Fraternal relationships can be complicated, and these two very different documentaries highlight the varying ways brothers can wreak havoc on each other (“Mistaken for Strangers”) or the outside world (the Koch Brothers retro-activism in “Citizen Koch”)…
Mistaken for Strangers…Indie rockers The National are supposedly a big deal, and the lead singer invites his…ummmm…”competency challenged” younger brother to go on tour with them. The brother decided to film a (very loose) documentary about the tour, but since he doesn’t actually care much for the band’s music, the footage soon just turns into a complicated portrayal of sibling rivalry. There are many scenes that are hilariously prickly, but the ending feels padded out (about the last 15 minutes is post-tour and follows the attempts just to finish the movie and screen the footage), and that’s a problem for a movie that is only 75 minutes long. Grade: B
Citizen Koch…This documentary starts off strong, and wants to show the hidden fingerprints of the Koch brothers all over the Tea Party movement, as well as their far-reaching tentacles into different avenues of American politics. But I do wish the filmmakers had stuck closer to that instead of getting a little too bogged down in inside-Wisconsin politics and goofy fascist governor Scott Walker’s shameless union busting, but it is good to know why that’s such a priority for Republicans in the post-Citizens United world. They barely bring up the toxic effect the Kochs have had in other states, and their murky racial agendas (their father was a founding member of the white-collar-racist-group The John Birch Society) that usually overlap with efforts to re-segregate Southern schools. The most interesting few minutes of the doc may be the exploration of the conflict of interest the conservative Supreme Court justices had when they ruled on Citizens United in the first place. Grade: B+