Truth Vs Alex Jones (2024)

When Alex Jones went on trial for spewing lies about the Sandy Hook massacre, HBO some how was allowed to film the trial. The resulting footage forms the backbone of this excellent documentary on the case and the cottage industry of naysayers who refuse to see the truth and instead see a grand conspiracy behind every blade of grass,

Chilling tale of one man who is making a fortune running rough shod over the lives of grieving parents. This is a film that doesn't just show us what Alex Jones did, but also shows us what happened in Sandy Hook so there is no doubt as well as showing us the crazies who were feeding nonsense to Jones.  It's a film that shows us the big picture and explains to us how it all came to be.

The level of stupidity of people these days is frightening. Fully a quarter of the people in the United States think that Sandy Hook was a made up event. Several years ago I waded into the nonsense (see here) and I came  face to face with people who don't know how to fact check, and just make false assumptions on pieces of the truth. Watching the film we are exposed the insanity of some of the people feeding Jones bullshit. One man insists that the reason he knows it was fake was there were no trauma helicopters to transport the wounded. When he is told that there were no need because the victims all died , he still insists that  there should have been helicopters.

It's chilling.

I was left shaking my head. Are we really this stupid?

Apparently.

This is a sad portrait of the dangers of stupidity.

MASTERGAME (2023) Fantaspoa 2024

Loosely based on Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game, MASTERGAME is a two pronged tale built around games of chess. One concerns a pair of refugees fleeing Soviet tanks in Hungary in 1956 and the other concerns a priest being tortured to disclose a valuable treasure. I shan't say more because there are some twists and turns would be to spoil the fun.

Moving as an almost breathless pace MASTERGAME grabs our attention from the start and just goes. We don't have time to consider where it's going because we are moving at a pace that doesn't allow out minds to wander. I was hooked early and carried along.

The flm is great looking and beautifully acted. Every one on every side of this film is fully invested in it and so when the denouncement comes and we see what is going on we take it in stride. 

This is a gem of a film and I can't wait to see it again now that I know what its all about,

Recommended.

ENCOUNTERS (2023) Fantaspoa 2024

Feeling like a film by Andre Tarkovsky or Piotr Szulkin, Dmitry Moiseev's ENCOUNTERS feels like a film only a decaying society could produce. That it comes from Russia, a land currently seeming to crawl back into the "glory days" of the Soviet Union explains a great deal. 

In a world where aliens have landed, a nurse takes a job ministering to a sick alien. The handlers want then kept alive because they are extracting something from them.

The world is broken. Nothing is clean. Garbage is everywhere. When our heroine has to go into a room filled with water she doesn't put on boots but wraps herself in plastic wrap. Calling it Dystopian isel being kind.

On some level this is a funny. There is something absurd about it all. On other levels this isn't funny with the exploitation of the aliens and the people caring for them clearly laid out. This isn't satire but straight on political commentary of the sort you can only get in science fiction or other fantastical genres. AT times watching the film I was kind of shocked that Russian officials allowed this film to be made since it seems to be saying pointed things about the Putin Regime.

To be honest this film rocked my world. I have been so starved of meaty science fiction of late that I thought that people forgot how to make films like this. I love films like this that blow your mind on the first time through to the point that you're not sure how to discuss it, but know you'll have a better chance after the next couple of times through.

Honestly I need a few more times through this film before I can discuss it- until the make an effort to see  it.

Godbless Fantaspoa for screening it and putting it on my radar.

One of my favorite films of 2024

MOURNING IN LOD (2023)

MOURNING IN LOD is a tough film to watch. Yes the subject of the cost of the war between Hamas and Israel has been done too many times, however it’s focus is such that it strips away the politics and focuses purely on the very human cost of the people caught in between the warring factions.  And when I say the film focuses on the people caught in between, I mean both Israeli and Palestinian civilians who are caught between their leaders who see them as expendable. 

Laying out the experiences of three families we come to understand how something so terrible can happen. That isn't to excuse it, but we see how the both sides, whipped into a frenzy about the alleged terrible things happening by these others, these labels, turn on the people who a short time before were their friends and neighbors. People they lived with in peace until the madness was introduced. 

I was moved. I love that director Hilla Medalia doesn't do anything fancy. She let's people talk and so we get to know the people before us. We learn of their lives and what their loved one means to them.

You need to see this film. It is one of the best film not only on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict I’ve run across but also the best films on the cost war. 

 Opening Friday in theaters, the film will stream next month.

LOVE AND MONSTERS (2020)

I was really looking forward to seeing this back in the covid days of 2020. As with most things in 2020 I missed it, and then efforts to catch up with it went sideways. With the film going away from Netflix I made time to sit down and watch the film.

Or rather watch it from the start since as the film moved into the final third I realized I had actually caught the last chunk of the film on cable

The film has the world going apocalyptic when an asteroid reigns debris on the earth. The fragments turn animals into monsters. Seven years on a young man named Joel realizes he has to leave his bunker and go across the broken world in order to save his girl friend  Aimee, who he has not seen (but spoken to on the radio) since the world changed.

Wonderful action adventure science fiction comedy romance should have been huge. This off beat mix of genre's gets everything right. It's funny and scary and full of edge of your seat moments. Sure we know it will be alright for Joel, but as for everyone else, nothing is certain.

I had a blast watching this from start to finish. I sat down and fell into it in the best possible way. And while I had seen the last part of the film earlier, I was still surprised to see how it all fit together.

What an absolute delight.

Highly recommended

Three Musketeers : Part 2 Milady (2023)

Martin Bourboulon's follow up to last years THREE MUSKETEERS PART 1 D'ARTAGNAN  continues the story from the end of the first film with D'Artagnan knocked unconscious after Constance is kidnapped. The film also continues Bourboulon's refashioning of the story into a tale of larger political intrigue, while keeping the basic framework of the story.

The first thing I have to say is that if you haven't seen the first film don't see this one until you can see the earlier one. Too much has been changed from the original tale so you can't really just wing it. Additionally if you haven't seen the first film close to to this one you may want to refresh your memory. I saw the first film back in December and seeing it with out the refresher I felt lost at times. 

That is not a knock on the film, rather a warning because I now really want to sit down and watch the films in one go.

As a stand alone film MILADY doesn't work. There are too many threads from the first film to have it make sense on its own. On the other hand the film as part of a historical epic (you need to see the two films as one) it's really good. (I will hold off saying great only because I want to see the two films together to see how it all works). The set pieces are fantastic, the images are Oscar worthy and the cast is great. This time out Eva Green gets to shine as Milady and she makes you wish she could get an action franchise of her own (she could have been a a great James Bond).

I had a blast watching this film. It was so much fun and it is actually emotional, we really feel the bad things that happen. Sure it's not wholly the classic story, but as it's own tale (I'm including the first film in this statement) that works wonderfully, which is all that matters.

If I may quibble with the film it is only in the films need to tease another film.  Sure there are other books with the characters, but this film wants to take it into another direction. It's not needed, and more importantly it's less satisfying.

Ultimately the quibble doesn't matter. What matters is the fact is  Martin Bourboulon's two part Three Musketeers saga is kicks ass.

Recommended

The Tenants (2023) Fantaspoa 2024

 

In order to get more money to pay his rent a man rents out his bathroom to a strange couple.

This is a weird ass comedy of the sort that you only get from Korea. Sure, other countries make strange and off kilter films, but the ones coming from South Korea have their own brand of strange. It's as if they want to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible, while at the same time being so absurd that you want to laugh, except that things are so bent you don't know if the joke is funny any more.

To be honest while I intellectually like the weirdness of THE TENANTS I'm not sure I like it. For me it's the wrong sort of weird. It plays so off for me that I'm not sure why I'm being asked to see it. I suspect it has something to do with the weird things we do, but at the same time maybe not

Don't let my not clicking with the weird here stop you. If you like really weird films give THE TENANTS a try

Coffee Table (2023)

Blacker than you can imagine black comedy/tragedy about a a couple of new parents who buy a coffee table  that they are told will "change their lives."

I'm not going to give you details because this is a film where all of the tension comes from the worm turning as events transpire that may result in them being found out. Think of the Hitchcock films were a bomb is hidden and we are waiting for it to go off. It's not a bomb, but we are curled up in a ball waiting for the true horror to be revealed.

This is a very very uncomfortable comedy until it isn't (it's horrifying), and even when it's funny again it's catch in your throat, "I think I'm going to be sick" sort of funny until it just stops being funny altogether.

I can completely understand people walking out of the theater because they don't want to go there.

And I completely understand if my saying that makes it seem not as bad when you sit down and see this, and I'm sorry for that, but some of you need to be warned.

If you want to go to a really dark place THE COFFEE TABLE is highly recommended. Me I don't know if I want to go there again.

ARA San Juan (2024)

 

Netflix documentary on the sinking of the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan Allegedly lost at sea during a storm the battle to find the truth was a long and hard.

If you want to see as detailed a presentation of a story as you can possibly be, ARA SAN JUAN THE SUBMARINE THAT DISAPPEARED is for you. A deep dive into the tragedy it spends it’s 8 episodes/4 hours going into every angle of the story, presenting detail reporting from everyone including the panels that were set up to investigate.  At no point do the filmmakers cherry pick the information, and instead lays it all out. The filmmakers allow the officials to fully get themselves into trouble with what they tell the grieving families. It’s everything you want to know and then some.

On the other hand  we are given so much information, and so much footage of the anels that things can seem to be over kill.  I was somewhere around the halfway point when my eyes started to glaze over. I went from mainlining the series to watching it in installments, an episode at a time.

Don’t let my saying I needed to watch the series in episodes deter you, this is a hell of a story. It’s a tale of officials not doing the right things and trying to cover their asses. I was hooked at the start and I had to see how it came out- because it’s not what you think.

Recommended.

Harakiri Squad (2024) Fantaspoa 2024

This film is a musical samurai comedy riff on the DC comics Suicide Squad about a group of thieves who are kept in a poisoned state by a the government in order to get them to do jobs for them. As long as they do the jobs they get the antidote to the poison. They end up hooking up with a young man who is looking to rescue his sister from a cult. The cult is headed by a demon and it is the target of the Harakiri Squad.

This film is a blast. Back in the Subway Cinema days of the New York Asian Film Festival this would have been one of the big films of the festival because it's wild and crazy and has a glorious sense of fun. This is a film that is going to riff on the Suicide Squad (one character's name is Suicide Squid), musicals, samurai films, possession films and a few other things, and do it with a big smile on it's face.

It's also going to give us some really good action sequences. Sure the film is a bit low budget, but it really doesn't matter since the fillmmakers use that to their advantage and have things take unexpected turns.

The handful of musical numbers aren't bad. While some seem just dropped in out of left field, most have a place in the story (kind of). They are also not bad as musical songs go, and while probably not destined to live on outside the film, they still are catchy enough not to annoy.

While the last third or so of the film gets a bit lost as things swing around for the final battle, the film still remains compelling, largely because we truly like the characters and care about them. I for one would love to see a sequel or two down the road.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good time HARAKIRI SQUAD just premiered at Fanaspoa

Patrick Meaney's wonderful THE BRINK OF (2022) has hit VOD - A review of the film and interview with the director and star.

"He's probably better for you than me"

"But I'm not better for him"

 Lena and James are the band The Brink Of...  As they were ending a six month tour and right after an influencer's tweets put them on the radar of the world at large, they disappear. As the film begins the duo is back and are on a radio show explaining what happened.

If you know director Patrick Meaney you will think either of his comic work both as a documenary filmmaker (he's profiled Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Chris Claremont) or as a writer, or you may know him as the director of the horror film HOUSE OF DEMONS. He would not be someone you instantly think of as a director of a sweet musical romance, but with THE BRINK OF.... he makes  romance films his own.

Beautifully acted and possessing a kick ass group of songs THE BRINK OF... soars. Director Meaney has fashioned a heartfelt and moving film. Its a film that had me misty at the end, not because it manipulated me but because it has given us a couple of people we can really root for. We like them  from frame one and are willing to go anywhere with them.

What I love is that in fashioning a love story Meaney has taken the romantic formula and used its tropes against us. I'm going to be honest and say there was a time when I just liked the film. The film was doing everything it was supposed to and hitting all the points exactly right but it didn't seem to be going the extra mile. It was technically great but it didn't seem to have all the emotion wired up to the power box... but at a perfectly placed moment there is scene where the script clicks and you realize that while we were distracted with the songs and other things Meaney was laying in the heavy gauge wire so when the big moment comes so do the the tears (and big yelp of joy which scared the neighbors). Everything that seemed to be throwaways came crashing it with a weight we never suspected. Simply put THE BRINK OF... does what few films do these days and gets the emotion and love of the audience by earning it and not manipulating us. 

Nicolette Norgaard and Tim Hoffman kick it out of the park. They make us believe that they coud be a  couple everyone knows are destined for each other but who refuse to see it. Indeed they manage to make that notion a perfectly played running gag. The pair also wrote their own songs and the emotion in them make the film even more special. Frankly while Patrick Meaney may have created the framework for the story, Norgaard and Hoffman's music, and their performances give the film life.

This film blew me away. Not just because I was sent the film totally blind and had no idea what it was at all, but because the film is just so damn good.

You must see this film because it will make you feel good.

Look for more on the film and an interview with director Patrick Meaney  and Nicolette Norgaard below

Brief thoughts on CAT CALL (2023) Fantaspoa 2024

Fani can't fall in love. Imagining the death of every man she meets she won't get involved with anyone. However, when she meets her new neighbor, she begins a relationship with his cat since she can hear him talk.

This is an amusing little romcom. Echoing the off kiltered flights of fantasy in things like AMELIE or WONDERFALLS this is a film that walks its own path. Additionally, like those works this is a film that is not going to click with everyone. That's perfectly fine since those who connect with the film are going to find a new favorite film. 

I had a good time.

Definitely worth a look for anyone who likes their romcoms quirky.

Puffin Rock and the New Friends (2023) hits streaming tomorrow

Feature film of the Cartoon Saloon TV series  has more adventures with the various characters from the series and it introduces a number of new friends including an otter.

This is a sweet little film. While not as heavy as the studio’s earlier films, this film is an absolute breezy delight. I smiled from start to finish. What I really loved was that the film has some real suspense. The storm sequence is tense. Had this not been part of a continuing TV series I would have been frightened that someone was going to die.

While clearly geared for small people it works just as well for the big ones as well.

Recommended.

PHOTOGRAPHIC JUSTICE: THE CORKY LEE STORY (2022) opens Friday

 

Wonderful portrait of the late great photographer Corky Lee. Lee was a native New Yorker who made a career of photographing the Asian experience in America and New York. Lee's aim was to "take the pictures that should be in out history books".  

He was everywhere in New York covering events no one else did and in ways that no one else could.  Because he was everywhere and people knew him Lee managed to get shots that changed lives. As recounted in the film his photos changed the accounts if the police who couldn't lie about what there was photographic evidence for.,

This is magnificent film. Its a wonderful look at a man and his work and beautiful explanation of why Lee matters.

Highly recommended.

KAMAY (2024) Vision Du Réel

 

Kamay is the name of a stubborn grass that grows in the middle of Afghanistan.  It is a symbol for the people who live there who refuse to give up and bow to authorities. It is a representation of the family of a girl named Zahra who killed herself after a run in with a teacher who was the dean of her school.

KAMAY the film is the story of Zahra’s family, who a year after her death are trying to not only get justice for her daughter but just get her possessions back from the authorities on Kabul.

This is a pastoral film that moves at the speed of life. It is a film where we watch the family as they work around their home, just trying to live their lives, while at the same time trying to connect with the people working for justice in Kabul. We also follow the family as they make the days long car ride trips into the city, through the mountains, the snow, and assorted other dangers.

KAMAY is a very moving film. It is a film perfectly designed to make us feel what the people on the screen are feeling. A brilliant use of pacing and minimal camera movement we feel as though we are moving through life with the family.  We feel the weight of their lives in ways that most films don’t give us. I was touched.

That said the pace of the film is very slow.  As I said it moves at the speed of life. If you either don’t like that or can’t click with it this is going to be a tough slog. I think what we see and what we experience is worth the trip, but that may not work for you.

Ultimately KAMAY is magnificent film that you should see, especially if you can see it on the big screen where you can fall into the images.

Recommended

Nightcap 4/14/23 I hate jump scares*, Drive in season approaches.

One of the top 3 loudest audience screams was at this moment and it wasn't a jump scare

I got into a couple of discussions about jump scares in horror films. It seems many people think that is what horror is all about. Clearly they are watching the wrong sort of horror films.

In trying to explain my position to the people on line  I came to realize that most horror filmmakers today just build films that simply are rollercoasters that peak in a series of jump scares.  In these films there is no real narrative tension, there is just waiting until someone jumps out and says "BOO" at maximum volume. I have nothing against jump scares, I mean an occasional one is fine but I prefer the dread and unease that a good horror film builds to being scared because the sound designer turns the volume up. 

So many of the smaller horror films are just jump scares and no real terror.  It's a series  wind up and release cycles, nothing that you take home with you. I think part of the reason for this is that so many people today learned what horror is by watching slasher films. Things like Friday the 13th and the films that copied those films are just a series sequences of waiting for Jason to jump out. There is no real fun in that after a point, just waiting for the new cool way to kill someone (An aside: the other crappy horror trend is films like the later Nightmare on Elm Street and Saw films where the horror isn't from the story but simply from the horror of the new deus ex machina death. However that is another essay for another time.)

To me the real horror is film where a mood is created, where jump scares are at a minimum and the shrieks are from unexpected turns like in The Exorcist (say the head spinning around), Insidious (the black demon just standing in the background-see above), Psycho (Norman's mother's face over his), Brooklyn 45 (when the locket moves) or in a sudden or unexpected turn that changes things say in Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal's escape), or The Wailing (where the film flips in the final half hour). Then there are films like Inerasable, which creates a horrible mood that builds to the end and is never released (I didn't sleep the night I saw it). 

Within the films that aren't just jump scare factories we get interesting discussions of society and humanity. We get examinations of who we are and where we are going in ways that normal films can't explore. I mean this is why horror novels like Frankenstein and Dracula and Dr Jekyll or Dorian Gray still resonate after centuries have passed or in films why Larry Talbot still breaks our hearts and John Carpenter's the Thing is finding bigger audiences every year.

I doubt that many films that are just jump scares or an excuse for cool effects will last. 

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Drive  in season has started. Across the country many drive ins have already started showing films. I know this weekend there screening of DAWN IF THE DEAD for its 40th anniversary.

In two weeks the big deals are happening in Pennsylvania- The Mahoning Drive in begins there season of genre features with WILLIE WONKA and THE WIZARD OF OZ. (Details here). After that it's going to be Muppets and Monsters and Zombies (all the Romero Zombie films Memorial Day Weekend) and Kevin Bacon. If you are in driving distance I suggest to checking the schedule and going.

In Vandergrift PA the Riverside Drive In(website here) is going to be hosting  the spring version of the Drive-In Monster-rama. it's two nights of four horror films. More importantly it's two nights with great people. I will be there and you you should be to.

Tickets are selling fast. They can be had here. For more detail also check the Facebook page.

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I may be a film writer and a member of a critics group but I am going to be leaving some films off my dance card.

I will not be seeing the new Joker film because I disliked the original film so much.

I will not be seeing SPEAK NO EVIL because as good as the original film is I never want to go to that dark place again- and if this film isn’t good I will be arguing that its not as good as the original.

I am not running out to see CIVIL WAR because I am up and down on Alex Garland’s films and because his lack of clear reasoning is going to make me crazy.

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More New Releases this week, more ND NF films and finally Fantaspoa films.

*-most of the time

Blind Cop2 (2023) Fantaspoa 2024

Send up of 1980's macho action films, this is a film that hots every expected note and a few you you never considered in the story of a blind cop named Blind Cop, who hunts down the leaders of the crimnal organization in his city. Teaming up with green young officer he unleashes mayhem everywhere he goes,

How you react to this film will be determined by where you see it. If you see it in a theater full of people you are going to have a better time than if you see this home alone. That's not a knock, but more a statement that that the over the top nature of the film will click better when you have an audience talking to the screen and each other. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad movie,  it just one that play better the more people can goof along with it.

The film is funnier is you know what it's riffing. If you grew up or spent all your adult life watching the endless low budget action films from Cannon, New World, Dimension or where ever then you are going to get even more out of the film because there is a good chance you many be able to name the movies that are being spoofed.

I had a grand time watching this film, laughing at each ridiculous turn... that wasn't so ridiculous because a few years back a similar sequence was played largely straight when Bronson, Eastwood or Segal did it straight. (Actually this would have been a good film if it had been played straight)

BLIND COP 2 is a blast and highly recommended when it plays at Fantaspoa. (And no, there is no BLIND COP)

IRENA’S VOW (2024) is a Fathom event

Sophie Nélisse stars as Irene Gut Opdyke, who during the second world war decided that she had to do something, so when she learned that the ghetto was going to be leveled she decided to hide as many Jews as possible in the safest place she could think of…the basement of the home of the Nazi officer for whom she was working.

This is a good war time bio/thriller. Telling a tale most of us haven’t heard of and fewer of us wouldn’t believe if it wasn’t true, IRENA’S VOW connects us to the past by telling us a really compelling tale.  That the story of the rescue is only part of the story is what makes this film something worth seeing.

If I was to say that there is any flaw in the film it’s in the casting of Sophie Nélisse in the lead. While perfectly adequate in the role she never changes her expression through almost the entire film. From first shot to almost the last she wears the look of a wounded deer in the headlights. While on some level it is understandable, it also makes her less like a person and more like a mannequin. It kept me disconnected from the film (though I was connected to the story). It’s not fatal but it kept me from being as deeply moved as I might have been.

Homicide New York(2024)

Five part Netflix series that is a sort of a documentary series of Law And Order.  Focusing on a group of NYC detectives, an Assistant District Attorney and  a medical investigator as they relate some of their cases. 

This is a super series. Once you get past the weak first episode the series is something that is going to make you binge it all in one series.  It took me two days to watch the first episode and when I was done I ended up streaming the rest in one night. This is great stuff.

Covering some big cases from the last few decades the series covers a grop of teens who killed a man in Central part, s serial killer/rapist in Harlem, a killing over the Carnegie Deli and two others. They are all cases you've heard about and this is a look behind the curtain.The best part of the series is we see the toll the cases take on the good guys. We see how they become involved and how t becomes too much and walk away. Having a friend who was a prosecutor who took her own life because the voices never left her  Dealing with the cost was something we don't see.

I loved this series and I've been recommending it.

I hope there is going to be more.

RAIN (2023) Miami Film Festival 2024

If you want to see the first film of the next director from Mexico to win an Oscar the see Rodrigo García Saiz's RAIN which is playing at the Miami Film Festival. Looking and feeling like the work of a seasoned director, the film has the assured hand that rivals the work of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo del Toro.

I know that sets up impossible expectations but take into account the way the film makes you feel and if you really watch how the film is crafted you will see that Rodrigo García Saiz is going to do great things.

The film is six interconnected stories all taking place over a rain soaked 24 hours. It begins in the rain when cab driver picks up a rider who gives him his own address as a destination. From there we move between the various stories which bring us into the lives of various people who are trying to get past an unexpected turn in their lives. 

I was moved. 

While some of the stories are not as perfect as others, all of them hold us tight in their grip. This is due to craft of filmmakers being directed by  Saiz, but also a cast that is among the best ensemble  casts of the last ten years.  This is as good as casting can get. Everyone nails  their role and you can feel their lives bleeding off the screen.

When the film was done I started to reach out to some of my friends. I had to get more eyes on this film because there is something special here.

You need to see this.