UPDATE: The title of this movie was changed to “The Emoji Story.”
A documentary about emojis and emoji culture deserves a more interesting title than “Picture Character,” but what this movie lacks in name creativity, it makes up for in informative content. Emoji (which means “picture character” in Japanese) is the computer symbol used to convey a word or emotion. Emojis have been called the modern-equivalent of Cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphic and Chinese pictographs. Using emojis as shorthand language makes people creative (according to emoji supporters) or makes people lazy (according to emoji critics). Curiously, “Picture Character” doesn’t mention the 2017 critically panned animated film “The Emoji Movie.” Maybe it’s because “The Emoji Movie” got such bad reviews that it gave emoji culture a bad name.
Shigetaka Kurita, the Japanese man credited with inventing emojis (his first emoji was a smiley face), is interviewed in the movie. Other people interviewed in the film include emoji pop-culture enthusiasts Jeremy Burge (an emoji historian), Tyler Schnoebelen (a linguist whose specialty is computer-based language) and Brooklyn Queen, a young rapper whose “Emoji” video went viral in 2017.
Luckily, “Picture Character” isn’t a documentary that just strings together a bunch of interviews about people talking about emojis. The movie also takes a fascinating look into the process of getting a new emoji approved by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), a mysterious group based in California’s Silicon Valley that decides which emojis will be available to the world’s computers and smartphones. “Picture Character” follows the journey of three emojis that are seeking approval from UTC: a hijab emoji created by a Muslim teenage girl in Germany; a maté emoji created by Argentine women who wanted a symbol for the popular South American caffeinated drink; and a menstruation emoji from a feminist non-profit group in the United Kingdom.
The UTC is described in the movie as consisting of mostly “white men” who are from the “old guard” of Silicon Valley. One of the earliest problems that had to be addressed in emoji culture was that early emojis depicting humans showed only Caucasians. Changes were not made until a black businesswoman from Texas named Katrina Parrott lobbied the UTC to have emojis of different skin tones to represent other races. The different emoji skin tones were later used by corporate tech giants Apple and Google.
UTC chair Lisa Moore and former UTC chair Mark Davis are among those interviewed for the documentary. They talk about the challenges and pressures they feel about adding new emojis. They both agree that making the emoji library too big would ruin the integrity of emojis. They also acknowledge that the emoji approval process still needs progress when it comes to being more inclusive of cultures that are outside of an Anglo or male standard. The group behind the possible menstruation emoji lament the fact that this natural biological function of females is considered too taboo for the UTC, but the UTC has approved several emojis for excrement.
“Picture Character” comes the conclusion that emojis won’t completely replace written or spoken language, but with more people preferring to communicate by text or email instead of talking over the phone, emojis have become increasingly important to the world’s culture, and they aren’t going away anytime soon.
UPDATE: Utopia will release “The Emoji Story” (formerly titled “Picture Character”) in select U.S. virtual cinemas on December 18, 2020, and on digital and VOD on December 22, 2020.
Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival’s “This Is Spinal Tap” 35th anniversary reunion in New York City. (Photo by Sherry Brunet)
The 1984 comedy film “This Is Spinal Tap” will probably go down in film history as the most influential mockumentary of all time. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner and mostly improvised by the cast, is a mock documentary of a fictional British heavy-metal band called Spinal Tap, as the band goes through the humiliation of a career downward spiral. Spinal Tap’s core members are egotistical lead singer/rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins (played by Michael McKean), simple-minded lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest) and laid-back bass player Derek Smalls (played by Harry Shearer). The band is rounded out by an ever-changing lineup of keyboard players and drummers. There’s a running joke in the movie that Spinal Tap drummers often meet an unfortunate demise.
“This Is Spinal Tap” takes place mostly during the band’s disastrous tour of the United States, where the band’s current album (“Smell the Glove”) is a flop, and Spinal Tap performs to increasingly smaller audiences. There’s also in-fighting because of ego clashes between David and Nigel. Feuds between a band’s lead singer and guitarist have happened so many times to famous bands, it’s become a cliché at this point. The movie also pokes fun at other clichés in the music industry, such as over-the-top machismo in heavy metal; embarrassing on-stage mishaps; smarmy hangers-on; incompetent handlers; a meddling girlfriend who thinks she’s almost a member of the band; and sparsely attended gigs in weird places. In the movie, Reiner plays fictional director Marty DiBergi, who is chronicling the Spinal Tap tour for a documentary.
When “This Is Spinal Tap” was first released, it was so convincing, that some audience members thought that Spinal Tap was a real band, and some real-life rock bands were offended, because they thought that the movie was making fun of their real-life experiences. McKean, Guest and Shearer can sing, play musical instruments and write songs in real life, and they’ve occasionally released albums and toured as Spinal Tap over the years. At the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, in celebration of the 35th anniversary of “This Is Spinal Tap,” a rare reunion took place with Reiner, McKean, Guest and Shearer, who gathered at New York City’s Beacon Theatre for a conversation and Q&A, before the Spinal Tap trio did an acoustic performance. (Elvis Costello made a surprise guest appearance during the song “Gimme Some Money.”) Here is what the “Spinal Tap” team said during the conversation and Q&A, which was moderated by Reiner.
Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Guest: I hadn’t seen [“This Is Spinal Tap”] in a while. It’s interesting to see yourself younger. What do you think?
McKean:[He says to the audience] Your reactions were like concert reactions, which were great. You’d see a scene beginning, and it was like hearing the beginning of “Free Bird.”
Shearer: I have to say, I was taken back in a time machine when I saw the scene with Paul Shaffer [who portrayed record promoter Artie Fufkin, who asks the band to “kick his ass” when there’s a low turnout for a Spinal Tap meet-and-greet at a music store]. It brought me back to a moment Michael and I and an ex-partner were in a comedy group called the Credibility Gap. We were in Arizona doing a gig, and everything that could be fucked up about our technical set-up was.
The representative from Warner Bros Records—a guy named Lou Dennis—came backstage, and we were furious. This was a record merchandising convention, and this was a chance for people in the business to become acquainted with an act they didn’t care about. Lou Dennis, before we could say one word to vent our anger, said, “Guys, kick my ass!” He became known as Lou “Kick My Ass” Dennis for years afterward. We put that in the movie, and for years afterwards, he would say, “I’m the guy in ‘Spinal Tap!’”
McKean: The other problem was that conventioneers started drinking at about 9:30 in the morning. And this was more like 9 p.m. when we went on. It got worse. Tucson, Arizona.
Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Reiner: It’s crazy, 35 years. It’s insane when you think about it. They put us in the National Film Registry and the Smithsonian. It was so crazy. The first time we screened the film at a screening in Dallas, people were coming up to us and saying, “Why would you make a movie about a band that’s no one’s ever heard of and one that’s so bad?”
McKean: Some of the cards that we got from the audiences from test screenings were amazing. In answer to the question, “What did you like about this film?,” one woman wrote, “DNA.” “How would you describe this film?” And we figured out that “DNA” meant “Does Not Apply.”
Guest: Michael and I were in Dallas to get some popcorn, and there were two young women who came out in the middle of the movie, and one of them said to the other one, “These guys are so stupid!”
McKean: Well, they were right.
Guest: And one of the cards said, “What did you like about it?” And the person who wrote it said, “It’s in color.”
McKean: It’s not a good jumping-off point.
Christopher Guest and Michael McKean in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Reiner: I’d forget that Dana Carvey is in [the movie]. There’s Billy Crystal, Fran Drescher, Fred Willard. Sir Denis Eton-Hogg, played by Patrick Macnee. The whole film is improvised, except for that one speech by Patrick Macnee said about, “Tap into America.” He said, “I don’t improvise,” so we sat down and wrote it. It’s the only written thing in the whole movie.
We had Peter Smokler was the DP [ director of photography] on the film. We hired him because he shot lots of rock’n’roll documentaries. We thought he would be the perfect guy. He was actually at Altamont, with the very famous Rolling Stones concert with the Hell’s Angels, a very said time. And we were going through this, and he kept saying to me “I don’t understand what’s funny about this. This is exactly what they do.”
Shearer: This was probably a trait that served Peter well—not seeing what was funny about what we were shooting—because before he came on our project, he had shot another documentary called “This Time, It’s for the Championship.” There was a gentleman in the 1970s named Werner Erhard, who ran an organization called Est. And everybody’s agent went to Est.
And with all the money that his customers had given him, Werner Erhard decided to become a championship car racer and commissioned a documentary about it. So it would’ve been a bad idea for Peter to have said [about “This Is Spinal Tap”], “You know what? This is the funniest shit I’ve ever seen.”
Christopher Guest in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Reiner: I never heard that story. There was a life to the band. They had their own life and their own history. We spent a lot of time talking about the characters. Everybody had their own frame of reference. And so, there was an organic creation.
We had some people come in to audition. John Densmore, the drummer for the Doors, auditioned. He was great, but he’s in the Doors. It’s not this alternative world that we created. Paul Stanley from Kiss came in.
Guest: Nicky Hopkins, a great keyboard player.
Reiner: If you look carefully in the “(Listen to the) Flower People” [music video], you’ll see Russ Kunkel, who was a great drummer who played for Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and James Taylor. And Danny Kortchmar was in “Gimme Some Money.”
McKean: And Ed Begley Jr. was the drummer [in an early lineup of Spinal Tap, in the “Gimme Some Money” clip].
At this point, questions were taken from the audience.
Christopher Guest in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Was the band Spinal Tap based on Iron Maiden?
Guest: It was never based on any particular band. The rhythm of the name Spinal Tap was like Uriah Heep or others with that rhythm. We picked and chose from various places.
Reiner: Life and art kept mirroring each other. That scene backstage where [Nigel Tufnel] is trying to get the sandwich to fit on the bread—that was taken from an article in Rolling Stone called “The Endless Party,” about Van Halen, and how they wanted all the brown M&Ms removed from backstage.
The keyboard player we had—a guy named John Sinclair—was in a 20-minute demo version of the film. And when we were ready to shoot the film, he got a job with Uriah Heep, and he figured, “This is a real band. I’m not going to go with these [Spinal Tap] schmucks. I’m going to get real money.” And when he came back from the Uriah Heep tour, he tells us how they got booked into an Army base. [In the movie, Spinal Tap performs at an Army base to a bewildered, straightlaced audience.]
Shearer: And just before we started shooting, I had the opportunity to be in England. I don’t even know how I wrangled this, but I got to go on the road with this mid-level band that most Americans never heard of, nor had I at the time, this English heartthrob band called Saxon. I picked up little details, like the bass player figured that that they were playing in E and A on all the songs, so he could play basically open strings, and he never had to finger it.
Reiner: There was life imitating art, back and forth. My favorite thing was we had this idea for Stonehenge. Black Sabbath decided they were going to tour with a Stonehenge theme. The movie came out about a week after they went on tour, and they were furious with us. They thought we stole the idea. It takes more than a week to make a film and distribute it.
Harry Shearer (pictured at left) in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
Why was the cucumber wrapped in tinfoil? [In one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Derek Smalls sets off a metal detector at an airport checkpoint, and to his embarrassment, an airport security employee discovers that it’s because Derek has a phallic-shaped vegetable, wrapped in tinfoil, stuffed in his trousers.]
Shearer: The real answer is—and someone might check this after the show to see if I’m right—if you slip a cucumber, or as I did [in the movie], a zucchini, in your trousers, and you get up on stage, and sweat for two hours, you’ll be glad it’s wrapped in tinfoil.
Since the members of Spinal Tap are American in real life, how did you get those English accents down so well?
Reiner: Chris’ father was British.
McKean: We spent a lot of time echoing what Chris was like, because he was on the money all the time.
Reiner: Chris’ father was in the House of Lords, and when he passed away, [the title] was handed down to Chris. Chris became a member of the House of Lords. Did you pass any significant legislation?
Guest: I was the one who said you didn’t have to wrap anything in tinfoil. It didn’t go anywhere.
Reiner: Why did they kick you out, by the way?
Guest: I’ll tell you later.
Michael McKean, June Chadwick and Harry Shearer in “This Is Spinal Tap” (Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal)
What was with scene where the band members have cold sores?
Reiner: That was the remnant of a joke that took about a half-an-hour of film to set up. At one time, the opening act was a punk band called The Dose, which was fronted by Cherie Currie, who was in The Runaways. And at one point, she is with Nigel, and they’re having a little fling, and in the next scene, you see that Nigel’s got a little herpes sore. And then, she’s hanging out with David, and then he has a herpes sore. And then she’s with Derek, and then Derek has a herpes sore.
And there’s a scene with the five band members sitting around, thinking about dropping The Dose from the tour. There are four guys with herpes sores, and the drummer doesn’t have a herpes sore, and he’s saying, “Why don’t we keep them? I like them!” That was the whole set-up and we ended up with two guys with herpes sores [in the final cut].
What was your favorite scene that didn’t get in the final cut of the movie?
Shearer: Bruno Kirby singing. It’s on the DVD extras. He’s at a party with us. It’s late in the evening. Weed and other things have been ingested. And he’s stripped down to his skivvies, and singing Frank Sinatra into what he thinks is a microphone, but it’s actually a slice of pizza.
McKean: And then he goes out like a light. Oh man, it was so good. I understand why they cut it. There was a touring company of “The Wiz,” and we shot a scene where there were two extremely flamboyant black dancers. And they just give us the eye, and our reactions got a little big, I think, so we cut that. [That scene] made me laugh.
Reiner: The first cut [of “This Is Spinal Tap”] was about seven hours. There were about three hours of interview footage. It was like making a documentary. It was like writing a movie with the pieces of film.
Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest at the Tribeca Film Festival’s “This Is Spinal Tap” 35th anniversary reunion in New York City. (Photo by Sherry Brunet)
Here is the set list from the Spinal Tap 35th anniversary reunion:
Celtic Blues
Hell Hole
(Listen to the) Flower People
Rainy Day Sun
Clam Caravan
All the Way Home
Big Bottom
Gimme Some Money (with Elvis Costello)
Sex Farm
Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Elvis Costello and Christopher Guest at the Tribeca Film Festival’s “This Is Spinal Tap” 35th anniversary reunion in New York City. (Photo by Sherry Brunet)
The 1995 campy film “Showgirls” has become a cult classic for many people, and there are now two documentaries exploring the pop-culture spectacle that’s been spawned by intense “Showgirls” devotion. The documentary “You Don’t Nomi,” directed by Jeffrey McHale, is expected to be released first; the movie focuses on “Showgirls” fandom and doesn’t include any interviews with any of the stars and filmmakers of “Showgirls.” The other documentary is “Goddess: The Rise and Fall of ‘Showgirls’,” directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, which includes the participation of several “Showgirls” principals, such as director Paul Verhoeven, but not “Showgirls” star Elizabeth Berkley. (“Goddess” launched a Kickstarter campaign in March 2019, and reached its $50,000 goal.)
Without the participation of anyone from the “Showgirls” cast and crew, “You Don’t Nomi” has to rely on archived interview clips with “Showgirls” principals and a lot of commentary from talking heads. The pundits interviewed in “You Don’t Nomi” include “Showgirls” superfans such as drag queen Peaches Christ, actress April Kidwell (who has starred as Nomi Malone in the off-Broadway musicals “I, Nomi” and “Showgirls! The Musical!”) and podcaster Matt Baume. Others who give their comments on “Showgirls” include film critics such as Adam Nayman (who wrote the book “It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls”), Barbara Shulgasser (formerly of the Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Examiner) and Susan Wloszczyna, who wrote for USA Today at the time “Showgirls” was released.
You don’t have to know anything about “Showgirls” before seeing “You Don’t Nomi,” because the documentary explains it all. “Showgirls,” which was a flop with critics and at the box office when it was first released, tells the story of Nomi Malone (played by Berkley), an aspiring dancer who moves to Las Vegas to try to make it big in a racy Vegas revue called “Goddess” at the Stardust Casino, where the female dancers often have to perform topless or nearly nude.
Nomi has ambitions to be the star of the show, and in order to do that, she has to find a way to replace Cristal Conners (played by Gina Gershon), the catty queen bee who is the current star of “Goddess.” Nomi uses her sexuality to get ahead, including seducing Cristal’s boyfriend Zack Carey (played by Kyle McLachlan), who is the Stardust’s entertainment director, and James Smith (played by Glenn Plummer), who is a bouncer at Cheetah’s Topless Club, where Nomi works on her way to joining the “Goddess” show. The movie has undertones of bisexuality, as Nomi and Cristal play erotic mind games with each other by trying to act like they want to have a sexual affair with each other. There are also hints that Nomi’s roommate Molly Abrams (played by Gina Ravera) has a crush on Nomi.
The melodramatic acting, the over-the-top sexuality and the laughable dialogue all made “Showgirls” either universally reviled by those who considered it to be one of the worst movies of all time, or endearing to those who think that “Showgirls” is so bad that it’s good. The movie also had the notoriety of getting a rare NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, so that people under the age of 17 weren’t allowed to see the movie in theaters. “Showgirls” sparked public outrage at the time because critics said the movie was exploitative and misogynistic, an accusation denied by Verhoeven and “Showgirls” screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. Verhoeven and Eszterhas previously worked together on 1992’s “Basic Instinct,” another controversial erotic drama.
The pundits in “You Don’t Nomi” offer insightful and sometimes hilarious analysis of “Showgirls,” pointing out its flaws as well as aspects that might be considered underrated. One of the inexplicable quirks of “Showgirls” is that the characters repeatedly mention eating brown rice and vegetables. Fan theories have abounded over why this type of meal is brought up so many times in the movie.
The outrage over “Showgirls” has faded over the years, but the damage to Berkley’s career has had long-lasting effects, since this former “Saved by the Bell” star hasn’t been able to get top billing at a major studio film since “Showgirls.” In recent years, Berkley has become more open about her “Showgirls” past, even appearing at a 20th anniversary “Showgirls” screening event in Los Angeles to introduce the movie. “You Don’t Nomi” has footage from that event.
Verhoeven’s and Eszterhas’ previous movies are examined in the documentary, and “You Don’t Nomi” has hilarious sequences demonstrating that Verhoeven’s movies have an apparent obsession with showing women admiring their fingernails. More disturbing, Verhoeven also has a pattern of depicting rape and other sexual assaults in his movies. One of the main reasons why “Showgirls” was hated by so many people is because of a scene where one of the female characters gets gang raped. Even the “Showgirls” fans who comment in “You Don’t Nomi” agree that the “Showgirls” rape scene was gratuitous and reeked of exploitation.
The documentary also doesn’t shy away from commenting on another criticism of “Showgirls”—that the movie was kind of racist, since the black characters in the movie were expendable and only seemed to be written as subservient people who would do anything for Nomi. However, the pundits also mention that one of the campiest things about “Showgirls” is that almost everyone who crosses paths with Nomi seems to fall for her—even though she’s not very charming, not very smart, and she has some pretty big anger issues. (Nomi’s temper-flaring outbursts, which are often random, are among the most-ridiculed aspects of “Showgirls.”)
There’s also some film history in “You Don’t Nomi,” as one of the pundits notes that “Showgirls” can be considered the spiritual sister of two other female-starring movies that flopped but went on to become cult classics: 1967’s “Valley of the Dolls” and 1981’s “Mommie Dearest”—all films about women driven to the brink of insanity by the desire for fame in the entertainment industry.
So why do people love “Showgirls”? The movie is cathartic for many people who relate to the characters, especially Nomi. As Baume points out, that’s why “Showgirls” has struck a chord with many in the LGBTQ community because, like Nomi, many LGBTQ people move to a big city to reinvent themselves, chase dreams, and find acceptance in a new environment. For actress Kidwell, she says in the documentary that “Showgirls” and playing the Nomi Malone character on stage were therapeutic for her, and helped her cope with the trauma of a real-life rape that she experienced.
McHale not only directed “You Don’t Nomi,” but he also wrote and edited the film, and is one of the documentary’s producers. The editing is one of the best things about “You Don’t Nomi,” because McHale has a knack for placing the right footage with effective music and commentary. He uses clips from a hodgepodge of pop-culture references to augment a point being made in the film. The clips range from well-known blockbusters such “E.T.” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to cult films such as “Pink Flamingos” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space” to flops that most people haven’t seen, such as Olivia Newton John’s “Xanadu” and Lindsay Lohan’s “I Know Who Killed Me.” After watching “You Don’t Nomi,” it will be hard to resist the temptation to see “Showgirls” to look out for some of the details that get an entertaining analysis in the documentary.
UPDATE: RLJE Films will release “You Don’t Nomi” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on June 9, 2020.
The crime thriller “Stray Dolls” is described by director/co-writer Sonejuhi Sinha as a “love story,” but all the characters in the film aren’t very lovable. Most of the film takes place at the sleazy Tides Plaza Motel, which is in an unnamed city in the U.S., but it’s the kind of dump where a lot of people are either down on their luck and/or doing something bad. A young woman named Riz (played by Geetanjali Thapa) has recently arrived from India to work as a live-in maid at the motel. We find out that Riz has escaped from her street life in India, and wants a better life for herself in America, where she plans to send some money home to her family.
Riz tries to re-invent herself as a hard worker with a clean lifestyle, but it’s slowly revealed that when Riz was in India, she has done illegal things, such as con games and robbery, in order to survive. Having a past life as a street hustler makes it all the more unbelievable that Riz would give her passport for safekeeping to her new boss Una (played by Cynthia Nixon), a no-nonsense Russian who is the motel’s manager. In the beginning of the film, Una is seen shredding the passport, which will have dire consequences for Riz later on in the movie.
Soon after arriving at the motel, Riz finds out that she has to share living quarters with a fellow maid named Dallas (played by Olivia DeJonge), who’s strung out on meth, obsessed with Dolly Parton, and trying to make enough money to open her own nail salon. Dallas’ dimwitted boyfriend Jimmy (played by Robert Aramayo) is also her drug dealer, and he also happens to be Una’s son.
Riz and Dallas get off on the wrong foot when Riz catches Dallas trying to steal from her, and the two get into a fight that leaves Riz feeling threatened. Riz continues to put on a façade of being a “good girl”—she refuses to drink alcohol or do drugs when hanging out with Dallas. But one night, when they’re at a restaurant, Dallas slips a painkiller drug into Riz’s milkshake while Riz is in the ladies’ restroom. Under the influence of the drug, Riz’s inhibitions are lowered, and she spends the rest of the night partying with Dallas and her druggie friends. When Riz and Dallas go back to their room at the motel, Riz asks Dallas to kiss her, which foreshadows the sexual attraction that is underneath later motivations in the film.
While cleaning a motel room when the room’s guest is away, Riz finds a hidden package of cocaine, impulsively steals it, and then gives the package to Dallas, in an effort to impress Dallas and with the hope that Dallas doesn’t pick a fight with her again. It’s one of many dumb and unnecessary decisions that the supposedly streetwise Riz makes in this film. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that things don’t turn out well for anyone who steals from a drug dealer.
But the movie’s plot really goes off the rails when Riz commits a serious crime twice, and what she does to cover up her misdeeds would make her a candidate for “World’s Dumbest Criminals.” The first time she commits the crime, it’s somewhat of an accident. The second time she commits the crime, it’s completely unwarranted and planned in such a cold-blooded manner that any sympathy that anyone might have for Riz will probably evaporate. The last 15 minutes of the movie have so many absurd things happening (including a ludicrous attempt to frame Riz and Dallas as “Thelma and Louise” type of outlaws) that “Stray Dolls” should have been named “Stray Plot Holes.”
UPDATE: Samuel Goldwyn Films will release “Stray Dolls” on digital and VOD on April 10, 2020.
How many times have we seen this in a movie or a TV show? A person accidentally kills someone in self-defense, but instead of doing the logical thing (calling the police or an attorney), the person gets rid of the body, which makes things worse because now the cover-up makes the death looks like a murder. That plot device of throwing logic out the window in order to create suspense is done repeatedly in “Blow the Man Down,” a film that has good intentions and solid performances, but so many illogical actions that you won’t feel much sympathy for the people who keep digging themselves further into criminal (plot) holes.
The movie begins with a scene showing a family gathering taking place right after a funeral. The deceased person is Mary Margaret Connolly, the mother of sisters Priscilla Connolly (played by Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth Connolly (played by Morgan Saylor). The two sisters are very different from each other: Priscilla is the older, more sensible sister, while Mary Beth is the younger, wilder sister. With their mother’s death, the Connolly sisters now bear the responsibility of running the family business, Connolly Fishing, in their small village of Easter Cove, Maine. Mary Beth has a restless spirit. She wants to sell the business and use the money to get out of town and start a new life. Priscilla vehemently disagrees and thinks the best thing to do is to keep the business going.
Meanwhile, the town has a bed-and-breakfast inn called Ocean View, which is run by Enid Nora Devlin, who also goes by the name Mrs. Devlin (played by Margo Martindale), who’s known the Connolly family for years. The other matriarchs in town—Doreen Burke (played by Marceline Hugot), Gail Maguire (played by Annette O’Toole) and Susie Gallagher (played by June Squibb)—are busybodies who make a point of knowing what’s going on with everyone in the community. It all sounds so quaint and small-town folksy—except it’s not.
Ocean View is really a brothel, and Mrs. Devlin is a madam who has a steely attitude underneath her friendly façade. Without giving away any spoilers, more than one person ends up dead, plus there’s a missing bag of $50,000 cash, blackmail and cover-ups of crimes. Mary Beth and Priscilla are involved in covering up the death of one of the people—a thug named Gorski (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach). They dismember his body and hide it in an ice box. Another dead person’s body washes up at sea, and the cause of death might be an accident or a murder.
A young police officer named Justin Brennan (played by Will Brittain) is the main person investigating the death of the person found at sea. Justin takes a liking to Priscilla, whose guilty conscience makes her even more nervous when he makes excuses to come over and visit her. At first, Officer Brennan appears to be a somewhat dimwitted neophyte who can be easily fooled, but he slowly begins to suspect that the sisters know more than they are telling him.
Because Easter Cove is such a small town, it’s easy to believe that only one cop would be doing most of the investigating. However, with all the small-town gossips who are in everybody else’s business, it’s hard to believe that word wouldn’t get out quicker about some of the suspicious activities that were done in plain view. As for that bag of $50,000 in cash that changes possession throughout the film, spending that kind of money wouldn’t go unnoticed in this small town, so it defies logic that certain characters go to a lot of trouble to get the cash in order to spend it in a way that the town would take notice.
“Blow the Man Down” has the benefit of a talented cast that adds layers of depth to a script that isn’t particularly original. Saylor and Martindale stand out as the most compelling to watch because their morally dubious characters in the movie have impulsive tendencies, so their actions aren’t always predictable. “Blow the Man Down”—written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy—also cleverly shows local fisherman characters singing well-known sailor songs (including the film’s namesake), as this movie’s version of a Greek chorus. The movie’s last 15 minutes are a flurry of activities that look like desperately written scenes aimed at trying to tie up some loose strings in the plot. If you’re willing to overlook the screenplay’s flaws, you might enjoy “Blow the Man Down” for the movie’s best assets: the cast’s performances and the way the film convincingly captures the mood of a small town with some very big, dirty secrets.
UPDATE: Amazon Prime Video will premiere “Blow the Man Down” on March 20, 2020.
If you know any single women who complain about not being able to find a life partner, or if you know people who think ABC’s reality TV franchise “The Bachelor” is exploitative and sexist toward women, then they should watch the documentary “Leftover Women,” which is a scathing look at the indignities and scorn that single women over a certain age have to endure in China. The movie takes its title from the Chinese phrase “sheng nu,” which translates into “leftover women”—the unflattering term that Chinese people use to describe unmarried, childless women who are near or over the age of 30.
The documentary focuses on three of these women, all of whom have successful careers: Qui Hua Mei, a 34-year-old attorney; Xu Min, a 28-year-old radio employee; and Gai Qui, a 36-year-old assistant professor at Normal University in Beijing. They’re not the type of women to sit around and feel sorry for themselves because they’re single, even when so many people around them try to shame them for not finding a husband yet. (This is a heterosexual-only film, as LGBTQ people are not mentioned in this documentary.)
Hua Mei is the heart and soul of the film. She is easily the most compelling and empathetic person to watch in the movie, whose opening scene is of her in a meeting with a middle-aged female dating coach/matchmaker. The matchmaker, who is smug and cruelly judgmental, proceeds to demean Hua Mei by telling her that she’s too old and not pretty enough to be considered a realistic candidate for marriage. Even though Hua Mei is neither old nor unattractive—and she’s certainly more attractive than the mean-spirited matchmaker who’s written her off as a lost cause—Chinese culture dictates that Hua Mei respect her elders, so she just sits there, nods, and takes the insults as if she deserves to be degraded. It’s excruciating and infuriating watch.
Still, Hua Mei makes an effort to find “the one,” and we see her looking for love in nightclubs, going on awkward dates, and participating in government-sanctioned social events for marriage-minded singles. The documentary also shows that Hua Mei isn’t some sad-sack, desperate spinster: She’s a caring individual who has an emotionally fulfilling life with her friends and career, but it’s impossible for her to escape from the overwhelming disapproval that she gets from Chinese society over her marital status.
The matchmaker isn’t the only person to treat the accomplished and intelligent Hua Mei as a pathetic loser just because she isn’t married. The movie shows that Hua Mei’s own family members, who still live in the rural area where she was raised, are constantly pressuring her to find a husband. It’s clear that Hua Mei has an independent streak and won’t settle for any suitor who comes along. She’s also the most educated person in her family, but her parents think of her as “less accomplished” than her married siblings simply because she isn’t married yet. They also remind Hua Mei that even though they love her, they think she’s an embarrassing burden on her family because she’s not married. And they say this, even though she’s an attorney who’s helped out her family financially because she has the income to do it.
It’s no wonder that Hua Mei is afraid to reveal to the people closest to her that she doesn’t really want to have children. Based on the way her family reacts when she tells them, you’d think that she had just confessed to a horrible crime. When Hua Mei breaks down in tears at her family’s unrelenting criticism, it’s one of the most emotionally difficult moments to watch in the movie. But it also foreshadows a decision that she makes at the end of the film.
Min comes from a well-to-do family who has somewhat spoiled her with material possessions, and she’s somewhat whiny about still being single, but she has other issues that come out during the course of the movie. From a therapy session shown in the film, she reveals that her mother emotionally abused her as a child, by pretending to abandon her as a way of punishment. Min still has not healed from those emotional wounds, and when she has an inevitable argument with her parents about still being unmarried, their response shows that they think they are good parents because they provided her with material comforts all of her life. In another argument, this time when Min is alone with her mother, she confronts her mother about the past abuse, and her mother abruptly ends the conversation and calls Min “ungrateful.”
Qui’s story is the most incongruous, because early on in the movie, she’s shown getting married. The quick courtship that she had with her younger husband is not in the film, but it’s revealed that there’s somewhat of a stigma in their relationship because she makes more money than he does. Of the three women whose stories are told in the movie, Qui is shown the least, so there’s no real sense of her personality, and she doesn’t go through the same struggles as the other two women do in the movie.
It’s no surprise that a patriarchal, sexist culture would place more shame on women than men for being unmarried by a certain age. The older the woman, the more “undesirable” she becomes to society, which is a prejudice that is embedded even in the most “progressive” countries. It goes back to the issue of women, not men, having a biological clock when it comes to conceiving children. Men face their own issues when it comes to how they’re judged as potential spouses. In most societies, a man’s marriage desirability is primarily defined by his wealth/income, followed closely by his physical appearance. In that respect, the United States and other Western countries aren’t much different from China.
These kinds of superficial biases are repeatedly shown in “Leftover Women,” such as a scene with women selecting potential husbands on a dating website and discussing the standards they have for any man they might marry. Several men are automatically rejected based on their looks, height, income or because they live in a rural area. (It’s assumed in Chinese society that people from rural areas are less educated and have less money than those from more urban areas.) Even if it looks like women have more control when they go online to choose whom to date, the documentary shows that when women in China are in serious romantic relationships, they’re expected to let the men be the dominant partners in the relationships. China isn’t the only country in the world to have a society with this mentality, but “Leftover Women” shows that the humiliation and pressure that unmarried women in China have to go through to find a husband make “The Bachelor” look like a feminist paradise.
UPDATE: PBS will premiere “Leftover Women” as part of the “Independent Lens” series on February 10, 2020.
Does the world need another bleak post-apocalyptic movie? Not if it’s as disappointing as this one. The above-average performances of Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) and Freida Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are the main reasons to see “Only,” a depressing drama with unrelenting emotional claustrophobia that can’t quite mask some of the film’s most glaring and annoying plot holes. Odom and Pinto play Will and Eva, two lovers who have quarantined themselves in an apartment in an unnamed U.S. city during a mysterious plague. From the opening scene, there’s a sense that Eva is somehow in danger: She frantically hides in a secret crawlspace in the apartment when men wearing hazmat suits suddenly enter the home to search it and interrogate Will, who lies to them by telling them that he lives alone.
In the film’s numerous flashbacks that might confuse some viewers, it’s revealed that the plague started when ash began to fall all over the world like a steady snowstorm, and females who are exposed to the ash develop a strange illness that makes them bleed near their ears, go into convulsions, then die within a matter of hours. Eva has managed to avoid this contagious disease by being in the apartment when the ash started to fall.
But in a major plot disconnect, a flashback scene shows her to be completely exposed in a hospital’s emergency ward, where Will and Eva have taken Eva’s roommate Carolyn (played by Tia Hendricks), who was caught outside when the ash started to fall. While at the hospital, which is filled with patients and their loved ones covered in the mysterious ash, Will figures out that only females are getting sick from the ash. In a “too good to be true” coincidence, he sees an “Authorized Personnel Only” door, which happens to contain two hazmat suits that he and Eva can wear when they flee the hospital to go back home and quarantine themselves. Never mind that Will and Eva have already been exposed to the deadly ash when they went outside to travel to the hospital while the ash is in the air, and they were in a hospital filled with people and things covered with the ash.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal this ludicrous part of the storyline because the entire movie relies on the premise that Eva has avoided exposure to the ash for at least 400 days, which contradicts the fact that she was exposed early on during the plague at the hospital. The entire hospital scene and the Carolyn character are completely unnecessary, since Will and Eva could have found out the cause of the plague and who was at risk by staying home and watching the news. It’s one of the movie’s several plot holes that will leave viewers shaking their heads in dismay at how “Only” writer/director Takashi Doscher sabotaged his own script.
Later in the movie, it’s revealed that because the plague has almost wiped out the world’s population of women and girls, and many of the surviving women who can get pregnant end up having miscarriages, the U.S. government has put up a $2 million bounty for anyone who can find a woman who can give birth to a child. However, since the government is doing scientific experiments on surviving women who are found, there’s little incentive for any of the remaining women like Eva to give themselves up.
The movie’s flashback scenes show that Will and Eva had a happy relationship before the plague. But after the plague, their relationship has become strained because Will has become so paranoid about Eva being discovered and getting infected, that he’s kept her a virtual prisoner in their home, and she has developed a simmering resentment over it. It’s a plot concept that could have been mined for some deep and emotional insight into male/female relationships and power struggles in society (something that “The Handmaid’s Tale” does so well), but “Only” jumps back and forth too much in the story’s timeline, which takes away from what could have been a more cohesive movie.
After Will and Eva have decided to quarantine themselves, the movie goes to great lengths to show us how Will dictates much of what Eva can and can’t do because he’s so afraid of Eva being discovered and getting infected. For example, he gets upset when she uses a cell phone or computer because he doesn’t want her technology activities to be traced. But then another part of the story reveals that Will allows Eva to communicate with the outside world in an Internet chat room with other female survivors, who also send email to the couple. Even though Eva is using an alias, we’re supposed to believe that paranoid Will doesn’t know that this type of Internet activity can still be traced. It’s a contradiction that’s almost laughable if this weren’t such a downbeat movie.
By the time viewers see that Eva (who’s disguised as a man) and Will have made a trip outside to get food, the story veers into a random fugitive thriller with Will and Eva trying to hide from a father and son (played by Jayson Warner Smith and Chandler Riggs), who are would-be bounty hunters. The problem is that the movie tries hard to convince viewers how Eva has been hidden for over a year, but Eva and Will make some decisions both in and outside their home that make it hard to believe that their secret hadn’t been discovered sooner. Their home is meticulously protected in a way that shows their long-term quarantine gave them plenty of time to think about ways to safeguard their home, yet Eva’s “disguise” as a man is so poorly thought-out that it’s a glaring contradiction. (It’s revealed in the last 15 minutes of the film why Eva is outside wearing unprotected clothes when she and Will leave their home to get food.)
Pinto and Odom have a few scenes where they adeptly show the emotional toll that the quarantine has taken on their relationship, but not even the best actors in the world can save this problematic and ultimately unsatisfying script.
UPDATE: Vertical Entertainment will release “Only” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on March 6, 2020.
“Clementine,” the first feature film from writer/director Lara Jean Gallagher, is a slow burn of a drama that is more of a psychological portrait than a psychological thriller. No one in the movie is named Clementine; the movie’s title comes from what clementine oranges mean to the central characters Karen (played by Otmara Marrero) and Lana (played by Sydney Sweeney). You’ll have to see the movie to find out how clementine oranges are mentioned, but we’re first introduced to Karen at the beginning of the film, when she breaks into a remote Oregon lake house owned by her older ex-girlfriend. The Karen character is supposed to be 29, but Marrero looks and acts much younger than a typical 29-year-old.
When there is a movie that takes place primarily in a secluded lake house in the woods, all sorts of sinister things usually ensue. But in the case of “Clementine,” don’t expect there to be any mysterious killer on the loose. Instead, the movie plays guessing games about who is trustworthy when it comes to matters of the heart.
It’s apparent early on that Karen’s breakup with her ex-girlfriend is recent and painful, because she broke into the house with the intent of taking back a dog without her ex-girlfriend’s knowledge. It’s unclear if Karen has rightful custody of the dog, but what is clear is that Karen feels that she deserves to have custody. When she finds out that the dog isn’t at the house, she decides to stay while she contemplates her next move. The only thing that viewers know about the ex-girlfriend, who’s named “D” (and is played in a cameo by Sonya Walger), is that “D” is a busy career woman who’s broken Karen’s heart, and Karen knows enough about her schedule to know when “D” won’t be at the lake house.
One evening, a teenager named Lana shows up at the house and asks Karen to help her look for her lost dog. Karen is a little reluctant to help at first, but she agrees, even though the sun is going down and it will soon get dark outside. They get in Karen’s car to search, and as the night wears on, they still haven’t found the dog. Karen’s skepticism grows, while she’s aware that she’s becoming sexually attracted to the mysterious Lana, who says she’s 19 and living with a boyfriend not too far from the lake house. Just when Karen is about to end the search because she thinks she’s being conned, Lana finds the dog, and Karen lets her guard down because she thinks Lana might be an honest person after all.
It isn’t long before they exchange phone numbers, and Karen invites Lana over for a late-night visit. Lana opens up to Karen and says she’s an aspiring actress, and the boyfriend she lives with is neglectful and someone who might be emotionally abusive. At first, Karen pretends that she lives in the lake house, but Lana quickly figures out the truth when Karen’s ex-girlfriend “D” unexpectedly calls on the house phone. It’s clear that the movie wants us to see that Karen projects a lot of her own experiences onto Lana as a way to bond with her: the idea of being seduced by an older woman, having unfulfilled dreams, and even searching for a beloved dog.
As Karen and Lana spend more time together at the house, Lana gives Karen subtle hints that she’s attracted to her, and Karen tries to decide if she’s going to initiate a romantic relationship with Lana. One day, the sexual tension between the two gets even more complicated when a young man aptly named Beau (played by Will Brittain), who does yard work and other maintenance for the house, shows up to do some work, and he openly flirts with Lana. Much to Karen’s dismay, Lana flirts back with Beau. Sensing Karen’s jealousy, Lana flirts with Beau even more whenever Karen is around.
All of this might turn into a suspenseful love triangle, but the movie takes somewhat of a ridiculous turn in the last 20 minutes when Karen commits an act of revenge that’s straight out of a Lifetime movie. The motivations for her to commit such a risky act don’t ring true, considering viewers know at that point in the movie if Karen and Lana have a future as a couple.
Marrero gives a solid performance as someone having inner morality conflicts over getting romantically involved with a teenager (even if the teen says she’s over the legal age of consent), but Sweeney has to carry the heavier acting load as someone who may or may not be a manipulative Lolita type. Unfortunately, the teen seductress role has been done so many times before in better-written movies that Sweeney often falls short of the challenge to create a fascinating and memorable character. The Lana character is certainly capable of inspiring lust, but Sweeney’s portrayal of Lana lacks the necessary charm that would make it believable that Lana would inspire true love. By the time secrets are revealed in the movie, the ending of “Clementine” is so anti-climactic that people won’t care much about what happens to the characters after the movie ends.
UPDATE: Oscilloscope Laboratories will release “Clementine” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on May 8, 2020. The movie’s digital and VOD release date is July 14, 2020.
Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto, who is also the lead singer/songwriter of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars, has been steadily building a portfolio of interesting work as a director—beginning with Thirty Seconds to Mars videos, and progressing to the award-winning 2012 documentary feature “Artifact” (which chronicled the band’s fight to get out of its contract with EMI Music) and the non-fiction digital series “Beyond the Horizon” and “Great Wide Open.” The documentary “A Day in the Life of America” is his most ambitious directorial project so far. Inspired by National Geographic’s “A Day in the Life” book series, the documentary is a fascinating mosaic of people in the United States, all filmed on a single day: July 4, 2017. Leto solicited video footage from the public, but the majority of what made it into the final cut of the movie is footage that was professionally filmed by the 92 camera crews that Leto dispatched across the United States to capture everyday people on Independence Day. The documentary is also a companion piece to Thirty Seconds to Mars’ 2018 album “America.”
Because we’re living in an era where millions of people have put their video diaries on the Internet, one of the documentary’s biggest accomplishments is that it takes all of that type of noise and shapes it into an eclectic and riveting symphony of varied human perspectives. Not all of it is easy to digest. There are so many contrasting viewpoints expressed in the documentary, that people watching this film are bound to see things that will make them angry, sad, offended, entertained, hopeful and inspired. The movie’s top-notch editing, seamless cinematography and compelling Thirty Seconds to Mars music score all contribute to making “A Day in the Life of America” an engrossing cinematic journey. The movie does not interview political pundits or news commentators to give their distracting opinions. The people in the movie are not identified by name when we see them talk. It’s a wise decision, because what everyday people have to say in this movie is more important than the possibility that anyone could become a star by being in this film.
“A Day in the Life of America,” whose main scenes are shown in chronological order, begins with a pregnant woman going into labor during a home birth. During the course of the documentary, viewers hear from a wide variety of people from just about every region of the United States. In Arkansas, two drunk redneck men fire assault rifles in the air, and complain that white Americans are a dying breed. In California, a porn actress is shown working on the set of one of her movies and talks about how much she loves her job. In New York, a Hasidic trans woman shares her experiences of what it feels like to be discriminated against in and outside her religion. In West Virginia, a young, white single mother who’s addicted to meth smokes the drug on camera, and expresses shame and guilt for not being a good parent. In Texas, a gay black man at a skating rink expresses his thoughts on LGBTQ rights and the ongoing fight to be accepted in the same way as heterosexuals.
On the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., people who are gathered at the Capitol Building range from Donald Trump supporters to anti-Trump protesters. Trump and wife Melania are shown greeting the crowd outside the White House. Speaking of Trump, his administration’s Muslim ban—and people’s contrasting views about it—are given notable screen time in this movie.
For many viewers, the most emotionally triggering aspect of “A Day in the Life of America” is the movie’s raw look at racism. In North Carolina, male and female members of the Ku Klux Klan are shown planning for a race war and spewing hatred against people who aren’t white and Christian. In Louisiana, African American adults talk about how there are two Americas: one that gives more privileges to whites and one where people who aren’t white still have to struggle to be accepted as equals. Meanwhile, the black kids in the Louisiana footage express more optimism about the future, saying that America represents freedom to them.
One of the movie’s effective devices is how contrasting viewpoints are edited right next to each other. After the KKK members from North Carolina are shown ranting that immigrants are ruining America, the next footage shows Native Americans in South Dakota celebrating their heritage. In another scene, there’s a ceremony where people are becoming U.S. citizens. The next scene is of white nationalist American Freedom Party members gathered for a meeting and talking about how they want their own country so they can have stricter laws against immigration. There’s a scene with people dressed as Revolutionary War-era Americans during a patriotic ceremony in Virginia. That footage is followed by a scene of a Muslim teenage girl in a boxing ring talking about how she won a hard-fought legal battle for her right to wear a hijab while boxing.
The documentary also takes a searing look at crime in America, particularly in how crime disproportionately affects black people. In Chicago, black residents in a working-class neighborhood express fear and sadness on the Fourth of July when they can’t tell if they’re hearing fireworks or gunshots. During filming, police arrive because a boy got shot. (The shooting is not in the movie.) In Detroit, young black residents on the streets are jaded and pessimistic about their future. In Oklahoma, a black man in prison (the details of his criminal record aren’t mentioned) talks about not getting justice and feeling like he’s invisible.
Health care is another big issue that’s covered in the movie. Tennis player Sebastien Jacques (who recovered from a life-threatening brain tumor) is shown in Kansas during his Walk Across America campaign to promote hope in dealing with health problems. That footage is in contrast to the next scene that shows a bed-ridden man dying from cancer.
Of course, it’s impossible for one movie to capture all the subcultures and issues that exist in the United States. For example, the wealthiest “one-percent” of people in America are noticeably absent from the film’s featured interviews. It would have been great to include the perspective of a self-made billionaire—not necessarily someone who’s famous, but someone who represents what is often described as the ultimate American Dream. Even though the super-wealthy aren’t really given a spotlight as a contrast to all the poor and middle-class people who highlighted are in the movie, “A Day in the Life of America” does a fairly comprehensive job of capturing a great deal of the contemporary diversity that exists in the United States. Simply put: “A Day in the Life of America” just might be the most honest documentary about the United States that could be released this year, because it’s the collective voices of people in America speaking their truths.
UPDATE: PBS’s “Independent Lens” series will premiere “A Day in the Life of America” on January 11, 2021.
The political documentary “Slay the Dragon” is part history lesson, part wake-up call to U.S. voters. The movie focuses on gerrymandering, the longtime practice of manipulating and rezoning voting districts so that one political party has a disproportionately favorable advantage over others. The word “gerrymander” was inspired by Elbridge Gerry (the Massachusetts governor credited with inventing the practice in the early 19th century) and the word “salamander,” since one of his rezoned districts looked like a salamander.
Even though “Slay the Dragon” mentions that Democrats and Republicans are guilty of gerrymandering, “Slay the Dragon” portrays Republicans as being more ruthless and more corrupt when putting gerrymandering into practice. The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, as well as the Republican party’s dominance of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate elections that year, can be considered the flashpoint for much of the grass-roots activism that gets the spotlight in this movie.
“Slay the Dragon” co-director Barak Goodman says that this documentary was largely inspired by David Daley’s 2016 nonfiction book “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count,” which details how gerrymandering was taken to new levels of corruption by Republicans, in response to the 2008 U.S. presidential election of Barack Obama and Democrats who dominated Congress during Obama’s first term. Daley, who is interviewed in the film, is also a consultant for the documentary. Also interviewed in the film are Mother Jones senior reporter Ari Berman and Republican State Leadership Committee chief Chris Jankowski, a political strategist who is often credited with the Republicans’ dominance of the 2016 elections.
But the film’s real star is Katie Fahey, founder of the Michigan-based grassroots organization Voters Not Politicians. Fahey, an upbeat activist in her 20s, had no political experience when she started Voters Not Politicians. Against the odds and predictions of naysayers, Voters Not Politicians managed to get the state of Michigan to create an independent commission to oversee voter redistricting. Voters Not Politicians is supposed to be a non-partisan group, but it’s clear that most of the group members are left-leaning voters who are more alarmed by Republicans taking over their districts than Democrats.
“Slay the Dragon” also examines the racism behind gerrymandering, which usually targets blacks and Latinos as groups to manipulate when reshaping voting districts. The 2014 Supreme Court case McCutcheon et al. v. Federal Election Commission, which eliminated limits on campaign donations for federal elections, is considered one of the main reasons why gerrymandering has placed even more political control in the hands of the wealthy. “Slay the Dragon” gives hope to those who believe that voters who aren’t wealthy have a real chance of making a difference if they band together to fight corruption.
UPDATE: Magnolia Pictures will release “Slay the Dragon” on digital and VOD on April 3, 2020.
