Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 20 September

TT: Closer to the Edge (De Aragues, 2011) is streaming on DocPlay

Some of the stream­ing ser­vices avail­able to us here in Aotearoa (and Australia) are such good value that I effect­ively have to throttle their appear­ances in this news­let­ter, lest they swamp all the oth­er content.

DocPlay is one of these.

Just landed is TT: Closer to the Edge, a film that las­ted a very short time in loc­al cinemas but is seared on my memory – partly because it was a superb example of how 3D film­mak­ing could include you in a film. Implicate you even.

From my ori­gin­al Capital Times review when the film was released:

Biggest sur­prise of the week is the thrill­ing and dra­mat­ic TT3D: Closer to the Edge, a doc­u­ment­ary about the 2010 Isle of Man TT motor­cycle races focus­ing on affable mav­er­ick Guy Martin and his attempt to win a TT – which he believes is his des­tiny. The course is legendary for its danger but the riders are, to a man (and woman) philo­soph­ic­al about the risks – with some jus­ti­fic­a­tion as almost half of the riders fol­lowed by the doc­u­ment­ary will come a crop­per dur­ing the event.

I actu­ally found myself get­ting angry at how much TT3D was stress­ing me out. It is a genu­ine example of a white-knuckle exper­i­ence – tense and emo­tion­al. Even if you don’t have an interest in motor sport you’ll be moved by this film – and if you do, you’ll be blown away.

The DocPlay present­a­tion is not in 3D (obvi­ously) but, remem­ber­ing how effect­ive this film was in the cinema, I do won­der what we’ve lost by dis­card­ing the format so easily.

Also fea­tured in that September 2011 review are Florian Habicht’s fest­iv­al favour­ite Love Story, Brendan Gleason and Don Cheadle as odd-couple Galway cops in The Guard, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (pre-La La Land) steal­ing Crazy, Stupid, Love from Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, “art­house ver­sion of the Hangover” Cedar Rapids, and Paul Bettany as a vam­pire hunter in Priest 3D.