Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

grover-9 Just saw the TV premier of this modestly-distributed movie and was delighted. Has anyone else noticed that the parrots really did more for Mark Bittner than he did for them? They changed his life in so many ways, and all for the better. There are many lessons to be learned from the movie, which is one of the few that left me both cheering and crying when it ended. I wish only the best for all, both human and avian, involved in its making.P. S. Those who previously submitted reviews to this site and saw the movie as an attempt to make Bittner appear a victim in any way certainly missed the point.

Danusha_Goska Save Send Delete The buzz about "Wild Parrots" is that it is a heartwarming portrait of a gentle man's bittersweet love affair with beautiful parrots.Well, okay, if that's the movie you saw, great.The "Wild Parrots" I saw was disappointing.The least I expect from any filmmaker is honesty. If you use your camera to ferret out truths that most of us miss, and present those truths articulately and in an interesting way to others, you work deserves a showing, no matter its topic. I love birds and haven't much interest in sports and would rather watch an insightful sports documentary than a movie about birds that plays it safe and fudges its story."Wild Parrots" follows forty something San Franciscan Mark Bittner's relationship with a flock of feral parrots that live on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Bittner spends much of his time hand feeding the birds and observing their behavior. Bittner, who is of sound mind and body but declines to work, lives rent-free in a cottage owned by people who apparently do work.The documentary's drama comes when the cottage owners decide that they must renovate the cottage. Given how extensively it needs to be renovated, they ask Bittner to leave.Bittner is shown weeping on camera. He gives away Mingus, a parrot he had living in the cottage with him. He says goodbye to Conner, a lone member of a species that is different from the rest of the flock. Conner had never been able to find a mate (a hard thing for a parrot, as they are very social) and Bittner had performed some mate-like functions for Conner, for example grooming him.Mingus is sent to live in a facility for abandoned parrots, and lonely Conner, after appearing to mourn Bittner's departure, dies tragically.The movie wants us to believe that Bittner is being victimized by the couple who asked him to leave their cottage, where he had lived for years without paying any rent. The movie wants us to believe that Mingus and Conner's sad fate is all the fault of the evil landlords.Oh, baloney.Bittner makes it clear that he has long refused to work for a living, preferring what he calls a more "spiritual" and "pure" lifestyle. Jesus was a carpenter . . . but that kind of labor is not good enough for Mark Bittner.Bittner could have gotten a job, enabled himself to pay rent, moved to a new apartment, and taken Mingus with him. After Bittner was evicted, he was taken in by friends in the East Bay. He was a short public transportation ride away from the parrot flock. He could have easily continued to visit the wild parrots; Conner did not have to mourn him.I've lived in the Bay Area. I met many who didn't work, and who didn't pay rent. These folks often announced themselves as above such pedestrian concerns as, oh, paying money for the food they ate, or contributing to society through labor. These folks often sponged off of their parents and friends. They often disappointed their loved ones and children. Like Bittner, they always had quotes from Zen scriptures at the ready to make themselves sound deep.Maybe there is a good reason why Bittner could not work, or live up to his commitments even to a flock of birds. The film never explores that question, though. It accepts, without any curiosity, Bittner's self description as a man too spiritual to work. The filmmaker became lovers with Bittner. Even so, women have been able, in the past, to explore the truths, both the benign truths and the hard truths, of their lovers' lives. That's what art is for, even art about parrots.The film doesn't even look very hard at the parrots it captures in its frame. There are very difficult to watch scenes of parrots attacking an injured flock member. No theory is offered as to why this happens.Any film featuring footage of parrots, other birds, and the sun on San Francisco Bay can't be all bad; "Wild Parrots" is beautiful. I just wish "Wild Parrots" had had a little bit more courage, a tad more curiosity, and some honesty. If the film had been more probing, and more honest, about both Bittner and the parrots, I'm sure I would have liked him, the birds, and the film much more.

Ed Uyeshima At first, I wasn't terribly keen about seeing this documentary about a flock of wild South American parrots even though it takes place in my city, San Francisco. The trailer, which I saw in the movie theater earlier this year and is included as an extra in the DVD, made it seem like one of those quirky stories about a lonely eccentric who takes care of birds. However, now that I have seen it, I can say it is a genuinely beguiling, even uplifting film that will surprise you with its charm and poignancy. Over the course of 83 minutes, local documentary filmmaker Judy Irving accurately conveys the heart and soul of Mark Bittner, a middle-aged, pony-tailed hippie who found his calling over a decade ago in taking care of over forty of these colorful birds from his ramshackle cottage on Telegraph Hill.Bittner's story is familiar – having dreams of becoming a rock musician, he moved to San Francisco in the 1970's but could never find a job to suit his free spirit. He is not the stereotypical homeless slacker, at least as portrayed by Hollywood, but an eloquent, obviously sensitive man who doesn't easily share his feelings with others except with the parrots he has come to know and name. What Irving has done particularly well is not portray Bittner as a selfless savior of these birds but as a realist who respects the freedom the wild birds need and tend to them when they are ill or injured. In fact, according to a city official interviewed in the film, environmentalists want them removed, even destroyed, as they are not a native species.Bittner, on the other hand, knows how the birds have adapted naturally to the cold climate of Northern California and continue to thrive in such an anomalous, urban landscape. The film does not shy away from the tragedy inevitable with wildlife, namely predators like hawks who hover above the city and perhaps more destructively, the ignorance of humans. Bittner himself speaks candidly about the trap of anthropomorphism, i.e., attributing human characteristics to the parrots, especially given the all-too-human penchant to project feelings onto animals. This becomes challenging to the viewer as well since what stays in the memory are the beautiful close-ups of the parrots and their obviously loving interactions with him. The birds - among them, Mingus, Pushkin, Tupelo, Picasso, Sophie - have individual stories that indeed humanize them to some degree, and the most interesting is the plight of Connor, the only blue-crown parrot among the cherry-crowns and consequently the resident outsider.What makes him and the film so noteworthy, however, is the fact that contrived sentimentality is averted in favor of a more journalistic approach to this highly personal story. The chief example of this is when the film documents a challenging development - the property owners have to evict Bittner from the cottage as part of a major renovation. Instead of being portrayed as villains, the obviously well-to-do owners are shown to be good, realistic people who have allowed Bittner to stay on the property for three years without rent. Irving also provides a lot of nice contextual touches with shots of Bittner in North Beach, the dramatic visual and audio contrast between the parrots and the soaring Blue Angels, and interviews with people who share "urban legends" about the origin of the parrots. I particularly like the establishing shot of the film when a particularly cynical inquisitor questions Bittner about how wild the parrots could be since they interact so easily with him. Irving and Bittner should be rightly proud of this heartfelt film.The DVD package has loads of extras targeted to those enthralled by Bittner's story, including most importantly, a seven-minute update on the parrots. There are seven deleted scenes, all understandably excised, but they nonetheless provide additional insight into Bittner's story as well as the parrots themselves. One interesting excerpt is a 14-minute interview with a woman who took care of the flock prior to Bittner and illustrating how the birds drew people from different walks of life. Four shorts are also included – a more in-depth profile of Connor, a follow-up report on Mingus at the Oasis Sanctuary in Phoenix, a featurette on California quails in the Presidio, and almost half an hour of Bittner's own home movies, which I assume is the basis of the film. There is even a music video of pianist-vocalist Roberta Fabiano signing a forlorn paean to the parrots. "Dogen, Connor and Tupelo".

handsomepete2-1 This documentary speaks volumes to those with a little bit of an open mind. You don't have to be a spiritual naturalist to accept some of the ideas Irving makes a valiant effort at getting across. There is nothing brutal or graphic about this G-rated movie, it's a family-oriented documentary about birds, but the storytelling is direct and often very emotional. There is one story told by the "hero" Bittner near the end that is one of the most emotional and effective stories about the human connection with animals I have ever heard. And this film works well as a collection of individual stories because there are so many birds. The true value in this film is that Bittner is not some expert on human/bird relations giving us lessons; he too makes mistakes he regrets and this film does the right thing in documenting what he did right and what he thought he should have done better with these wild birds. Recommended highly for anyone who respects animals in any way, plain and simple!