Welcome to the film-related musings, complaints, and comments of Zack Clopton, an amateur film-critic, scholar, and screenwriter. Featured here are Director's Report Cards, essays, and other reviews. Enjoy!
Last of the Monster Kids
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For “Viva Verdi!,” filmmaker Yvonne Russo and her team spent several years among the residents of Casa di Riposo per Musicisti. Also known as simply Casa Verdi, this is a rest home and retirement community for older opera singers and musicians. Founded in the late 1890s by Giuseppe Verdi, he designed it to be a “shelter for elderly singers who have not been favoured by fortune.” The work continues to this day, the neo-Gothic building giving the aged singers and musicians a place to live and also to teach the next generation. Russo's camera mostly focuses on a few reoccurring faces: Former singer Claudio Giombi, Japanese immigrant Chitose Matsumoto, the walker dependent Anthony Kaplen, and a few others as they go about their days. Despite their advanced ages, they all continue to sing or play.
"Viva Verdi!" is fairly standard in its construction for a documentary. Most of the film is made up of interviews with the residents of the home, cut together with photos and footage from across their long careers and personal lives. This supported by fly-on-the-wall recording of daily life in Casa Verdi, with occasional pauses to explain the building's history. While nothing groundbreaking, there is a lot of value in hearing people simply tell their stories. Giombi emerges as the film's main character, a boisterous and colorful man devoted to his wife and his art form. When he opens up a suitcase and retrieves photos from across his career, the candor and joy he expresses is something to see. Matsumoto's life story is also a fascinating one, a Japanese woman who fell in love with opera so totally that she happily moved to Italy to dedicate the rest of her life to the profession. I also greatly appreciate that the film highlights not only the star singers but also the musicians. A drummer, a violinist, and more get to tell their stories too.
Opera singing is, to me, one of those talents that might as well be a superpower. I genuinely do not know how the human body can produce such resonating, powerful sounds. The level of training required to make your lungs and larynx bend so extremely must be staggering. Imagine my surprise when I saw such reverberating melodies come out of the mouths of old men and women in "Viva Verdi!" A memorable moment sees a former opera singer apologizing for her voice breaking, when I'm impressed she was able to make those sounds at all. Most of the residents of Casa Verdi are in their eighties and nineties. We see one resident having her 103rd birthday. Despite their advanced ages, most of the individuals interviewed in the film seem quite energetic and spritely. The suggestion, it would seem to me, is that pursuing your passion and doing what you love is a good way to keep yourself feeling young, even as your body starts to fail you.
This, of course, is inevitable. We see Kaplen leaning on his walker and describing how he gets around a lot slower these days. One elderly man mourns his wife, who preceded him in death, and longs for the time they are reunited. "Viva Verdi!" ends, not exactly surprisingly, with epitaphs for several of the characters seen in the film. Despite the end being near for most of these men and women, the air around "Viva Verdi!" is not of solemnness but of celebration. Celebration of the lives of these artists and what they've accomplished, and still accomplish, and celebration of the music and art they all love. The nominated theme song is entitled "Sweet Dreams of Joy" and carries along that feeling of effervescent excitement and glee. That's what I see more of in this film than anything else.
I'll be honest with you, guys. I know almost nothing about opera. "Viva Verdi!" didn't exactly teach me much about the complexities of performing this style of singing, of the different types, genres, or placements in the theatre. Most of the historical segments focus on the history of Casa Verdi itself, describing the man who spearheaded its creation and his reasoning for doing so. This was based in a love for the people who performed his music and for the music itself. Which does not function exactly as a rebuttal to Chalamet's statement. We do see a younger generation learning this craft, meaning opera as an art form will continue. The film's overall obscurity and the advanced ages of its figures does suggest that the popularity of opera is dwindling. I don't know how to reverse the latter condition but the firmer has been somewhat resolved by "Viva Verdi's" producers. They quickly responded to its nomination by getting the doc on digital platforms as promptly as possible. Me and all the other Oscar Death Racers really appreciate that. [7/10]
International cinema is vital because it gives us a window into the lives of other people from other country. If you're an American, like me, you probably do not have a very accurate understanding of far away places. Looking at art from another country, if nothing else, gives you a peek into how people over there see themselves. To the average American, I imagine they perceive Iran as nothing but endless stretches of desert, dotted with little villages. Popular conceptions like this is why it's easy for my government to convince its populace that it's fine to drop bombs on this place. Iran has a thriving film industry though. Another reminder of this is “Cutting Through Rocks,” a nomination for Best Documentary Feature that gives us a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a tiny corner of Iran and the struggles that go on there.
The film, from directors Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, concerns Sara Shahverdi. She is the first woman elected to the town council in her small village. She has a passion for riding motorcycles and often goes right to the homes of people seeking her help. She is especially focused on helping the teenage girls in her town, many of whom are forced into marriages to older men before they are even 18. The village has many traditionalist men in it, who are aghast at the idea of a woman holding a position of leadership in the town. Eventually, the authorities go so far as to make Sara undergo a DNA test to prove that she isn't a man in disguise. Despite these challenges, she continues forward on her journey to help others.
Sometimes, a documentary only needs an interesting subject to succeed. Sara Shahverdi quickly establishes herself as a real character. The opening scene has her pulling down an old gate, an on-the-nose metaphor for the way she confronts the barriers put before her head-on. She cruises around on her motorcycle, wearing sunglasses, and teaches other girls how to ride and operate the machines. When she is at a council meeting, eating with people and casually sitting in their homes, it gives the impression more of someone hanging out with friends than a government matter. Basically, Sara Shahverdi being a town councilwoman strikes me a bit as if your cool aunt got elected to a minor position of power. She's tenacious, passionate, calm, considerate, and personable. Cool lady, I would say.
The Academy almost always nominates documentaries that touch on important social issues, effecting countless people all over the world. “Cutting Through Rocks” is one of those too. Unsurprisingly, Shahverdi is often challenged by the men in her town. One guy has a loud argument with her right on the street, following her back to her car. On another occasion, they are harassed by a group of men as Shahverdi and her friends ride on their bikes. In the last act, when accused of being a man bringing women back to her home for improper reasons, Shahverdi is led into an office by a machine gun carrying guard. She's outright told to stop being so active, that it is not suitable for a woman to do so. The topic of teenage girls being married off comes to a head in a scene where another town councilman is confronted by a young woman. He outright states that he sees no problem with this tradition and suggests the girl before him – she looks 13 – should get married soon herself. It's infuriating.
While “Cutting Through Rocks” has a compelling central heroine and points a camera at some distressing traditions, the film is also almost painfully slow. There's little music throughout. The camera crew stands back and watches these sometimes mundane interactions and meetings. Scenes dispassionately flow into each other, at a tortoise's pace. There's little editing, the captured scenes playing out in real time more often than not. It's not that these moments aren't interesting but it progresses so slowly. Watched at the end of a long day, I'll admit I was fighting sleep a little bit. I suppose what I'm saying is that “Cutting Through Rocks” needed more motorcycle riding.
Ultimately, I'm glad I watched “Cutting Through Rocks.” Shahverdi seems like a brave woman, passionate about helping others and determined to personally enact positive change in her home town against long-held traditions. I admire that a lot. I'm glad she got this spotlight. I do wish the film was a little punchier in terms of pacing. Nevertheless, it is an interesting film and probably a valuable, for exposing more eyeballs to a culture and challenges that they might not think about otherwise. I hope Shahverdi and those around her aren't effected by the actions of America's military. [6/10]
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science must fucking hate Vladimir Putin. I mean, I get it. He seems like a real prick. If you're going to pick a current world leader to vilify, he's an understandable choice. However, it does strike me as mildly interesting that, since 2017, six documentaries critical of the Russian president have been nominated for an Oscar, three of them winning. One of those was before the war in the Ukraine started, back when Putin was only moderately more evil than your average president. There's lots of atrocities in the world. America probably did some more since last night but I guess Putin is a suitably despicable figurehead for the Hollywood set to focus their hate on. This year's anti-Putin doc puts his name in the title too. “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” it's called, and it's the latest film to remind us why this guy sucks.
The Mr. Nobody spoken of in the title is neither Jared Leto nor the leader of the Brotherhood of Dada. Instead, it is Pavel “Pasha” Talakin. He is a teacher and videographer at a primary school in Karabash, Russia. His job is fairly mundane at first. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, orders come down from on high that their will be a change in school curriculum. The government now requires public education to include regular displays of patriotic fervor and the faculty to teach material focused on glorifying Russia's military and demonizing the Ukrainians. Part of Pasha's job is to upload videos of these demonstrations and lessons to an online archive, to show that schools are doing their national duty. Dismayed by the mandated turn towards hardcore propaganda, Talakin intends to resign... Before filmmaker David Borenstein reaches out to him to make a film on this topic. Using the footage he's already legally required to record, Talakin begins to document what he's seeing.
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” gives us a front row seat to the Russian propaganda machine. It is not an altogether unfamiliar sight. The kids are forced to march through the halls while waving Russian flags and singing the national anthem. Soldiers arrive to educate the young boys on land mines and let them pick up guns with emptied out magazines. When I was in high school, the army had recruitment booths in the cafeteria during lunch time. A daily march down the hallways is only slightly weirder than doing the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. The material the teachers have to read off to their students, about how Putin is “de-Nazifying” the Ukraine or how Crimea actually loves Russia, is dismaying. News programs broadcasting the message that Russia has to “kill people” in Ukraine for the love of their children is depressing. But so is watching Fox News for more than a minute. A Russian rock star sings a patriotic song over footage of missiles launching, which is basically what the entire country music industry became circa 2001. I don't think the directors of “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” set out to make the point that Putin's ramped up propaganda machine is barely a rung above what the U.S. has been doing for the last twenty years but the implication struck me anyway.
If my tone seems a bit glib given the subject matter, I'm merely following the lead of “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” Mr. Talakin is a bit of a smart-ass. He introduces his home town by highlighting how ugly and industrial it is. It's pointed out that Karabash is home to a copper smeltery that, since 1994 at least, has led to a notable increase in birth defects and stunted growth among the town's youth. Multiple Youtube videos referring to it as Russia's most miserable town are briefly featured. Pasha seems quite happy to antagonize some of his coworkers and the government in the early scenes of “Mr. Nobody.” Such as when he plays the Lady Gaga version of “The Star Spangled Banner” when he's supposed to be honoring Mother Russia. At one point, he interviews one of the school teachers and asks him what Russian historical figures he admires. All his answers, we are quickly informed, are brutal enforcers during the Soviet years. This is played as a grim punchline of sorts.
I certainly can't object to anyone depending on gallows' humor in the face of propaganda and war crimes. I'm also not surprised that a Russian's sense of humor veers towards the dry and sarcastic. “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” does get notably more down-beat as it goes on. A friend of Pasha's is deployed and ends up dead, the sorrowful wails of his mother at the funeral. Some of his students or their siblings end up in the army. The doc's final moments are resigned and mournful. This feels like a major tonal shift after the more snide first half. It almost feels like the film is two docs in one, the first far more sarcastic than the ultimately bummed out mood it settles into.
Another unavoidable issue I had with “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” is that Talakin comes across as kind of unlikable. He is not the most charismatic of documentary host and his voice-overs are sometimes grating in their smugness. Any time a filmmaker centers themselves in what is otherwise a documentary about activism, it quickly starts to feel self-indulgent. Still, I do think “Mr Nobody” makes some good points, if a few probably by accident. I'm sure glad I don't live in an imperialistic nation run by a bloviating ogre that pumps its schools and air waves full of mindless support for the militaristic regime! [6/10]
A couple years back, those awful Instagram poems started to go viral. I think someone published a book. Many people more in-tune with the literary world than myself were aghast by this. I suppose I was happy to see that the kids still like poetry at all, even if it's not very good poetry. Apparently, I was way off and the art of using elegant, rhyming, or stylized prose to describes thoughts and feelings is more alive in the modern age than I previously realized. You'll have to excuse my ignorance but, before watching the Oscar-nominated documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” that the “rock star of poetry” was a thing that could be said to exist. However, that exact sequence of words is used to describe its main subject, poet laureate of Colorado Andrea Gibson. The film makes a convincing argument that Gibson was, indeed, a rock star poet. See, watching all the Oscar nominees every year is educational!
Excuse my glibness, as “Come See Me in the Good Light” is no less heavy than the other films nominated for Best Documentary Feature. Gibson, well known for their slam poetry about gender, sexuality, and many other topics, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021. Gibson would undergo chemo treatment for the cancer, see it go into remission, only for it re-emerge again. Well aware that they will likely die in the near future, Gibson decides to focus on the important things in life. Such as their relationship with wife Megan Falley and a desire to perform on-stage one more time before the end. The film reflects on Gibson's life and history at the same time, tracking Falley's attempt to write a memoir, and witnesses the couple as Gibson undergoes new treatment, finds hope, loses it, and struggles and survives.
As I said previously, I was not familiar with Andrea Gibson or their poetry before this film. I suppose I am out of the loop on queer and sapphic slam poetry. Throughout “Come See Me in the Good Light,” Gibson reads a number of their poems. They reflect on their gender and sexual identity, past experiences, memories, and the inevitable death they are moving towards. What I am about to write might strike some as insensitive but I didn't really care for what I heard. My knowledge of modern poetry goes no further than the Beats but I don't object to the topics, lack of traditional structure, or word work within Gibson's poetry. During the peak of their popularity, Gibson literally did perform in rock clubs. Their highly expressive, very pointedly read performances of their own words strike me as kind of corny. I feel that way about all so-called “slam poetry.” It's not my thing. Gibson repeatedly states that they only use “five words” in their writing and do not consider their work especially literary. To any sapphic poetry enthusiast that might be reading, I am sorry. Please forgive my gonadal bias.
In spite of Gibson's writing not being particular to my ear, I still got a lot out of “Come See Me in the Good Light.” On paper, the premise of the documentary sounds depressing. We are watching somebody slowly die of cancer, right? The film does touch on Gibson's feelings about the swiftly incoming end of their life, of course. Many tears are shed. Each of their doctor's visit carry a sense of exhaustion, Andrea clearly burnt out from the unending treatments. A few times, Andrea and Megan read new reports concerning how the cancer has advanced. At one point, a new medication leads to improvement before, at the end, Andrea learns that the malignancy has spread to other parts of their body. While the film does not cover Gibson's death, as they passed away in July of last year, a few weeks after the documentary was released, the truth is unavoidable: They aren't getting better.
Dying is a difficult time for anyone, maybe the most difficult time we'll all deal with. What most struck me about “Come See Me in the Good Light” is, despite the grim prognosis, the amount of joy Andrea and Megan still have. The two are still clearly so in love. Megan shares recollections of how they met, how Andrea was the first person to make her feel accepted and adored in her own body. We see footage of the couple cuddling on the floor with their dog, laying in bed, laughing. They joke around, talk about their sex life, consider each others' writing. When Andrea makes the decision to go on tour again, they re-learn their own poems, Megan reading along. It shows something important. We're all going to die. Some of us sooner than later, more suddenly than others, but it will happen. That doesn't mean we can't have joy, happiness, excitement, or love anymore. Andrea describes it as dancing through sorrow.
This makes “Come See Me in the Good Light” a poignant but surprisingly upbeat watch. You can tell that director Ryan White was perhaps hoping for a happier ending. After Andrea gets the news that their cancer has spread all over their body, a resolution about being grateful for the time they have left and a pleasant car ride must be quickly assembled so the film doesn't end on a totally downbeat note. Despite its sadness, I found the film's reflections on how love and joy can persists even during dark times touching. The film covers a lot of ground. Gibson reflects on coming out as queer, realizing their gender identity and choosing their pronouns, struggles with fitting in among the traditional feminine roles they were assigned. Their writing is covered extensively too and the film even touches a little on their early basketball career. Interesting stuff and well worth seeing, no matter how dorky slam poetry is. [8/10]
I knew a guy who was a prison guard. Any time he would tell me stories from his job, it always sounded like a real fucked-up gig to me. From my view on the outside, it sounded like the entire system was designed to breed animosity between the guards and the inmates. That violence was inevitably chosen to be the first and only solution to most problems. He got the shit beat out of him all the time too, so the entire system was fucked. I said to him once that I thought corruption was present in every layer of American justice and that the prison system needed to be completely overhauled, with a focus towards rehabilitation and not “punishment.” He agreed with me and this guy never agreed with me on anything, so that should tell you something about the self-evident flaws in the corrections industry. I don't know where my state ranks country-wide in terms of prison shittiness but I was also not surprised to hear that Alabama's prisons are especially bad. This is the starting point of “The Alabama Solution,” another Oscar-nominated documentary about clear and evident injustices in this country of mine.
Cell phones are strictly forbidden among the inmates in U.S. prison. This has not stopped them from becoming among the most common of contraband behind bars. The proliferation of cell phones has allowed prisoners to record an unfiltered and honest documentation of what their lives are like. “The Alabama Solution” began to take shape when, while filming an outdoor barbecue at Easterling Correctional Facility in Barbour County, Alabama, prisoners covertly approached directors Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman with accounts of abuse from staff and unsanitary conditions. The murder of Steven Davis, beaten to death by guards, and the movement from his mother, Sandy Ray, to find the truth is also a prominent bullet note in the film. Eventually, the focus turns to the Free Alabama Movement, a peaceful activism group driven by inmates to call attention to their own mistreatment and lead to proper government oversight of Alabama's prisons. Naturally, those in power – including governor Kay Ivey, who gives the film its title by insisting that “Alabama problems require Alabama solutions” – do what they can to dismantle the protests.
The backbone of “The Alabama Solution” is that cell phone footage of life inside the prisons. Jarecki and Kaufman maintain all the video errors, the skips in audio and footage, leaving little doubt about what we are seeing is largely unedited. The film doesn't show me much of anything I couldn't have guessed about prison life. That doesn't mean some of these images aren't shocking. We see people sleeping on floors. Drug addicted inmates collapse in public spaces, their arms blacken and rotted with injection wounds. Blood is left splattered from beatings. We see Steven Davis' body in the immediate aftermath of his murder, his face so bruised from the brutal beating that nearly his entire face is blackened. Weirdly, that's not the moment that grossed me out the most. Instead, it was when a scene where an inmate says that he can't leave any food in his cell for fear of rats eating it... Before revealing a home-made mouse trap made of a water bottle with two live rats squirming around inside it. I mean, Jesus.
Not that things would have to be any worst than that to make “The Alabama Solution” upsetting. However, the film prepares more than enough material beyond the violent abuse and filthy conditions to prove how fucked-up Alabama's prisons – and, by extension, all American prisons – are. Once again, the fact of the matter that inmates are used as essentially slave labor by both the state and major corporations is examined. A notable moment sees a man working in a laundry department, saying he's been in prison for thirty years, has worked every day, and never gotten a single dollar in all that time. A pointed statement has the state's governor saying she doesn't want to be around prisoners before it's casually dropped that inmates being paid two dollars a day built her fuckin' mansion.
Proving that all of justice bends towards workers' rights, the Free Alabama Movement uses a workers' strike to demand change. The system's response is to cut the amount of food the inmates are fed, literally starving the movement to death. This is such a disgustingly immoral response that my brain immediately goes “why isn't that illegal?” before remembering that laws don't apply to social institutions that get to make the laws. We hear talk radio house make demeaning, dehumanizing comments about prisoners. Governor Ivey's solution is to consolidate Alabama's prisons into three mega-facilities, saying that it'll save the state money. Guess what project ends up going wildly over-budget before the end? It's always the same thing. When the repressed class realize they actually have the numbers on their side, those in power resort to systematically starving them of options and distracting the public with a bunch of stupid bullshit.
Sorry, I know this wasn't my most coherent review. I don't have a lot of deeper thoughts about “The Alabama Solution” other than to say, over and over again, how much this kind of stuff pisses me off. I suppose the film's ability to prompt such a viscerally emotional reaction to these social injustices is an example of its success. Simply pointing a cell phone camera at these horrible abuses of power and bringing them to light makes it so evident how wrong this shit is. So I'll just wrap this up by once again asking the two people reading this to please donate to the Free Alabama Movement, or whatever the closest local equivalent is for, if you can. I don't know how to fix any of this shit but, if I can buy a striking inmate lunch for a day, that's better than nothing. [7/10]
True crime media is undeniably an industry now. If you are interested in real life stories of murder, disappearances, or other criminal activities, there's more hours of content about it than one human could ever hope to consume over their entire lifetime. Every streamer service under the sun, it would seem, has to crank out a new documentary or mini-series on some serial killer, missing person case, or bizarre story. Most of these are not worthy of much comment. To learn that Netflix used generative A.I. in some of their recent true crime docs is not at all surprising. However, occasionally, one will rise to the top of the pack. I started to hear buzz around “The Perfect Neighbor” sometime last year, as a better-than-most example of its genre. Now, the film has been extra validated by picking up an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, the Academy rarely recognizing flicks of this nature. Let's dive deeper, shall we?
In a small neighborhood in Ocala, Florida, Ajike “AJ” Owens lived with her four sons. The kids would often play in the street and various yards near-by, in the rowdy way kids do. This was greatly offensive to Owens' neighbor, an elderly white woman named Susan Lorincz. Susan would often chastise the kids for being on her property, despite the contested strip of land not even belonging to her. She was seen spewing profanity, and using racial slurs, against the boys from time to time. She would often call and report the supposed trespasses to the police, who were obligated to investigate. Each time, Susan's version of events were usually more dramatic and violent than what others recalled. On June 2nd of 2023, Susan would take a tablet away from one of Owens' sons after another incident of her harassing the children. When Ajike knocked on her door, angrily asking the tablet be returned, Lorincz shot her through the locked entrance. Owens would later die from her injuries. The police would be slow to prosecute Lorincz as they were uncertain if she acted within Florida's controversial – to say the least – Stand Your Ground laws.
I think the main reason “The Perfect Neighbor” proves to be such a compelling documentary is simple enough: We've all known a Susan. Before the woman's aggression turn violent, the kids accurately identify her as a “Karen.” The smallest, most innocent infractions seem to her to be great injustices. She is quick to anger and quick to demand a legal response for these “crimes.” Most pressingly, she is always the victim in her own eyes. When she apparently drives her pick-up truck through a gate, and the cops confront her about this, she brings up an unrelated incident of being sexually assaulted years before. Susan knows her reactions are unreasonable. This is why she exaggerates the events to be more outrageous, claiming a tiny child tried to put a large dog into her truck or that Owens was threatening to kill her. This is what makes women like Susan so infuriating: They refuse to budge on any disagreement and must always be observed as the victimized party. When the police tell the woman that she's been charged with manslaughter, she refuses to move from her seat. She simply doesn't want to obey because, in her mind, how could she ever possibly be the offender?
Susan Lorincz is clearly a mentally unwell person. Sometimes she seems scatterbrained when questioned, though one suspect this might be an act. Her history of repeated anti-social behavior suggests something is wrong with her wiring. At the same time, I also think Susan knew exactly what she was doing. After firing the shots that killed Owens, she called the police, sobbing and saying she feared for her life... Before her voice goes smug and calm as she mentions that the kids were “always leaving their shit in” her yard. When the cops ask if she had researched Florida's Stand Your Ground laws at all, she unconvincingly flip-flops in her answer. When questioned about using a racial slur against the boys, she half-asses a response that she might have said that but, surely, she had a good cause to. I think Lorincz' intense fixation on the Owens' kids wronging her points to some degree of mental illness.
However, one truly has to wonder: Would she had reacted so violently if the Owens had been a white family? This is another aspect that is so infuriating about Susan and people like her. There is an undeniable element of racial entitlement to their petty grievances. The reasons white people see any person of color innately as a threat or a potential criminal are varied and complex. Regardless, the sheer amount of anger and outrage people like Susan Lorincz and George Zimmerman reserve for anyone with darker skin color than them is an unavoidable factor. White kids merely existing on the same street as her seem unlikely to have inspired Lorincz to the same level of violent reaction. She must not merely be "protected" from other races. The fact that they live in the same neighborhood as her at all is offensive enough.
“The Perfect Neighbor” is composed largely out of footage recorded from police body-cams, with little additional footage or voice-over narration guiding the story. This creates a sense that we are witnesses to these events as they play out. It sets up the mundane quality of the location. Susan's first interactions with the Owens family are almost comical. She's such a ridiculous figure, her anger so obviously unreasonable, that one can't take her seriously. The cops don't either, laughing about how often she calls them. Once the shots are fired, however, “The Perfect Neighbor's” approach gives us a heartbreaking front row seat to the aftermath. To see her kids panic and cry as their mother is injured or to hear their father grimly admit that mama won't be coming home, it causes an ache in your chest. To hear the eldest son blame himself, because his tablet was the one stolen, makes you wish you were there to comfort the child.
It's difficult not to be wrapped up in emotions when watching “The Perfect Neighbor.” Susan Lorincz is such a despicable villain, the motivations for her actions so common and familiar, her refusal to admit responsibility or recognize her own prejudices so enraging. Seeing four young kids separated from their beloved mother so senselessly produces such an immediate emotional response. What truly elevates “The Perfect Neighbor” is the uncomfortable questions it forces you to ask. The film treats the police fairly neutrally yet their inability to recognize the clear mental imbalances in Lorincz means they hold some responsibility. So do the vile lack of gun control laws in this country, where something with Lorincz' history would have access to a firearm in the first place. Before the credits role, the film acknowledges that an overwhelming majority of shooters in Stand Your Ground cases in Florida have been light-skinned and their victims usually a darker color. To look at the facts of this sad, distressing case is to look at the number of factors that lead up to it. As long as we have a lack of easily accessed mental health resources, an excess of guns, and a deeply ingrained racism in this culture, crimes like these will continue to happen.
Susan Lorincz ultimately went to jail for killing Ajika Owens. As “The Perfect Neighbor” wraps up, we see the trial playing out in quick snippets. When the verdict is read, Lorincz' facial expression is one of anger and snideness. As if even the weight of going to prison for 25 years, likely the rest of her life, still isn't enough for her to realize that some kids being on her lawn doesn't vindicate her actions. I hope the Owens family are able to heal from their mental wounds in time. I hope, some day, events such as these no longer occur. I even hope that Susan Lorincz realizes the gravity of what she's done eventually. What is most upsetting about “The Perfect Neighbor” is how difficult that last scenario is to imagine. It's a well assembled film that prompts big questions and big feelings and bring. [8/10]
Television journalist Steve Hartman came to fame for light-hearted segments, fluff pieces designed to bring viewer's moods up at the end of a program. That changed in 1997, with the Columbine school shooting. Since then, he has devoted himself to doing a weekly report on the school shootings that have occurred in that seven day stretch. “All the Empty Rooms” represents an evolution of this project. For seven years, he traveled to the homes of the families whose children have been killed in these infuriatingly common, all-too-preventable acts of violence. With photographer Lou Bopp in tow, photos were taken of the now unoccupied bedrooms of the children whose lives were cut short so senselessly. The documentary focuses on the last three families Hartman visits and chronicles for this project.
As an act of journalism, “All the Empty Rooms” is clearly meant to re-center the human element within the debate around this on-going crisis. The film does not bother with statistics about school shootings. It does not discuss the politics of the situation, never once mentioning gun control laws, activism in favor of them, or the gun company lobbyists who kill these bills and the politicians who receive kickbacks because of it. Hartman, photographer Lou Bopp, and director Joshua Seftel focus entirely on the families left incomplete. The camera lingers on the children's rooms, often left largely untouched since the day of their deaths. There is a heartbreaking contrast between the childish images we see – a room decorated in Spongbob merchandise, a bed full of stuffed animals, a favorite blanket – and the grim reminder that this young life has been violently ripped away. The parents and siblings have often been living with this grief for years, some seeming resigned to the absence of their children while others still break down into tears when discussing the topic.
It is incredibly sad to watch. The home movies and photos of these kids make them seem so alive, so youthful, a whole life before them. I don't know how any parent endures that kind of loss. “All the Empty Rooms” is a powerful experience for putting these emotions on-screen. It's also a frustrating one because of its decision to not focus on the politics of this situation. Because this doesn't have to happen multiple times every week. This kind of heartbreak and loss need not be so commonplace. The top review on Letterboxd for “All the Empty Rooms” says that it should be “five hours long and every politician should be made to watch it.” I'm inclined to agree but only if the vision is more purified. Hartman takes time to tell his own story and how this project came about, which is largely unnecessary. A film devoted entirely to reminders of what has been destroyed, ending with a reminder that lawmakers can do something about this if they actually give a shit, would be most effective. [7/10]
Brent Renaud was a documentary filmmaker and journalist murdered by Russian troops while covering the invasion of Ukraine. Renaud had the philosophy of going right into war zones and disaster stricken areas and pointing his camera right at the death and destruction. His brother, Charles, is also a filmmaker and sometimes accompanied him on his journey. After Brent's death, Charles assembled “Armed with Only a Camera.” It combines footage Brent shot from across his lengthy career, with home movies and new footage filmed by Charles of Brent's funeral.
To speak negatively of “Armed with Only a Camera” feels like speaking ill of the dead. I do believe there is value in what Renaud did. “Seeing is believing,” or so the saying goes, which means capturing video of war crimes and dire disasters proves that these things happened. That is important. Intent matters too though. Renaud was in Haiti after the 2017 earthquake. He was right in the aftermath of a car bombing in Somalia. He interviewed villagers in Afghanistan following a bombing by U.S. forces. He followed soldiers into action in Iraq. “Armed with Only a Camera” puts parts of that footage up on-screen and it is bracing. We see victims on the operating table, wounds bandaged, limbs freshly amputated. There are injured kids, dead bodies, people begging for water, a woman describing watching a roof collapse and crush her mother. During these moments, I found myself thinking something crucial: How can you simply point a camera at these things, instead of feeling compelled to help? Why record people begging for fresh water rather than give them fresh water? I certainly hope he did help in other ways. Is showing these things to rich white people in America going to make the situation in foreign countries any better?
As I felt when watching past nominees like “20 Days in Mariupal” or “For Sama,” I found myself wondering what can be gained from being shown these images. There's footage in “Armed with Only a Camera” of people screaming in agony from their wounds. After Brent's death, his brother points the camera right at his corpse, to show us it bloodied and broken. Where does journalism end and exploitation begin? These questions are all the more troubling because “Armed with Only a Camera” is essentially a video eulogy for Renaud. Scenes of him talking about being an adult with autism or playing with his dog is paired right next to the violent footage. Is this meant to show off how brave Brent was? Or was these scenes selected for their “power?” To bring attention to the person holding the camera and not the suffering on the other side? Further muddying the waters is how jarring the editing is. Eulogies at the funeral cut back to footage shot from different time periods. This back-and-forth continues over the thirty minute runtime. The film ends with text describing how often journalists are now being killed. Put together, it all feels unfocused, uncomfortable, and uncertain in what it's trying to accomplish. [5/10]
Forgive the somewhat odd grammar of “Children No More: Were and Are Gone.” The title comes from the activism group the film is chronicling. That would be Children No More, a Tel Aviv based collection of Israeli citizens against the war in Gaza. Every day, the group organizer looks up the children that have been killed in Gaza by military action the night before. For the ones that have photos, she prints out their name, a picture, and an epitaph simply saying they “were but are now gone.” (Eventually, it's decided to hold up paintings of flowers for the children that do not have photographs.) The activists gather in public places, in silence, and display these signs. This, unsurprisingly, makes the organization controversial in their home country. They are often verbally abused by people passing by.
How much you get out of “Children No More” depends on how valuable you think protest is at enacting change. I am, admittedly, cynical about the power of a group coming together to peacefully rally around a cause. As a person of Jewish descent who also thinks killing kids is fucked-up and that Palestine is effectively a country-sized prison, I certainly relate to the plight of the people profiled here. Living in a country committing war crimes sucks, I say as an American. However, does standing around in public with a bunch of paper signs accomplish anything? I think calling attention to what Israel is doing, especially by shining a light on how innocent lives are being ended, is necessary. But are the activists out on the streets because they want to help or because they want to mitigate their own guilt? How much of this protest is performative? If they really wanted to help, wouldn't they be in Gaza, personally putting their lives on the line for those endangered?
Considering the perspective of “Children No More” is directly on the protestors, that question becomes more pertinent. The entire second half of the short is devoted to people on the streets questioning the protestors, shouting profanity at them, telling them they are idiots, that Hamas wants them dead. One guy jogs by with his middle finger up. And it sucks to hold the obviously, morally correct position on a major issue – killing children is bad! – and have a lot of people consider you wrong or evil simply for expressing that. But I think those in Gaza probably deserve the sympathy and the spotlight more. “Children No More” is well made. I think the interviews with the organizers of the group are well-intentioned. I agree with what they are coming from. I hope these protestors are also raising money to send aide to the West Bank. [6/10]
“The Devil is Busy” is one day in the life of the staff at an Atlanta, Georgia abortion clinic. It mostly centers on Tracii, who is the head of security. She arrives early in the morning. She checks the bags of every woman who enters the building. She protects them from the ever-present protestors outside. She looks the scared, uncertain women and girls in the eyes and tells them she's going to take care of them. We also see interviews with the women who answer the phones, who have the hard job of informing the desperate people calling whether they can be helped or not. The documentary was filmed in 2001, before Roe V. Wade was overturned and reproduction rights became even more restricted in this country. The doctors and ultrasound techs are also interviewed, each giving their philosophy behind a necessary service that feels increasingly endangered.
While the activism in “Children No More” and “Armed with Only a Camera” actively made me wonder how much good was accomplished, there's no doubt in my mind that “The Devil is Busy” depicts people truly making a difference. Tracii emerges immediately as the noblest of characters. Her intentions are never more complicated than helping others. She does not judge, simply understanding that life puts everyone on a difficult path sometimes. She herself is a religious woman and notes the hypocrisy of the protestors outside. Which includes a man previously convicted of a hate crime, of burning down a black church, who insists he's repented and is therefore in God's good graces now. Tracii, meanwhile, still feels guilt over her own abortion she had in her youth but is nevertheless determined to help everyone that comes through those doors. When she breaks down in tears, I wanted to step through the screen and give her a hug.
Tracii is not the only brave person depicted in “The Devil is Busy.” The doctors and surgeons argued for the existentialism of what they do while acknowledging that they are in danger every day. That the laws around them could change at any minute. They voice their concerns but never falter in their mission. Putting yourself between those who need assistance and those determined to harm them, that is true heroism to me. The fly-on-the-wall structure of “The Devil is Busy” helps clarify how, stressful and perilous as this situation may be, it's just another day for these people. The final image is Tracii stepping through an exit, heading home, knowing she'll have to come back and do it all again tomorrow. If there is a God above, I hope those that help the helpless are favored more than those screaming harassment at the scared and hopeless. [9/10]
After four rather heavy productions, “Perfectly a Strangeness” arrives to at least offer a change in pace in 2026's slate of Oscar nominated documentary shorts. Directed by filmmaker Alison McAlpine, who specializes in scenic consideration of the natural world, “Perfectly a Strangeness” follows three donkeys. They are named Paloma, Ruperto, and Palaye. I'm not sure which is which though. They wander around a desert in an unknown land. The three beasts of burden come across an astronomical observatory. The machines inside the building seem to function without any human interaction. What do the simple animals make of the science of observing the stars? Your guess is as good as mine.
When the nominations in this category were first announced and people started to watch some of the docs, the general response to “Perfectly a Strangeness” was confusion and bafflement. Compared to the other nominees, this is practically a narrative-free experience that doesn't seem to be commenting on any on-going real world crises or concerns. I suspect the film probably tests the limits of the “documentary” genre as well. Are we to assume that the camera crew started following these donkeys around, hoping they would wander towards something interesting? Or where they directed towards the observatory on purpose? One can probably come to the likelier answer. Either way, the question of what exactly the filmmaker was documenting here remains. To put it bluntly, “what was the point of that?”
I don't know if I have an answer. I think McAlpine is probably obliquely commenting on the separation between nature and the man-made realm of science. The donkeys and the desert around them simply exists. The telescope must serve a function, must forge a purpose for itself to justify why it is there. Or maybe we are meant to draw parallels between mankind's insistence on observing the stars and the donkeys observing technology they have no way of understanding. Needless to say, this is the kind of movie that gives as much back as the viewer is willing to put into it. Personally, I can vibe with it. I don't mind hanging out with some donkeys wandering around the desert for fifteen minutes. The lack of any dialogue or people at all makes me imagines this is some post-human, far-future scenario. Mankind's machines continue on without us but the animals are simply doing what animals always do. It is certainly interesting though whether you're able to get much of anything out of it is strictly a matter of personal preference. [7/10]
To most people aware of such things, Diane Warren is one of the most successful song writers of all time. She has penned number one hits for Celine Dion, Aerosmith, Toni Braxton, Chicago, Brandy, and, uh, Milli Vanilli. She has provided songs for some of the biggest pop stars of all time, like Beyonce, Cher, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Taylor Swift. Her extremely deep catalogue ranges from R&B to bubblegum pop, hard rock, and the occasional alternative radio track. One indicator of success that has eluded Miss Warren is an Academy Award. Her penchant for weepy ballads has scored her 17 nominations for Best Original Song but not a single win. For nearly the last decade, the Academy has annually put her within sniffing distance of an Oscar but – save for an honorary statue in 2022, which clearly nobody thinks counts – never awarded her one. This has resulted in some extremely questionable titles earning the prestige of a nomination. Which I, in my drive to watch all the nominees every year, have forced myself to watch. Warren is herself the topic of 2026's Obligatory Diane Warren Nomination, "Diane Warren: Relentless." Of course, she penned a song for it. Of course, it is nominated and, of course, I watched it. Ah shit, here we go again.
"Relentless" tracks Warren's life and career. It follows her childhood in suburban Van Nuys, where her obsession with music was born. Her mom wanted her to become a secretary but her dad always believed in her. Despite a frequently combative personality, a good deal of social awkwardness, and not being much of a singer herself, Warren became a hit maker. "Relentless" interviews friends and collaborators, follows her daily routine, covers her personal struggles, and eventually zeroes in on her repeated inability to finally win that damn little gold man.
"Relentless" is, in many ways, your standard biographical documentary. Home movies and vintage photographs are cut together with peeks into Warren's current life and a retrospective of most of her big hits. Director Bess Kargman employs genre cliches like taking Warren back to her childhood home and tracking down old friends and relatives. Famous faces rave about her talent but "Relentless" does stop just short of pure hagiography by acknowledging her quirks and flaws. Such as her potty mouth and being a pain in the ass to work with. Once the topic turns towards the Academy's unwillingness to give her a win, "Relentless" reveals its true reason for existing. Her indefatigable excitement at being nominated and disappointment at losing is showcased. The climax of "Relentless" is the creation of "Dear Me," the Kesha sung number that got the movie nominated. In other words, the documentary is a ninety minute For Your Consideration ad, aimed at convincing Academy members that the perpetual runner-up really deserves a win.
A rich, famous, and very successful person being sad that they don't have one more trophy to add to their mantle is not the most universal of motivations for making a movie. The makers of “Relentless” were clearly aware that the question of “Why should anyone give a shit?” needed an answer. The documentary cycles through the usual narrative of Warren having a difficult childhood, an impossible to please parent, and struggling to establish herself in the L.A. music scene. Since “Relentless” is as focused on Warren's current life as her past, however, it can't build that into a compelling story arc. There's a lot of mention of Diane's disapproving mother but this thread is mysteriously dropped with a half-hearted admission that the elder Warren eventually got over it. There's a pause to acknowledge the recent death of her beloved cat. Which is sad, sure, but not something you can really build a whole movie around.
The decision the film finally settles on centers around is questionable. Warren wrote the Lady Gaga anthem “Till It Happens to You” from sexual assault awareness documentary, “The Hunting Ground.” During the press tour for the movie, the songwriter admitted that she herself is a victim of childhood sexual abuse. That takes courage to admit, especially publically. I'm a survivor myself, so I understand. However, the film spinning that bravery as the main reason Warren should have won an Oscar strikes me as distasteful. Especially as the doc pontificates more on how Warren is still trying to get the make-up award for that loss. Yeah, Lady Gaga belted it out at the ceremony. Sure, I think “Till It Happens to You” is a better song than the crappy Bond theme it lost to. But is this movie trying to guilt me into voting for “Dear Me?” As if winning an Oscar would resolve the trauma of Warren's assault? You sure that's the point you wanna make? What are we doing here, movie?
This marks an exploration of the life and process of a clearly talented person – presumably the reason we watch docs like this – as a secondary goal to “Diane Warren: Relentless'” real purpose: Declaring that its subject really, really needs that fucking Oscar. Which leaves us with a documentary that is a wispy ode to its subject's ego and not much else. Kargman does give us peeks into more humanizing parts of Warren's life. We learn about her love for animals, which includes a ranch home to rescued donkeys and pigs. She talks about her status as a neurodivergent individual. I'm one of those too and I recognize a reliance on structure, lack of a filter, and hyperfocus on passions in Warren. A few scenes discuss her continued lack of a love life and how that reflects on her ability to write love songs that resonate with so many people. That could have been a really interesting topic! Alas, “Relentless” knows that it will be mostly watched by Academy voters and zeroes in on convincing them to vote for its song.
Unfortunately, “Diane Warren: Relentless” had the misfortune to come out during the same year as “KPop Demon Hunters.” “Dear Me” isn't bad. It's easily the seventh best version of this same song that Warren has had a hand in making. It's not going to beat “Golden” though. If a genuine musical pop culture phenomenon hadn't come out in 2025, Diane's latest teary ode to self-actualization would still probably come in behind “Sinners'” “I Lied to You.” I say that all of this is unfortunate because it guarantees at least one more year of some random-ass thing getting a nom strictly because Warren wrote a song for it. They made an entire movie to win her an Oscar and it'll all be for naught. And if she does somehow won, will Diane pivot towards being obsessed with winning a Tony and filling out her EGOT score card? She does have a jukebox musical hitting stages soon. I guess they'll have to make a “Relentless II” for that. Her suffering is truly never ending. I repeat this joke with a sigh: See ya next year, Diane. [5/10]
If you are an American horror fan who grew up during the later stages of the video store era, for many years there was a question that gnawed at your mind. You'd look through the Hs and find “House,” “House II: The Second Story,” and then... “House IV!” Where was “House III?!” No store had a copy in stock and no clerk could locate it. Why did this franchise skip the number three? Eventually, the well-spring of all knowledge that is the internet would resolve any confusion. “House III” is “The Horror Story,” James Isaac's killer-returns-from-the-grave slasher from 1989. The film would begin life as the third installment in the wacky horror/comedy haunted house series, producer Sean S. Cunningham in tow. Partially due to “The Second Story's” box office take and simply because of how the script developed, the decision was made during production to turn “House III” into more of a serious horror movie. The result was so different in tone and story – including not featuring much of a haunted house – that it was released stateside as “The Horror Show.” Overseas, however, the film would maintain the “House” branding. Whether you call it “The Horror Show” or “House III,” either title is equally relevant to the plot.
Police detective and family man Lucas McCarthy is finally the one to bring in “Meatcleaver Max” Jenke, a serial killer that has been terrorizing the country. That's only after Lucas sees Jenke murder his partner and decapitate a little girl. He continues to have nightmares about the killer, concerning his wife and two kids. McCarthy attends the execution of Jenke to make sure he's dead. Jenke takes two volts from the electric chair and threatens to get his revenge on Lucas. Afterwards, the horrifying dreams continue and McCarthy begins to see Jenke tormenting him throughout the day. When his teenage daughter's boyfriend is found dead in the basement, Lucas is the main suspect. Instead, a doctor studying the nature of evil reveals, the truth is far stranger: Evil exists as an electric frequency and, via micro-dosing himself with shocks throughout his life, Meatcleaver Max has returned from the grave as a phantasmic being.
Exploitation filmmakers were ready to leap on the success of “Halloween,” slashers full of masked murderers flooding cinemas by 1980. I guess they took longer to catch on to Freddy's status as the next horror icon. Whatever the reason, four separate movies released between 1987 and the end of the decade would be about vengeful killers returning from the electric chair to kill again. Two of them were blatant Freddy wannabes. Both Craven's “Shocker” and “The Horror Show” make a serious mistake in emulating the Freddy movies. Part of what gave “A Nightmare on Elm Street” a universal appeal was its simplicity. Freddy can only get you in your dreams and, if you die in the dream, you die for real. “The Horror Story” can't seem to make up its mind about what rules govern Max Jenke. Sometimes, like “Shocker's” Horace Pinker, he exists as a living electrical signal, jumping around various appliances. (And, in a blatant imitation of the “Nightmare” films, spends a lot of time in the basement furnace.) Other times, he seems more like a classic ghosts. Jenke also appears in Lucas' dreams and visions. At least once, something that happens in the dream rolls over to waking hours, a wound appearing on Lucas' chest. Jenke is also able to manifest in reality, becoming a physical threat again in the last act but still using some of his supernatural powers. The explanation cooked up, about the abstract concept of evil being an electric wavelength and volts being both Max's weakness and the source of his power, clears nothing up.
Adding further to this confusion is “The Horror Show's” inability to pick a tone. The filmmakers clearly intended Max Jenke to be a wise-cracking Freddy-like figure. He has a trademark, a nasally chortle. At one point, he appears in the guise of a TV stand-up comic, cramming half-a-dozen lame one-liners into a single scene. At the same time, the script tries to make Jenke into a vile serial killer. He gruffly croaks out profanity at his enemies. I mean, he cuts off a little girl's head early on. That's fairly extremely. There's an obvious degree of sexual menace in his interactions with McCarthy's wife and daughter. When he drags Lucas' wife into his power plant lair at the end of the movie, the implication of what he plans to do to her are obvious. Other scenes, that focus on McCarthy being in court-appointed therapy or being investigated by internal affairs, feel like something from a grittier cop-versus-killer thriller. In general, “The Horror Show” feels pulled between wanting to be a farcical horror/comedy, a grim gore-fest, and something more like a typical eighties cop flick.
It's easy to imagine the script for “The Horror Show” beginning life as another “Dirty Harry” imitator, something closer to “Cobra” than “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Lance Henriksen stars as McCarthy, his voice as gravelly as ever. He grimly swears and pulls his gun when pursuing the killer, acting a lot how you'd expect Lance Henriksen to perform in such a role. Brion James, himself a vet of action flicks, is Meatcleaver Max. Like in many an action movie, the bond between hero and villain seems deeper than mere hate. Jenke is obsessed with Lucas, to the point that he returns from the grave for him. The two men make repeatedly references to “getting their ass” and “nailing” each other. In the last act, while holding McCarthy's wife hostage, Jenke demands the cop crawl over to him and kiss his feet. When paired with a scene where Jenke pretends to be his enemy's teenage daughter and tricks her boyfriend into stripping for him, or dresses in drag as McCarthy's wife, points towards a casual homoeroticism. This seems to be a natural side-effect of the movie's heavy-handed machismo, of the plot device of two men being totally obsessed with each other.
The manly longing Jenke has for his archenemy is more interesting than the movie's horror elements. Brion James goes way over the top as Jenke, in a way that straddles the line between fun and overbearing. Lance is a reliable hero. The cast playing his family play their notes at a cartoonish level, especially Aron Eisenberg as the would-be con artist son. The movie does cook up some memorable special effects gag. A noteworthy sequence has Jenke's face appearing in a roasted turkey, the cooked bird becoming some freakish Brion James/fowl hybrid. That was cool. An early scene, where Lance stalks the killer through a dinner littered with severed heads and hands, looks cool as hell. Mac Ahlberg, Stuart Gordon's regular D.P., does the cinematography and creates some moody, foggy, deep blue night shots. There's a lot of ingredients here that should work, simply put.
Instead, as all too often happens: It's the Script, Stupid. “The Horror Show” simply doesn't have a compelling story. As a slasher flick, it never quite delivers, most of the beheadings happening off-screen. I guess because it's ostensibly a “House” movie, most of the film is confined to the McCarthy home. This limits the creativity of the set-pieces the movie can cook up. The inability to figure out what the villain can and can't do, as well as how the viewer is suppose to feel about what they are seeing, keeps this from being better. Despite making him look like Jason on the U.S. one-sheet and multiple advertisement's comparing the film to Freddy, Max Jenke did not become a Halloween costume. I guess the film is a little less annoying than “Shocker,” if not as gloriously camp, and not quite as generic as “Destroyer,” if you want to compare it to the other electric chair themed revenge-from-the-grave flicks. Ultimately, perhaps it's for the best that this was destined to be the “House III” most of us wouldn't know about. “The Horror Story” can't compare to the giddy heights of “House II” or the reliable creature feature fun of the original. [6/10]
Is there a single European country Jesús Franco didn't make a movie in? I mean, probably. However, there's no denying that ol' Jess sure did get around. He worked in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Portugal, and Liechtenstein. Yes, Liechtenstein, the semi-constitutional monarchy, all of sixty-two square miles wide, that is wedged between Austria and Switzerland. Despite its relative tininess, Franco would actually make a couple of movies within the country. Most of these fall more on the sexploitation side of his style but at least one is classified more as horror. That would be “Nightmares Come at Night,” which started out as a fragment Franco made sometime in 1970 that was then padded out to feature length with some additional scenes. It was one of Franco's more unseen film during his glory days but, like everything the prolific cult director touched, would eventually get DVD and Blu-Ray presentations far nicer than the grindhouses it was designed for.
Anna worked as an exotic dancer in a nightclub in Zagreb, often dissatisfied with her work and feeling a growing sense of de-personalization. That is until she notices a beautiful woman, visiting the club to watch her every night. The woman introduces herself as Cynthia and, after meeting Anne in her dressing room one night, the two began a passionate love affair. That was some time ago though. Now, Anna is in the grips of a serious mental health crisis. She has haunting dreams every night, which often seem to cross over into her waking hours. Her live-in doctor does not seem to be helping her fracturing psyche any. Growing increasingly frustrated and cold with Anna, Cynthia begins to bring home other lovers. Anna begins to have murderous dreams, beginning to wonder if she has taken a life in reality as well. Or is something more sinister going on?
I've had mixed feelings about the Franco flicks I've seen in the past, enjoying his gothic horror flicks over his trippier doses of erotica. “Nightmares Come at Night” falls squarely on the latter side of the equation. Franco's “Vampyros Lesbos” muse, Soledad Miranda, has a small role here as the often pantless next door neighbor. This film is also about a lesbian tryst between two strippers, another frequent reoccurring element in Franco's work. There's quite a lot of scenes of Diana Lorys and Colette Giacobine in stylish outfits, in various states of undress, lounging in bed, taking showers, or rolling around with various partners. These scenes play out against a smooth jazz score from frequent giallo composer, Bruno Nicolai. The story is extremely loose, the film operating more as a series of set pieces set at often undetermined points in the past. The pacing is languid, to say the least.
Given the above description, you would expect me to find “Nightmares Come at Night” as tedious as I found “Vampyros Lesbos.” Actually, I ended up liking this one quite a bit. Partially because, unlike “Vampyros Lesbos” mixing of elements from “Dracula” and “The Awful Dr. Orloff” into its stew of dreamy eroticism, this one never pretends to have much of a plot. From the beginning, it's apparent that this film will be a wash of the main character's memories, dreams, and hallucinations. That “Nightmares Come at Night” centers so much on its main character is what, I think, made it work for me. The film features quite a lot of voice over from Anna, which further puts us in her mindset. As she recalls her time at the night club, she describes her feeling of being treated like an object. No wonder she is starting to lose her grip on reality. Everybody around her wants and desires her but nobody is interested in actually knowing her. When the complicated nature of her mental health makes itself known, Cynthia smacks her, yells at her, and starts sleeping with other people. When Anna finds brief solace with a man, it's because he makes her feel realized and doesn't seem to want anything from her. It's a ruse, of course, another person lying to Anna to use her. “Nightmares Come at Night” ends up getting a pass for its sleepy pacing and barely existent story by taking place solely inside the head of its fractured protagonist.
Considering it was one of the Franco productions to be somewhat cobbled together, that's another reason why “Nightmares Come at Night” borders incoherent at times. A subplot about a bank robbery emerges in the second half, that never amounts to much at all. Some characters come and go with little warning. A series of last minute plot twist makes one wonder if this was supposed to be a giallo at some point. As you'd also expect from Franco, the visual approach is quite slapdash at times. There's lots of handheld footage and some rough zooms. More than a few times, the camera actually goes out of focus as it roams around the lovers wrapping their arms around each other and kissing or while Lorys cries on a bathroom floor. I watched the Blu-Ray release and it is still overly dark in spots and quite grainy throughout. While normally these would be the elements that distract me when watching Franco's films, it all blends together to make an intoxicatingly dream-like brew here.
Existing within that nightmare headspace, when your mind is groggy and your memory is foggy, when dreams and wakefulness blend together, causes a lot of “Nightmares Come at Night's” bugs to become features. Perhaps I'm warming up to Franco's particular strain of bullshit. Or maybe the girls were extra sexy enough to keep me watching. Either way, the slowness and choppiness of “Nightmares Come at Night” actually worked its spell on me. Sometimes, you simply want to slip into a fuzzy, relaxed, sleepy world of sex and murder and madness. That cool score from Nicolai doesn't hurt either. I can't decide if the English title is mildly poetic or simply redundant. When else would a nightmare come but at night? [7/10]
A very long time ago, before TLC became a non-stop freak show devoted to individuals of unusual physical dimensions, child beauty pageants, quickie marriages, family with lots of kids, or popping zits, those letters actually stood for something: The Learning Channel. If you turned on the channel around 2002 or so, you might actually acquire some knowledge. That's when the network starring airing “Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed,” a series all about exploring the likeliness, history, and meaning of those scary and ironic tales we call urban legends. Host Natasha Henstridge would present five stories, which where then presented as dramatic re-enactments. Experts and historians would then expound on whether there was any truth to the story and why such legends endure. The series had a good balance of spookiness, humor, rationality, and laid-back basic cable charm. In other words, I loved it and the show was surely a factor in heightening my fascination with modern folklore.
Not every story explored on “Mostly True Stories” was macabre or horrific in nature. The third episode also discusses the story of an unfaithful husband being caught at a surprise party in his birthday suit. However, as urban legends often do, the tales tended to veer towards the horrific. The episode discusses the tale of a choking Doberman revealing the presence of a home invader, a woman buying a new coat and being bitten by the baby snakes that hatch within, an actual mummified corpse hanging up as a prop in a carnival fun house, and what is probably the most iconic urban legend of all: Teenage lovers driving their car to a secluded spot for a romantic evening only to be interrupted by news of an escaped killer with a metal hook for a hand, who might be closer than either of them realize.
As an educational program, “Mostly True Stories” is well done. The segment on the Hook legend links its likely origins back to the infamous Moonlight Murders that plagued Texarkana in the forties. (The same case that inspired “The Town That Dreaded Sundown.”) It contains an interview with an actual doctor with a real prosthetic hook hand, who makes the case that the story propagates harmful stereotypes about the disabled. Most fascinating to me, the program gets into the cultural meanings behind this story. The Hook is deconstructed as a fable about teenage girls needing to be cautious with handsy boys and their own sexuality. My favorite part is when Dr. Susan Block, quite a colorful looking character, compares the hook itself to a “twisted phallic symbol,” pointing to the subtext of a premature withdraw and castration symbolized in the image of the car peeling out and the hook's bloody fate. All the other legends are given a similarly thorough reading. The facts of the mummy in the fun house – an actual true story – are detailed. An actual coat company CEO is brought in to debunk the snake eggs one. The show was always honest about the harmful elements of these stories too, pointing out the racist qualities of the Choking Doberman.
As a make-shift horror anthology, your mileage may vary with “Mostly True Stories.” The production values for the dramatic re-enactments were extremely modest. The acting from the usually silent actors was often quite campy. However, that didn't stop the show from occasionally producing a striking image. The Hook sequence is actually kind of creepy. The silhouetted shot of the hook man lurking in the shadow or the boyfriend's own hand being replaced with a hook are actually quite well done. When discussing the Phantom Killer, the sudden appearance of a gun-wielding figure in a hood genuinely frightened me as a kid. The other segments are anywhere near as creepy as that one but shots of a cadaver in the lighting of a dark ride or baby snakes slithering out of a coat pocket aren't without their value. Henstridge's host segments are inessential but I do like the smoky, dark set she hangs out in. While most of the shows I watch this time of year are things I'm revisiting from childhood or seeing for the first time, I'll be totally honest and admit that “Mostly True Stories” is one I've re-watched quite frequently. Something about this show is extremely cozy to me. I love this stuff. [8/10]
As far as I know, nobody in the Year of Our Lord 2025 hitchhikes anymore. This is after nearly every pop culture recreation of the activity has depicted it as utterly fraught with danger. No matter what end of the wheel you're on, you are either getting picked up by a psycho or picking up a psycho, it seems. I guess teenage girls hitchhiking to rock concerts and never being seen again was a big problem in the seventies. “Take An Easy Ride” began life as a Public Information Film, those notoriously grim British educational films largely shown in schools, intended for television by director Kenneth F. Rowles. That's when exploitation producer David Grant offered to give the film theatrical distribution if lots of sex was inserted. This is how “Take An Easy Ride” took form as a cautionary pseudo-documentary about the dangers of hitchhiking and also a super sleazy sexploitation flick, with leering camera work and copious nudity. The film follows several storylines, of young women hitchhiking to a rock concert. Some of them are picked up simply by a creepy guy. Another is lured into a hotel room with alcohol. One pair is attacked and assaulted. While another set of young women prove as dangerous as the men picking them up.
This bizarre back-and-forth is what makes “Take An Easy Ride” an interesting cinematic experience. Man-on-the-street interviews, presumably staged, have random people being asked about whether they think hitchhiking should be banned. The film's intention is made repeatedly clear by the stern-voiced narrator repeatedly telling us how unsafe this activity is. As with any PIF, the presentation is stately and frills-free. The acting is often ropey, perhaps even amateurish. Cutting between multiple different scenarios so often furthers the feeling that this was a production by largely inexperienced newbies just happy to get the intended message out there. That's paired with documentary-like footage of the Isle of Wight rock festival, which gives us a fly-on-the-wall peek at seventies hippy culture as it was happening.
This clumsy, if seemingly sincere, attempt to warn the youth at large not to go hitchiking, you friggin' dummies, is paired with an extremely sleazy approach. I think every single actress in the movie get naked on-camera, often for no particular reason. There's a stop over in a sex club, with a strip tease captured on-camera alongside lots of footage of porno tapes. When the sexual violence occurs, it's photographed with extremely pervy angles that glare at the actress' exposed body. The story of a woman intoxicated and manipulated by a charming man does not seem to show much sympathy to the victimized woman. When combined with the strict moralizing tone, the effect feels like the film is chastising the characters as much as it is any perspective viewers. It adds up to create a particular viewing experience, the dissonance between the intended message and the way it's delivered properly baffling the viewer. Sleazy and uncomfortable, “Take An Easy Ride” played in British grindhouses for years, where I can't imagine it informed too many people about the threats of hitchhiking but did provide them with the cheap thrills they were looking for. [6/10]
