Run Lola Run has been on my film bucket list since I had hair. It was one of those films that you heard about from the cooler people you knew. It was the movie that the cool girls who babysat you when you were little talked about. It was pure Gen-X and I always looked up to that generation. I’m not an X-er, but they were damn cool. Lola embodies that generation. She’s so self-secure and tough and cool and hip and if you don’t like her- Whatever!
Yes, Gen-X women had a go F-yourself streak that if you didn’t like them, piss off. I was the beginning of the Millennial/Y generation who I guess got into avocado sandwiches or whatever they say about us. X was the generation that knew they were getting passed over because there was a bigger generation coming and the boomers did not want to get out of the way, but X embraced the suck of it all.
It is really sucky that Lola is in love with Manni who is a really mediocre criminal. Manni also loses things; such as, a bag of 100,000 Marks (60,000 USD) that belongs to a gangster. Oopsy! He is like the Anti-Lola: whiny, dumb, insecure, and unlike Lola -NO screaming telekinesis powers AT ALL! Yes, when she screams, it destroys or moves objects. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out why she liked Manni so much – FFS she has superpowers.
When Manni tells Lola that he lost the gangster’s money and says that he will rob a grocery store if she doesn’t get to him in twenty minutes, Lola literally RUNS into action. Yes, there is A LOT of running in this film. She runs in hallways, on sidewalks, on streets, away from cops, and accidentally towards cops. As she runs past people, we get a glimpse of the extras’ lives in THIS timeline and boy are these extras a bunch of cretins.
Timeline?! WHAT?! Yes, this movie is ALL about time travel. Lola needs to get the day right or she or her boyfriend or David Duchovny will die. I’m assuming Duchovny too because he was a 1990s GOD! She time trips three times to get it, to get it, to get it right child. I was going to reference some 1998 songs, but I looked them up and The Thong Song just sounds sad.
The movie blends light surrealism with action and really believable performances. You have this guttural feeling that this is a woman on her own, fighting her own fight, and you better get out of her way. Also, she’s the only person in the film who is pure-hearted. Her dad is a philandering banker asshat, her boyfriend is a milquetoast, and the people she bumps into show glimpses of their sinful lives. Lola is literally running around evil. She has great running form too; I ran track in high school and she’s got talent.
Listen, it doesn’t matter how big your house is or how nice of a career you’ve got going or how pretty your family might be. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a nice pool or a nice house or if your sister-in-law lives right next door. It doesn’t matter how friendly the neighbors seem to be or that there’s a really hot guy at your new job. If you live in the suburbs, you are screwed.
At least, that’s what I’ve learned from watching Lifetime movies. Now, I should admit that I live in a suburb and …. well, it’s pretty nice. But I’m guessing that my neighborhood must be the exception to the rule because, as I’ve learned from watching Lifetime, every other suburban neighborhood is a hotbed of murder, betrayal, and kidnapping.
Take The Killer Next Door, for instance!
Julie (Andrea Bogart) and her ten year-old son, Matty (Nicholas Borne), have just moved into a nice, big house in the suburbs. Julie’s been having a tough time ever since her husband was killed in a tragic auto accident. But, finally, it looks like things might be getting better! She’s got a new home and a new job as a personal trainer, where she meets big, handsome Blake (John-Michael Carlton). Living right next door, she’s get her sister-in-law, Alison (Hannah Barefoot). As Alison makes clear, she’s more than willing to help Julie in whatever way possible. Alison definitely wants to look after Matty whenever Julie can’t be there. In fact, Alison is so determined to be there for Matty that she even seems to get a little bit offended when Julie hires a nanny! Hmmmm, I wonder where this could be leading….
As Julie soon discovers, she’s moved into a very tight-knit and somewhat gossipy neighborhood. In fact, there’s even a website where everyone in the neighborhood can post comments about upcoming events, along with totally mean stuff about the newest member of the community! Julie quickly discovers — with Alison’s help — that her new neighbors apparently don’t like her! Little things — like taking the trash out on the wrong day — really set them off. And then there’s the time that Julie thinks Matty has been kidnapped and she gets the entire neighborhood to set up a search party, just for Alison to come driving up in her SUV with Matty sitting in the passenger’s seat. It was all just a misunderstanding! Needless to say, Julie’s neighbors are not amused. All that drama for nothing….
Anyway, no one should be shocked to discover that Alison isn’t exactly the benevolent sister-in-law that she pretends to be. In fact, she’s setting Julie up. But will Julie realize what’s happening or will she be too caught up in arguing with her neighbors to notice that Alison is stealing her son away from her? You’ll have to watch to find out….
I always enjoy a good, “evil in the suburbs” movie so I enjoyed The Killer Next Door. It’s pretty obvious from the start that Alison is not to be trusted but that’s actually what makes a movie like this fun. You know that Julie’s being set up and the suspense comes from trying to guess how long it’s going to take Julie to figure it out. Mostly, I liked the film’s portrayal of all of Julie’s gossipy neighbors. No matter what was happening, you could always be sure that one of them would pop up in the background with a disapproving look on their face. The Killer Next Door was a fun trip to Suburban Hell.
Hey, I hear you, sister. We live in a stressful world. I mean, it’s the holidays. Not only do I have to make sure that all the members of my family have a merry gift-giving season but I also have to make sure that they know exactly what to buy me. On top of that, I’ve got a hundred movies that I still need to see, I’ve got Oscar season to keep up with, and I’ve got to keep this site updated with interesting information. Seriously, I can understand how you can get stressed to death….
Of course, the lead character in the Lifetime film, Stressed to Death, is suffering from maybe a little bit more stress than even I am. Having served in the middle east, Maggie (Gina Holden) has finally returned home and is now working as an EMT. She’s still haunted by flashbacks to one particularly harrowing firefight but she’s determined to get on with her life. She’s got a loving husband, Jason (Jason Gerhardt), and a daughter and a job that allows her to help people. But then, one night, she comes across a robbery taking place in a convenience store. An obviously deranged man has shot one man and is pointing his gun at a pregnant woman. When Maggie enters the store, she explains that she’s just an EMT and she’s here to save lives. She says that she just wants to take the man and the woman out of the store and get them medical attention. The gunman replies that she can only take one of them out of the store and he demands that she choose which one. Maggie chooses to save the pregnant woman. The robber than shoots the man to death.
Ten years later, Maggie is still haunted by that night. Her husband has a good job and they now live in a big house. Her daughter, Jane (Taylor Blackwell), is now a teenager and, while she’s somewhat of an outcast at school, she’s also extremely intelligent and appears to have a great future ahead of her. Maggie thinks that she’s ready to return to work as an EMT but, as her supervisor tells her, PTSD is nothing to take chances with.
Jason’s boss, Victoria (Sarah Aldrich), often complains that Jason isn’t ruthless enough. While Jason always wants to be a nice guy, Victoria insists that Jason should take no prisoners when it comes to making money. As critical as Victoria is, she also says that she appreciates the fact that Jane is tutoring her son. Of course, what neither Jason nor Maggie know is that Victoria is the widow of the man who was murdered in that convenience store. Victoria has waited ten years for vengeance and now, she’s determined to get it….
Stressed to Death starts with an interesting idea but then it eventually becomes a standard Lifetime abduction film, as two hitmen kidnap Jane and Maggie tries to rescue her daughter. The PTSD angle is never explored as much as the film’s title might lead you to expect. I mean, yes, Maggie is stressed but I imagine that even someone who has never served in the military would be equally stressed if their daughter was kidnapped by two hired killers. That said, Gina Holden did a good job in the role of Maggie and I liked that the character of Jane wasn’t just another typically perfect daughter. Instead, she was kind of quirky and easy to root for. As played by Sarah Aldrich, Victoria was an interesting villain. Though her plans were evil, you could sympathize with her pain and that’s an important thing. She wasn’t just a cardboard evil person. Instead, she was someone who was suffering just as much Maggie, Jason, and Jane.
It’s hard not to feel that Stressed to Death missed a few opportunities but it was still a diverting Lifetime film.
In a Lifetime film, the value of social media often depends on what time of year the film is taking place.
If it’s a Christmas film, social media is an amazingly helpful tool that helps single young women meet handsome carpenters and which also allows them to keep tabs on whether or not their hometown is going to be able to afford to put on the annual nativity pageant. Want to find the perfect Santa Claus? Well, just hop on Facebook and look up Kris Kringle! Want to discover that, because of a snow storm, you’re going to have to spend the Holidays in a Christmas-themed inn? Just check on twitter!
Of course, any other time of year, social media is portrayed as being the tool of the Devil. Social media is how con artists steal identities and how psychotic children track down their birth mothers. Social media is how lies are spread and how revenge porn pics are sent to everyone on Sunday morning and how stalkers can keep track of your every move. With the exception of the films that air during Christmas, Lifetime spends most of the year telling us that we all need to get off the grid and consider learning more about the Luddites. Perhaps we should all go to a religious retreat in the French wine country. That’s something that my sister Erin and I have often discussed doing. I don’t drink wine but I do speak French. She doesn’t speak French but she does drink wine. A year living offline, we’d make it work and, by the standards of Lifetime, we would both be a lot safer.
Take Instakiller, for instance. Harper (Lizze Broadway) is an aspiring fashion designer and influencer and her account on …. wait for it …. Instapixer (!) has suddenly become very popular. (One thing that I always enjoy about these Lifetime films is seeing the names that they come up with for the movie’s version of real-life social media companies. Degrassi featured two of my favorites, Facerange and MyRoom.) Unfortunately, Harper also has a stalker. He sends her creepy messages. He follows her as she walks home from school and takes pictures. (When confronted by a bystander, he smashes the man’s face into a car hood.) When Harper’s mom, Layla (Kelly Sullivan), forces Harper to delete her account, the stalker sits in his car and screams. Soon, the stalker is attacking people with golf clubs and strangling them with jumper cables.
Who is Harper’s stalker? Could it be one of the customers at her family’s coffee shop? Could it be one of Harper’s coworkers or even one of her friends? There’s one obvious suspect but he’s so obvious that you know from the minute he shows that he’s going to turn out to be geeky but not dangerous. To be honest, the identity of Harper’s stalker is not that shocking, just because there aren’t that many suspects. Once you dismiss all of the obvious red herrings, there’s really only one possible suspect left.
But no matter! Instakiller is an entertaining Lifetime film, which is to say that if you enjoy Lifetime films, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Kelly Sullivan and Lizze Broadway are believable as mother-and-daughter and I imagine that a lot of moms will watch this movie and find themselves totally relating to Sullivan’s character and her confusion as to why Harper is willing to put her life in danger just to have an Instapixer account. Seriously, though, once you hit a thousand followers, the risks are totally worth it….
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you were having trouble getting to sleep at one in the morning, you could have turned over to TCM and watched the TCM Underground premiere of a low-budget oddity that was first released in 1976, The Pyramid.
The Pyramid is a collection of disjointed scenes, some of which are unsettling, some of which are rather amateurish, and some of which are oddly poignant. It’s perhaps as strange a film as a film about hippies in Dallas could be. The film opens in North Dallas, with a disturbing scene of an old man having a heart attack while driving his car and crashing into a school bus. (As far as school bus crashes go, it was almost as disturbing as the one that would later open Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue.) Two reporters show up to cover the carnage — supercool L.A. Ray (Ira Hawkins) and his cameraman, Chris Lowe (C.B. Brown). In the style of Medium Cool, they’re both detached from the tragedy and the carnage around them.
The film moves on from the school bus crash, which is never again mentioned once L.A. and Chris file their story. We get a series of scenes that may or may not be connected. L.A. argues with a woman who might be his wife. Chris wanders around Dallas and tries to film people talking about their lives. At one point, Chris and L.A. drive through Dealey Plaza and Chris stares back at the Book Depository Building. At a party, Chris tells a random woman that both Jesus and Richard Nixon were Capricorns. L.A. and Chris smoke weed while driving around. Later, they take part in a slow motion flag football game with a group of hippies. An old man in a steam room suggests that everyone should imagine being dead.
Chris and L.A. stumble across a shoot out involving the police. A young black man is gunned down by the cops. L.A. spends several minutes loudly vomiting. They go to an abandoned church that is sitting in the middle of the countryside and talk to an old man who says that he’s had religious visions. Back at the station, Chris’s boss accuses Chris of shooting out-of-focus footage and accuses him of being pretentious. Chris is fired.
L.A. disappears from the film for a while as Chris wanders around with his camera. Chris interviews a hog farmer who is worried that he’s going to lose his hogs. He covers a vacuous fashion show in the backyard of a Highland Park mansion. In Oak Cliff, he stops to stare at a rooster. (For the record, the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas is famous for its roosters.)
Chris meets a “confrontational therapist” named Merleen (Tomi Barrett). Merleen screams at a middle-aged man until the man starts screaming back, his entire body shaking as if he’s become possessed. Chris meets with his friend Bubba and asks if this is the way that we want the world to be. People gather underneath a makeshift pyramid. An astronaut is interviewed about conducting ESP experiments in space. The real-life suicide of newswoman Christine Chubbuck is crudely recreated and then not mentioned again. The entire cast appears gathered around a pyramid and starts to sing. Meanwhile, the sun rises over the Dallas skyline….
The Dallas skyline and the sun rising over it is a sight that’s often seen in this film. As a Dallas native, I enjoyed that part of The Pyramid. Even though the film was made long before I was even born, I still saw plenty of familiar sights in The Pyramid. It’s rare that I get to watch a movie and yell out, “Hey, I’ve driven through that tunnel!” That part of the movie was fun.
The Pyramid was an odd film. Just from my own research, I discovered that The Pyramid was filmed over the course of at least two years. If nothing else, this confirmed one of my main suspicions about the film. Though production on the film started in either 1972 or 1973, it still features a recreation of Christine Chubbuck’s 1974 suicide. That would seem to suggest that the film itself was kind of “made up” as things went along. (It also potentially explains why the suicide is never again mentioned after it rather abruptly happens.) That certainly explains why the film is such an episodic and disjointed experience.
What’s the film really about? Your guess is as good as mine. In many ways, it feels like a Texas version of Medium Cool but it’s also obvious that the filmmaker’s had grander goals in mind than just paying homage to Haskell Wexler’s classic portrait of alienation. As you can tell by looking at the advertisement at the bottom of this review, The Pyramid was advertised as being “a positive mystical experience.” The ad also states that “For this engagement, the theaters have been energized with pyramid power.” The film suggests that we’re all connected to each other and that we need to seek out and embrace the positive, lest we become so consumed by all the negative and hate that we end up like Christine Chubbuck. It’s a message that’s both naive and kind of sweet. Whatever else can be said about this movie, it can’t be faulted for a lack of sincerity.
The Pyramid‘s a mess but I kind of liked it. Of course, I have a weakness for low-budget passion projects. Whatever flaws this film may have (and it has many), it’s obvious the someone really felt that they had something important to say with this film. It’s not necessary to agree with the film’s conclusion to respect director Gary Kent’s commitment to bringing to life his own vision. That said, it bears repeating that The Pyramid is definitely a flawed film. The acting is frequently amateurish. The sound quality is far from perfect. The narrative momentum starts to seriously drag during the 2nd half of the film. But it has its strengths too. The shots of the Dallas skyline are impressive and there are a few cinema verite sequences that are interesting from a historical point of view. (This film basically is a time capsule of the early 70s.) In the end, it stays true to its own bizarre vision and there’s definitely something to be said for that.
I mean, seriously, do you understand what I mean? Sometimes, you just see a film that leaves you feeling so indifferent that it’s a struggle to even think of anything to say about it. That’s the way I feel about The Kitchen, which is neither bad enough to hatewatch nor good enough to recommend. It’s a mediocre film, one that would be totally forgettable if not for a few remarkably inept choices made by the director and the cast.
Melissa McCarthy is Kathy Brennan. Tiffany Haddish is Ruby O’Connell. Elisabeth Moss is Claire Walsh. The year is 1978 and all three of them live in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York. All three of them are also married to men who are involved with the Irish Mob. When their husbands all get busted by the FBI and the new mob boss refuses to help the three women pay the bills, they team up and take over the neighborhood themselves. With the help of their number one enforcer, Gabriel O’Malley (Domhnall Gleeson), the women prove that they can be even more ruthless than their husbands and their competitors.
And really, this should have been fun. I’m all about girl power and I’m half-Irish. If I was going to join the mob, I would definitely join the Irish Mob. But, seriously, The Kitchen is not just a mess but it’s a dreadfully heavy-handed mess as well. I knew that this film was going to suck as soon as James Brown started singing, “This is a man’s world,” over the opening credits because it was just such an obvious choice to go with. To me, picking the song showed that the filmmakers weren’t really interested in giving too much thought to what the film was about. Instead, they just said, “Hey, that’s a really on-the-nose choice! Let’s go with it!” About an hour later, Clare and Gabriel were making love while Carry On My Wayward Son blasted on the soundtrack and I found myself wondering if this film’s soundtrack was put together by listening to a random classic rock station and just jotting down the names of the first ten songs that were played.
Adding to the disappointing atmosphere of the film is a talented cast, everyone of whom appears to be acting in a different movie from everyone else. Melissa McCarthy, for instance, gets all of the dramatic scenes but gives a comedic performance, one that feels like it’s been assembled from outtakes of the “awkward humor” bits of Ghostbusters. Tiffany Haddish is ruthless but it’s a very one-note type of ruthlessness. It gets boring after a while. Elisabeth Moss gives the best performance out of the three but her character often seems to be pushed to the side. Once Claire starts threatening to shoot people, you can tell that the film doesn’t know what to do with her.
You also have to feel bad for the supporting cast, all of whom deserve better than this film. Annabella Sciorra plays a Mafia wife who walks up to the women in the middle of the street and tells them that they’re just like Gloria Steinem and, when she shows up, you can’t help but think that Sciorra would have been a better pick for the role of Kathy than Melissa McCarthy. Then Common shows up as an FBI agent because, for some reason, Common always plays a member of law enforcement in films like this. Margo Matindale gets a few good scenes as an Irish mafia matriarch but her character disappears from the film far too quickly.
It’s a mess of a film. Kathy, Ruby, and Claire’s rise to power happens too abruptly to be credible and none of the subsequent betrayals make much sense. Appropriately, for a gangster film, it’s violent but the violence is so repetitive that it gets a little bit dull after a while. None of the characters are really memorable enough for their subsequent deaths to generate much of a reaction. An hour into the film, you just find yourself thinking, “Oh, hey, that dude’s dead now. Yay, I guess.” Much like Captain Marvel, The Kitchen often seems to only be interested in girl power as a way to disguise the fact that the script kind of sucks. I kept waiting for one of the male gangsters to shout, “The ancient prophecy said that I will be defeated by no man!,” just so Melissa McCarthy could respond, “Yes …. by no man!” It didn’t happen but maybe they’ll get around to it in the sequel.
There is no state more beautiful than Hawaii and there are no people friendlier. When I was 17 years old, my family spent a summer in Hawaii and it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I can’t swim to save my life and I have a morbid fear of drowning but, when I was in Hawaii, I happily walked into the ocean. Not far into the ocean, of course. But still, everyone in my family was amazed. Of course, eventually I saw a jelly fish floating towards me and I screamed and ran back to the beach. (After reaching the safety of the beach, I realized that the jelly fish was actually just seaweed but still, it was scary-looking!) Hawaii is just the type of state that makes you appreciate life and take risks.
For instance, consider the two main characters in Roger Corman’s 1958 film, She Gods of Shark Reef. Chris (Bill Cord) and Lee (Don Durant) are brothers who live in Hawaii. Chris has blonde hair and a good attitude towards life. Lee has dark hair and a criminal nature. Chris loves the ocean. Lee loves to run guns. After Lee kills two men, he stows away on Chris’s boat. When the boat then hits a storm, Chris and Lee wash up on the shores of an isolated beach. It’s a beautiful island but all Lee can think about is how he can make money off of his current predicament. Bad Lee, bad!
Anyway, it turns out that the island is inhabited by an all-female village of pearl divers. Everyone is excited by the arrival of two handsome, shirtless men. Everyone except for Queen Pua (Jeanne Gerson), who doesn’t trust either one of them and who doesn’t appear to want anyone in the world to be happy. She’s especially upset when Chris interrupts a plan to sacrifice a villager to the shark gods of the sea. Chris not only rescues but also falls in love with Mahia (Lisa Montell).
While Chris is busy falling in love, Lee is trying to figure out a way to escape from the island before a rescue boat arrives. Lee, after all, is a wanted criminal and the last thing that he wants is to go from being shipwrecked to imprisoned. Lee comes up with a plan for himself, his brother, and Mahia to escape the island. However, Lee being Lee, he just can’t overcome his greedy nature. As quickly becomes obvious, Karma is not only a bitch but it’s a shark as well.
She Gods of Shark Reef was directed by Roger Corman. Though the film’s low budget is obvious in every frame, Corman wisely decided to concentrate on the island’s beauty as opposed to the movie’s somewhat haphazard story. This is one of those films where the action stops for nearly five minutes so that Corman can film a hula dancer. But you know what? That’s okay! The beauty of Hawaii and the surrounding ocean carry the film. You don’t watch for the plot. Instead, you watch for the blue water and the green grass and the vibrant skies. This is a film that you watch for the island scenery and the sharks. Both of them are quite nice.
Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a swimmer at the University of Florida who has a loving but troubled relationship with her father, Dave (Barry Pepper). With a Category 5 hurricane on a collision course with the state of Florida, everyone has been ordered to evacuate the area. However, Haley is concerned that her father may not have gotten the message or, being the stubborn type that he is, he may have gotten the message and just decided to ignore it. (I could totally relate to Haley’s frustration. When Dallas got hit by tornadoes last month, my Dad not only refused to hide in his laundry room but he also called me up to inform me that he was sitting out on his back patio watching for any twisters.) With the storm raging all around her, Haley searches for her father. When she finally finds him, he’s in the crawlspace of their vacation home. He’s unconscious. He’s wounded. And he’s surrounded by alligators! It’s now up to Haley to save the lives of not only her father but also the family dog. And, of course, she has to do all of this without getting eaten by an alligator herself. Even worse, even if they do manage to outswim the alligators, Haley and Dave are still going to have to deal with the ever intensifying storm that is raging outside.
Crawl is an intense and exciting film, one that clocks in at a brisk 87 minutes and which has a lot more going on underneath the surface than might be readily apparent. Yes, this is a film about two people and a dog who are trapped in a flooded crawlspace by a bunch of hungry alligators. And yes, I’m sure that some people will be totally boring and predictable and make a big deal about the film’s environmental subtext. (“How many more innocent people have to be eaten by alligators before we pass the Green New Deal!?”) But, at its heart, this is a film about relationships. Dave has always been hard on Haley. Haley has always both loved and resented her father. The flooding and subsequent alligator attacks may justify the pressure that Dave put on Haley to become the best but, even more importantly, it allows Haley to show that she actually is the best and that she doesn’t always need Dave to tell her what to do. With Dave spending the majority of the film incapacitated in one way or the other, it’s often up to Haley to keep them both from getting eaten as they try to move from one flooded location to another. It’s up to Haley to keep fighting and fight she does. Haley never gives up and never surrenders and, for me, Crawl is a thousand times more empowering than Captain Marvel or any of the other more obviously heavy-handed “girl power” films that have come out this year.
As directed by Alexandra Aja, there’s not a single wasted moment to be found in Crawl. He plunges straight into the story and the film is pretty much an unrelenting thrill ride from beginning to end. Even more importantly, Aja is smart enough to trust his audience to be able to read between the lines of this genre film without necessarily beating the audience over the head with its message. This is a film that can be appreciated as both a thriller and a heartfelt look at a difficult but loving relationship. This is a grindhouse film with a heart, featuring a strong and committed performance from Kaya Scodelario. As Haley is, again and again, forced to prove her strength, she becomes a stand-in for all of us. Crawl is genre filmmaking at its best, along with being one of the most impressive films of 2019.
The new documentary Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops opens with police body cam footage of a man getting gunned down in the doorway of his own house.
Why was the man shot? Because he was holding a screwdriver and he apparently didn’t drop it quickly enough. Why were the police there in the first place? They had been called by the man’s mother, who warned the police that her son was schizophrenic and that he was hearing voices. When the cops shoot him, the man’s mother can be heard screaming in the background, begging the cops not to kill her son. But kill him, they did. He died for the crime of holding a screw driver while having mental health crisis.
Unfortunately, that’s a scenario the seems to be happening more and more frequently in the United States. The police are trained to quickly take control of dangerous situations, to show no emotion, and to bark out orders. How many times do we hear it whenever someone is gunned down for not immediately dropping whatever they were holding their hands? “If he had just done what the police said, he’d still be alive.” We hear that a lot but what if, like the man holding that screwdriver, you’re already hearing voices before the police start screaming at you to show them your hands. What if you’re already disorientated and not sure what’s real and what’s not? What then?
Unfortunately, it’s rare that the police are trained on how to deal with someone suffering from mental issues. Ernie Stevens and Joe Smarro are two cops in San Antonio who are trying to change that. As members of the SAPD’s mental health unit, Ernie and Joe are advocates for changing the way that the police deal with the most vulnerable members of society. As they explain at one of their training sessions, the police academy will spend days teaching recruits how to draw and fire their weapon without devoting one minute to discussing how to deal with someone who might be hearing voices or who might be suicidal. Ernie and Joe argue for compassion over brute force. (Unfortunately, while some cops are seen nodding along with Ernie and Joe’s lessons, several others are seen smirking and rolling their eyes.)
Shot in the style of cinéma vérité, the film follows Ernie and Joe as they deal with cases and attempt to teach their fellow cops that brute force is not always the solution. At one point, we watch them deal with someone who is threatening to jump off an overpass. We also listen as Joe, a former Marne, discusses seeing a child blown up in Iraq and how he is still haunted by PTSD. Ernie, meanwhile, is a family man who goes to church every Sunday and who is looking forward to soon retiring from police work. The film follows them as they talk, joke, and occasionally bicker like an old married couple. It’s a good, if somewhat low-key, documentary. One watches it and hopes that other police departments will learn from San Anotnio’s success.
As I watched the film, I found myself thinking about Vanessa Marquez. Vanessa was a former actress and a longtime member of the #TCMParty on twitter. Vanessa was always very open about her own health struggles. 14 months ago, the police showed up at Vanessa’s house in South Pasadena, California. They say they were doing a welfare check. They say that Vanessa was in obvious mental distress and that Vanessa resisted their attempts to force her to go to the hospital to be checked out. The police say that Vanessa pointed a BB gun at them. Unfortunately, we only know what the police said happened but Vanessa is not her to tell her side of the story. She was shot and killed. At the time, it was big news but, as always happens, the media eventually moved on to something else. After all this time, we still don’t know what really happened the day that Vanessa Marquez was killed in her own home. We probably never will.
Watching the documentary, I found myself wondering what would have happened if it had been Ernie and Joe or, at the very least, a cop with a similar outlook and compassion who showed up at her house on that day. Would Vanessa still be with us, watching movies on TCM and tweeting about her experiences in Hollywood? No one can say for sure but I think she would be.
Hopefully, this documentary will serve as a wake up call for some people. One need not lose their compassion just because they put on a uniform. In fact, it’s essential that they don’t.
In general, I usually don’t get much out of watching documentaries about drug addiction. There’s a few reasons for this:
1. Drug addicts are depressing to watch.
2. Drug addicts are boring to listen to.
3. Since everyone knows that drug addiction is a bad thing and that there’s usually only two possible endings to a drug addict’s story — death or detox — it’s not like the majority of drug addiction documentaries have anything new or surprising to tell us.
4. I always find myself wondering about just how much the film crew is enabling the addicts that they’re following around. There’s always a feeling that the documentary crew is more concerned with putting addicts on display as opposed to actually getting them the help that they need. It’s hard not to feel that the point of many of these documentaries (and reality shows) is to invite the viewers to gawk and say, “My life may be messed up but at least I’m not passed out in the parking lot of Burger King with a syringe hanging out of my arm.”
Taking all that in mind, I do have to say that I found the new documentary, American Relapse, to be a disturbing and thought-provoking look at not only drug addiction but also the way that the rehab industry has become a big business in South Florida. Frankie Holmes and Allie Severino are two former addicts who now work as — well, they’re referred to as being “Junkie Hunters,” though Allie objects to the term. A junkie hunter is someone who searches the streets, befriends drug addicts, and eventually takes them to rehab. Frankie and Allie both say that they’re in the business because they want to help people and save lives. At the same time, they also admit that their industry is full of people who don’t care about the addicts that they’re claiming to help. Instead, they’re simply looking for addicts who have good health insurance so that the rehab centers can make money off of treating them and the hunters can make money off of finding them.
As American Relapse demonstrates, there’s a lot of money to be made in rehab. The simple act of giving someone a drug test can bring in a few hundred dollars, assuming that the person being tested has insurance. For a rehab center to make money, there has got to be addicts to make money off of and every time that a formerly sober person relapses, that means even more money. It leads to a viscous cycle, one where people will help but only so much.
The film alternates between scenes explaining how the rehab industry works and scenes of Frankie and Allie working the streets and searching for addicts. Frankie spends his time trying to get Conor into rehab. Allie spends most of her time searching for a missing friend of her’s while also trying to help a homeless couple. Adam Jasinski, who won Big Brother 9 and later went to prison for using his winnings to stet up a drug distribution network, shows up for a few minutes and acts like a dick. Unfortunately, there are no happy endings. By the end of the documentary, some people have died. Others have vanished. One of the “junkie hunters” has relapsed.
It’s certainly not a happy documentary. It’s also a bit too long as well. 105 minutes is a long time to spend watching people who aren’t going anywhere. (Then again, if you consider that Allie and Frankie spend their entire day doing just that, perhaps 105 minutes is not too much to ask.) Like a lot of recent documentaries, the film occasionally tries to shake things up by inserting animation and clips from old educational films and the results are a bit mixed. This documentary works best when it sticks to a cinéma vérité style. Still, it’s a thought-provoking if rather depressing look at lives of intense desperation.
Through the Shattered Lens 