Side By Side
201299 minutes
Not Rated
by Scott Mendelson
There is something both fascinating and depressing about seeing a film-related documentary specifically dealing with events that I vividly remember. Obviously as I get older this phenomena will become more and more common, but it's a relatively new experience for me. Films like Waking Sleeping Beauty and now Side By Side evoke a complicated nostalgia in this particular critic. This new film, directed by Christopher Kenneally and produced by Keanu Reeves (who conducts the onscreen interviews), examines the current cinematic debate between the advancement in digital video and the fight to keep old school film alive in the current marketplace. But while there are plenty of potent arguments for both options, and the film never really takes a side per-se, it operates less as a feature-length debate and more as a 90-minute history of the rather swift (around ten years as it relates to this feature) advancements in digital film making. And watching the picture was a revelation, both because it's so damn good and because I remember pretty much every single moment referred to as if it were yesterday.
