What if I told you Keanu Reeves not only is a notoriously good person in real life, but also kind of a deep thinker? He appears front and center in Side by Side, questioning filmmakers (among others) on the decision-making process regarding whether to record their movies using film or digital recording devices. This is something I’m acutely interested in, but instead of reading some dry prose by some boring-ass book nerd who spends all his time in a library, this documentary lets us hear directly why guys like Martin Scorsese and James Cameron decide to make movies the way they do.
There’s so much being written right now about the disappearance of film from the movie industry and the futuristic horror scenarios being presented by those opposed to the new normal that is digital cinema projection and filmmaking. But the opinions I’m most interested in are not those of stuffy film critics whose lives depend little on whether the movie they’re seeing has deep enough blacks or not. I would much rather hear the thoughts of those actually making the decisions, who are just as thoughtful about it, and learn what perspectives actually go into those decisions. And having Neo asking them all about it just makes it infinitely more enjoyable.
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