Category: Oscar Nominee

This documentary follows the experiences of an extended Chicago family after one of their teenage members is shot and killed. The cameras follow four women for the next five years of their lives as the victim’s grandmother (who raised the teenager) is given a home through the kindness of a stranger, his cousin (the narrator of the documentary) graduates high school, her mother struggles with getting off welfare, and his mother recovers from her addiction to cocaine. While their stories are touching, the format doesn’t seem to do them justice in aggregate. The narrative jumps between the various stories and timelines with little focus. There isn’t an overlying theme to what is being presented and could simply have been a feature news story since the plot becomes ‘here is what happened to these people’. There is a somewhat throw away line at the end where the narrator states she will be raising children with her husband ‘the way it’s supposed to be done’ which comes across as a slap in the face to the strong women who came before her and raised her despite their own struggles.

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features

I’ve already established most war films aren’t generally my thing and war propaganda documentaries, even directed by the great John Huston, do it even less. What I found most educational about Report from the Aleutians was learning the importance of the islands in the Pacific campaign, but what was most interesting was seeing the daily lives of the men assigned to that remote outpost. Though later proved to not be a filming of the actual battle as it happened, San Pietro was the result of Huston being paired with a regiment as they fought in the Battle of San Pietro. It still remains unflinching in its portrayal of the experiences of the servicemen who were there and the sacrifices of war. 

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features (Report from the Aleutians)