By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week I caught a few festival flicks that tried and failed to tee up their spring release plus docs of every stripe.
271. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
This debuted at SXSW and was on Hulu maybe a week later. Mike (James Marsden) and Alice (Eiza Gonzalez) are having an affair behind Nick’s (Vince Vaughn) back, and he’s a mobster (so is Mike, but he wants to quit). So when Nick asks Mike to help in on a hush-hush job, it feels dicey, even more so when it turns out Nick wants Mike to help him kidnap Nick (Vince Vaughn). Turns out that’s (six months in the-)Future Nick who’s talked him into helping nab Past Nick. Suffice it to say, this movie has a lot going on and not all of it entirely coheres, but the rabid-fire banter and violence are fun enough not to worry too too much about that. Basically the kind of movie cineplexes were lousy with 20-ish years ago, which makes for a fun bit of nostalgia (and realization of why all those Tarantino knock-offs more or less petered out back then). Four Beers.
272. In The Blink Of An Eye
Andrew Stanton returns to live action sci-fi once more in this Sundance and then shortly after Hulu-debuting film that drew pretty poor reviews in general there. I’m not entirely sure why- perhaps it’s overly earnest in its “ain’t life beautiful” conclusions, but I feel like they’re properly supported and earned by the three intercut stories across millennia. One follows a Neanderthal family surviving on the seashore, the other a pair of academics in the present day or so falling in love, and the last a woman alone shepherding the seeds of a new human settlement to a faraway planet. While none of the three are perhaps any great shakes on their own, the way Stanton interpolates them is the point of the exercise, and by my book he did a great job (I was also one of those John Carter apologists, so maybe he’s more my wavelength than most’s). Two Beers.
273. Neighbors
This HBO documentary series definitely has the cringe comedy imprint of executive producers Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein (most lately of Marty Supreme fame) and its A24 imprint, but directors Harrison Fishman and Dylan Redford have a unique eye all their own. The focus is on bite-sized stories of dueling neighbors all across these United States, and while the many eccentricities of these people (intriguingly basically none of these conflicts have a clear rooting interest by the time their stories are fully told) need no embellishment, stylistic tics like their kaleidoscopic fisheye lens really amp the bizarre surreality of what is still very much documentary filmmaking. Two Beers.
274. DTF St. Louis
This gem of a crime drama is never what you think it is. Several times in the first few episodes you (and Joy Sunday & Richard Jenkins, playing the detectives on the case) will think you know exactly how suburban dad Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) ended up suspiciously dead in a closed for the season pool house, survived by his wife (Linda Cardellini) and best friend (Jason Bateman), who we learn very early on are having an affair. You don’t, though, and so incredibly uniquely, the more layers of this story that are uncovered, the nicer it gets. Smernitch is a ray of light in the life of everyone he meets, it seems, and the relationship between these three keeps revealing new complexities. While as polished and well-acted as we’ve come to expect from HBO, creator Steven Conrad’s show here is quite unlike anything else out there. Two Beers.
275. Ghost Elephants
Werner Herzog returns with one of his pensive documentaries on life, the universe, and everything, with his vehicle this time South African biologist Steve Boyes and his quest to find a lost subspecies of gigantic elephant he’s convinced still reside in the remote highlands of Angola. Along the way Herzog interrogates every related culture and subject that crosses his path as is his wont, but never loses sight of Boyes’ thrilling journey of discovery, something you may think is no longer possible in the year 2026… but you’d be wrong. Two Beers.
276. The Last Rhinos: A New Hope
I went ahead and let this short documentary autoplay after Ghost Elephants– it felt like a logical progression. It is indeed a beautifully shot, African-set nature tale, this time focused on the efforts of scientists and the caretakers who devote their lives to protecting the endangered Northern White Rhino to save them from extinction. Being that there are only a mother and daughter pair left with enough preserved semen to create a limited number of embryos to implant in their less endangered Southern counterparts, it’s a tall order indeed. This is a story without an ending yet, but it’s inspirational to see these people come together in this essential quest. Two Beers.
277. A Friend, A Murderer
Netflix et al are now casting abroad for material to satisfy the world’s voracious true crime appetite. This Danish documentary is just as polished as the English language documentaries in Netflix’s house style that have led up to it. It examines a group of adult friends who are shocked to find that one of their number is the serial rapist and killer who’s been terrorizing their quiet rural community. We don’t often see this kind of story told from the perspective of the friends who never saw it coming, never saw the monster within, and puts to rest any thoughts that you’d yourself be immune to this blindness. Two Beers.
278. Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet
This polished Netflix anthology documentary series from a few years back delves into various ways that the Internet has fucked over individuals or society as a whole in its rapacious appetite for misinformation and capacity for duplicity. If anything, episodes on, say, the Seth Rich conspiracies feel almost oddly innocent considering how much further away from reality most of their adherents now reside. You could make endless seasons of this show, but I can kind of see why they haven’t. Some things are too depressing for documentary after all. Three Beers.
279. Dynasty: The Murdochs
It’s a pretty poorly kept secret that the Roys of Succession were based on the Murdochs, whose decades of maneuvers to position themselves to be the one to succeed a dear old Dad as the head of their media empire are detailed here. If anything, there are more power shifts in this true story, and scion Rupert was even more transparently cold in how he played his children off each other (and even more stubbornly resistant to actually ceding power even as he entered his 80s and even 90s). Fascinating stuff, with future twists and turns not off the table even with Rupert retired and just having turned 95. Two Beers.
280. It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
This documentary profiles the incredibly talented singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, who tragically passed at the age of 30 in an accidental drowning. This is more of a optimistic film, though, a celebration of a shooting star who was able to cover everyone from Nina Simone to Pakistani qawwali legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (and, of course, Leonard Cohen in his seminal rendition of “Hallelujah”). This was a talent with unlimited range and an insatiable appetite for musical knowledge, and this film doesn’t so much on what could have been as all the joy he did bring in his brief time with us. Two Beers.
