The Hottest August

This is a smart documentary. It assumes we know the issues of the big picture and presents the views of a broad cross section of people in August 2017 living in the greater NYC area. There are many surreal and grounded moments presented by Brett Story, his narrator and crew. It was so moving to watch, listen and soak it in.

The Hottest August was received with confusion and bewilderment at SXSW Film Festival. It is an incoherent film and the director should find another line of work. It was supposed to be about climate change, but it wasn't. Basically, the director walked around Brooklyn (mostly along the beach) during the month of August 2017 and asked ordinary people what they thought about the future. The various individuals (who are all unnamed until the credits) talked about their anxiety about economics, race, and occasionally about the climate. Some gave sophisticated intellectual answers, some gave vaguely racist answers, and some offered total incoherent nonsense. Some just talked about ordinary challenges that they were facing in their daily lives. The film could be called a slice of life, but mostly it is bad film-making. The interviews are directionless, and the film is poorly edited. While some of the individual interviewee are interesting and insightful, there is no argument tying together the different interviews or any apparent order to the order in which they were edited together. A film requires a narrative and this one doesn't have one. Frankly, I'm surprised that the SXSW staff accepted the film. I've seen hundreds of documentaries and this is among the worst that I've encountered.

So one summer in one North American city is Scientific proof of climate change??? DUMB!

I created my account just so I could express how boring this movie is. I could have done a similar work just by walking around downtown and ask random questions to strangers (such as "What do you think of the future?), filming and jumbling those answers together. Most people interviewed were ordinary people.

The movie could have been engaging and interesting if it followed 2 or 3 people with radically different values and lifestyles and went deeper in their thoughts and everyday life, instead of juxtaposing dozens of people and featuring them for 2 to 20 minutes each.

You may as well just lay in bed for 1h30 and think about the future or just scroll through your Facebook newsfeed and you'll get a similar result / sentiment as this film would give you.

I love documentaries. The artsier the better - beautiful shots, sound design, etc. This was, hands down, the WORST docu I've ever seen in my many decades of watching. Almost nothing about global climate change or the environment. There is less than 5 minutes where interviewees discuss Hurricane Sandy. No rhyme, no reason, and no flow. Superhero movies are better than this - now that says alot. Save your $.