Has anyone seen this documentary??

It's getting fantastic reviews and it deserves it.

A truly mind-blowing piece of work.

Horrifying if you've got kids though.

Never heard of it. Whats it about?

I am looking forward to the DVD release as I'm sure it won't come to my city. I have read excellent things about it in EW.

http://www.capturingthefriedmans.com/main.html

I'm pretty sure this will be on the Sundance Channel soon....I can't wait to see it - there was a nice write-up in the last issue of Premier on it. The director was also on Fresh Air i believe a couple of weeks ago....check pbs.org and you can listen to the interview - fascinating stuff.

Excellent documentary. Riveting and shocking. The filmmakers really go in depth and have obtained great footage from the family and the people who were involved and affected in the case. I recommend it highly.

I recently had the chance to see this great documentary. Kinda in the same vein as the Jaundiced Eye. This is a very nuanced, complicated documentary. About half-way through I wasn't sure it would be able to reconcile the competeing thematic elements: familial, legal, etc. However, the film seamlessly resolved the themes and left the audience with MUCH to discuss.

I couldn't believe how the brother, David, was in such denial
all the way through the film.

I meant to write a proper review of this, but had to leave town for a wedding.

In one word: Excellent.

There's so many elements here that writers could dream of - a dysfunctional family, a crime with conflicting testimonies, actual videotape footage of events as they happen! And of course the questionable morality of all the victims.

The film points out to me some of the problems with the justice system in the US and specifically with plea bargains. Innocent people plead guilty because of the sometimes overwhelming advantage of the state. Guilty people plead to get a sentence less than what they deserve. Isn't that a lose-lose situation?

Anyway, I would highly recommend this film. My one question to someone who might know - is the Jarecki who directed this film related to the Jarecki who did The Trials of Henry Kissinger?


8/10.

They're brothers. The Chicago New City had a feature on Capturing the Friedmans when it came out and mentioned the relation (the Kissinger doc was playing somewhere else in the city).

As for the movie, damned good. As stated above, there's more drama and plot turns than any fiction feature could get away with. Screw the Matrix or Terminator, or whatever. Capturing the Friedmans is THE mindf--k movie of the year.

But what a goldmine Jarecki happened upon. All that footage.

Can someone explain in detail about the Friedmans and what they did? I watched the trailer and it didn't really say much... just a typical family and some crime/controversy. What was it?

Warning: even though it's based on a true-life case, there is material worthy of the SPOILER tag in the article below:

http://www.freejesse.net/S/Salon.htm

The Fresh Aire/NPR story also made mention that the director is planning to restore some if not all five and half hours (the rough cut of the film) of cut footage back into the film for it's DVD release. Gonna wait for the DVD.

Apparently, Jarecki was extremely wealthy before all of this.

He sold his AOL stock (or something big) for $380 million and decided to make films.

Capturing the Friedmans was the first one.