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Good documentaries transcend art and commerce by helping us understand who we are, where we came from and where (hopefully) we may be going. These five films prove the necessity and urgency of the #blacklivesmatter movement and help to contextualize our current situation and the need for dramatic change.

Whose Streets? 

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay, Vudu, Hulu.

Moving like a living, breathing monument to revolution, Whose Streets? captures a flashpoint in history with gripping vibrancy, as it bursts with an outrage both righteous and palpable. Activists Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis share directing duties on their film debut, bringing precise, insightful storytelling instincts to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, they provide a new and sharp focus to the events surrounding the 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson.

Cincinnati Goddamn

Available to stream for free from wexarts.org.

Wexner Center’s Paul Hill and filmmaker April Martin’s documentary exposes the similarities between 2014 events in Ferguson, MO surrounding the murder of Michael Brown and events in Cincinnati beginning in 1995 and culminating in riots following the suspicious, police-involved deaths of Roger Owensby in November, 2000 and Timothy Thomas in April, 2001.

The final product delivers an incisive look at the roots and ramifications of systemic racism. The filmmakers speak candidly with bereaved family members and witnesses, weave in crime scene footage and the news coverage of the day, and speak to historians, activists, police and political leaders to paint a picture that becomes jarringly prescient.

13th

Available on Netflix.

Director Ava DuVernay followed her triumphant Selma with an urgent dissection of mass incarceration in the United States. Packed with testimony from those who know, propelled by the force and vision of a director who knows how to tell a story, this is as gripping and necessary a film as you will find. Informative, stirring, and heartbreaking, 13th delivers a lesson that is essential to understanding both the ugly roots of America, and how shamefully deep they remain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jBRPjImuw

The Seven Five

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay.

If current events haven’t satisfied your appetite for stories of cops behaving badly, take a trip back to the 1980s with The Seven Five. It’s a sobering look at Mike Dowd, the man dubbed “the dirtiest cop in history,” as well as the law enforcement code of silence that still appears shockingly prevalent.

Director Tiller Russell uses footage from Dowd’s 1993 hearing testimony as an effective bookend to current interviews with Dowd and several of his cohorts. The chill that comes from a younger Dowd testifying that a good cop means “being 100 percent behind anything another cop does” only intensifies when you hear one of his old partners recalling the prevailing attitude of their criminal heyday.

Peace Officer

Available on Tubi, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu.

How, and why, did we get the point where tactics and weapons of the military are standard issue for police forces across the country?

This film’s strength lies in its nuance, and in its refusal to provide snap judgements. Rather than looking to vilify police officers, the goal here is to understand how the system itself has become untenable, all but guaranteeing continued tragedies.

It’s not a fun conversation, but it’s one that’s long overdue. Peace Officer may speak softly, but it’s hard to imagine an American film that is more urgent.

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The Mutineer

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The Ghost of Peter Sellers

by Hope Madden

You can’t go home again. You can go to Cyprus again, though, which is what director Peter Medak does in an attempt to come to terms with the project that nearly derailed his blossoming career.

Objectivity be damned!

Medak’s documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers deconstructs the disaster that was his unreleased 1973 pirate comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun. Medak believes he may be the first director to make such a documentary.

He’s not entirely wrong. Richard Rush directed a doc about the making of his own The Stunt Man – but that was an Oscar-nominated success. And though Terry Gilliam was involved in Lost in La Mancha—a doc outlining the endless disasters that doomed his first attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote— he was not the director.

Rather, this time the documentary is the filmmaker himself documenting not his successes but his massive, almost career-ending failure. That failure was partly due to incessant weather troubles and other catastrophes—hell, his pirate ship sank the day it arrived in Cyprus.

But according to Medak, those involved in the shoot and those who knew the actor best, the main problem was Peter Sellers.

“It’s not as if any of us didn’t know that Peter was nuts,” remarks the incredibly sage producer John Hayman, nearly 50 years after the fact. “But none of us knew how nuts.”

Medak’s clearly been haunted by the production—and, to a degree, by Sellers—since the shoot wrapped. Riding high at the time on two critical and box office successes (Negatives, The Ruling Class), the in-demand director jumped at the chance to direct the brilliant Sellers, then considered the greatest comedic actor in the world.

But Sellers—possibly, as friends suggest in the film, a man suffering from an undiagnosed mental health condition who was exploited by money hungry moviemakers—would not be the artist Medak hoped he’d be.

Lunatic behavior combined with an outright desire to sink the film turned an already underwhelming script, underfunded production and nightmarish environment into something crippling.

The stories from the set are fascinating, as are moments of commiseration between Medak and directors who’d dealt with Sellers on other films (Casino Royale and the Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu). Equally interesting are the sympathetic but knowing, even giggling responses Medak’s tales of woe elicited from Sellers’s family and friends.

“Oh, yes. He definitely did that.”

But too much time spent with director who is also subject turns many scenes into a self-indulgence.

That doesn’t topple The Ghost of Peter Sellers. Medak’s confessional pity party delivers a compelling look at the wrong side of filmmaking as it offers yet another take on Sellers—his genius as well as his demons.

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I Shouldn’t Go Out – Week of May 25

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Drive-in sensation and throwback SciFi fun comes home this week, as well as a handful of other mainly decent choices.

Click the film title to link to the full review.

The Vast of Night

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band

The Invisible Man (DVD)

Endings, Beginnings (DVD)

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All In

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Lucky Grandma

by Hope Madden

It’s hard to watch Lucky Grandma without giving at least a passing thought to Lulu Wang’s 2019 gem The Farewell. This story could not be more different, honestly, but at the heart of both movies is the undeniable force of a nai nai.

In writer/director Sasie Sealy’s tale, Tsai Chin portrays Nai Nai Wong as a dead-eyed hoot. Cigarette dangling, disgusted expression, Nai Nai doesn’t play. Her dismissive stare is priceless. Her confrontational giggle even better.

One routine trip to see her fortune teller/doctor/friend (Yan Xi) convinces her that her luck is changing. She boards a bus, hits a casino and lets it roll.

But luck is not always what you hoped for and the next thing Nai Nai knows, some homely gangsters are after her.

What makes this film the savvy, funny adventure it is results from Sealy’s manipulation of the familiar. The basic story follows many an Underdog Runs Afoul of the Mob stories (Hard 8, Jackie Brown, Millions, True Romance, etc.)

The difference here, obviously, is the underdog.

Like the movie on the whole, the elderly and beloved old grandmother at the center of this mess is simultaneously familiar and alien. Her aches, pains, poverty and the clear patterns of her behaviors suggest something authentic and recognizable. She’s just not a movie grandma—not like any in the movies we’re used to. Her will is as strong as steel, whether her body keeps up or not.

Sealy’s careful not to mock Nai Nai Wong (a good thing, as she would clearly kick a person’s ass). But Chin makes certain this character is not only formidable, but hilarious.

She’s aided by her odd couple sidekick Big Pong (Hsiao-Yuan Ha), a gentle giant of a bodyguard hired in the savviest, old-ladiest of ways. (You know who can spot a bargain? Grandma can.)

Michael Tow also lends a fascinating, unseemly quality to his scenes as creepy gangster henchman Little Handsome.

The emotional grounding for the film never feels forced, which allows the Lucky Grandma to run its course without the predictable sentimentality that crushes most “look how funny this old person is” films. It’s there—the weighty pull of family over self-reliance, of dependence over loneliness—but, like everything else in the film, it respects the character Chin has so meticulously developed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XRn6VswMro

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Fright Club: Best Jump Scares

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We spend a lot of time ripping on weak and lazy jump scares. But today we want to acknowledge that, when done well, jump scares can be an incredibly effective tool for a horror filmmaker.

Here are our 10 favorite jump scares from horror movies.

10. It Follows (2014): tall man at the door

This movie is a freak show of scares beginning to end, and the different images the demon takes throughout is forever terrifying and fascinating. But it was the tall man at the door that really got to us.

9. Les Diaboliques (1955): alive in the tub

First of all, this is a spoiler. But the film came out 65 years ago, so if you haven’t seen it by now (we even showed it once!), that’s on you, man. It’s a classic, and a classic scare.

8. The Ring (2002): I saw her face

Again, here is a film chocker block full of utterly fantastic creeps, all told a moment at a time. But it was that first one, when we see Samara’s first victim, that set the stage and made us jump out of our seats.

7. A Tale of Two Sisters (2003): under the sink

So much nuttiness, so many confusing ideas to keep track of, such a master class piece of atmosphere building in this film. You just are not expecting jump scares in this one. And yet, as one dinner party goes wrong…

6. Hereditary (2018): signpost

Tell us you saw this one coming and we will tell you that you are a liar.

5. Carrie (1976): Carrie White’s grave

Oh holy shit. You think Sue Snell has been through enough, what with missing out on prom and watching every friend she has die in a flaming blood bath. But you would think wrong.

4. Audition (1999): What’s in the bag?

Ring ring. Ring ring. The way Takashi Miike frames this scene, lovely Asami’s hair draped in front of her, her spine showing, that loud phone – you can’t take your eyes off her, waiting for her to rouse, to answer. You might not even notice that burlap sack…

3. Jaws (1975): Hey, it’s Bruce!

Jaws has two classic jump scares, and it was hard to pick. Remember when Hooper’s digging that tooth out of Ben Gardner’s boat and then, all the the sudden, a human head! Well, that would have been enough for most movies, but after waiting nearly 2/3 of the film to see that shark, Steven Spielberg introduces his lead with authority.

2. The Conjuring (2013): bureau

James Wan’s instant classic haunted house movie also boasts more than one strong contender for this list. That hand clapping scene, showcased in the trailer, was reason enough for us to buy our tickets. But the one that did the most damage starts with a sleep walker and ends with the best jump scare in the last twenty years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOgC_YUyTYs

1. The Exorcist III: guy in the hall

There are so many utterly priceless moments in this underrated horror show: Patrick Ewing and Fabio as angels, Sam Jackson as a blind man, that terrifying confessional scene. But there is this one flash of white that is the reason everybody who sees this movie remembers it.

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Rescue Me

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Fourteen

by Hope Madden

Mara (Tallie Medel) and Jo (Norma Kuhling) make an odd couple, or so says Mara’s one-time dinner date who remembers the pair of best friends from high school. Mara’s quiet, no-fuss. And Jo?

“She’s cutting.”

In fact, Mara and Jo resemble any number of very real relationships, those that maneuver childhood and the dramatic complexities of adolescence to settle into something adult that may not be sustainable.

Jo is flashy, passionate, needy. Mara is level-headed and supportive. Dan Sallitt’s understated character study Fourteen picks up their relationship somewhere into adulthood and follows it from Mara’s point of view with a detached but caring comment on how life, responsibility and surrender finally look.

Matter-of-fact performances eliminate any hint of melodrama as Fourteen wades through a series of the duo’s scenarios across about a decade. The performers’ delivery and the director’s style undercut any artifice, nearly every scene focused exclusively on a conversation, most of which feel improvisational.  

It offers a loose but relentless progression, a regrettable erosion focused on growing up and growing apart, caring for each other and caring for yourself.

Sallitt rarely focuses squarely on big moments. Jo’s breakdowns and histrionics remain almost entirely off screen, and what we see is Mara’s inevitable response as well as quietly significant moments: the first dinner with a new boyfriend, a trip back home for a timely visit.

The progression of time told in haircuts and apartments is handled more gracefully in Fourteen than what you might expect, but again, Sallitt’s style is not showy. More than the visual backdrop to mark a new era, it’s Medel and Kuhling’s recognizable reacquaintance, first halting then quickly entrenched in familiar patterns: this is who we are.

Medel’s performance, aided by her enormous eyes, is deceptively compelling. As the friend less likely to draw notice (she mentions at one point that, in Jo’s presence, she sometimes feels as if she’s not even there), she’s comfortable in the background. At the same time, Mara is clearly and constantly observing, making a mental note, internally balancing what’s best for Jo versus what’s best for herself.

Kuhling is a bit weaker, her believable amalgamation of tics in early scenes do not translate well to her climactic breakdown, which at times feels like a student actor’s workshop.

It’s a minor flaw, though, in a film that feels quietly courageous in its interest in one of life’s great heartbreaks.

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Gangster Lean

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Capone

by Hope Madden

What a nutty idea.

You’ve seen Capone on film: films about him, films containing him, films about gangsters reminiscent of him. A lot of these movies have been great – some of them classic. But you have never seen Alphonse Capone the way writer/director Josh Trank sees him.

Wisely, Trank realized Tom Hardy would be able to translate his vision.

There are moments, especially early in the film, where Hardy and Trank seem to be conjuring Vito Corleone (Hardy has always carried the same dangerous charisma of Brando, anyway). But it doesn’t take long before the role defines itself as something we truly have not seen before.

The film focuses on the final year of the infamous mobster’s life—the adult diapers and dementia year. He’s served his prison term for tax evasion, the syphilis he contracted in his youth has taken its toll on his mind and body, and his money is quickly evaporating.

Maybe he’s hidden $10 million somewhere. Maybe he’s just nuts.

Trank’s loose narrative is less concerned with the scheming, criss-crossing and backstabbing from underlings trying to find the money than it is with Capone’s deterioration, and that’s what makes this film so gloriously odd.

There is a grotesque humor underlying many of these scenes. Trank doesn’t ask you to sympathize with this notorious villain, nor does he revel in his decrepitude. But he definitely explores it, and that’s a brave decision. Many a mobster film fanatic will be annoyed by this glimpse into the post-badass years, but defying expectations is something Capone does early and often.

If Trank doesn’t trade in sympathy, we can still expect Hardy to generate empathy. As is characteristic of every performance in his career, Tom Hardy finds the faulty humanity in this character. His depiction of Capone’s confusion is unerringly human, and in his hands Trank’s macabre humor never feels like mockery.

Linda Cardellini flexes more in the role of Capone’s wife Mae than she has in her many other turns as put-upon spouse. She’s a great sparring partner for Hardy, and their volatile but ultimately tender relationship creates a needed grounding for a film so busy with the shadowy unreality of a diseased mind.

Because of the borderline surreal nature of a film told from the point of view of a man in the throes of dementia, it’s often tough to suss out the reality of the events onscreen. This generally works, but there are certainly moments—generally those inserted to give us stepping stones of a plot–that seem stiffly ill placed.

Thankfully, Hardy’s there to command your attention. No doubt some viewers will be disappointed—those who tuned in to see Hardy play a badass at the top of his game. My guess is that the reason one of the finest actors working today was drawn to Capone was the opportunity to do something just this unexpected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnvz-P9j2qA

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The Perfect Beast

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How to Build a Girl

by Hope Madden

There may be nothing braver than an open heart. That kind of bravery accompanies a lack of cynicism that makes others hide their eyes. It is also what drives Coky Giedroyc’s big screen depiction of Caitlin Moran’s memoir (adapted by Moran herself), How to Build a Girl.

Though events have been condensed and details changed (including the main character’s name), Moran’s inimitable upbeat and insightful voice remains, finding its ideal avatar in Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein.

Feldstein is Johanna, unrepentantly resilient odd duck. Friendless, in love with life, desperate for an adventure, Johanna is the fearless hero in this quest. Feldstein, aside from a few struggles with the accent, commands your attention and very best wishes. You root out loud for her.

After a local TV spot as student poet turns mortifying, Johanna’s brother (one of four) suggests she audition for a London magazine’s “gunslinger” opening as music critic. She unironically writes up a piece on the soundtrack to Broadway’s “Annie”—which nabs her an interview, but only as a joke. Undeterred, she overwhelms the smarmy hipsters into an assignment.

There are moments where How to Build a Girl transcends its coming-of-age trappings. Those are the moments when it directly quotes the book, giving us a peek inside the skill as a writer that will carry Johanna through it all.

The film bears a resemblance to Lady Bird, in which Feldstein portrayed shy bestie to Saoirse Ronan’s adolescent work-in-progress. Like Lady Bird, Johanna craves life outside her hometown. The two heroines also share a lovely knack for forgiveness (of self and others) as well as a strength for self-definition.

Feldstein’s work thus far (Neighbors 2, Lady Bird and, most notably, Booksmart) has announced her as the go-to for funny, brainy, less-than-popular teens—which is not to call her a one-trick pony. Part of her draw is her ability to carve out individuals, to recognize and unveil the human heart inside each girl. Her charisma is almost blinding in this film.

That’ll help you miss some of the weaker elements. Minor characters are allowed little opportunity to develop and the story feels boiled down to the most obvious plot points. There is nothing superficial about Johanna, but the film itself fails to dive far enough beneath the surface to do her justice.

Moran’s audacious humor sometimes feels muted, and that is an outright shame. Nonetheless, Feldstein’s a 1000 watt bulb who makes even the most ordinary scene glow happily. There is also something fearless in a film that decides it is up to every girl to build and rebuild herself in her own image.

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Fright Club: Best of Troma

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Here it is—the topic to test the marriage. Luckily, so George did not have to watch every film on the list, we were able to snag a couple of experts. Phantom Dark Dave and Jen Dreadful join Fright Club to gush, ooze, splurt, spray and basically get sloppy with Troma.

5. Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Are you squeamish? If so, best of luck trying to make it through anything on this list. Poultrygeist is certainly not recommended.

Part Better Off Dead, part Night of the Living Dead, a whole lot of Poltergeist, Kaufman’s film picks apart horror tropes and fast food chains. The film will do nothing for your appetite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s74J-XtfOE4

4. Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

James Gunn is one of many cinematic giants who got started with Troma. Along with Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman and Shakespeare, Gunn penned a troma-tastic version of the Bard’s star-crossed romance. Truth be told, things work out a little better for Gunn’s cute couple.

Incest, cannibalism, homoeroticism, body fluids, poor food safety protocols and more delirious nastiness mark this as a bone-deep Troma effort, so don’t let the highbrow source material throw you.

3. The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Here’s the classic. No way we could put together a tribute to Troma without Toxie. The Eighties underdog flick feels tame compared to what came before and after, but Eighties Troma tended to be a little friendlier, almost mainstream.

Well, that might be an exaggeration, but Toxic Avenger offers an excellent first toe into the massive, polluted gene pool that is Troma.

2. Father’s Day (2011)

The creative team behind loving giallo spoof Editor started off making what could reasonably be considered a spoof of a Troma film that wound up being an actual Troma film because, let’s be honest, who could tell the difference?

Story schmory—the film sets up every conceivable way to offend, disgust and dismay and it has the best time doing it. You’ll know if this film is for you within two minutes. Chances are good you won’t make it through that opening scene, and even better that you be sickened before the end of the movie if you do stick it out. What they do is vile and hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMZBXdf-6qA

1. Killer Condom (1996)

A Troma-distributed splatter/horror/comedy, Killer Condom is an enormous amount of fun. This is a German film—German actors delivering lines in German—but it’s set in NYC. You can tell because of the frequent shots of someone opening a New York Times newspaper machine.

Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel) is the grizzled NYC detective who longs for the good old days in Sicily. In German. He’s assigned to a crime scene in a seedy Time Square motel he knows too well, where it appears that women just keep biting off men’s penises.

Or do they?

This film is refreshingly gay, to start with, as nearly every major character in the film is a homosexual. The run-of-the-mill way this is handled is admirable, even when it is used for cheap laughs. (Babette, I’m looking at you).

It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s gory and wrong-headed and entertaining from start to finish. Who’d have guessed?