Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city from December 31, 1999 to January 2, 2000, the sci-fi/horror/comedy film “Y2K” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A group of high school students and other people battle against machines and gadgets that have become homicidal on January 1, 2000.
Culture Audience: “Y2K” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, filmmaker Kyle Mooney, and silly horror comedies where teenage characters are the main focus.
Fred Durst, Lachlan Watson, Jaeden Martell, Daniel Zolghadri and Rachel Zegler in “Y2K” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli/A24)
The horror comedy “Y2K” is about people versus machines that go on a homicidal rampage during a Y2K electronic crisis. The real haywire mess is this entire dimwitted movie that cares more about resurrecting Limp Bizkit’s old hits than having a good story. Unfortunately, “Y2K” takes what could have been a potentially great concept for a horror movie and squanders it on a bunch of mindless scenes, most of which are neither funny nor scary.
Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Kyle Mooney makes his directorial debut with “Y2K,” which he co-wrote with Evan Winter. “Y2K” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. The movie takes place in an unnamed U.S. city but was actually filmed in New Jersey, in Ringwood, Chatham Borough, and Clark.
“Y2K” is based on the real-life scare that people around the world had in the late 1990s, when computers and other electronic-operated machines were predicted to malfunction on January 1, 2000, because the machines supposedly weren’t programmed for any year past 1999. That massive electronic meltdown didn’t happen in real life, but the plot of “Y2K” speculates what would have happened if machines didn’t just melt down but also went on a killing spree. The production notes for “Y2K” say that Mooney thought of the movie’s concept “in the haze of a New Year’s hangover.” And unfortunately, the ends results are “Y2K” looks like a movie that was written and directed in a brain-addled haze.
“Y2K” uses a lot of the same, tired clichés that are found in many horror movies where the main characters are teenagers. Cliché #1: A nerdy and introverted protagonist with a more outgoing best friend both want to be accepted by the “cool kids” in their school. In “Y2K,” these two outsiders are shy Eli (played by Jaeden Martell) and goofy Daniel “Danny” Bannon (played by Julian Dennison), who are both juniors (16 or 17 years old) at the same high school. Eli and Danny share a passion for pop, rock and electronica music, so expect to hear a lot of songs that were mainstream hits in the 1990s, such as Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” and Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.”
Cliché #2: The geeky protagonist has a secret crush on a pretty and popular student, who already has another love interest. In “Y2K,” the characters who are the couple in this love triangle are Laura (played by Rachel Zegler) and Soccer Chris (played by the Kid Laroi), who are supposed to be the “it couple” of the school. Chris (who is called “Soccer Chris” because he’s a star on the school’s soccer team) is predictably an arrogant jerk, while Laura is predictably nice to everyone. It’s all a movie contrivance for audiences to root against Chris and root for underdog Eli to get together with Laura.
Cliché #3: The protagonist and his sidekick are bullied by other students. In “Y2K,” the school bullies are a bunch of stoners who listen to hard rock/heavy metal. They include a loudmouth leader named Farkas (played by Eduardo Franco) and an androgynous follower named Ash (played by Lachlan Watson), who is an aspiring filmmaker and an avid fan of rock band Limp Bizkit. Ash constantly carries a portable video camera, which becomes a source of contention later in the movie.
And here comes another teen horror movie cliché: The teen house party that goes horribly wrong. “Y2K” begins on December 31, 1999, when Eli and Danny plan to crash an unsupervised house party held at Chris’ house. Eli, who is an only child, lives with his parents Robin (played by Alicia Silverstone) and Howard (played by Tim Heidecker), who are in the movie for less than 10 minutes. Eli gets embarrassed and uncomfortable when his parents reminisce about how Robin taught Howard how to French kiss during the couple’s college romance.
Even though Eli and Danny are best friends, Eli is still hurt by something cruel that Danny did to Eli: In a desperate attempt to get attention from the “cool kids,” Danny told a lie to other students that Eli drank Danny’s urine. Danny told Eli that he was sorry for fabricating this disgustng story, but Eli is still being bullied over this lie. It’s a sore spot in the otherwise solid friendship of Danny and Eli.
Before Eli and Danny go to the house party, they visit their older friend Garret (played by Mooney), who is a clerk at their favorite video store. Garret openly abuses drugs (he has a fondness for marijuana and psychedelics) and is a walking stereotype of a spaced-out weirdo. Garret is harmless, but “Y2K” viewers have to sit through many bad jokes that Garret tells in this movie. Danny smokes some marijuana with Garret in the video store’s storage/employee room, while Eli declines the offer to smoke and only seems interested in drinking alcohol.
At the house party, many of the teens are aware of the Y2K scare but are unconcerned about it. Danny tries to liven things up by playing a homemade CD of his favorite songs and dancng to the music. Danny’s fun-loving personality attracts the attention of a pretty girl named Madison (played by Ellie Ricker), and it doesn’t take long before Danny and Madison start kissing each other. Eli somewhat mopes around and tries not to notice how the relationship between Laura and Chris is still going strong. Chris has figured out that Eli has a crush on Laura and angrily tells Eli to not make any moves on Laura because “you’re a dud.”
As the clock strikes midnight for January 1, 2000, all hell breaks loose in the house. Machines and gadgets—such as a microwave oven, a toy jeep and a blender—suddenly turn deadly. This review won’t go into too many details about who gets killed and who survives. However, it’s enough to say that there’s a “chief villain” machine that can best be described as looking like the original “Lost in Space” robot, with a computer monitor for a head.
Some of the teens escape from Chris’ house, including Eli, Laura, Ash and an aspiring rapper named CJ (played Daniel Zolghadri), who says he’s in a hip-hop group called Prophets of Intelligence. And you know what that means: Expect to see a scene in “Y2K” of CJ and his horrible rapping.
The teens spend most of their time outside, trying to hide from the chief villain robot and other deadly machines that could be on the loose. The teens bicker over things such as whether or not Ash’s portable video camera will turn against them as a weapon. And then, they encounter Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst (who plays a version of himself) hiding somewhere by himself, and “Y2K” continues its downward spiral into stupidity and plot holes.
During all of this chaos, the teens don’t think about seeing if they get help from authorities. They also don’t try to get in touch with their parents or other family members. Is it because there’s no electricity or phone communications during this apocalypse? No, because a pivotal scene in the movie shows someone being able to easily use the Internet on a desktop computer. Remember, this movie takes place during a time when accessing the Internet was done mostly by dial-up phone connections.
Because “Y2K” is partially a tribute to Limp Bizkit (Ash’s devotion to the band is a huge part of Ash’s character), it should come as no surprise that Durst performs Limp Bizkit songs from the late 1990s, such as “Break Stuff ” and Limp Bizkit’s cover version of George Michael’s “Faith.” These performance scenes will no doubt have “Y2K” viewers rolling their eyes at the cheesiness of how these scenes are staged. Everything looks forced and phony.
The cast members perform adequately, but the “Y2K” screenplay is so relentlessly sloppy and moronic, there’s almost no suspense or real amusing moments. “Y2K” also has some empty preaching about the dangers of becoming addicted to electronic devices/machines. If this “Y2K” movie were a computer, it would be a computer afflicted with a bug that causes it to repeatedly malfunction.
A24 released “Y2K” in U.S. cinemas on December 6, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on December 24, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, the comedy film “The Gutter” features a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white, Latin and Asian) representing the working-class and the middle-class.
Culture Clash: A down-on-his-luck man with extraordinary bowling skills teams up with an ex-champion bowler as his coach to enter bowling tournaments so they can raise enough money to save the bowling alley where he works, but he comes up against a formidable longtime bowling champion who has recently come out of retirement.
Culture Audience: “The Gutter” will appeal primarily to fans of the movie’s headliners and tacky and mindless comedies where almost all of the main characters are irritating.
Susan Sarandon in “The Gutter” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“The Gutter” is an apt way to describe this trashy and stupid comedy about obnoxious people involved in bowling tournaments. The racist jokes aren’t funny at all and shouldn’t be excused just because African American filmmakers put these jokes in the movie. This is the type of garbage movie that thinks it’s hilarious that the black protagonist gives himself the nickname Nygga Time when he enters bowling tournaments, with “Nygga” pronounced exactly like you think it’s pronounced.
Isaiah Lester and Yassir Lester (who are brothers) directed this moronic film, which was written by Yassir Lester. “The Gutter” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival and later screened at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival. There’s no explanation for why this bottom-of-the-barrel crappy movie ended up at these two major film festivals except that the filmmakers have great connections.
“The Gutter” is not only filled with idiotic dialogue but it’s also very boring and repetitive. The movie is an onslaught of terrible writing, with the cast members not doing much to elevate the material. “The Gutter” begins with main character Walt (played by Shameik Moore), who is an unlikable dolt, applying for a job at AlleyCatz Bowling Alley, which is in an unnamed U.S. city. This loathsome movie has a weird fixation on calling Walt the “n” word, because a caption in the beginning of the movie describes him as “That Ni*ga.”
Walt is interviewed by AlleyCatz Bowling Alley owner Mozell Lester (played by Jackée Harry), who takes one look at Walt’s résumé and tells him: “Let me be honest with you. Your résumé is trash. You really shouldn’t list on here why you got fired from these jobs.” The movie then shows an unfunny flashback montage to Walt’s previous jobs where he got fired.
As a line cook at an Italian restaurant, Walt described bread sticks as “dildos.” As a sales associate at an electronics store, he insulted two lesbian spouses and their son, who were customers, by calling the boy a “lesbian kid.” Walt proves that he’s still an insipid creep by sexually harassing Mozell during the interview. Because this movie is a dumpster train wreck, Mozell hires him anyway to be a bartender at AlleyCatz Bowling Alley.
“The Gutter” gets worse. There’s a running gag that Walt doesn’t like to wear shirts on the job because it will save him money from doing laundry. And so, there are several scenes of shirtless Walt looking like a “Magic Mike” reject.
How “poor” is Walt? There’s an awful scene showing Walt arriving at his home, where he lives with his mother Vicki (played by Kim Fields), who plays a prank on him by pretending they got their electricity cut off for not paying their ulility bills. When she reveals it’s all a prank, Vicki cackles, “Being poor is fun.”
A customer who is constantly at the AlleyCatz Bowling Alley bar is a former professional bowler named Skunk (played by D’Arcy Carden), an admitted alcoholic, who “gets drunk here every day,” according to Mozell. Skunk is a whiny and sarcastic pessimist, who talks in a deadpan voice. Walt and Skunk immediately clash with each other, which means they’re going to be stuck with each other for most of this terrible and unimaginative movie.
“The Gutter” has poorly written scenes that serve no purpose but to have someone say something vapid and aggravating, but the filmmakers probably think it’s clever and edgy. For example, an employee who works at the bowling alley named Brotha Candy (played by Rell Battle) is shown standing outside the bowling alley with a megaphone shouting: “White people come from monkeys! That’s why their nipples are pink!” If you think this is hilarious, then “The Gutter” is the movie for you.
One day, an unnamed city building inspector (played by Adam Brody) shows up and delivers some bad news to Mozell: The AlleyCatz Bowling Alley has all types of building code violations. It will cost about $200,000 to clear up all of these violations. And she has a limited time to get the money, or else AlleyCatz Bowling Alley will be shut down.
Mozell doesn’t have the money, of course. And what a coincidence: Around this time, Walt finds out that he has extraordinary talent in bowling. He then comes up with an idea to enter bowling tournaments so that he can win enough money to save AlleyCatz Bowling Alley. Walt enlists a reluctant Skunk to be his bowling coach.
And so, Walt and Skunk go on a cross-country tour of bowling tournaments. Most of their stops are in the Midwest and South (in cities such as Indianapolis, Tulsa, and Houston), only so “The Gutter” can have ridiculous caricatures of backwards “redneck” people who are shocked that someone who looks like Walt is so good at bowling. The movie over-uses a not-funny-at-all gag that when Walt wins a tournament, he throws a hissy fit if he doesn’t get an oversized cardboard check.
Another unfunny gag that goes nowhere: Pornhub becomes a sponsor to Walt during these tournaments, so Walt plasters Pornhub stickers all over his shirtless chest and back. A TV journalist named Angelo (played by Paul Reiser) notices Walt’s bowling skills and tags along on this tour to report on this potential new bowling star. And a weird and arrogant bowler named Crantley Jr. (played by Paul Scheer) becomes Walt’s rival.
However, Walt’s biggest competition ends up being ruthless Linda Curson (played by Susan Sarandon), a former world champion bowler, who comes out of retirement when she hears how well Walt is doing on the bowling circuit. Linda is the type of bowler who chain smokes while she’s bowling, which is supposed to be the movie’s way of showing that she can do whatever she wants in places where indoor smoking is not allowed. It’s eventually revealed that Skunk has a huge grudge against Linda and a secret connection to Linda.
You know where all of this is going, of course. It’s excruciating to get there because “The Gutter” has so many scenes that are just irksome because of all the horrible dialogue and repellant characters. The bowling scenes have no suspense or real excitement.
Sarandon looks like she’s trying to have as much fun as she can with her role as mean-spirited and vengeful Linda. Carden’s understated approach to her jaded Skunk character is so off-kilter in comparison to Moore’s try-hard approach to over-the-top Walt, it’s almost painful to watch these two characters in scenes together. The other characters in the movie don’t have enough screen time to have any real meaning to this limp story.
“The Gutter” isn’t one of those movies where it’s amusing or entertaining to watch mismatched characters thrown together in circumstances they could not predict. It’s just a parade of sloppy filmmaking, cringeworthy dialogue and a very lazy ending. By the end of “The Gutter,” you won’t care to see any of these repulsive characters ever again.
Magnolia Pictures released “The Gutter” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on November 1, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed area of the United States, the sci-fi drama film “Things Will Be Different” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A brother and a sister are stuck at a farmhouse where they can time travel and are under attack by mysterious forces.
Culture Audience: “Things Will Be Different” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of time-traveling movies and sci-fi movies films about convoluted puzzle solving.
Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy in “Things Will Be Different” (Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing)
“Things Will Be Different” has an ambitious time-traveling concept revolving around a brother and a sister. Unfortunately, this botched sci-fi drama gets caught up in being too mysterious for viewers to care what happens to these underdeveloped characters. This is the type of movie where viewers will start to lose interest about 30 minutes into the film because the basic plot of the movie still hasn’t been coherently explained by then.
Written and directed by Michael Felker, “Things Will Be Different” is his feature-film directorial debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. It’s a low-budget film with a very small number of people in the cast and very few locations but the movie has a lot of problems with its narrative structure. The majority of the film’s scenes take place at a farmhouse in an unnamed area of the United States. (“Things Will Be Different” was actually filmed in Fremont, Indiana.)
“Things Will Be Different” begins by showing a phone call between the protagonist siblings (who are in their 30s), as they talk about meeting up the next day. The brother says to his sister, “We can catch up on some brother/sister rekindling time. See you in the morning.”
The brother is Joseph, also known as Joe (played by Adam David Thompson), who is a former bar owner. Joseph’s sister is Sidney (played by Riley Dandy), who owns a pawn shop. Joseph is a bachelor with no children. Sidney is a single mother to a 6-year-old daughter, who is not seen in the movie. Sidney’s daughter has given a handmade bracelet to Sidney, who wears it as a good luck charm. The parents of Joseph and Sidney are deceased.
Joseph and Sidney meet up at a diner and have the type of pleasant but strained conversation that people have when they haven’t seen a relative for quite a while and have had a period of tense estrangement. Most of the movie’s dialogue is very forgettable and bland. Sidney and Joseph quickly leave the diner when they hear a police siren.
It’s explained later in the movie why the sound of a police siren is cause for the siblings to be alarmed: Sidney and Joseph have committed a robbery. And they are going to a hideout that was arranged for them in advance. This isn’t spoiler information because it’s part of the official plot description for the movie.
Later in “Things Will Be Different,” it’s mentioned that Sidney got arrested (the movie doesn’t say why she was arrested) when she was 24 years old and going through a rebellious phase in her life, but she has (until ths robbery, at least) supposedly turned her life around and become a responsible adult. Joseph distanced himself from her during this low period in Sidney’s life, and she has lingering resentment toward Joseph over what she thinks is his emotional abandonment. That’s about all viewers will learn about the personal lives of these two siblings in this very muddled movie.
Sidney and Joseph make their way to a farmhouse in a wooded area with a nearby corn field. There are three men parked in the house’s driveway as unwelcome trespassers. Sidney takes out a rifle, shoots the gun near the three strangers and yells, “You have five seconds to get off of my land!” Joseph has a shotgun and shoots too. The three men quickly drive away,
The house is abandoned and looks like it hasn’t been lived in for quite some time, because in the front hallway, there’s a dead cat with flies buzzing around it. Inside the house, Joseph and Sidney spin the hands on two separate clocks to try and open a locked closet door. The clocks seem to work as combination lock keys to open the closet. Sidney uses a rotary phone to call someone and says something in an unknown language.
It turns out that this how Joseph and Sidney have turned back time by about two weeks. Sidney later tells Joseph that it’s kind of weird how the owner of this house let them borrow the house but didn’t tell them how the house works. And who is or was the owner of this house? Don’t expect to get the answer to that question until much later in the movie, which becomes even more convoluted as it stumbles along.
The rest of “Things Will Be Different” is a repetitive slog of Joseph and Sidney finding mysterious written messages in the house and communicating by audiocassette recorder with an unknown man, who seems to be watching the siblings’ every move. What’s strange about this communication is that every time the play button on the recorder is pushed, it works like two-way walkie talkie instead of a recorder. Don’t expect an explanation for that either.
Here’s an example of what could have been an intriguing sequence but just falls flat with tedium: Sidney and Joseph see a wooden sign on the closet door that says, “Go to the mill,” with no explanation for how that sign got on the door when it wasn’t there before. When the siblings find the miil, there’s a human body inside that’s completely burned. Sidney and Joseph unrealistically barely react to this gruesome discovery.
The siblings then see this puzzling message scratched on a wooden table: “You are in the group on the rise. I’m on the left side. Another is the right. Give in or join them. Carve here to comply.”
The unknown person who’s been communicating with them tells Joseph and Sidney that the siblings are in the middle of the right and left. The mystery man adds, “Someone is coming: an unknown visitor. All we know is that they are using the door and leaving destruction in their wake.”
If all of this is too obscure for you to know what this movie is about, you should know that “Things Will Be Different” is a tedious loop of this vagueness for the majority of the movie’s 102-minute run time, with filler scenes of Joseph and Sidney doing a lot of bickering about what they should do next. The movie’s performances are adequate, but the screenplay is like a tangled knot of yarn with many loose ends that go nowhere. It’s one of those irritating movies that is poorly written but tries to make viewers feel not very smart if viewers don’t know what’s going on in the movie.
Viewers who are patient enough to watch all of “Things Will Be Different” might be very let down by the plot twist/reveal at the end because the plot twist/reveal is so derivative. How derivative is it? It’s almost exactly the same plot twist/reveal as a better-known low-budget sci-fi thriller about people stuck in a house in a remote wooded area. (Hint: The other movie was Drew Goddard’s feature-film directorial debut and had Chris Hemsworth in the cast.)
In the production notes for “Things Will Be Different,” Felker describes “Things Will Be Different” this way: “It’s a heady movie where you won’t pick up everything it’s putting down the first time around, but you’ll have a blast watching it, and hopefully that’ll compel you to watch it again and pick up more stuff to piece together on the eighth, maybe ninth time.”
Watching a movie eight or nine times assumes that viewers will love it enough to invest that much time for those repeat viewings. It’s hard to imagine a lot of people wanting to see “Things Will Be Different” eight or nine times when the movie does a substandard job of telling the story the first time that people see this disappointing film.
Magnet Releasing released “Things Will Be Different” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on October 4, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in Europe, from 2019 to 2022, the documentary film “Fly” features a group of predominantly white people (and a few people of Asian/Pacific Islander heritage) who are connected in some way to the sport of BASE jumping, which is jumping off of very high, stationary places with usually only a parachute and/or wing suit for support equipment.
Culture Clash: Professional BASE jumpers experience personal rewards and refuse to have conventional lives, but the risk is very high that they will die or get seriously injured while BASE jumping.
Culture Audience: “Fly” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching documentaries about people whose lives revolve around extreme sports.
Scotty Bob Morgan and Espen Fadnes in “Fly” (Photo courtesy of Reel Peak Films/National Geographic Documentary Films)
With breathtaking cinematography and even more poignant human stories, “Fly” is an unforgettable documentary about the dangerous sport of BASE jumping. The documentary shows in unflinching ways how the sport can be as fulfilling as it is addicting. BASE is an acronym for the four possible types of stationary jumping-off points in BASE jumping: buildings, antennas, spans and earth. In “Fly,” the BASE jumpers are all seen jumping off from earth areas, usually cliffs.
“Fly” should be seen on the biggest screen possible. However, viewers who get vertigo from watching things filmed from extreme heights should be warned that “Fly” might induce dizziness and nausea in several scenes that show human flight at vertiginous heights and breakneck speeds. (The sound design for “Fly” is excellent in giving viewers a sense of the high-velocity speed involved in BASE jumping.) Beyond these scenes that will thrill many viewers and will make others feel a little sick, “Fly” has moments that are truly tearjerking because of what happens to some of the people featured in the movie.
Directed by Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau (who are also “Fly’s” main cinematographers), “Fly” was filmed from 2019 to 2022, in various parts of the United States and Europe, such as Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Switzerland, France, and Norway. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival before screening at 2024 edition Hot Docs and the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. Six BASE jumping people (three couples) are the focus of “Fly,” which explores the physical aspects of BASE jumping, along with the emotional toll that the sport takes on the lives of participants who devote most of their time to BASE jumping.
“Fly” might get some comparisons to “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a 2024 documentary about a Russian couple engaging in rooftopping: a dangerous and usually illegal sport of climbing extremely high structures without ropes, nets or other safety measures. Unlike rooftopping, which almost always involves trespassing, BASE jumping is considered a legitimate sport, but not any less dangerous than rooftopping. Professional BASE jumpers can compete in international competitions and often get sponsors.
In “Fly,” the six BASE jumping people (three couples) who get the spotlight are:
Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti, a married couple who co-founded Apex BASE, a California-based company that sells BASE jumping equipment and gear, teaches BASE jumping classes, and hosts BASE jumping events. Pouchert and Empinotti—who were a childless couple in their 50s and living in Moab, Utah, when this documentary was filmed—started BASE jumping in their late teens or 20s. Pouchert (an American) is jovial and has a daredevil personality. Empinotti (originally from Brazil) is more pragmatic and cautious than Pouchert. They co-founded an annual get-together in Las Vegas for BASE jumpers (many of them current and former Apex BASE trainees) to let loose and party.
Scotty Bob Morgan and Julia Botelho Morgan (both in their 30s)—the biggest risk-taking couple in the documentary—were dating and got married during the course of making this documentary. Morgan (an American) is a former U.S. Marine who served in the Iraq War and overcame a troubled past to devote himself to professional BASE jumping. Botelho Morgan (originally from Brazil) was an attorney who quit the law profession to become a skydiver in the Brazilian Army and then became a professional BASE jumper. The spouses operate a California-based training course called Bob’s BASE Academy, although Apex BASE is the main focus of the BASE jumping training that is shown in “Fly.”
Espen Fadnes (in his 40s) and Amber Forte (in her 30s) are a married couple living in Norway, which is Fadnes’ native country. Forte is originally from the United Kingdom. Fadnes, who is considered a pioneer in wingsuit BASE jumping, is a former World Cup champ for the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)/World Air Sports Federation. He has been featured in the Netflix documentary “Wingmen.” Just like the other couples featured in this documentary, this European BASE jumping couple say that they are lucky to have found each other because it’s rare to find a romantic partner who shares the same passion for BASE jumping. Fadnes is very open about how nothing is more important to him than BASE jumping, and he won’t stop BASE jumping, even if people close to him die from it. Forte says she’s less of a risk-taker than Fadnes and she gets more thrills from feeling like flying than feeling like she’s risking her life.
“Fly” begins wth a captioned quote from Leonardo da Vinci: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward.” It certainly describes how die-hard BASE jumpers feel about this sport that they say they can’t live without. Unlike many other sports where professional athletes are expected to retire by the time they’re in their 50s, the “Fly” BASE jumpers say that there really is no age limit for adults to continue BASE jumping.
Fadnes comments on what people get out of BASE jumping: “We feel enormous joy … We are dreamers. There is value in that.” Fadnes also express deep admiration for Morgan, whom Fadnes considers to be one of the best BASE jumpers in the world. Pouchert adds, “A lot of people have said that base jumping has saved their life. It’s a form of absolute bliss.”
On the flip side, Morgan and Fadnes are among the BASE jumpers who say more than once in the documentary that being a professional BASE jumper requires a lot of selfishness. Because of the sport’s high-risk demands, most professional BASE jumpers are obsessed with the sport and make BASE jumping more important than most relationships in their lives. Professional BASE jumpers also have to brush aside concerns from loved ones who are worried that the BASE jumpers will die from this sport.
Morgan says in a separate interview about why he became hooked on BASE jumping: “It was love at first jump.” Morgan adds that he BASE jumps every week. “It’s been good for me,” he states. “It’s therapeutic.” Morgan explains that BASE jumping has helped him with his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and got him through some rough patches in his life, such as when he had drug abuse issues and “ran into some legal trouble.”
Pouchert jokes, “I could be the only person in the world who was taught to jump by his wife.” Remarkably, Empinotti says she has never had a serious injury while BASE jumping. She later opens up about how she dealt with the trauma of a having a boyfriend who died from BASE jumping when she was in her late teens. She also confesses that Pouchert’s tendency to be a jokester in serious situations used to bother her but she grew to accept that was part of his personality.
In addition to putting their lives in danger, the BASE jumpers featured in “Fly” are candid in showing how people who make a commitment to this unconventional lifestyle usually have to lead nomadic existences without a steady income. Professional BASE jumpers often choose not to have children. They also have to accept the reality that many of their friends and/or family members who are BASE jumpers could most likely die from BASE jumping.
Issues of life and death are never far from the focus of the documentary. By the end of the documentary, one of the younger couples in this documentary will bring new life into world when they become parents. (The woman in the couple even BASE jumps when she’s at least six months pregnant.) Someone in another couple experiences near-fatal injuries while BASE jumping. And another couple has the worst possible outcome to the couple’s love story.
It’s impossible not to notice that most people involved in BASE jumping are of a certain demographic. The documentary doesn’t really offer an explanation for why BASE jumping is not a racially diverse or socioeconomically diverse sport, although the clues are there. It’s similar to why race car driving, tennis, golf and skiing are not racially diverse or socioeconomically diverse sports: Getting lessons and traveling in these sports have financial expenses that many people cannot afford. Participants who are not affluent have to make a lot of financial sacrifices to stay in the sport.
Most “daredevil” sports also tend to be dominated by men. “Fly” makes it clear that the women who co-star in the documentary were skilled BASE jumpers long before they met their male romantic partners. Forte explains her perspective of being a female in a sport where the majority of participants are male: “I never wanted to be a boy. I just wanted to be able to do what the boys could do.”
If there’s any shortcoming in “Fly,” it’s that the documentary could have had a little more variety by giving more screen time to professional BASE jumpers who aren’t in a committed relationship with a romantic partner. There’s a glimpse of how lonely this life can be, early in the documentary when Morgan says that he’s essentially homeless and sleeping on friends’ couches because he doesn’t see the point of paying rent for a place where he won’t be living for most of the year. Later, after Morgan and Botelho Morgan are married, he says that being married has changed his mind about putting down roots somewhere.
Morgan’s mother Julie Maxwell Morgan says she often gets asked if she’s worried about her son dying while BASE jumping. She says yes, but his happiness is more important to her. “I don’t think Scotty can be happy unless he can fly,” Maxwell Morgan comments. She also says she feels slightly envious that he’s found a passion for something in his life and has accomplished a lot with this passion, which is something that she was never able to do in her own life.
Also featured in the documentary are two scruffy BASE jumpers who are close friends of Pouchert and Marta Empinotti: Jason “Jay Mo” Moledzki is a native Canadian who is a co-founder and creative director of Flight-1, a Florida-based company that teaches canopy flight skills. Ben “Dicko” Dixon is a long-haired Australian native/Utah resident who looks like he could also be a bohemian surfer. Other BASE jumpers in the documentary are shown in fleeting moments, with nothing about their personal lives revealed. The movie has good use of its soundtrack songs, which includes Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and Avicii’s “The Lights.”
“Fly” is the type of documentary that is as effective as it is because it was filmed over several years. There are moments of exhilaration and moments of agony that will stay with viewers after the movie is over. Regardless of how viewers feel about BASE jumping, “Fly” serves as an example of what it means to take bold and non-traditional risks. These risks in BASE jumping aren’t for everyone, but the risks are ultimately about living life to the fullest and being fortunate to have the privileged freedom to do so.
National Geographic Documentary Films released “Fly” in select U.S. IMAX cinemas for a limited engagement on September 2 and September 3, 2024. The movie will premiere on the National Geographic Channel on September 24, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in and around Cork, Ireland, the horror film “Oddity” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A psychic medium, who believes she can communicate with dead people, temporarily moves in with her sister’s widower to find out more information about the unsolved murder of her sister.
Culture Audience: “Oddity” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of supernatural horror movies that are also murder mysteries.
Gwilym Lee in “Oddity” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)
The horror film “Oddity” is better at delivering a creepy and foreboding atmosphere than a story that results in genuine surprises. It’s a competently made film about a psychic medium who wants to solve the murder of her sister. The movie isn’t overpopulated with characters, but the characters could have been written better because they often come across as underdeveloped stereotypes.
Written and directed by Damian McCarthy, “Oddity” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place in and around the city of Cork, Ireland. “Oddity” (which was filmed in Ireland) has a very uncomplicated plot but it has a somewhat slow start to get to the heart of the mystery.
The beginning of “Oddity” shows a facility were many of the residents have been diagnosed as criminally insane. Dr. Ted Timmins (played by Gwilym Lee) is a psychiatrist at this facility. He is often aided by a orderly named Ivan (played by Steve Wall), who has a gruff and stern personality.
Ted and his wife Dani Timmins (played by Carolyn Bracken) live in a remote rural house that they’ve been renovating. Dani tells Ted that she’s worried about her blind twin sister Darcy Odello (also played by Bracken), who’s supposed to have regular medical checkups. Ted tells Dan that Darcy is capable of taking care of herself.
One day, Dani is home alone when she gets an unexpected visit from a recently released resident of the facility named Olin Boole (played by Tadhg Murphy), who is wild-eyed and disheveled. Olin has been living in a halfway house since his release from the psychiatric facility. At first, Dani doesn’t open the door for Olin but talks to him through a sliding window peephole.
Olin is distressed. He tells Dani, “You’re in trouble.” Olin says that he saw someone go inside the house when Dani’s back was turned. Olin begs Dani to call for help because he doesn’t have a phone. Dani says, “If I open the door, what are you going to do?” Olin replies, “I’ll look around.” Dani then asks, “And if you don’t see anyone?” Declain responds, “I’ll leave.”
Just as Dani starts to open the door, the scene abruptly shifts to showing Olin’s housemate Declan Barrett (played by Jonathan French, also known as Johnny French) at the halfway house. Declan is an artist who likes to draw. He’s in the middle of drawing something when he looks startled.
Declan is hearing strange noises, such as animal-like screeches and heavy grunting. Declan goes in another room and is horrified to see a man’s body with a mutilated head. It’s soon revealed that the dead person is Olin.
What happened in between Dani opening the door for Olin, and then Olin being found murdered? That question is mostly answered by the end of the movie. The timeline jumping in “Oddity” will be confusing to some viewers.
“Oddity” then makes another abrupt shift in the timeline. It’s one year later. That’s when it’s revealed in the movie that Dani is also dead. She was murdered a year ago on the same day that she opened the door to her home to Olin, who is the last known person to have seen her alive. Dani’s murder is never seen or described in graphic detail.
One year after Dani’s murder, Ted is now living at the house with his girlfriend Yana (played by Caroline Menton), whose occupation is never mentioned in the movie. Yana has a generically nice personality. Olin had been the prime suspect in Dani’s murder. However, Olin was never arrested for the murder because he was also killed shortly after Dani was murdered. Both murders have remained unsolved.
A year after the murder, Ted and Yana get a visit from Darcy, who says she wants to use her psychic abilities to find out what Olin was thinking on the day that he was believed to have murdered Dani. “He took my sister’s life,” Darcy says. “I want to know what was going through his mind when he was dying.” Darcy is a little surprised by how quickly widower Ted has moved on to a serious relationship with another woman, but Darcy tries not to be judgmental.
Darcy owns a shop in Cork named Odello’s Oddities, which has a collection of “cursed” items, according to Darcy. Something that Darcy brings with her is a small silver tap bell, which she says is one of the cursed items from her shop. She shows Ted the bell and tells him this story: The bell used to be at a hotel, where an unpleasant bellhop was killed after being shoved down the stairs by a drunk guest. When a hotel receptionist used the bell to summon the new bellhop, the ghost of the dead bellhop appeared instead.
Ted tells Darcy he feels incredibly guilty for allowing Olin be released from the facility: “He should never have been discharged.” Darcy comforts Ted by telling Ted that it wasn’t his fault and that he couldn’t have known that Olin was going to kill Dani. To help Darcy with her psychic medium probe, Ted gives Darcy a handkerchief and tells her what’s in the handkerchief is all that’s left of Olin. Inside the handkerchief is the glass eye that Olin used to wear.
And what about Declan, the person who discovered Olin’s body? Declan died about a week before Darcy arrived. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is all going, which is why when the answer to the mystery is finally revealed, it’s not surprising at all.
Darcy is invited to stay with Ted and Yana during Darcy’s visit. Darcy has a trunk delivered to the house. And inside the trunk is an ominous, life-sized mannequin, which has the name Wooden Man (played by Ivan de Wergifosse) in the film’s end credits. Wooden Man is Darcy’s constant “companion” who sits at the same table when Darcy has her psychic sessions.
Soon after Darcy arrives, strange things start happening. Yana sees the ghost of Dani in a photo that Yana took a few days before. “Oddity” is very much a “things that go bump in the night” type of movie for many of its jump scares. The sound design for “Oddity” is excellent, even though a great deal of the film somewhat wanders, with mot much plot development beyond showing that the house now seems to be haunted. Is it the ghost of Dani, Olin, or something else?
“Oddity” can maintain viewer interest because of the murder mystery and some of the jump scares. The cast members’ acting is solid, with Bracken giving the obvious standout performance as the eccentric Darcy. Still, there’s so information about the characters in “Oddity” that is left unexplained. As a horror film, “Oddity” has an interesting concept that excels with the movie’s sound and visuals. However, “Oddity” comes up a bit short in developing the movie’s characters and could have made this murder mystery a lot harder to solve.
IFC Films released “Oddity” in U.S. cinemas on July 19, 2024. Shudder will premiere the movie on September 27, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Bavarian Alps in Germany, the sci-fi/horror film “Cuckoo” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with few Asian people and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A 17-year-old girl has nightmarish experiences and finds out that something sinister is going on at the vacation resort where her family is visiting.
Culture Audience: “Cuckoo” will appeal primarily to the fans of the movie’s headlines and will appeal people who don’t mind watching horror movies that are better at having terrifying moments than having mostly appealing characters.
Dan Stevens in “Cuckoo” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
The erratic horror film “Cuckoo” isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, but Hunter Schafer’s lead performance and some genuinely unique terror scenes elevate the story when it starts to become conventional and repetitive. The movie’s ending will be divisive to many viewers.
Written and directed by Tilman Singer, “Cuckoo” had its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie uses a lot of formulaic stereotypes of horror film about family “stuck” in a remote area where something sinister is happening. However, “Cuckoo” has some imaginative scenes and scenarios that give “Cuckoo” enough to hold most viewers’ interest.
In “Cuckoo,” 17-year-old American girl Gretchen Vanderkurt (played by Hunter Schafer) has reluctantly traveled to the Bavarian Alps in Germany with her British-born father Luis (played by Márton Csókás); her American stepmother Beth (played by Jessica Henwick); and Gretchen’s 7-year-old mute half-sister Alma (played by Mila Lieu), who is the biological daughter of Luis and Beth. Gretchen’s biological mother is deceased. The family has been invited to a remote “nature preserve” resort by Luis’ mysterious and smirking boss Herr König (played by Dan Stevens), who is clearly up to no good from the moment that Herr König is seen on screen.
Luis and Beth want to build their own resort and are staying at Herr König’s resort for ideas and inspiration. Moody and pouty Gretchen is bored, so Herr König offers her a part-time job working as a front-desk receptionist at the resort. A friendly staffer named Beatrix, also known as Trixie (played by Greta Fernández), trains Gretchen in this new job. Beatrix has a lover named Erik (played by Konrad Singer), who’s a police officer.
It doesn’t take long for Gretchen to notice that the resort’s front-desk employees seem to disappear at around 10 p.m., with no explanation. She also notices that women show up in the resort lobby and vomit. And when a woman vomits in a movie, and she’s not drunk or intoxicated, there’s usually another predictable reason why.
Meanwhile, Gretchen starts having nightmarish visions when she’s asleep and when she’s awake. She has terrifying experiences of being stalked by a hooded woman (played by Kaylin Morrow), but no one seems to believe Gretchen. And so, the movie indulges in another horror cliché: the female who experiences terror but she is not believed by most people around her, and she’s deemed mentally ill.
Someone who believes Gretchen is Henry Landau (played by Jan Bluthardt), who tells Gretchen that he needs her help in finding the hooded woman, whom he says is wanted for murder. Early on in the movie, a resort neighbor named Dr. Bonomo (played by Proschat Madani) introduced herself to Gretchen. It should come as no surprise that Henry and Dr. Bonomo have secrets
There’s a not-very-interesting subplot about Gretchen getting romantically involved with a resort guest named Ed (played by Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey), who is in her 30s and has a sarcastic and rebellious personality. Some viewers of “Cuckoo” will think the age gap between Ed and Gretchen (who will soon turn 18) is very inappropriate. It should be noted that in many European countries, including Germany, the minimum age of sexual consent is 14. Although the age gap between Ed and Gretchen might be inappropriate to some viewers, it’s legal in this part of the world.
“Cuckoo” has very effective sound design and recurring close-ups of pulsating necks as a creepy visual motif. Gretchen also frequently listens to music, which makes a room vibrate in eerie ways that could be supernatural or part of Gretchen’s imagination. Grief is a big theme in “Cuckoo,” as Gretchen is very much in mourning over the death of her mother. There are multiple scenes where Gretchen is shown leaving messages on her dead mother’s voice mail.
Schafer holds many scenes together with her authentic-looking performance. Stevens’ performance gets increasingly campy, which might irritate viewers into really disliking the movie. “Cuckoo” is not a great horror movie, but it might be considered good enough for people who want some freaky jump scares and a mystery that’s fairly easy to solve.
Neon will release “Cuckoo” in U.S. cinemas on August 9, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, the documentary film “Join or Die” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans, Asians, Latin people and Native Americans) who discuss the sociological benefits of joining groups.
Culture Clash: The people interviewed in the documentary say that American society has moved toward more social isolation and division, which could be harmful to communities and democracy.
Culture Audience: “Join or Die” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in sociopolitical documentaries that have general overviews, but this documentary doesn’t dig deep enough into the down sides of joining problematic groups.
Robert Putnam in “Join or Die” (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)
“Join or Die” is mostly a tribute to political scientist Robert Putnam and his teachings that advocate for people to join groups. This well-meaning documentary ignores the realities that toxic groups exist, but the movie’s overall message is admirable. In some ways, “Join or Die” bit off more than it could chew and becomes unwieldy by addressing topics too broadly. Some of the topics needed a more meaningful examination that is better suited for a docuseries, not a feature film.
Directed by siblings Pete Davis and Rebecca Davis, “Join or Die” is their feature-film debut and had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film & TV Festival. Pete Davis is the documentary’s cheerful narrator. Putnam, who is Pete Davis’ former Harvard University professor, gets a lot of screen time because this documentary was originally going to be a biographical film about Putnam. The movie’s original title was “Unraveling America.” Putnam wrote the 2000 non-fiction book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” which is the inspiration for much of the ideas put forth in “Join or Die.”
“Bowling Alone” is about the philosophy that societies are better off when people in the societies feel connected to each other. And the best way for people to feel connected with each other is to join groups. The term “social capital” is mentioned numerous times in “Join or Die.” In the documentary, Putnam says he defines “social capital” as “social networks have value.” Davis says in the documentary’s introduction narration: “This is a film about why you should join a club, why the fate of America depends on it.”
As a nation, the United States of America has gone though ebbs and flows in overall unity among residents. “Join or Die” sounds the alarm that the early 21st century has become an era of increased social isolation and a widening gap between the rich and the poor that harken back to the Gilded Age of the late 1870s to the late 1890s. The U.S. Civil War (which lasted from 1861 to 1865) was obviously the most divisive period in American history, but the Reconstruction period was also a tough recovery period of civil unrest. Putnam believes that the best way to lessen the divisiveness caused by the large socioeconomic gaps between the rich and the poor is for people who are rich and poor to interact with each other in groups.
“Join or Die” has commentary from various people in the United States and visits several states (including California, New Hampshire, Illinois, Texas, Michigan, and New York) to interview people about the benefits of joining groups. “Join or Die” also does a good job of including people with various political leanings, ranging from liberal to conservative, and those who are in between. Some “regular folks” are interviewed to talk about some of their social groups (where the groups’ main meetings are in person, not online) that they consider beneficial to their lives.
It’s a noble but ultimately flawed approach to the documentary’s premise because it ignores the down sides of certain groups. What about harmful cults? What about hate groups? What about groups that illegally discriminate against people from joining? Those questions are never explored in “Join or Die” because it seems to cling to the assumption that most groups are not harmful. And that might be true, but there are some groups that are very problematic and cause a lot of harm.
“Join or Die” puts an emphasis on in-person interactions as the healthier way for people to be part of a group, compared to online interactions. The movie doesn’t condemn online interactions but does make a case that in-person interactions are a better alternative if possible because people feel more connected when they can see each other in person. The documentary also makes clear that the type of group joining that’s discussed in the movie is about the groups that people join in their free time and of their own free will—not jobs where people are required to be together.
The rise of social media in the early 21st century gets superficial mentions in “Join or Die” as a reason for why more people are likely to be isolated from in-person interactions. There have been studies linking excessive social media use to depression and suicidal actions, particularly among young people, says U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who is interviewed in the documentary. However, “Join or Die” doesn’t go any further than this brief mention.
“Join or Die” has interviews with a number of well-known public figures, including former politician/former U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg (currently U.S. Secretary of Transportation), and Mike Lee (currently a U.S. Senator for Utah), but they don’t really say anything profound and only talk in generic terms. For example, Clinton says of the suffrage movement in the U.S. to fight for women’s right to vote: “It never would’ve happened without the spark of civic life.” Buttigieg says, “Social capital is the stuff of which cities and countries are actually made.”
Also mentioned in “Join or Die” is the Saguaro Seminar, which is Putnam’s ongoing initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The purpose of the Saguaro Seminar is to study social capital and civic engagement in the United States. Some of the Saguaro Seminar alumni include Barack Obama (years before he became the 44th President of the United States); George Stephanopoulos (currently an ABC News anchor and formerly White House Communications director for the Bill Clinton administration); and Vin Weber, former U.S. House of Representative for Minnesota. Two of the Saguaro Seminar graduates interviewed in the documentary are economist Glenn Loury and sociologist Xavier de Souza Briggs.
Other interviewees in “Join or Die” are social psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, religious scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr., New York Times columnist David Brooks, “The Upswing” co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett, economist Raj Chetty, labor organizer Jane McAlevey, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research director of operations Kathleen Weldon, gathering expert Priya Parker, Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman and political scientist Hahrie Han. They all say things that affirm the documentary’s premise that society can benefit when people join groups instead of having an isolationist outlook on life.
The “regular folks” interviewed in the documentary include JC Muhammad, a Chicago-based rideshare driver who’s an organizer for an activist group called Chicago Gig Alliance; Odilia Romero, a member of a Los Angeles-based group of people of Mexican and Native American heritage; Tommy Wright and Awais Hussain, members of the Odd Fellows Lodge #80 in Waxahachie, Texas; Zahra Alabanza, a mother who formed a bike-riding group in Atlanta called Red Bike Green; and Rev. Nurya Love Parish, executive director of Plainsong Farm & Ministry in Rockford, Michigan. Parish and Brooks are among the people in the documentary who say that religion is one of the most common reasons why people join groups.
Remnants of the documentary’s original intention to be a biography of Putnam can be seen in footage where Putnam talks at length about his life. Viewers will hear details about how he met his wife Rosemary Putnam (who’s also interviewed in the documentary) in 1960, when they took the same political science class as students at Swathmore College. At the time, he was a Republican. She was a Democrat. Their first date was a rally for then-U.S. presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.
Robert and Rosemary both attended Kennedy’s inauguration ceremony in Washington, D.C., where Kennedy gave his famous speech saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Robert says that these words from the speech had a tremendous impact on him and gave him clarity on what his life purpose would be. Later, Robert still gets emotional and choked up when he tells a story about being honored at the White House with the National Humanities Medal in 2013 (bestowed by President Obama) and seeing a portrait of Kennedy at the White House. It was a “full circle” moment for Robert, he says. All of this personal information about Robert Putnam adds an intimate tone to the documentary without being off-topic.
“Join or Die” ultimately puts a feel-good spin on joining groups. The documentary could have used a better examination of legal issues of joining groups that have to do with inclusion and exclusion. For example, what if there’s a group that bases its membership on members having a certain identity. but someone who doesn’t have that identity wants to join the group? “Join or Die” looks at a massive topic from a particular viewpoint that is generally upbeat and positive, but falls short when it comes to acknowledging the reality that not all groups are beneficial to society.
Abramorama released “Join or Die” in select U.S. cinemas on July 19, 2024.
A 1970s archival photo of Cymande in “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande.” Pictured from left to right: Pablo Gonsales, Patrick Patterson, Mike “Bammi” Rose (half-kneeling, in front), Derrick Gibbs, Steve Scipio and Sam Kelly. (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)
Culture Representation: The documentary “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” features a predominantly black group of people (with a few white people) discussing the career of the British R&B/funk band Cymande, which is best known for the band’s music that was released from 1972 to 1974.
Culture Clash: Cymande received critical acclaim for their music in the 1970s but was prevented from achieving major star status because the band was mostly ignored by radio stations and other media.
Culture Audience: “Cymande” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching documentaries about underrated musicians.
A 1970s archival photo of Cymande in “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande.” Pictured from left to right: Patrick Patterson, Michael “Bammi” Rose, Steve Scipio, Sam Kelly, Derrick Gibbs and Pablo Gonsales. (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)
“Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” takes viewers on a ride of highs, lows and everything in between when telling the story of the R&B/funk band Cymande, which is pronounced “sih-mahn-day.” If you want to know why the 1970s British band Cymande didn’t become as well-known as American counterparts such as Parliament-Funkadelic, this illuminating documentary tells a fascinating, heart-wrenching and informative story. The movie gives viewers who are unfamiliar with Cymande an exploration of the band’s music from different perspectives, including how Cymande’s music influenced later generations. The documentary has previously unreleased archival material, exclusive interviews filmed for the movie, and performance footage of Cymande’s reunited lineup.
Directed by Tim MacKenzie-Smith, “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” had its world premiere at the 2022 SXSW Film & TV Festival, followed by a U.K. premiere at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival. One of the reasons why many music fans have never heard of Cymande is because the band’s first incarnation lasted for only three years—from 1971 to 1974—which was the period of time when the Cymande made its most influential music. The band’s name comes from a calypso word for “dove.”
Cymande received critical acclaim for the band’s music but struggled to have a major breakthrough. Cymande disbanded in 1974, because the band members were broke and needed to get day jobs to financially survive and support their families. The band briefly reunited in 2006, before calling it quits again. Cymande reunited again in 2012 and was still together when this documentary was released.
In the 1970s, Cymande had a changing lineup, but there were six core members who remained consistent to the group: lead singer/guitarist Patrick Patterson, saxophonist/flautist Michael “Bammi” Rose, bassist Steve Scipio, drummer Sam Kelly, saxophonist Derrick Gibbs and percussionist Pablo Gonsales. All six of these members are interviewed in the documentary, which began filming in 2017. Gonsales died in 2020, at the age of 77. An epilogue title card mentions his death and says the documentary is dedicated to him. In the documentary, Gonsales is the band’s extroverted jokester, who also talks a lot of being in tune with nature.
Told in mostly chronological order, “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” gives cultural context to the band’s origins in South London, by discussing how all of the band’s core members came from families who immigrated from the Caribbean. Patterson (the unofficial leader of Cymande) comments on why their parents immigrated to England: “England was not simply the mother country; it was the place to go to maximize our potential.”
But what happens when that potential is blocked by racism? Patterson describes how his father was a trained baker in Jamaica, but in England, he was rejected for bakery jobs by racist employers who didn’t want black employees in baker positions. Unfortunately for Cymande, racism and xenophobia played a damaging role in preventing the band from getting the same type of exposure on radio stations and television that other music artists selling out the same sizes of venues usually got.
According to several the members of Cymande, the British media’s prejudice against Cymande was based on the band’s race and (ironically) the band’s nationality. Cymande couldn’t get radio airplay or bookings on British TV shows that showed preferential treatment to white artists. The few R&B bands that played their own instruments that did get those slots were almost always American. To this day, it’s still very difficult for a British R&B/funk band to achieve worldwide success.
Cymande was discovered by British music producer John Schroeder, who died in 2017, at the age of 82. Cymande signed to Schroeder’s record company Alaska Records in the United Kingdom, and Janus Records in the United States. Cymande released three albums in the 1970s: 1972’s “Cymande,” 1973’s “Second Time Round” and 1974’s “Promised Heights,” all produced by Schroeder.
The song “The Message,” from the band’s first album, was a minor hit, but could not get further momentum because it wasn’t getting a lot of radio airplay. This was during an era when radio airplay was essential for artists to have mainstream hits, and the Internet did not exist for artists to market themselves. Years later, when Cymande’s music became popular for sampling on other artists’ music, “The Message” was rediscovered when it was featured in Masta Ace’s 1990 hit “Me and the Biz.”
Even though the media in the United Kingdom mostly ignored Cymande, the band seemed to be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the United States when Cymande was selected to be the opening act for Al Green’s 1972 U.S. tour, which played at arenas. It was the first time that Cymande had ever toured in America. And performing in front of thousands of people a night was a heady experience.
In the documentary, several of the band members look back on this tour with great fondness and say they appreciate how fans in America were so welcoming to Cymande. But those are bittersweet memories, because after the tour with Green ended, Cymande went back to the United Kingdom, where they were still treated like “nobodies” by the media and the music industry.
After two more albums and still no breakthrough, Cymande called it quits in 1974. (Cymande’s 1981 studio album “Arrival” was a collection of throwaway tracks that were recorded in 1974.) By 1974, most of the band members had become husbands and fathers and needed more stable incomes than being musicians in debt.
Patterson, who became a lawyer, says that going from the cusp of music stardom to working in “normal” jobs was not necessarily an easy transition for the former Cymande members, but it had to be done. He explains, “We didn’t go off the road to go on the dole [British slang for government welfare]. We just found a different way of contributing to our community.”
Not all of the members of Cymande completely quit being professional musicians in the 1980s to 2000s. In the 1980s, saxophonist Rose was a backup musician for the reggae band Aswad and later for Paul Simon’s “Graceland” tour. He then formed a band called Jazz Warrior. And since 1999, Rose has been part of the studio band for the BBC music show “Later… with Jools Holland.”
The second half of the “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” focuses mostly on how Cymande music influenced various music artists who had their big breakthrough hits in the 1990s or 2000s. Cymande became one of those obscure bands that most people never heard of but was discovered and appreciated by true music aficionados. Those who are interviewed in the documentary include music producer Mark Ronson, Masta Ace, DJ/producer Louie Vega, Prince Paul, DJ/producer Cut Chemist, Ozomatli bassist Wil-Dog Abers; Jazzie B (of Soul II Soul fame) and former De La Soul member DJ Maseo.
Expect to hear a lot of gushing fan commentary from artists who admire Cymande’s music. Norman Jay, a nightclub/radio DJ, has this to say about Cymande: “They’re the first band that had come along that tapped all of my cultural buttons. Their music isn’t frivolous. It’s not throwaway. It’s thought-about, provokes reaction. It’s challenging. It confronts you and makes you dance.”
My Morning Jacket lead singer Jim James is seen in the beginning of the documentary giving his personal Cymande testimonial about how he discovered the band. James says that he loved the Fugees’ 1996 album “The Score,” especially the title track. Sometime in 2006, James says he found out that “The Score” song sampled Cymande’s song “Dove.”
After hearing “Dove,” James remembers: “I was forever changed. That song, to me, is so profoundly important, it almost eclipses everything. It’s like a magic spell.” Ronson adds his thoughts on “Dove” in a separate interview: “It really feels otherworldly, like it came down on a spaceship or something.”
In the documentary, Kool DJ Red Alert and DJ Hollywood say in separate interviews that the Cymande song “Bra” was very influential to them. Also giving Cymande praise in the documentary are DJ/club promoter Nicky Siano; skateboarder/musician Tommy Guerrero; DJ/producer Peanut Butter Wolf; radio DJ Deb Grant; Collen “Cosmo” Murphy, curator of Classic Album Sundays; rapper Loyle Carner; Khruangbin members Mark Speer, Laura Lee and Donald “DJ” Johnson Jr.; Ruthless Rap Assassins members Anderson Hinds, Carson Hinds and Kermit Leveridge; and Ruthless Rap Assassins producer Greg Wilson.
Perhaps the most inspirational part of the documentary is seeing that even though Cymande didn’t get the mainstream success that the band had hoped for in the 1970s, it didn’t kill the band members’ desire to still make and perform music at ages when most people have retired. Cymande released the reunion album “A Simple Act of Faith” in 2015, and has been performing concerts on a regular basis since the reunion. The documentary includes footage of Cymande performing at music festivals in 2019, including WOMAD.
“Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” is partly a tribute to the band and partly an interesting music history lesson, especially for people who have never heard of Cymande, a band that is underrated but not forgotten. It’s a story of a band that reunited after decades of the band members being apart—but this time around, the band doesn’t feel the pressure to have big hits on the charts and is playing music for the pure joy of it. And that might be the biggest lesson of all that this documentary has to offer: Music is an art form that doesn’t have to be segregated by age, race or nationality and can change people lives in impactful ways.
Abramorama released “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” in New York City on July 26, 2024, will release the movie in the Los Angeles area on August 7, 2024.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “MoviePass, MovieCrash” features a predominantly white group of people (with some black people) discussing the rise, the fall and the attempted comeback of MoviePass, a subscription service for movie tickets.
Culture Clash: MoviePass struggled for years to become a popular company, until a controversial management team took over and made radical business decisions that rapidly increased subscribers, but the company crashed and burned due to overspending and extreme financial losses.
Culture Audience: “MoviePass, MovieCrash” will appeal primarily to people who are moviegoers, entrepreneurs or business investors and are interested in watching documentaries about how greed and arrogance can ruin businesses.
Stacy Spikes and Ted Farnsworth in “MoviePass, MovieCrash” (Photo courtesy of MoviePass/HBO)
The documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash” (directed by Muta’Ali, also known as Muta’Ali Muhammad) offers some interesting behind-the-scenes perspectives of the rise, fall and attempted comeback of MoviePass, the first popular subscription service for movie tickets in the United States. The film editing brings some comedic touches to a harsh business story. Because so much of what happened to MoviePass has been widely reported elsewhere, not much is surprising in this documentary, and there are glaring omissions.
For example, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” does not mention AMC Theatres’ subscription service AMC Stubs A-List, which launched in June 2018 as an extension of the already existing AMC Stubs rewards program. AMC Stubs A-List was one of the biggest factors in the downfall of MoviePass in 2018. And although “MoviePass, MovieCrash” gives some commentary on the apparent racism behind white executives sidelining and eventually ousting MoviePass co-founders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt (who are both African American), there’s no mention of the obvious sexism at MoviePass. At the peak of MoviePass’ popularity, all of the company’s top executives and board of directors consisted of men. “MoviePass, MovieCrash” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
“MoviePass, MovieCrash” tells the company’s story in mostly chronological order, featuring interviews with Spikes and many of the company’s former employees, investors and subscribers. Headquartered in New York City, MoviePass was founded in 2011 and didn’t become a profitable company until 2023. Before co-founding MoviePass, Spikes (who was born and raised in Houston) had experiences in the 1990s as a marketing executive at Miramax and as a product manager at Motown Records. In 1997, Spikes founded the Urbanworld Film Festival as a showcase for filmmakers of color. Watt’s previous experience was as an entrepreneur of various small businesses.
According to what Spikes says in the documentary, MoviePass was originally conceived as a subscription service version of the Urbanworld Film Festival. The idea for MoviePass morphed from not just being limited to one film festival but to being a nationwide service for movie ticketing at corporate-owned and independently owned movie theaters. These movie theaters would get a cut of the revenue from tickets purchased through MoviePass.
The MoviePass business model was that subscribers would pay a monthly fee to watch a certain number of movies per month at a wide selection of movie theaters. One of the original MoviePass subscription plans was $39.95 for 30 movies a month, with a limit of one movie per day. Tickets could be booked on a MoviePass app, and a MoviePass card that operated like a debit card would redeem the tickets at participating movie theaters.
However, it was difficult for this business model to be profitable, as long as numerous subscribers were frequent moviegoers and paying only a fraction of what they would pay for tickets without this MoviePass subscription. In other words, MoviePass was losing money from all the ticket discounts that MoviePass subscribers were getting from these subscriptions. MoviePass did not have any other source of sales revenue to offset these financial losses, and the company had to rely on investors to keep MoviePass in business.
From 2011 to 2016, Spikes was the CEO of MoviePass, while Watt was the board chairman who mostly dealt with finding investors. The company’s biggest problem during this time period was that the subscriber base stalled somewhere around 20,000 subscribers. Another big setback was that MoviePass temporarily lost a business deal with Movietickets.com (partially owned by AMC Theatres) in 2015, when Adam Aron replaced Gerry Lopez as CEO of AMC Theatres. Lopez is interviewed in the documentary, while Aron is not. Lopez says that MoviePass was beneficial to AMC Theatres in the early-to-mid-2010s.
One of the original major investors in MoviePass was Chris Kelly, a former Facebook executive who briefly dabbled in politics. (In 2010, Kelly lost the California district attorney’s Democratic primary to Kamala Harris.) As a major investor in MoviePass, Kelly also became a member of MoviePass’ board of directors. Because he invested so much money in MoviePass, Kelly was eventually given two seats on the board. Kelly, who is interviewed in the documentary, says that there came a point in time when he had no more money that he could invest in MoviePass, so he urged Spikes and Watt to find other big-money investors.
Mitch Lowe, a former executive for Redbox and Netflix, joined MoviePass in 2016 as CEO and as a board member. Spikes was made chief operating officer (COO) under this new management structure, while Watt began to be sidelined. In the documentary, Lowe openly admits that he didn’t think Watt was as valuable as Spikes to MoviePass at the time.
On the recommendation of Lowe, a big-talking executive named Ted Farnsworth (who was CEO of analytics firm Helios and Matheson at the time) was brought to MoviePass as a chief investor. Farnsworth had a background in finance, public relations and marketing with several start-up companies. Farnsworth told the MoviePass executives that MoviePass couldn’t be profitable until MoviePass had at least 1 million subscribers. Spikes says in the documentary that he constantly raised concerns to Lowe, Farnsworth and other MoviePass board members about the sustainability of this goal.
Spikes says Farnsworth and Lowe repeatedly dismissed Spikes’ warnings that MoviePass’ financial losses would become too large to handle with more than 1 million subscribers, unless MoviePass figured out a way for the company to become profitable. There was also the issue of MoviePass being understaffed and unable to keep up with any rapid increase in subscribers. Lowe’s reaction was to act like Spikes was being negative and difficult: “He was not being a constructive member of the team,” Lowe says in the documentary about Spikes.
In the documentary, Spikes uses an airplane analogy to explain MoviePass’ rapid growth plans: “We’re kind of learning to build the plane mid-flight. And changing it from a crop duster to a 747 that can handle large volumes of people. We were not prepared to keep running at that pace.” Spikes says his recommendation to “put the brakes” on MoviePass’ plan for rapid growth was often ignored.
Lowe wanted MoviePass to quickly reach the goal of 1 million subscribers and get a lot of media attention for it. Lowe takes full credit in the documentary for coming up with the idea of reducing the MoviePass subscription price to $9.95 per month, which would still give subscribers a “pass” to see one movie every day at participating theaters. And sure enough, MoviePass had a meteoric increase in subscribers and got a lot of media attention from late 2017 through all of 2018. By then, Spikes and Watt had been pushed out of the company.
In August 2017, Helios and Matheson bought a majority stake in MoviePass. Spikes and Watt were removed from MoviePass’ board of directors and forced out of the company. Spikes and Watt got to keep their stock shares in MoviePass after they were fired from the company. However, under the terms of their exit deal, Spikes and Watt could not buy or sell these shares for a 12-month period after being dismissed from MoviePass. According to Spikes, his shares in MoviePass were worth about $80 million when he was ousted from MoviePass in 2017. A year later, those shares would essentially be worthless.
MoviePass’ rapid rise and fall have been well-documented in the media and elsewhere. By December 2017, MoviePass had 1 million subscribers. By February 2018, MoviePass had 2 million subscribers. By June 2018, MoviePass had 3 million subscribers. Lowe and Farnsworth became the new faces of MoviePass, with many media outlets incorrectly identifying Lowe and Farnsworth as the founders of MoviePass. Lowe and Farnsworth soaked up all the publicity they were getting for being “visionary” leaders of a “hot” company that was a popular choice for stock investors.
Still, the question remained: How was MoviePass going to actually become profitable? In media interviews, Farnsworth and Lowe kept saying that MoviePass was planning to sell its customer data to movie studios. However, they avoided answering questions on how much this data was actually worth to make up for the hundreds of millions of dollars that MoviePass was losing.
Meanwhile, MoviePass went on a spending spree. The company spent millions on promoting MoviePass at major film festivals and other events. According to the documentary, MoviePass reportedly spent $1 million at the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and hired mismatched spokespeople—such as former basketball star Dennis Rodman and social media influencer OK Bunny—to promote MoviePass at the festival. OK Bunny is interviewed in the documentary, and she still seems a little confused by what MoviePass was doing at Coachella and why she was paired with Rodman.
There were other ill-conceived business decisions, such as MoviePass Ventures and production company MoviePass Films, which invested heavily in the 2018 flop biopic “Gotti,” starring John Travolta as notorious Mafia boss John Gotti. Lowe says that MoviePass thought that its subscriber base would be the most likely to buy tickets to any movies that MoviePass produced. The failure of “Gotti” proved that business theory wrong. MoviePass also purchased the outdated Moviefone, a financially declining company for movie tickets and showtimes.
There were helicopters and private jets bearing the MoviePass logo. And several people in the documentary say that Lowe and especially Farnsworth were caught up in acting like “rock star” executives who wanted to party with celebrities. Lowe doesn’t deny any of it and makes this excuse for why he and other high-ranking MoviePass executives got the biggest perks from the spending sprees, while the lower-level employees were overworked and understaffed: “Not all roles get to party.”
Farnsworth is not interviewed in “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” which depicts Farnsworth as the story’s biggest villain and a prime example of callous corporate greed. There is no mention in the documentary if the “MoviePass, Movie Crash” filmmakers attempted to interview him, or if Farnsworth declined any requests for comment. It’s mentioned in the documentary that Farnsworth abused his power at MoviePass to make nepotism hires of family members and friends who were inexperienced or unqualified.
One of these nepotism hires was Robert “Bob” Ellis (Diana Ross’ first ex-husband), who is mentioned but not interviewed in the documentary. Ellis, who was put on MoviePass’ payroll as a marketing consultant, is described as a Hollywood hanger-on, photographer and close friend of Farnsworth. He was part of the MoviePass executive clique that went on luxury trips that were paid for by the company.
Also mentioned but not interviewed in the documentary is Khalid Itum, an inexperienced MoviePass employee who quickly rose through the company ranks and eventually became MoviePass’ vice president of business development. Itum is named as one of the biggest offenders in the wild spending sprees at MoviePass. The documentary includes some audio clips of recordings of MoviePass staff meetings. In these recordings, Itum and Lowe seem to be willfully in denial about how their overspending was very damaging to MoviePass.
In July 2018, during the weekend that “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” was released in theaters, MoviePass crashed and burned when the MoviePass app stopped working or had limitations for most of its customers. MoviePass frequently switched its terms of service without giving customers proper notice. Subscribers complained of not getting responses from MoviePass customer service representatives. These problems continued for the next several months. The widespread customer complaints and several lawsuits against MoviePass led to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigating MoviePass for fraud.
Daniel Kaufman, the former FTC director who was involved in these MoviePass investigations, describes Farnsworth as a con man who didn’t really know how to operate a business but only knew how to promote a business. Journalists/reporters Nathan McAlone and Jason Guerrasio, who both covered the MoviePass saga for the website Business Insider, also describe Farnsworth as the worse person in the toxic duo of Farnsworth and Lowe. Business Insider is listed in the documentary’s end credits as a production collaborator for “MoviePass, MovieCrash.”
As for Lowe, he doesn’t take much personal responsibility for MoviePass’ downfall. Lowe shifts almost all of the blame on bad advice that he got from Farnsworth. In the documentary, Lowe says that when things came crashing down for MoviePass, Farnsworth told Lowe: “Just keep going and the money will come.” MoviePass’ bankruptcy and closure in 2019, as well as MoviePass’ revival by Spikes (who bought back the rights to MoviePass in 2021 and returned to the company as CEO), are briefly mentioned toward the end of the documentary. The MoviePass legal problems of Lowe, Farnsworth and Itum are in the documentary’s epilogue.
“MoviePass, MovieCrash” has interviews with former MoviePass customer service employees Sydney Weinshel, Emmanuel Freeman and Ezekiel Sansing; former MoviePass engineer Oscar Miscar; former MoviePass social media manager Drew Taylor; former Helios and Matheson public relations executive Mark Havener; former Urbanworld Film Festival director Gabrielle Glore; and former MoviePass subscribers Mat Levy, Jose Rolden and James Simermeyer. Also interviewed are several investors (some of whom were MoviePass investors, while some were not), such as Mark Gomes, John Fitchthorn, Ken Gardner, Ben Rabizadeh, Daymond John and Guy Primus.
The former MoviePass employees describe feeling optimistic and excited when they first joined the company, but that excitement soon turned to dread and discontent when they saw how things were being grossly mismanaged. Lower-lever staffers were overwhelmed with customer complaints, while MoviePass’ upper-level executives were living lavish lifestyles and denying that big problems existed at MoviePass. Miscar is the former MoviePass employee who is the most candid in the documentary interviews and is the only former MoviePass employee to call out the problematic racial issues in how Spikes and Watt were pushed out of MoviePass by an all-white team of executives.
Spikes and Watt are diplomatic when talking about their humiliating exits from MoviePass. Watt emphatically states that MoviePass is in his past, and he’s happy to have moved on to other things. (He’s an investor consultant.) By contrast, Spikes is still very clearly haunted by the demise of MoviePass from 2018 to 2019, and he is determined to make the company even bigger and better than it ever was. Spikes mentions he was partially inspired to revive MoviePass by how Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell were ousted from the companies they founded and made big comebacks when they returned to those companies.
“MoviePass, Movie Crash” uses a lot of clips from movies and TV shows as ways to put an emphasis on the emotions and reactions being described in the documentary. This editing brings some amusing entertainment to an otherwise infuriating story about corporate corruption. Spikes mentions that if he and Watt had been running MoviePass in the same the way that Lowe and Farnsworth ran the company into the ground, then Spikes and Watt would’ve gotten quicker and harsher legal consequences.
There is some mention in the documentary about these racial inequalities for entrepreneurs, with the obvious fact that white men get the vast majority of investment money. Watt says in the documentary that a start-up company such as MoviePass needed this factor to take the company to the next level: “If you have a white man with more gray hair that could inspire other white males with white hair to be more comfortable investing. It’s a factor we considered through the entire entrepreneurial journey.”
Lowe and Farnsworth certainly took MoviePass to the “next level,” but at what cost? The MoviePass brand name and reputation became permanently tarnished. Millions of dollars were lost. Untold numbers of people felt ripped off and cheated by MoviePass. And certain people got into big legal trouble over how MoviePass was mishandled.
The racial implications of MoviePass’ history are certainly acknowledged in the documentary. However, there’s no good reason for the noticeably low number of women interviewed for this documentary. Studies from the Motion Picture Association and other sources have shown for years that women are about 51% of the movie ticket buyers in the United States, and females are about 51% of moviegoers. And yet, there are no female MoviePass subscribers interviewed in this documentary. (A social media clip of a random female former MoviePass subscriber talking about MoviePass is not the same thing as an interview.)
The very real problem of sexism is completely ignored in “MoviePass, MovieCrash,” which comes across as very much like a “boys’ club” documentary without including the realities of how women have a big impact on movie ticket buying. The “MoviePass, MovieCrash” filmmakers also never question why women were excluded from being MoviePass’ highest-ranking leaders. The documentary’s biggest flaw is failing to mention these issues regarding gender and sexism. However, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” does a sufficient job of answering this question for anyone who is curious: “Whatever happened to MoviePass?”
HBO premiered “MoviePass, MovieCrash” on May 29, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, from 2019 to 2020, the comedy film “Babes” features a racially diverse cast of characters (white, African American and Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two longtime best friends go through very different experiences when they get pregnant and give birth within a year-and-a-half of each other.
Culture Audience: “Babes” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, director Pamela Adlon and female-focused movies that have adult-oriented comedy.
Michelle Buteau and Ilana Glazer in “Babes” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
“Babes” won’t be considered a major classic for films about childbirth and motherhood, but it’s entertaining enough for viewers who can tolerate crude jokes. The movie tries too hard to be raunchy, but the jokes are more hit than miss. Some of the situations in the movie are unrealistically absurd (and not in a good way), but the realistic female friendship depicted in “Babes” is the heart and soul of the movie.
Directed by Pamela Adlon, “Babes” was written by llana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz. “Babes” takes place in New York City (where the movie was filmed on location), from 2019 to 2020. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. It’s a movie that has frank and frequently vulgar talk about pregnancy, sex, childbirth, body parts and bodily functions. It also shows the nuances of female friendships when two friends are at different stages of emotional maturity and personal responsibilities
“Babes” (which is told in chronological order) begins with a scene taking place at a movie theater sometime around Thanksgiving in 2019. Two longtime best friends—neurotic Eden (played by Glazer) and sassy Dawn (played by Michelle Buteau)—have had a tradition for the past 27 years to see the same unnamed movie around Thanksgiving time. This particular movie happens to be playing in a theater, although in real life, there is no movie theater in New York City that has played the same movie during Thanksgiving from 1992 to 2019.
Eden (a self-employed yoga teacher who works from home) arrives at the theater feeling a little flustered because she had to travel 115 minutes and take four subway trains to meet Dawn (who is a dentist) at this theater in New York City’s Manhattan borough. That’s because Eden lives in Astoria (in New York City’s Queens borough), and Dawn lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Eden and Dawn used to live near each other in Astoria. Eden (who is a never-married bachelorette) is a little bitter that Dawn and her emotionally supportive husband Marty (played by Hasan Minhaj) have moved several miles away from Eden. Marty works for an unnamed business.
Dawn is pregnant with her second child and is due to give birth in two weeks. When Dawn and Eden go inside the screening room, Dawn notices that every seat she sits in is wet. And then, Dawn realizes that water is leaking from her vagina—or, as Dawn put it, she has “pussy drizzle.” Dawn begins to wonder if she’s in labor, so she asks Eden to see what her vagina looks like, right there in the nearly empty screening room. Eden confirms that Dawn’s vagina looks like it’s dilated, so Dawn calls her OB/GYN doctor, who says she’s probably in labor.
Instead of going to a hospital right away, Dawn and Eden decide to go to a restaurant and have an eating binge, since Dawn thinks she shouldn’t be eating this much after Dawn gives birth. At the restaurant, Eden looks at Dawn’s vagina again in public to check on the dilation size. When their waiter finds out that Dawn is in labor and starts to give unsolicited advice, Dawn snaps at him: “What are you? The Gordon Ramsay of my pussy?”
The trip to the hospital is chaotic. Dawn is in too much pain to walk, and she won’t sit down in a wheelchair, so she crawls to the delivery room. (It’s a very unrealistic scenario.) Eden and Marty are there in the delivery room, where Eden is nauseated by what she sees and is shocked to find out that someone can defecate while giving birth. You can easily predict how Eden will react to seeing an umbilical cord and placenta up close for the first time. If these types of scenes don’t sound like something you want to see in a comedy, then “Babes” is not the movie for you.
Dawn gives birth to a baby girl named Melanie and is on maternity leave. Dawn and Marty’s first child is 4-year-old Thomas, nicknamed Tommy (played by Caleb Mermelstein-Knox), who has some arrested development because he still wears diapers and still drinks from a baby bottle. During the course of the movie, Dawn stars to feel the pressure and stress of taking care of two children under the age of 5.
At the hospital where Dawn gave birth, Eden is shocked and annoyed that the hospital charged her nearly $500 for sushi that she ordered from hospital room service. Eden takes the sushi with her on the subway and starts to eat it inside the subway car. Sitting across from her is an actor named Claude (played by Stephan James), who is in a waiter uniform. She strikes up a conversation with Claude by offering to share some of her sushi with him. Claude tells her that he’s in costume because he’s an extra in a Martin Scorsese movie.
Eden and Claude have an immediate attraction to each other. They talk some more and find out that they share the same enthusiasm for the video game “Street Fighter,” so they go to her place to play “Street Fighter” together. Eden and Claude also reveal that they’ve never had unprotected sex with other partners. One thing leads to another, and Eden and Claude agree to have unprotected sex with each other. Eden tells Claude that she’s currently menstruating, but he doesn’t mind.
There are indications throughout the movie that although Eden is in her late 30s, she often still has the mindset of a child. For example, she thinks she can’t get pregnant while she’s menstruating. As already revealed in the “Babes” trailer, Eden does get pregnant. She decides to keep the child.
For reasons that are explained in the movie (but won’t be revealed in this review), Claude is unable to be in the child’s life. Dawn’s OB/GYN (obstetrics/gynecology) doctor Dr. Morris (played by John Carroll Lynch) becomes Eden’s OB/GYN doctor too. A running joke in the movie is how Dr. Morris handles his receding hairline and bald spots.
Eden is very emotionally co-dependent on Dawn and expects her friendship with Dawn to be the same as it was before they both became parents. It leads to the expected conflicts and arguments. There’s also a subplot about Dawn and Marty trying to rekindle their sex life, which has gone stagnant because they’re so exhausted from their jobs and taking care of their kids.
Glazer and Buteau are believable as best friends, but some of the jokes they’re given in “Babes” fall very flat. Some viewers might be offended by a scene where Dawn is worried that her breasts are not producing milk to breastfeed her newborn child, and Dawn takes illegal drugs anyway. In this scene, Eden (who doesn’t know yet that she’s pregnant) and Dawn decide to take psychedelic mushrooms together.
During this psychedelic experience, Dawn finds out that she is, in fact, lactating. The expected “breast squirting” scene ensues. During the hallucinations, Dawn’s breasts also talk to her. Whoopi Goldberg is the voice of Dawn’s breasts.
Nothing is shown or told about Dawn’s parents, but Eden’s widower father Bernie (played by Oliver Platt) is in a few scenes in the movie. (Eden’s mother died when Eden was 3 years old.) Bernie is described by Eden as someone who is a “hoarder” with mental health issues. Eden and Bernie are not close, but they don’t hate each other. Their best scene in the movie happens when Eden tells Bernie that she’s pregnant.
“Babes” has some rough spots where the movie drags, the dialogue is kind of stupid, and the comedic timing isn’t very good. However, the bright spots outshine the movie’s flaws. Viewers who don’t mind watching movies with a lot of explicit adult language might be charmed by how the friendship of Dawn and Eden authentically evolves. The ending of “Babes” is undeniably sappy, but it puts a sweet finishing touch on a comedy that is often very salty and deliberately distasteful.
Neon will release “Babes” in select U.S. cinemas on May 17, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on May 24, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was held in U.S. cinemas on May 13, 2024.