not that this movie started off, in its developmental stages, as terrible, but that it had its throat clamped off midway through production and ended up severely malnourished. You see, what started off as a possibly decent documentary exploring the possibility that Courtney Love may have murdered Kurt Cobain (an idea I do not entirely believe, but do not believe to be impossible, either) was hampered by of lack of funds, lack of time, an inept director, and most importantly, a poor relationship with Courtney herself, who owns the rights to all of Nirvana's music. Yet they still went ahead with it anyway.

The major problem seems to be that director Nick Broomfield expected everything to go exactly as he planned it. Well, in case you missed the last paragraph, it didn't. But he still stuck with his original plans. The most lingering example of this is that he wanted to use Kurt's music in the background for many of the scenes. Due to the subject matter, Courtney refused to grant Broomfield the rights to do this. So there's no actual Nirvana music in the movie. This wouldn't necessarily mean that the movie had to be horrible, but it isn't a good thing, either. Broomfield seems blissfully unaware of this (and just about everything else that went wrong) and repeatedly interjects comments about what song he WANTED to play during the present scene, but couldn't.

The single best example of Broomfield's ignorance to reality (not coincidentally my favorite scene) is when he tries to film in a place where cameras are prohibited. A receptionist promptly tells him that pictures are not allowed. Broomfield, never one to back down easily, responds with something to the effect of "You don't understand! We're filming a documentary about Kurt..." Then the screen cuts to his crew driving away, with his voiceover telling about how they wouldn't let him in.

In short, this film seems more like a parody (something like This Is Spinal Tap) than a real documentary. Its biggest drawback is that it is frequently punctuated with reminders of what might have been. Still, I do like Nick Broomfield's blissfully (Nirvana?) ignorant aloofness in the same way people like fabled "worst director of all-time" Ed Wood's movies. This is probably why I am giving this movie more stars than it deserves. The facts are questionable and the editing looks like it was done at your local high school, but it does have its own bizarre charm. So if you're looking for a good, well-researched documentary, look elsewhere, but if you're looking for mediocre cinema at its most mediocre, than consider this flick. I mean, the content is Ok... It should be worth a rental to most Nirvana fans and/or conspiracy theorists. But actually purchasing it...even for "good" bad cinema, that may be a stretch...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: contraversy sells
Review: If you got caught up in the conspiracy theories of JFK or even Bill & Hillary - then this would be your kind of documentary. The whole thing was a little short - just 85 minutes - so this is just a taste of the subject...it kinda leaves you hanging. But it's got it all sex, drugs, rock n roll, deception, wierd parents, Divine Brown's pimp, everything that makes it watchable. But you can't help but roll your eyes a few times with the acquisations being thrown around. It'll give you enough to blow off the theory or intrigue you enough to search out a chat room or discussion group.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Who killed Kurt Cobain?
Review: OK, this is like a big documental for all those Nirvana fans and grungies. This contains a lot of information and some interesting implications about Kurt's murderer. I think they have very reliable sources, and it keeps you interested, even though they included some unuseful takes and scenes (for example, the scenes in the car that have nothing directly to do with the investigation).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pretty Decent
Review: I thought that this movie was good on bashing Courtney Love. The director didn't really get a lot of information on Kurt Cobain but morely information on Courtney's life and how it could have influenced Kurt's death. Another thing the director did was interview Courtney's father, who thinks that his own daughter had something to do with his death. When I watched this movie for the first time, i loved it!! As I watch it more it becomes less interesting, like did this guy know what he was doing or what? All's I can say is see for yourself.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Grunge God and His Goddess
Review: This time Nick Broomfield focuses his cinematic magnifying glass on the untimely (and highly suspect) demise of late Grunge God Kurt Cobain and his talentless-yet-oddly-successful wife, Courtney Love. Especially maddening are the segs wherein Nick plays us the phone conversations from his attorney in which he is told that Courtney has bullied the financiers into pulling out of the film. Remember El Duce from The Mentors? Remember when he allegedly walked into an oncoming train right after allegedly telling Courtney Love that he wouldn't kill Kurt for her? Hmmm...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: If you love Courtney, Spare yourself and not watch
Review: Well, I love Nirvana and always loved Hole and, yes, Courtney Love. However, this documentary can make even a devoted Hole fan question Courtney's role in Kurt's death. I don't think she hired anyone and even the director himself said he didn't believe the conspiracy theories. Thus, the only motivation I can see is spite. He makes Courtney look like a manipulating gold digger and Kurt, an innocent bystander to his own life. She loved him and he knew what he was doing when he shot himself. Why try to pin her as a killer?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Riddiculous garbage
Review: Bringing murder allegations against a public figure (irespective of who they are)without checking your journalistic sources is a big no-no, yet Broomfield plainly and openly ignores common sense to deliver this big heaping pile.

Not once do the delusional "testimoies" actually make a coherent picture. Since they were all people who had mistreated and abused Love way before she became a Rock Star, one wonders what their motivation was for doing this (drugs, fame, money or some combination of all three)Of course people who did not like Love when she was not famous are going to use her misfortune to promote themselves.

The only possible reason why somebody should buy this video is the interviews (unintentionally of course) show that Kurt was right when he once praised his wife saying that she was strong and this threatned most men and some women. Another really remote posibility is to use it as an instructional video against tabloid journalism, other than that it is not worth watching.


<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates