Tag: SXSW

Review: ‘Luv Ya Bum!,’ starring Wade Phillips, Dan Pastorini, Earl Campbell, Mike Barber, Terry Bradshaw, Peyton Manning, Jerry Jones, Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware

November 30, 2025

by Carla Hay

A 1970s photo of Bum Phillips in “Luv Ya Bum!” (Photo courtesy of Blue Harbor Entertainment)

“Luv Ya Bum!”

Directed by Sam Wainwright Douglas, David Hartstein and Andrew Miller

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Luv Ya Bum!” features a predominantly white group of people (with some African Americans) who discuss the life and career of football coach Oail Andrew “Bum” Phillips Jr., who was best known for being thr head coach for the Houston Oilers from 1975 to 1980.

Culture Clash: Unlike many football coaches who used fear and intimidation in their leadership style, Phillips (who died in 2013, at the age of 90) was known for treating his football players like family members. 

Culture Audience: “Luv Ya Bum!” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching documentaries about American football and football coaches who are sometimes overshadowed by bigger names.

Wade Phillips in “Luv Ya Bum!” (Photo courtesy of Blue Harbor Entertainment)

“Luv Ya Bum!” is a heartfelt tribute to NFL coach Bum Phillips, who treated his football players like family. This documentary includes an impressive array of interviews, great archival footage, and meaningful stories about his life as a coach. The movie is also a lesson on how he handled defeat with grace but also never lost his passion for being the best that he and his team members could possibly be.

Directed by Sam Wainwright Douglas, David Hartstein and Andrew Miller, “Luv Ya Bum!” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival, where the movie won the Documentary Spotlight Audience Award. The movie was written by Joe Holley. Dennis Quaid is the narrator.

“Luv Ya Bum” follows a traditional format for a biographical documentary, by mixing archival footage with footage that was filmed specifically for the documentary. Most of the exclusive documentary footage consists of sit-down interviews with people who knew Phillips or gave him extensive news coverage as sports journalists/commentators. It’s almost a “who’s who” of football luminaries from the mid-to-late 1970s, when Phillips was at his career peak as the coach of the Houston Oilers. The last 10 minutes of the documentary focuses on his legacy as the father of NFL coach Wade Phillips and grandfather of NFL coach Wes Phillips, who are both interviewed in the documentary.

“Luv Ya Bum!” briefly touches on telling Bum Phillips’ personal background before he became a football coach. He was born Oail Andrew Phillips Jr. in Orange, Texas, on September 29, 1923. (He died on October 18, 2013, in Goliad, Texas.) He got the nickname Bum from an early age. During World War II, Bum volunteered to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he became part of a elite special operations team called the Marine Raiders.

In an archival interview with Bum, he says that his U.S. Marine Corps experience influenced him on how he wanted his leadership style to be and how he didn’t want it to be. Bum remembers how his Marine Corps leaders frequently humiliated and intimidated subordinates. Bum decided he wanted to have a completely opposite leadership style that would encourage and support the people who had to follow his orders.

Bum spent his entire career as a football coach. After being discharged from the U.S. Marines, he graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with a degree in education, in 1949. He was a football player when he was a student at the university. After his graduation, he spent several years as a football coach for high school and then as a football coach for universities throughout Texas. Bear Bryant Texas A&M University is mentioned as Bum’s most important coaching mentor in college football. Bum famously turned down a job offer to coach at the University of Alabama (considered one of the top football universities for decades) because he wanted to stay in Texas.

Bum was married twice and had six children. The documentary doesn’t go into too many details about his personal life. However, his daughter Susan Phillips is one of his children who is interviewed in the documentary. She says that although Bum was a loving father, it was hard on the kids for them to have to move around a lot because of the different football coaching jobs that Bum had in his career.

Susan says, “I think I moved 11 times by the time I was 18.” She also says that the family moved so many times, Bum often wouldn’t tell the kids that they were moving. She remembers that it wasn’t unusual for her to be called home when she was at school and find out when she got home that they were moving when she saw a moving truck at the house.

Bum got his first head coaching job for the National Football League (NFL) when he was promoted from assistant coach to head coach of the Houston Oilers in 1975. Bum replaced Sid Gillman, who quit the team in frustration, after just one year on the job, because he couldn’t break the Oilers’ losing streak. People in the documentary describes Gillman has having a leadership style that was like a dictator.

With Bum now in charge of coaching the Oilers, he brought a very different leadership style to the team. NFL fans already know that when Bum was coaching the Oilers (from 1975 to 1980), he took the Oilers to the AFC Championships twice (in 1978 and 1979), which was a remarkable comeback, considering the Oilers were considered one of the lowest-ranked NFL teams in the early 1970s.

During the Bum Phillips era of the Oilers, the fan enthusiasm reached a fever pitch. The team’s main color is blue. The Oilers had a fan slogan (“Luv Ya Blue!”) that was chanted almost like a chant at a religious service. Even when the Oilers lost the AFC Championships when Bum was their coach, the fans gave them a hero welcome back home to Houston, especially in 1979, when the Oilers lost the game after a controversial referee decision that invalidated a touchdown made by wide receiver Mike Renfro.

Renfro is one of several of former Oilers teammates who had Bum as a coach and are interviewed in the documentary. Other former Oilers team members who are interviewed include Dan Pastorini (quarterback), Earl Campbell (running back), Robert “Dr. Doom” Brazile (linebacker), Mike Barber (tight end), Elvin Bethea (defensive end), and Billy “White Shoes” Johnson (wide receiver). Barber remembers this type of pep talk that Bum used to give the team: “He never failed to end with this: “You just remember, guys, when you don’t think that anybody loves you, you just remember Old Bum loves you.”

The former Oilers players remember Bum generously inviting the players’ family members and dogs to be at Oilers practices, which was very unusual at a time when NFL practices were usually off-limits to most family members. The documentary shows footage of some of the Oilers with their sons and dogs on the football field during Oilers practices. And, of course, there is plenty of footage of the Oilers playing some of their most well-known games when Bum was their head coach.

Bum’s coaching style wasn’t just about giving his players positive encouragement instead of intimidation. When he was tasked with turning the Oilers into a winning team, he recruited from a lot of places that successful NFL teams weren’t really interested in recruiting, such as small colleges and amateur football teams. One of the Oilers’ most unusual recruits in Bum’s early years with the team was an Austrian immigrant in his 30s named Toni Fritsch, who didn’t have the physique of a typical football player, but he excelled as a kicker.

Bum’s son Wade Phillips made his NFL coaching debut with the Oilers. Wade and the former Oilers who worked with Wade say that Wade didn’t have it easy and had to prove he wasn’t just a nepotism hire. Bum was probably tougher on Wade than any other assistant coach that Bum had in the NFL, according to people in the documentary. Pastorini says that Bethea actually bullied Wade. Bethea doesn’t deny it and says he was hard on Wade because he wanted to make sure that Wade was tough enough to coach the Oilers.

Bethea, who was with the Oilers from 1968 to 1983, has high praise for Bum in the documentary and makes this comment about the Oilers during the Bum Phillips era: “We had a bunch of misfits. And he made a difference [with] the players on the field and off the field.” Bethea continues with a laugh: “I know that off the field, he saved a lot of people.”

Campbell says about Bum: “He was like the perfect dad that everybody thought they would love to have.” Pastorini also echoes the sentiment that Bum was like a father figure to the Oilers and other people associated with the team. The former Oilers quarterback also mentions how Bum convinced him to stay with the Oilers for one more year after Pastorini was ready to leave the team. Pastorini describes the compassionate conversation that Bum had with him when Pastorini made tough decision to leave the Oilers in 1980.

The documentary includes the controversial firing of Bum from the Oilers in 1980. Oilers owner Bud Adams fired Bum because apparently Adams didn’t like that the Oilers still hadn’t made it to the Super Bowl under Bum’s leadership. Bum’s dismissal from the Oilers shocked many people, including Bum. The documentary has archival footage of people’s reactions to the firing, including an interview that Bum did on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Campbell says in the documentary, “If Bud had left Bum alone, I believe we would’ve won the Super Bowl the next year.” Bum went on to be the head coach for the New Orleans Saints from 1981 to 1985, but that coaching stint didn’t and couldn’t recapture the magic that he had with the Oilers. Bum retired after leaving the Saints.

Other people interviewed in “Luv Ya Bum!” are several former NFL stars, such as Terry Bradshaw, “Mean” Joe Greene, Peyton Manning, Archie Manning, J.J. Watt, DeMarcus Ware, Von Miller, Aqib Talib and Gary Kubiak, a Houston native who was in high school when he met Bum and who went on to become coach in the NFL. Sports broadcasters and journalists are also interviewed, such as Michael Berry, Bill Worrell, Jim Nantz, Dale Robertson and Bob West.

Amy Adams, daughter of former Oilers owner Bud Adams, is also interviewed. And so is Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has this to say about Bum: “It was the personalities of men like Bum Phillips that gave me great motivation to be in the NFL.” Singer/songwriter Texas-born singer/songwriter Larry Gatlin, whose 1984 song “Houston (Means I’m One Day Close to You)” is featured in “Luv Ya Bum!,” is also interviewed in the documentary.

The documentary mentions that Bum’s heyday with the Oilers also coincided with a booming economic period in Houston, which was riding high in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the Houston Rockets (a National Basketball League team), the big business generated by the Houston Astrodome, the nightclub Gilley’s, and the popularity of the John Travolta’s 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” which was set in Houston. The Oilers craze reached such a peak that Oilers wide receiver Ken Burrough briefly became a recording artist, with the release of a 1979 novelty pop song called “Super Bowl Itch,” which is played in the documentary. The movie also has footage from the record release party for the song. (Burrough died in 2022, at the age of 63.)

Bum wasn’t a pushover, but his friendliness to rival NFL teams was unusual. The Pittsburgh Steelers were the biggest rivals to the Houston Oilers during Bud’s time with the team. Bradshaw (who was the Steelers’ quarterback during this time) remembers how Bum invited him and other Steelers for a gregarious and fun-loving gathering with the Oilers before the start of the AFC Championships in 1979, the year that the Steelers defeated the Oilers.

Bradshaw remembers Bum gave him a “beautiful” pair of ostrich blue cowboy boots during this meeting. And he says he’d never experienced this type of welcome from a rival team’s coach before or since. Bradshaw comments in the documentary, “If I could play for any coach in the NFL, I’d play for Bum Phillips.”

Bum Phillips’ football coaching legacy continues with his son Wade and Wade’s son Wes. Wade would go on to become a defensive coordinator with the Denver Broncos (from 1989 to 1992 and 2015 to 2016) and was a Broncos head coach from 1993 to 1994. Wade won the Super Bowl with the Broncos in 2016. Wade has also had coaching positions for other professional football teams, including the Dallas Cowboys, the Buffalo Bills, and the United Football League’s San Antonio Brahmas. Wes was a tight ends coach and pass game coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams, who won the Super Bowl in 2022. As of 2025, when this documentary was released, Wes is an offensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings.

Bum Phillips had a 2010 memoir (“Bum Phillips: Coach, Cowboy, Christian”), but “Luv Ya Bum!” can be considered a very entertaining and informative cinematic biography of this memorable football coach, who is described by some of the documentary interviewees as a “legend” and an “icon.” “Luv Ya Bum!” begins with archival footage of an interview that Bum did that best sums up his attitude about coaching and his time with the Oilers: “I was there for seven years, and it was the happiest seven years of my life—not because we won but the way we won, and the way the kids acted and the way the fans and players reacted.”

Blue Harbor Entertainment released “Luv Ya Bum!” in select U.S. cinemas on October 23, 2025. The movie was released on digital and VOD on November 25, 2025.

Review: ‘Bunny’ (2025), starring Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Liza Colby, Tony Drazan, Linda Rong Mei Chen, Eric Roth, Richard Price and Henry Czerny

November 23, 2025

by Carla Hay

Mo Stark in “Bunny” (Photo by Jackson Hunt/Vertical)

“Bunny” (2025)

Directed by Ben Jacobson

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the comedy film “Bunny” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latin people, and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A hustler, his best friend, and other people who live in the same apartment building try to hide the body of a man the hustler accidentally killed.

Culture Audience: “Bunny” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the low-budget independent films about.

Tony Drazan, Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson and Linda Rong Mei Chen in “Bunny” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“Bunny” is a shaggy but watchable 2020s movie that pays tribute to absurdist stoner comedies of the 1990s. The plot (about New York City apartment dwellers trying to hide a dead man’s body) drags and wears thin by the middle of the movie, but there are some genuinely funny moments. It’s probably why “Bunny” would’ve been better as a short film.

As it stands, “Bunny” (which clocks in at 87 minutes) doesn’t get too long-winded. It’s the type of movie best appreciated by people who like to see movies about misfits and weirdos getting into conflicts and trying to get out of one mishap after another. Much of the comedy in “Bunny” comes from the fact that many of the film’s main characters are too stoned to think clearly.

Directed by Ben Jacobson, “Bunny” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival. Jacobson, Mo Stark and Stefan Marolachakis co-wrote the “Bunny” screenplay. The movie takes place over a 24-hour period on a summer day in New York City’s East Village, where “Bunny” was filmed on location. Most of the movie’s scenes take place inside or nearby the apartment building, thereby keeping the plot fairly uncomplicated.

“Bunny” is named after the movie’s main protagonist, who does occasional voiceover narration, where he gives hindsight commentary. Bunny (played by Stark) is first seen handcuffed in the back of a police car. It happens to be Bunny’s birthday. He says in the voiceover, “Today, I fucked up. I upended the lives of people I love the most: my family.”

What exactly did Bunny do? He accidentally killed a man named Calvin, a stranger who attacked Bunny in a fight inside the apartment building. Most of the movie is about Bunny enlisting the help of friends and neighbors to hide the body.

Why doesn’t Bunny call the police and claim self-defense? Bunny doesn’t want to deal with law enforcement because he does illegal work as a gigolo servicing women and men. Bunny has assumed that the dead stranger who attacked Bunny was getting revenge for a recent sex worker job that went wrong when Bunny assaulted two male clients who got rough with Bunny during a sexual encounter.

This client attack incident is not shown in a flashback but is described by Bunny in a detailed confession to Bunny’s somewhat dimwitted best friend Dino (played by Jacobson), who lives on the same apartment floor as Bunny but in a different apartment unit. Bunny makes this confession in an apartment hallway and is overheard by an unnamed rabbi (played by Henry Czerny), who pops up later in the story.

The movie takes a little too long to get to the main conflict (what to do about the dead body), because this plot development doesn’t happen until almost halfway through the story. Before that, “Bunny” consists of a series of scenes showing the people in the apartment building who will get involved in this cover-up. It’s a motley crew that isn’t always beliveable, but there can be suspension of disbelief because “Bunny” is a comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There are many things in “Bunny” that are nods to the 1990s. Bunny looks like grunge rocker from the 1990s. Dino looks like bleach-blonde skateboarder from the 1990s. At one point in the movie, Bunny and Dino both wear jerseys sporting the name of the 1995 movie “The Basketball Diaries,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a New York City teenage basketball player who gets addicted to drugs. (“The Basketball Diaries” movie is based on Jim Carroll’s 1978 memoir of the same name.)

“Bunny” has a gritty visual aesthetic that is similar to independent drama films that were set in 1990s New York City, where the main characters (just like the main characters in “Bunny”) live in run-down apartment buildings that have unpleasant and unidentifiable smells. The main characters in these movies are often up to some type of illegal mischief. 1995’s “Kids” (directed by Larry Clark) and 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant” (directed by Abel Ferrara) come to mind.

In addition to Bunny and Dino, the conspirators to hide the body are:

  • Bobbie (played by Liza Colby), Bunny’s sexually fluid and fun-loving wife, who works as a production designer.
  • Linda (played by Linda Rong Mei Chen), the apartment building’s feisty manager/landlord.
  • Happy Chana (played by Genevieve Hudson-Price), an Orthodox Jewish divorcée who is renting a room from Bunny and Bobbie for a few days because she’s traveled from Tarzana, California, to meet an online boyfriend in person for the first time.
  • Loren (played by Tony Drazan, also known as Anthony Drazan), Bobbie’s estranged father who shows up unannounced after not seeing Bobbie for years.
  • Ciel (played by Kia Warren), a friend of Bunny’s and Bobbie’s, who spends most of her screen time getting high on cocaine and marijuana.

Complicating matters are two New York Police Department officers, who seem to have nothing better to do during their work time but loiter in outside of the apartment building and pester the building’s residents and people walking on the street about where to get certain types of fast food. The two cops are Officer Cellestino (played by Ajay Naidu) and Officer Nadov (played by Liz Caribel Sierra), who are quick to misuse their authority in ways that are meant to intimidate people over trivial matters. Officer Cellestino and Office Nadov frequently stop and question Bunny throughout the movie.

The beginning of the movie shows Bunny, who has noticeable fight wounds, as he frantically runs with a travel bag through the streets. He ducks into a park to change his clothes and then runs back to his apartment. It’s later revealed that he was running away from the incident where he assaulted two of his clients. Based on the way Bunny describes the assault, he was acting in self-defense.

Early in the movie’s voiceover narration, Bunny compares his gigolo work to being like Richard Gere in the 1980 movie “American Gigolo.” Bunny is kind of delusional, because he doesn’t do high-priced escort work, like Gere’s character in “American Gigolo.” Bunny says in the narration that the sex work that Bunny does is “a means to an end for a beautiful life.”

Not much else is revealed about Bunny except that he has a reputation in his apartment building for being friendly and helpful. For example, there are multiple scenes where Bunny assists a disabled neighbor named Ian (played by Richard Price) by carrying items (such as laundry) up and down the apartment stairs. (It’s a walk-up apartment building with no elevator.)

Before the dilemma over the dead body happens, Bobbie introduces Bunny to a woman named Daphne (played by Eleonore Hendricks), who has agreed to have a threesome with the couple to celebrate Bunny’s birthday. Bobbie also has some molly (ecstasy) and excitedly tells Bunny that a hotel room has been rented for this threesome. However, Bunny says he’s not interested because he doesn’t feel well.

Bobbie gets upset and storms off, bringing Daphne with her. (Bobbie and Daphne eventually come back to the apartment, where more hijinks ensue.) While Bobbie is temporarily away, her father Loren shows up because his current wife has broken up with him, and he needs a place to stay. Loren and Bobbie are estranged because Loren abandoned Bobbie and Bobbie’s mother (his ex-wife) when Bobbie was a child.

Meanwhile, Linda is angry because a young male tenant (played by Anthony Rodriguez) is long overdue on paying rent. The tenant isn’t returning her messages or answering when she knocks on his door, which seems to be barricaded. What happened to this tenant is eventually revealed in the movie.

There are also three “party girl” tenants who are friends with each other and are seen going in and out of the building: Betty (played by Noa Fisher), Elaine (played by Jaeden Gomez, also known as Jaeden Rae Gomez) and Yaz (played by Yaz Perea), who invite Bunny and his pals to a party in the midst of this chaos. These three characters aren’t really essential to the movie’s plot, but they add to the frenetic atmosphere.

“Bunny” has some cliché slapstick comedy and a few predictable scenarios. But some of the characters are written with specific quirks that make them unique enough for this movie. For example, Dino doesn’t have much common sense, but he’s a movie fanatic who can quote and namecheck trivia from his most-liked films. (He mentions 2006’s “The Departed” and 2007’s “There Will Be Blood.”)

There’s also a running joke about Happy Chana, who is very neurotic and particular about how people say her name. (Chana is pronounced Hanna.) She always introduces herself by saying that people can call her Happy Chana or Chana Eliza, but never just Chana. The joke is funny the first three times it’s in the movie, but it quickly gets old the more it’s repeated.

Happy Chana is also very religious and refuses to be in Bunny’s apartment unless Bobbie or two other women are there, because Orthodox Judaism teaches that a single woman cannot be in a space with a man unless the man’s wife or two other women are there. Bunny needs the money that Happy Chana is paying, so he has to accommodate her demands. While Bobbie is away, Linda and Ciel are the two women who can fulfill Happy Chana’s Orthodox Jewish protocol requirements.

Stark’s portrayal of Bunny has enough charisma to keep people watching when parts of the movie tend to be come tedious. Stark and Jacobson, who are friends in real life, have an easy chemistry together as Bunny and Dino. Colby does well in her role as outspoken Bobbie, while Hudson-Price is a scene-stealer as nervous Happy Chana.

The tone of “Bunny” is both freewheeling and tension-filled. Although some of the situations are definitely over-the-top, “Bunny” is an authentically New York City movie that skillfully captures a lot of the attitude and eccentricities that really are a part of New York City’s East Village culture. Despite many of the seedy and crude things that happen in the movie, “Bunny” leaves room for some sweet sentimentality about the power of community camaraderie.

Vertical released “Bunny” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 17, 2025.

Review: ‘I Wish You All the Best,’ starring Corey Fogelmanis, Amy Landecker, Lena Dunham, Alexandra Daddario and Cole Sprouse

November 15, 2025

by Carla Hay

Cole Sprouse, Corey Fogelmanis and Alexandra Daddario in “I Wish You All the Best” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“I Wish You All the Best”

Directed by Tommy Dorfman

Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina, the dramatic film “I Wish You All the Best” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A nonbinary teenager moves in with their older sister after being kicked out of their parents’ home, and the teen starts a new life during a period of self-discovery. 

Culture Audience: “I Wish You All the Best” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and coming-of-age stories about LGBTQ+ people.

Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Corey Fogelmanis in “I Wish You All the Best” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“I Wish You All the Best” is a well-acted and charming coming-of-age drama about a nonbinary teenager who starts a new life after experiencing parental rejection. The movie is sweet-natured but unrealistic in some areas. That’s because after the teenager moves to a new city, the teenager doesn’t experience any prejudice from the people in this new city. The only bigotry/ignorance depicted in the movie comes from the teenager’s parents.

Written and directed by Tommy Dorfman, “I Wish You All the Best” is based on Mason Deaver’s 2019 novel of the same name. The movie (which is Dorfman’s feature-film directorial debut) had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “I Wish You All the Best” takes place in North Carolina, primarily in the capital city of Raleigh. The movie was actually filmed in Los Angeles.

“I Wish You All the Best” begins with a brief montage of 16-year-old Ben De Backer (played by Corey Fogelmanis) having a seemingly idyllic life. In this montage, Ben (who is nonbinary and whose pronouns are “they/them”) is very close to Ben’s parents: Ben De Backer Sr. (played by Judson Mills) and Cathy De Backer (played by Amy Landecker). All three are seen watching a movie together at home in a seemingly loving and supportive environment. But everything changes one night, when Ben comes out as nonbinary to Ben Sr. and Cathy, who are religious conservatives.

This coming-out scene is not shown in full detail, but only snippets are seen in flashbacks. All viewers know is that Ben’s coming-out experience was emotionally painful, Ben’s parents rejected Ben, and Ben ran out of the home that night with no shoes on. Ben fled to a local convenience store, where Ben made a frantic and tearful call to Ben’s older sister Hannah Wallace (played by Alexandra Daddario), who lives in Raleigh. Ben tells Hannah what happened and asks her to take them to Hannah’s home, where Ben lives for the rest of the story. Ben’s 17th birthday takes place during this period of time.

Hannah, who is about 15 years older than Ben, lives with her husband Thomas Wallace (played by Cole Sprouse), who is a teacher at a high school in Raleigh. Ben and Hannah haven’t seen each other in 10 years because Hannah has been estranged from their parents, for reasons that are revealed in the movie. It should come as no surprise that liberal and open-minded Hannah has had her own issues with her conservative parents.

Hannah and Thomas (who is also liberal and open-minded) have an infant son named Cyrus, so Hannah is currently a homemaker. Thomas forges a permission notice from Ben’s parents so that Ben (who is a junior-year student) can be enrolled in the school where Thomas teaches. This type of forgery is illegal but is kind of glossed over in the movie because Ben’s parents accept that Ben wants to live in Raleigh with Hannah and Thomas. Hannah and Thomas eventually file an official application to become Ben’s legal guardians.

Ben is quiet and introverted and has an interest in fashion and art. Ben is very talented at drawing and painting portraits. Even though Ben is shy, it isn’t long before Ben meets three schoolmates who will become Ben’s closest friends: bisexual Nathan (played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley), queer Sophie (played by Lisa Yamada) and straight Meleika (played by Lexi Underwood), who considers herself to be an ally to LGBTQ people. All of Ben’s new friends are open about their sexual identities. Ben mentions later in the movie that Ben was a loner in Ben’s previous school.

Ben meets Nathan (who is a year older than Ben) when Thomas asks Nathan to give Ben a tour of the school’s campus. Nathan introduces Ben to Nathan’s friends Sophie and Meleika. Ben is immediately accepted into their social circle. In many ways, Nathan has a personality that is the opposite of Ben’s personality. Nathan is optimistic and confident. Ben is pessimistic and insecure. Ben and Nathan’s relationship evolves from a friendship into a romance.

The parents of Ben’s new friends are never seen in the movie, even though Ben sometimes spends the night at Nathan’s place. Ben, Nathan and their teenage friends never talk about what it’s like to be openly queer in their high school, which is a regular public high school, not an “alternative” school. The movie needed more realism in the teenagers’ conversations, which tend to be sitcom-ish and a bit superficial.

Ben gets mentorship from two adults who also happen to be queer: Ben’s nonbinary art teacher Ms. Lions (played by Lena Dunham) and gay transgender man Chris (played Brian Michael Smith), who is Ben’s supervisor at the senior citizen day camp where Ben gets a part-time job. It’s all so convenient how the only teachers/mentors who are shown interacting with Ben (aside from Ben’s heterosexual brother-in-law Thomas) are also queer. All of the cast members’ performances are very good (Fogelmanis and Gutierrez-Riley are the movie’s standout cast members), but the screenplay is the part of the movie that doesn’t ring entirely true.

Ben wears skirts and makeup in public and never even gets stared at by strangers. And although Raleigh is one of the more politically liberal cities in North Carolina (the city tends to elect conservative Democrats), it seems like a fantasy for the movie to depict Raleigh as a place where queer teens can go and not experience any hurtful prejudices from people who live there. Ben’s angst has mostly to do with how Ben feels about being rejected by Ben’s parents, who live in another city, which is unnamed in the movie.

Ben also gets lucky in Ben’s first romance as an openly nonbinary person because Ben’s partner Nathan is also openly queer and completely respectful to Ben. Ben’s biggest complaint about Nathan is Ben thinks Nathan is too cheerful. Ben experiences bouts of depression (in one part of the movie, Ben doesn’t leave home for a week and stays mostly in bed), but these mental health struggles are treated in a shallow way. Ben just gets a few stern lectures (not professional counseling) about this depression from the concerned adults in Ben’s life.

Many movies about LGBTQ+ people are centered on the hateful bigotry that LGBTQ+ people experience. It’s understandable if the filmmakers of “I Wish You All the Best” didn’t want to focus the movie on this type of harmful experience or for the movie to revolve around LGBTQ+ trauma. But at the same time, it’s far-fetched to erase the existence of this prejudice from the protagonist’s current community while positioning anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry solely as something from the protagonist’s past community, as represented by the protagonist’s parents.

Experiencing bigotry is a fact of life for anyone from a historically oppressed group of people. This type of toxic discrimination doesn’t magically go away by moving to a more politically liberal city. By refusing to address this reality, “I Wish You All the Best” does a disservice to its intended audience. However, if people are looking for a relatively lightweight approach to a coming-of-age story about a teenager who happens to be nonbinary, then “I Wish You All the Best” fulfills that purpose.

Lionsgate released “I Wish You All the Best” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025.

Review: ‘Good Boy’ (2025), starring Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden and Indy

October 6, 2025

by Carla Hay

Indy and Shane Jensen in “Good Boy” (Photo by Ben Leonberg/Independent Film Company and Shudder)

“Good Boy” (2025)

Directed by Ben Leonberg

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Good Boy” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Against the warnings of his sister, a man moves into an abandoned house previously owned by their deceased grandfather, and strange things start happening, as observed by the man’s loyal dog. 

Culture Audience: “Good Boy” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of uncomplicated horror movies that are effectively scary on low budgets.

Indy in “Good Boy” (Photo by Ben Leonberg/Independent Film Company and Shudder)

“Good Boy” is an impressive example of a horror movie that does a lot with a low budget. This simple story, which is told from a loyal dog’s perspective, can get a bit repetitive with haunted house scares, but it skillfully manages to maintain suspense. And at 73 minutes long, “Good Boy” doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a thriller that does what it needs to do in the right amount of time.

Directed by Ben Leonberg, “Good Boy” was co-written by Leonberg and Alex Cannon. Leonberg is also the cinematographer for “Good Boy,” which is his feature-film directorial debut. “Good Boy” had it world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. “Good Boy” was actually filmed in New Jersey, partially in Leonberg’s own home.

This “Good Boy” horror movie should not be confused with the 2020 “Good Boy” feature film that was part of Blumhouse’s “Into the Dark” anthology series on Hulu. Both are horror movies where a dog is the main character but the dog in the “Into the Dark” version of “Good Boy” is the a homicidal villain. It’s established early on in 2025’s “Good Boy” (and shown in the movie’s trailer) that the dog is the heroic protagonist.

Although the specific year of 2025’s “Good Boy” story is not mentioned in the movie, visual clues (such as the types of phones being used) indicate that the movie takes place in the mid-2020s. However, the house that’s at the center of the film is stuck in the 1980s, such as having a television and VCR that’s from the 1980s. The house, which is suspected of being haunted, has been abandoned for years until the grandson of the previous owner moves into the house with his male Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever dog named Indy. (The dog is actually Leonberg’s own dog, whose name is also Indy.)

“Good Boy,” which is told from Indy’s point of view, begins by showing Indy waking up to the sound of an iPhone ringing, as blood is dripping on the phone. Indy’s owner Todd (played by Shane Jensen) is unconscious nearby. Todd’s sister Vera (played by Arielle Friedman) is calling Todd and comes over to his place when Todd doesn’t answer the phone and doesn’t return her messages. Vera is alarmed to see Todd unconscious and calls for medical help.

It’s not directly said out loud, but Todd was unconscious because he attempted suicide. He spends an unnamed amount of time in a hospital and is eventually discharged. Todd decides to leave his home in the city to live with Indy in a dilapidated house in a remote wooded area. This house used to be owned by the unnamed grandfather (played by Larry Fessenden) of Todd and Vera.

This grandfather, who is seen in home video footage, had some type of mental and physical breakdown and was found dead. Vera is convinced that the house is haunted, so she begs Todd not to move into the house. Todd thinks that Vera is overreacting and being unreasonable.

But sure enough, strange things starts happening after Todd moves into the house. He starts having inexplicable nosebleeds. Indy sees a shadowy figure that seems to be lurking around. And one night, Indy sees a dog that looks exactly like Indy and follows this look-alike dog upstairs.

“Good Boy” deliberately obscures the faces of the human characters for most of the time that the people are on screen. It’s a clever technique for viewers to focus on and remember that most of the facial expressions in the movie are from the dog. There are some jump scares that turn out to be false alarms. But fortunately, these false alarms are few and far in between.

Because Todd is living in isolation, the vast majority of the screen time is about showing what happens to Todd and Indy. Todd treats Indy well, but as Todd’s physical condition starts to deteriorate, he becomes impatient with Indy. Todd has a few brief interactions with a hunter neighbor named Richard (played by Stuart Rudin), who knew Todd’s grandfather. Indy has some nightmares, but the movie suggests that this dog might have psychic abilities.

“Good Boy” has adequate acting from the humans, but the movie’s biggest strengths or how well Indy is made into a compelling character, as well as good use of score music, cinematography and visual effects to immerse viewers into the foreboding atmosphere. It’s worth noting that after the end credits, there’s a featurette, narrated by Leonberg, where he gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of “Good Boy” (which was filmed over a four-year period) that gives an informative explanation of how he and the other filmmakers were able to make the most out of Indy’s facial expressions and actions. “Good Boy” is a promising feature-film debut from Leonberg and is proof that a horror movie with a nice dog as the main character really can be scary.

Independent Film Company and Shudder released “Good Boy” in U.S. cinemas on October 3, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on October 24, 2025. Shudder will premiere “Good Boy” on November 21, 2025.

Review: ‘Americana’ (2025), starring Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser and Halsey

August 20, 2025

by Carla Hay

Paul Walter Hauser, Sydney Sweeney and Halsey in “Americana” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)

“Americana” (2025)

Directed by Tony Tost

Culture Representation: Taking place in South Dakota and in Wyoming, the comedy/drama film “Americana” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Native Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Several people become entangled in a violent power struggle to own a valuable Lakota ghost shirt.  

Culture Audience: “Americana” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and 21st century Westerns that mix violent action with serious drama and absurdist comedy.

Gavin Maddox Bergman and Zahn McClarnon in “Americana” (Photo by Ursula Coyote/Courtesy of Lionsgate)

If 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” and 1996’s “Fargo were put in a blender and fermented in South Dakota and Wyoming, it would be the lumpy comedy/drama “Americana.” Halsey stands out in this erratic story about people fighting over a Lakota ghost shirt. “American” is very derivative in some ways but has enough unique elements and engaging performances to be watchable for people who don’t mind seeing an uneven Western with a second half that’s better than the first half.

Written and directed by Tony Tost, “Americana” is his feature-film directorial debut and had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film and TV Festival. The movie (which was filmed in New Mexico) is told in five chapters, with events shown in non-chronological order in the first half of the movie. “Americana” features a group of characters, most of whom are strangers to each other, who become entangled in each other’s lives—for better or for worse.

It takes a while before “Americana” find its best groove because the characters start off being very one-dimensional. The movie begins in an unnamed small town in South Dakota, where Amanda “Mandy” Starr (played by Halsey) is living in a trailer with pre-teen Calvin “Cal” Starr (played by Gavin Maddox Bergman), who’s about 9 or 10 years old. Cal is an eccentric child who is being raised as Mandy’s brother. Also living in the trailer is Mandy’s abusive boyfriend Dillon MacIntosh (played by Eric Dane), who complains in the first scene that Cal is living with them.

Dillon (who’s about 20 years older than Mandy) owns the trailer and car that he and Mandy are using. It’s the first indication that Mandy has fallen on hard times and is financially dependent on Dillon. Cal is fixated on pretending that he is the reincarnation of Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota chief who died in 1890 and led a resistance against U.S. government policies that were harmful to Native Americans.

Cal never wavers from acting as if he’s Sitting Bull. Why is Cal having an identity crisis? The answer is revealed later in the movie, which implies that Cal knows a secret that other people don’t want him to know.

Cal is outside when Mandy suddenly runs out of the trailer and tells Cal that they have to leave immediately. She says Dillon is unconscious because she smashed his head with a weapon. (A flashback scene later reveals that Mandy used a hammer for this attack.) Mandy is fleeing the scene by taking Dillon’s car.

Cal refuses to leave because, as Sitting Bull, he says his land is here. Mandy is in a frustrated panic and is in a rush to leave, with or without Cal. When she sees that Cal won’t leave with her, she tells him to go to the Whitleys’ house nearby because the Whitleys can take care of Cal. It’s presumed that the Whitleys are neighbors who know Mandy and Cal. Mandy then speeds away and leaves Cal to fend for himself.

“Americana” then shows the rest of the characters who make up this tangled web. Lefty Ledbetter (played by Paul Walter Hauser), who is actually right-handed, is a socially awkward and lovelorn military veteran who wants to find a nice woman to marry. He “falls in love” very quickly and his marriage proposals get rejected. How quickly does Lefty fall in love”?

In one of the movie’s first scenes with Lefty, he asks a woman named Brittany Gable (played by Austin Boyce) to marry him after they’ve been dating each other for two weeks. Brittany says no because even though she thinks Lefty is a nice guy, they don’t know each other well. Brittany immediately breaks up with Lefty after he proposes.

Lefty is a regular customer at George’s 50s Diner, where Penny Jo (played by Sydney Sweeney) is a server. Penny Jo is shy and sweet. She’s an aspiring singer whose idol is Dolly Parton. Penny Jo’s dream is to move to Nashville to become a country music singer, but she doesn’t have the money and she’s self-conscious about her speech impediment that often makes it hard for her to form words in a sentence.

Lefty and Penny Jo become platonic friends because they both feel like misfits in this world and haven’t had much luck when it comes to dating. Even though Penny Jo is physically attractive and gets attention from men, she is very introverted and seems to be afraid of having an active social life. Penny Jo lives with her strict and cranky grandmother Tish Poplin (played by Harriet Sansom Harris), who scolds Penny Jo for playing the guitar at night in Penny Jo’s bedroom. Tish thinks Penny Jo is foolish for wanting to be a country music star and discourages Penny Jo from pursuing this dream.

One day at the diner, Penny Jo observes three customers who are seated at the same table for a meeting. It’s a flashback scene showing Dillon, his younger crony Reggie Dale (played by Jasper Keen) and a museum owner named Roy Lee Dean (played by Simon Rex), as they concoct a scheme to steal a rare Lakota ghost shirt from a wealthy artifact collector named Pendleton Duvall (played by Toby Huss), who lives in South Dakota. Various people name prices of what they’d be willing to pay for in the sale of the shirt. Roy, for example, is willing to pay $500,000 for it so he could possibly resell it on the black market.

Some other people want the shirt for different reasons. The Red Thunder Society, which is described by its members as a Lakota Nation version of the Blank Panthers, also wants possession of the shirt, which was originally stolen from the Lakota Nation many years ago. Red Thunder Society leader Ghost Eye (played by Zahn McClarnon) and his main sidekick Hank Spears (played by Derek Hinkey) have prominent roles in the story.

It’s enough to say that the ghost shirt is stolen from Pendleton. And several people try to gain possession of the shirt, with deadly consequences. At one point in the movie, a desperate Mandy goes back to her family’s home in rural Wyoming. It’s revealed that she’s the prodigal daughter of a very religious clan led by Mandy’s father Hiram Starr (played by Christopher Kriesa), a racist and sexist patriarch who expects the women in the family to act and dress like farm women who live in the 1820s, not the 2020s.

Also living in the oppressive Starr household are Mandy’s mother/Hiram’s wife Grace Starr (played by Augusta Allen-Jones) and Mandy’s sisters Abigail Starr (played by Rhiannon Frazier), Florence Starr (played by Kenzie Shea Ross) and Calliope Starr (played by Emily Perry), whose ages range from late teens to early 20s. It’s during this tension-filled family reunion that Halsey has her best scenes, as the character of Mandy is revealed to be more than the self-centered rebel than she first appears to be.

Of course, not everyone will make it out alive when the inevitable gunfight showdown occurs. The trailer for “Americana” already reveals a lot about the movie that should have been left out of the trailer and left to be surprises for people who watch “Americana” for the first time. However, there are some worthwhile parts of the movie that aren’t in the trailer.

Because Mandy is the most complex character in “Americana,” the movie showcases Halsey’s impressive acting range, as she becomes the scene-scene star of the show. Not so great are the movie’s cheap-looking wigs that look like they’re from 1981: Sometimes, Mandy’s hair looks like she’s a Joan Jett wannabe. Other times, Mandy’s hair looks like Paul Stanley from Kiss.

Sweeney puts in a good performance as the stammering Penny Jo, who becomes more confident as the story goes along. However, you never forget that Sweeney is acting, whereas Halsey’s performance is more natural. Although “Americana” is marketed around Sweeney’s image and the Penny Jo character, Mandy has the most interesting story and is the real leading character.

All of the other well-known cast members in “Americana” are perfectly adequate in their roles but have played these types of characters many times before on screen: Hauser as the sad-sack outsider, Dane as the nasty criminal, Rex as a sleazy hustling/con man type. It doesn’t help that he characters of Lefty, Dane and Rex are underdeveloped. By the end of the movie, you still won’t know much about these characters outside of how they got mixed up in wanting the ghost shirt.

“Americana” gets a little awkward when it tries to bludgeon viewers over the head with messaging about anti-colonialism and pro-feminism. Cal’s impersonation of Sitting Bull is meant to be a symbol of misguided cultural appropriation, but sometimes the tone of Cal’s scenes are a little too preachy to drive the message home with the intended satirical edge that they need. Similarly, there’s a shootout scene where a man scoffs at the idea of a woman using a gun. And as soon as he makes this derogatory remark, you know what’s going to happen to him.

“Americana” isn’t as witty or funny as it could have been. Some of the characters could have been written better. But if viewers are patient enough to watch the movie past the halfway mark, the story improves and becomes more intriguing. The ending of “Americana” might seem like a tonal mismatch, but it should be satisfying for anyone who’s looking for some humanity amid the carnage and the chaos.

Lionsgate released “Americana” in U.S. cinemas on August 15, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on September 16, 2025. “Americana” will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 28, 2025.

Review: ‘I Don’t Understand You,’ starring Andrew Rannells, Nick Kroll, Morgan Spector, Eleonora Romandini and Amanda Seyfried

August 12, 2025

by Carla Hay

Andrew Rannells and Nick Kroll in “I Don’t Understand You” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“I Don’t Understand You”

Directed by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano

Some language in Italian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Italy and briefly in the United States, the comedy/drama film “I Don’t Understand You” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married gay American couple, who are in the midst of adopting their first child, go on vacation in Italy and get involved in various hijinks when they accidentally kill an elderly woman and try to cover up this crime.

Culture Audience: “I Don’t Understand You” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and movies about obnoxious people who do stupid things.

Morgan Spector and Andrew Rannells in “I Don’t Understand You” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“I Don’t Understand You” could’ve been a wickedly funny satire of a vacationing American couple trying to cover up an accidental killing in Italy. Instead, this misguided comedy/drama is a witless bore that fizzles early and never recovers. “I Don’t Understand You” is the type of film where if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve already seen the best parts of the movie. In this case, this is not a compliment.

Written and directed by David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, “I Don’t Understand You” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. The movie takes place in Italy and briefly in the United States. The challenges that gay couples have in adopting children are used as flimsy gimmicks to explain the motives for some the idiotic shenanigans that take place in the movie.

In “I Don’t Understand You,” married gay American couple Cole (played by Andrew Rannells) and Domenico, nicknamed Dom (played by Nick Kroll) are in the process of adopting an unborn child. The child’s biological mother Candace (played by Amanda Seyfried) is about seven or eight months pregnant when the story takes place. Candace communicates with Cole and Dom by videoconference. It appears to be a private adoption with no agencies involved.

Cole (who is neurotic) and Dom (who is more easygoing) are anxious to have this adoption go smoothly. That’s because they were previously victims of an adoption scam from a woman who pretended to be pregnant, but she really wasn’t pregnant, and she conned them out of an untold amount of money. This fraud is not shown in the movie.

Before the birth of the child, Cole and Dom decide to take a vacation to Italy, where they will be staying mostly in the capital city of Rome. A man named Daniele (played by Paolo Romano), who is a friend of Dom’s father, recommends that Cole and Dom go to a restaurant owned by a local family whose elderly matriarch is named Luciana (played by Nunzia Schiano).

The restaurant is in a remote wooded area. On the way to the restaurant, the rental car that Cole and Dom are using gets stuck in a ditch. Cole whines, “We can’t even get to dinner. How are we supposed to raise a child?”

The cell phone service is spotty, but Dom is able to call AAA car insurance to get the rental car towed and to get a ride to the restaurant. The driver drops off Dom and Cole at the rustic-styled restaurant, which is also the house where Luciana lives. Luciana greets them warmly but she doesn’t know much English. Even though Cole is a vegetarian, Luciana insists that he eat the meat-topped pizza she has made.

Through a series of circumstances, Cole accidentally kills Luciana when he mistakenly pushes her down some stairs, as already revealed in the movie’s trailer. Dom convinces Cole that they shouldn’t report this death because it could put their adoption plans in jeopardy. The rest of “I Don’t Understand You” includes ridiculous things that involve Luciana’s sons Massimo (played by Morgan Spector) and Gianni (played by Vincenzo Gallo), as well as Massimo’s fiancée Francesca (played by Eleonora Romandini), who are not-very-funny stereotypes of loud and emotional Italians.

Dom and Cole become increasingly irritating. And it should come as no surprise that the body count increases. “I Don’t Understand You” makes half-hearted attempts to poke fun at cultural barriers and misunderstandings when people travel to another country and don’t speak the country’s native language. But in the end, it’s just a stupid dark comedy about two people who want to cover up and not be held accountable for some heinous crimes.

Vertical released “I Don’t Understand You” in select U.S. cinemas on June 6, 2025. The movie was released on digital and VOD on June 24, 2025.

Review: ‘Stans,’ starring Eminem

August 8, 2025

by Carla Hay

Eminem in “Stans” (Photo courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing)

“Stans”

Directed by Steven Leckart

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Stans” features award-winning rap superstar Eminem and a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Asian and Latin) talking about Eminem.

Culture Clash: Fans of Eminem (whose real name is Marshall Mathers) have had many of the same personal struggles that Eminem has had at various points in his life, including drug addiction, mental illness, being bullied, anger issues and parental abandonment.

Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of Eminem fans, “Stans” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in celebrity documentaries and documentaries about hip-hop fans.

Zolt Shady in “Stans” (Photo courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing)

When an artist is a producer of a documentary about fans gushing about how the artist made their lives better, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a humble brag. “Stans” is an adequate Eminem tribute film (produced by Eminem) with no new substantial info. The movie could’ve done a better and more responsible job of realistically examining the dark sides of being a “stan,” the slang term for an obsessive fan.

Directed by Steven Leckart, “Stans” had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of SXSW London. “Stans” was produced by Eminem (whose real name is Marshall Bruce Mathers III), Paul Rosenberg (Eminem’ longtime manager), Stuart Parr, Antoine Fuqua, Tony DiSanto, David Schiff with DIGA Studios in association with Shady Films, Fuqua Films, Interscope Films, and MTV Entertainment Studios. Bruce Gillmer, Amanda Culkowski and Michael Maniaci are executive producers for MTV Entertainment Studios.

All of this information goes a long way in explaining why the documentary has an abundance of MTV Networks archival footage of Eminem. It’s also why former MTV host Carson Daly (who gives sycophantic commentary about Eminem in the documentary) makes it sound like MTV is the main reason why Eminem should be considered the most influential rapper of all time. Interscope (the record company that has distributed all of Eminem’s albums since his 1999 breakthrough “The Slim Shady LP,” his second album) also gets self-congratulatory praise in interviews with Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine and longtime Interscope artist Dr. Dre, who talk about how they immediately wanted to work with Eminem after “discovering” him from hearing one of Eminem’s demo recordings.

Eminem (who has a mischievous alter ego named Slim Shady) was born on October 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, and was raised in Detroit. His difficult childhood and personal hardships (living in near poverty, being abandoned by his father, being bullied by other kids) have all been well-documented in his songs and in his memoirs (2000’s “Angry Blonde” and 2008’s “The Way I Am”). His rocky relationships with his ex-wife Kim (whom he married and divorced twice) and his mother Debbie—as well as his addictions to prescription painkillers—have also been covered extensively in his songs and in his other media interviews. This documentary doesn’t add anything new or revealing about these issues.

Instead, “Stans” has a bunch of Eminem fans talking separately about how parts of Eminem’s life are relatable to their own lives and how his songs helped them through their own difficult times. The beginning of the documentary mentions how Eminem’s song “Stan” (featuring pop singer Dido) became more than a hit single from his 2000 album “The Marshall Mathers LP.” The song has Eminem taking the first-person perspective of an obsessed Eminem fan named Stan, who becomes increasingly irrational and dangerous. In 2017, the word “stan” (which people have said is a combination of “stalker” and “fan”) became entered into the Oxford Dictionary as a word for an obsessed fan.

In the music video for “Stan,” actor Devon Sawa had the role of Stan, while Dido had the role of Stan’s neglected and pregnant girlfriend. Sawa and Dido are not interviewed for the “Stans” documentary, but the movie has early 2000s archival footage of Dido commenting on the song “Stan.” Sawa in seen briefly in the “Stans” documentary during a re-enactment scene where he portrays a real-life stan named Zolt Shady (not his real last name), who is interviewed in the documentary. All of the non-celebrity Eminem stans who are interviewed in the documentary (almost all of them do not have their last names in the movie) say that they might be obsessed fans but they’re not dangerous, like the namesake in the song “Stan.”

Zolt Shady, who dresses like 2010s-era Eminem and who has a face that resembles a younger Eminem, gets the most screen time of all the stans in the documentary. He has an Eastern European accent, is based in Paris, and says he’s been an Eminem stan since 2001. Zolt is seen going to Eminem’s former hangouts in Detroit like he’s on a religious pilgrimage.

Zolt talks about meeting Eminem for the first time when Eminem was in Paris to record music, and Zolt was waiting outside a building with some other stans to catch a gimpse of Eminem. When Eminem was about to leave in a car, Zolt says he was shocked that Eminen called him by his name and invited Zolt to have a short conversation with Eminem in the back of the car. (The documentary has a photo of this meeting.)

Other stans interviewed in the documentary are Katie (a stan since 2009), who likes to dress in the superhero Robin (the DC Comics character) costume that Eminem had in his 2002 music video for “Without Me”; Noah, a stan since 2010; Brendan, a stan since 2008; Wonje, a stan since 2000; Kripa, a stan since 2015; Daniyela, a stan since 2003; Meagan, a stan since 2000; Alexander, a stan since 1999; Ramon, a stan since 1999; James, a stan since 1999; Brookyln, a stan since 2013; Kyle, a stan since 2002; Melissa, a stan since 1999; Marshall, a stan since 1999; and Nikki, a stan since 2001.

The stans are racially diverse, but they mostly live in North America or Europe. Eminem has loyal fans from around the world, so it’s baffling that the “Stans” filmmakers chose only two continents to be represented in this documentary for the overwhelming majority of stan interviews. Although these stans have lively personalities on camera, they don’t talk about how their obsessive fandom has cost them money or personal relationships. What types of sacrifices have they had to make to fund an Eminem stan lifestyle? Don’t expect to hear those stories in this documentary.

But here come the sob stories: James, Marshall, Kyle and Meagan say they can relate to Eminem being bullied as a kid because they experienced this abuse too. Meagan says of Eminem: “He inspired me to write. His music made me feel like I wasn’t alone in what I was going through.”

Daniyela says Eminem’s songs helped her cope with her anger over having an absentee father, just like Eminem says he had a deadbeat dad. Kripa (the documentary’s youngest stan, who was 14 when this movie was filmed) breaks down in tears when she reads an unsent fan letter that she wrote to Eminem after her parents’ acrimonious divorce. (Most of the stans interviewed in this documentary are in their 20s, 30s and 40s.)

Ramon and Melissa both talk about overcoming addiction issues and suicidal thoughts because they were inspired by Eminem’s own recovery from addiction. Katie and Ramon get emotional when discussing how Eminem’s music helped them cope with the deaths of loved ones. Marshall is a transgender man who says that Eminem’s music helped him during his gender journey and inspired Marshall to change his first name to the same as Eminem’s real first name.

Eminem also gets into a little bit of a self-pity party when he comments on his fame: “None of it is normal.” He later adds, “It was a weird, strange kind of adjustment, and my personality couldn’t handle it.” Eminem also says that after a harrowing incident in the early 2000s, when he and his daughter Hailie (who was born in 1995) were mobbed by fans at a shopping mall, he never again went to a shopping mall without wearing a disguise.

The documentary demonstrates Eminem’s love/hate relationship with the media by mostly showing old video and audio clips from the 2000s and 2010s, where he makes soundbite quips responding to some of the criticisms he had at the time. (“I’m just Marshall. I’m not your fucking savior,” he says in one archived clip.) Anthony Bozza, a journalist who interviewed Eminem for Rolling Stone magazine when Eminem became famous, doesn’t have anything insightful to add, unless you think it’s illuminating that Bozza says the first time that he hung out with Eminem for the magazine article, Eminem didn’t speak directly to him for hours.

Most of the documentary’s exclusive interview footage with Eminem shows him sitting in a room. However, “Stans” has a few scenes where Eminem is interviewed outside of a room, such as when he visits the site of his former childhood home in Detroit. Eminem said he wanted to buy the building after he became famous, but the deteriorated building had already been condemned by the city and was demolished years ago.

The site where the building used to be is a patch of grass that has a mini-shrine to Eminem. In the documentary, he says it still feels weird to him that people would build a shrine there because where he used to live “is not that big of a deal.” Despite his ongoing discomfort with mega-fame, Eminem expresses appreciation for his fans in the documentary, mostly toward the end of the film.

In the documentary, Eminem talks about dealing with grief after the 2006 shooting death of rapper Proof (whose real name was DeShaun Holton), Eminem’s best friend since childhood. Eminem says this grief made his addictions worse. Eminem also discusses feeling bad about having to cancel performances in 2005 on the Anger Management tour because of his addiction problem, which was announced at the time as “exhaustion.” Again: All of Eminem’s “confessional” comments in the documentary are not new and have been public knowledge for many years.

If you believe the comments from Eminem’s colleagues and stans in the documentary, then you’d have to believe that Eminem was the first rapper to show vulnerability in his songs when he talked about his struggles with addiction and mental health. Dr. Dre says, “There’s so much strength in vulnerability. That’s one of the reasons for Eminem’s success.”

Apparently, the “Stans” filmmakers want to forget about Tupac Shakur’s emotionally vulnerable songs—such as “Dear Mama,” “Keep Ya Head Up” and “Life Goes On”—that were well-known to hip-hop fans before Shakur was murdered in 1996, long before Eminem was a star. And before that, LL Cool J (whom Eminem says in the documentary was one of his earliest rap idols) had arguably rap’s first emotionally vulnerable hit, with 1987’s “I Need Love.”

“Stans” also doesn’t address the racial issues that Eminem faced in his early career as a talented white person in a music genre invented and dominated by African Americans. In this fawning documentary, Eminem doesn’t talk about why he succeeded in hip-hop when other talented white rappers failed, but the explanation can be seen in the documentary’s archival footage when Eminem had his meteoric rise to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s: Eminem surrounded himself with black rappers (such as rap group D12, producer Dr. Dre and Eminem protégé 50 Cent) for knowledge and credibility.

Meanwhile, as Eminem became a superstar and courted controversy with his violent, misogynistic and homophobic lyrics, there were black rappers with similar lyrics who didn’t get as much support from MTV and radio that Eminem did when Eminem was controversial. (Eminem has since stopped releasing violent, misogynistic and homophobic songs.) While certain magazines would never put groundbreaking and inoffensive mainstream rappers such as Run-DMC or LL Cool on their covers, Eminem was on the covers of those magazines—even if he didn’t do interviews for these cover stories. It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to describe Eminem (for better or worse) as the Elvis Presley of rap music.

By the same measure, the documentary hints at but doesn’t adequately explore why Eminem became very popular with people who usually aren’t known for being hip-hop fans. The closest that “Stans” does to acknowledge this phenomenon is to mention New York Times opinion columnist Mauren Dowd, an Eminem critic-turned-begrudging-Eminem admirer, who admitted in a 2002 column that she and other older white women she knew had become “smitten” by Eminem’s bad boy jokester image and antics.

Is it a coincidence that Eminem also became the first rapper to win an Oscar for Best Original Song? He won for “Lose Yourself,” from the 2002 semi-biographical drama “8 Mile,” starring Eminem in his first feature film. “(“Lose Yourself” is still his biggest hit song.) Eminem didn’t bother to show up for the Oscar ceremony where he won this Academy Award, and he hasn’t starred in a scripted feature film since “8 Mile,” although he’s done some very small roles as an actor in other movies since then.

Eminem has refused to become a movie star or pursue a career as an actor after winning an Oscar. He seems almost embarrassed about being accepted by Hollywood’s filmmaking elites who rewarded him with an Academy Award for his first feature film. And although Eminem fans in “Stans” rave about “8 Mile” being a game-changing and beloved Eminem project, Eminem himself has nothing to say about “8 Mile” in this documentary.

“Stans” tells Eminem’s celebrity story in mostly chronological order, but leaves out a lot of information, such as not getting his thoughts on “8 Mile” and not mentioning his songwriting process for any specific Eminem album. The closest that Eminem gets to talking about his songwriting process is when he says he never gets writer’s block because for years, he has kept notebooks of lyrics and song ideas. The documentary has very quick glimpses of a few of the hand-written pages in these notebooks.

The movie cherry picks Eminem lyrics that express dark thoughts by showing them as on-screen captions and as examples of his mental health struggles. The documentary fails to mention Eminem’s most controversial lyrics, where he talks about his fantasies of being a murderer or when he says derogatory things about LGBTQ people. A more interesting documentary would’ve done something like ask transgender stan Marshall what Marshall thinks about how Eminem’s lyrics and attitude about LGBTQ people seem to have evolved. Instead, the movie shows photos of Eminem and Elton John performing at the 2001 Grammy Awards and an old quote from gay icon John saying that he never thought Eminem was homophobic.

Because “Stans” only puts a positive spin on Eminem fandom, you’re not going to hear how Eminem copes with his dangerous fans. And it’s an ironic omission because the song “Stan” is about a dangerous Eminem fan. The documentary also paints a rosy and unrealistic picture that Eminem’s fandom is like one big happy family when they meet each other, when in reality any celebrity fandom has people who are toxic and competitive with each other.

There isn’t much in the documentary to indicate how or why most of the interviewed stans were chosen to be in this movie. The only criteria mentioned is that they identify as Eminem stans. Almost all of them say in the documentary that they’ve never met Eminem—although that situation has changed since the documentary was filmed, because all of the documentary’s non-celebrity stans posed for photos with Eminem at the movie’s New York City premiere on August 6, 2025.

Only two of the Eminem stans in the documentary seem to take their fandom to extremes: Zolt is obviously a stalker type, who says that he knows what Eminem’s cars look like and where Eminem is at any given time. Nikki brags that she holds the Guinness world record for the person with the most body tattoos for a music celebrity. At the time she filmed this documentary, she had 22 Eminem tattoos on her body.

None of these stans except for Nikki (who married another hardcore fan of Eminem) talk about how being an obsessive Eminem fan has affected their love lives. Some of the stans mention having a sibling or a friend who introduced them to Eminem’s music, but that’s about the extent that they say how other people in their lives are affected by Eminem fandom. And although some of the stans share some of their personal struggles, it’s told in the context of “This is how Eminem’s music helped me,” not “This is how other people in my life are affected by me being an Eminem stan.”

Ed Sheeran, LL Cool J and Adam Sandler are three of the celebrities interviewed in the documentary. Sheeran (who collaborated with Eminem on 2017’s “The River” song) describes himself as an Eminem stan, while LL Cool J and Sandler seem admiring of but also a little bit envious of Eminem in their comments. Sandler (whose 2009 movie “Funny People” and 2025 movie “Happy Gilmore 2” each had a cameo appearance from Eminem) remembers seeing Eminem at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards (where Eminem brought a small army of look-alikes on stage with him) and recalls saying to himself about Eminem: “Yeah, that guy is cooler than me.”

The documentary curiously has no interviews with female celebrities who are Eminem stans or Eminem collaborators. Eminem had two of his biggest hits with Rihanna (2010’s “Love the Way You Lie” and 2013’s “The Monster”), but Rihanna isn’t even mentioned in the documentary. And surely, Dido isn’t that hard to contact. Why wasn’t she interviewed for this documentary that was inspired by her Eminem song collaboration? Don’t expect “Stans” to answer that question.

The “Stans” documentary might be fascinating to people who know almost nothing about Eminem except that he’s a famous rapper. But for everyone else who knows more than a little about Eminem, the documentary’s “revelations” are recycled. “Stans” is really a public relations vehicle for Eminem, with good use of many of his songs. And with a title like “Stans,” it’s reasonable to see that this a fan-oriented film. Just don’t expect “Stans” to be more than testimonials praising Eminem, a “greatest hits” compilation of his music, and “nothing new” commentary from Eminem.

Trafalgar Releasing released “Stans” in U.S. cinemas (exclusively at AMC Theatres) for a limited engagement from August 7 to August 10, 2025. Paramount+ will premiere “Stans” on August 26, 2025.

Review: ‘Clown in a Cornfield,’ starring Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand and Will Sasso

May 31, 2025

by Carla Hay

A scene from “Clown in a Cornfield” (Photo courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder)

“Clown in a Cornfield”

Directed by Eli Craig

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Kettle Springs, Missouri, the horror film “Clown in a Cornfield” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A 17-year-old girl moves with her widower father to Kettle Springs, and they find out that Kettle Springs has been plagued by serial killngs of someone dressed as a mascot clown named Frendo.

Culture Audience: “Clown in a Cornfield” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the book of the same name and horror movies about killer clowns.

Verity Marks, Cassandra Potenza and Katie Douglas in “Clown in a Cornfield” (Photo courtesy of RLJE Films and Shudder)

Some fans of the book “Clown in a Cornfield” might be disappointed by the movie’s tonal changes to this horror story about serial killings done by a mascot clown. The self-aware comedic revisions mostly work well, thanks to the movie’s appealing cast. The movie leans more into having sarcastic jokes in the story, compared to the book, and this satire is effective because the cast members have very good comedic timing.

Directed by Eli Craig, “Clown in a Cornfield” (which had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival) is based on Adam Cesare’s 2020 horror novel of the same name. Carter Blanchard and Craig co-wrote the “Clown in a Cornfield” adapted screenplay. The story takes place in the fictional city of Kettle Springs, Missouri. The “Clown in a Cornfield” movie was actually filmed in Winnipeg, Canada.

The “Clown in a Cornfield” movie begins in 1991, during a party that teenagers are having in a cornfield. A teenager named Jessica (played by Kaitlyn Bacon) takes off her top and runs into a secluded part of the field. Another teen named Tyler (played by Dylan McEwan) follows Jessica because he thinks she might want to fool around.

Tyler notices that there are some large footprints in the muddy field. These footprints look too big for Jessica. Tyler sees Jessica in front of him. She’s vomiting because she’s been fatally wounded. And you can predict what happens next: Someone dressed as a creepy-looking clown suddenly appears and impales Tyler with a machete.

“Clown in a Cornfield” then fast-forwards to 2025 to show a teenage girl and her father arriving from Philadelphia on their first day as new residents of Kettle Springs. Quinn Maybrook (played by Katie Douglas) is a moody and introverted teenager who doesn’t really want to live in Kettle Springs because she thinks she will be bored in this small city. Quinn’s father Glenn Maybrook (played by Aaron Abrams) is a medical doctor who has accepted a job to be Kettle Springs’ chief physician.

It’s autumn, and Quinn will be a starting her last year of high school in Kettle Springs. Quinn and Glenn are grieving over the death of Quinn’s mother/Glenn’s wife a few months ago. It’s later revealed that Quinn’s mother died of a drug overdose. Glenn wanted a fresh start in a place that’s very different from Philadelphia, which is why he decided to move to Kettle Springs.

Quinn is dismayed to find out that Glenn bought the two-story farmhouse where they live in Kettle Springs without going in person to look at the house. He made the purchase based on photos he saw online. When they arrive at the house, Quinn gets even more upset when she finds out there’s no WiFi service in the house. The house also has a nasty odor, which turns out to be a dead raccoon that’s stuck in the chimney.

A big cornfield near the house can be seen from various windows in the house. Quinn notices that in this cornfield is a large building with a sign that says Baypen Corn Syrup Factory. The company clown mascot also appears on the same sign. Quinn later finds out that this clown is named Frendo, and the factory has been abandoned.

Quinn is a loner type who’s not very concerned about how popular she’ll be in her new school. Her first day at the school also happens to be her 17th birthday. A teenager named Rustin “Rust” Vance (played by Vincent Muller), who’s also a student at the school, lives nearby and has noticed that Quinn and her father have moved into this house.

Rust visits the house, introduces himself to Quinn and Glenn, and offers to walk with Quinn to the school. Glenn approves because Rust seems like a friendly guy. On the way to the school, Rust tells Quinn that hunting and fishing are the main leisure activities for the teenagers in Kettle Springs.

“Not everyone is a redneck,” Rust says. “I don’t really care what people think. Be careful who you hang out with. There are some real weirdos at this school.” Quinn thanks Rust for his advice but doesn’t really know what he means by “weirdos.”

Quinn is late for her first class, which is teaching astronomy. The no-nonsense teacher for the class is Mr. Vern (played by Bradley Sawatzky), who becomes furious when he finds out that unknown students have played pranks on him. First, they put a photo of Mr. Vern’s head on a photo of someone else’s muscular body so that this altered photo appears on the video projector in the class. No one in the class will confess to this prank, so Mr. Vern punishes everyone by giving them a surprise quiz.

Mr. Vern then sees that his dating profile has been copied on a surprise quiz that he hands out to the students. He has a screaming meltdown, which gets recorded by Janet Murray (played by Cassandra Potenza), who likes to think of herself as the school’s “queen bee.” Quinn quickly finds out that the pranksters are the school’s clique of “cool kids,” who introduce themselves to Quinn during this class. Janet is in the clique.

The clique is led by self-assured Cole Hill (played by Carson MacCormac), who comes from the wealthiest and most influential family in Kettle Springs. Also in the clique are Janet’s neurotic best friend Ronnie Queen (played by Verity Marks), Matt Trent (played by Alexandre Martin Deakin), who is Ronnie’s athletic boyfriend; and Tucker Lee (played by Ayo Solanke), who has a fun-loving personality.

This clique has a YouTube channel, where they like to post videos of pranks they’ve pulled on unsuspecting people. Quinn later finds out that Cole and Rust used to be very close, but they had a falling out and no longer speak to each other. The clique has a reputation for being brats who commit petty crimes.

Cole’s ancestors founded Kettle Springs. Cole’s image-conscious father Arthur Hill (played by Kevin Durand) is the current mayor of Kettle Springs. Cole’s great-grandfather founded Baypen Corn Syrup, which used to be the largest company employer in Kettle Springs, until a fire destroyed the inside of the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory about a year ago. The factory has remained abandoned. Kettle Springs has been suffering economically ever since.

Even though Kettle Springs has been going through hard times financially, the city is still continuing its tradition of having its Founders Day parade, where the biggest attraction is a float of Frendo. There’s been widespread gossip that Cole and his friends accidentally started the fire during while partying in the factory after-hours. For this reason and because of the clique’s prank videos, Sheriff York Dunne (played by Will Sasso), who’s in charge of law enforcement in Kettle Springs, has this clique on his radar as potential troublemakers.

The first time that Quinn is invited to hang out with Cole and his friends, they play a prank on her by having Tucker dress up as Frendo and scaring Quinn. They film this prank and post the video on social media. However, Cole notices that there seems to be a shadowy figure of someone else dressed as Frendo in the background of this video. None of this is spoiler information, because the trailer for “Clown in a Cornfield” reveals a lot of what happens in the movie.

Quinn develops a growing attraction to Cole, who seems to be attracted to her too. But this possible romance gets tested during a teen party at the warehouse, where various things happen. All hell breaks loose when people start getting killed in what turns out to be a Frendo massacre.

“Clown in a Cornfield” has many action-packed chase scenes and other terror scenes that should please horror fans but have a lot of typical horror stereotypes of people walking right into a trap when they should be going elsewhere to get help. The gore in “Clown in a Cornfield” is intense but it’s not excessive. This is the type of movie that knows how goofy it is but at the same time it keeps people guessing on who’s behind this killing spree and why certain people are being targeted. (The answer is eventually revealed.)

The movie doesn’t take itself seriously and has some comedy that spoofs how people in horror movies often do idiotic things. For example, there’s a scene where Janet and Quinn are trapped in a place where the only phone they can find is a rotary phone, which they don’t know how to use because they only know how to use phones that operate by pushing buttons. There’s another scene in the movie that’s a not-so-subtle dig at the stereotype of black people get killed off quickly in horror movies, when a terrified Ronnie (who’s black) mentions this stereotype when she says that she’s going to be the next one killed.

“Clown in a Cornfield” is effective because all of the cast members are believable in their roles, although no one is going get nominated for any awards for this movie. The story has some gravitas when it comes to Quinn’s tense relationship with her father and how they’re navigating grief over the loss of Quinn’s mother. Cole seems to be confident on the surface, but he’s also dealing with some insecurity issues having to do with his family and his identity. “Clown in a Cornfield” has an ending that raises some questions that aren’t adequately answered. But considering that the “Clown in the Cornfield” book has sequels, it seems inevitable that “Clown in the Cornfield” will also continue with movie sequels in franchise.

RLJE Films and Shudder released “Clown in a Cornfield” in U.S. cinemas on May 9, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on June 10, 2025.

Review: ‘Sew Torn’ (2025), starring Eve Connolly, Calum Worthy, K Callan, Ron Cook, Thomas Douglas, Caroline Goodall and John Lynch

May 25, 2025

by Carla Hay

Eve Connolly in “Sew Torn” (Photo courtesy of Vertigo Releasing)

“Sew Torn” (2025)

Directed by Freddy Macdonald

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in the United States, the dramatic film “Sew Torn” (based on the 2019 short film of the same name) features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A seamstress, who is struggling to keep her business operating, faces three choices when she comes across two wounded men and a suitcase full of cash on a deserted road.

Culture Audience: “Sew Torn” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in quirky thrillers that present multiple outcomes for different choices made by the story’s protagonist.

Thomas Douglas, Eve Connolly and Calum Worthy in “Sew Torn” (Photo courtesy of Vertigo Releasing)

“Sew Torn” can get tedious with its overabundance of offbeat characters. However, it’s an intriguing story showing three different outcomes when a lonely seamstress decides what to do about finding cash and two wounded criminals on a deserted road. The performances rise to the challenge of maintaining viewer interest, even though the characters aren’t quite as developed as they could be.

Written and directed by Freddy Macdonald, “Sew Torn” is his feature-film directorial debut and is based on Macdonald’s 2019 short film of the same name. The feature-length “Sew Torn” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The short film “Sew Torn” had no dialogue, while the feature-length “Sew Torn” has dialogue, some of which is darkly amusing, some of which is stuff and unnatural. Each movie has different cast members.

The feature-length “Sew Torn” (which takes place in an unnamed rural U.S. town; the movie was actually filmed in Switzerland) begins with a voiceover from protagonist Barbara Duggen (played by Eve Connolly), as the camera shows dead bodies on a floor. Barbara says in a flat voice: “If I were to tell you why I did what I did, when I was broke and alone, would you pity me, or would you say my actions were justified? Perhaps you’d relate to my isolation, my need. Or perhaps you’d simply see my lack of morality.”

The movie then shows a glimpse of who Barbara is to explain the choices she could make in the story. Barbara is a loner who owns a shop called Home of the Talking Portraits, which sells unusual products: custom-made yarn portraits that have audio recordings installed. Barbara inherited the shop from her deceased single mother (played by Petra Wright), who made several portraits of herself and Barbara. As part of the business, Barbara (who is a skilled seamstress) also operates a mobile sewing service, where she drives to do sewing jobs for customers.

Barbara is feeling despondent because ever since she took over the business, it’s been failing. In fact, the beginning of the movie shows that Barbara has already put up a Going Out of Business signs on display in the shop’s front windows. She is going to one of her last house appointments before she intends to close the shop for good.

This house appointment involves some last-minute mending and sewing of a wedding dress on the wedding day of a demanding socialite name Grace Vessler (played by Caroline Goodall), who will be marrying her third husband. Barbara is nervous because she’s a little late for the appointment. Grace is rude and tells Barbara that Barbara’s mother was better at doing business.

Barbara needs to sew a button on the wedding dress. However, Grace has been so obnoxious and impatient, Barbara pretends to accidentally let the button slip down a grate, when Barbara actually flicked the button down the grate. Grace is upset and Barbara uses this “lost” button as an excuse to go back to her shop to get another button. She assures Grace that she will be back as soon as possible.

While driving on a deserted road back to her shop, Barbara sees a bizarre sight. There’s been a motorcycle accident. The two men (one in his 40s, one in his 20s) are lying face down and wounded on the road. As Barbara drives closer, she sees that the younger man has a broken handcuff on his wrist, while the older man (wearing a motorcycle helmet) is grabbing the younger man by one of his legs, as if he doesn’t want the younger man to move any farther.

The younger man seems to be attempting to crawl to the briefcase on the road. Attached to the briefcase is the chain of the other handcuff. There are two guns nearby. Both men are too wounded to reach the guns and the briefcase. Barbara soon finds out that the briefcase is full of cash.

It’s pretty obvious that this is probably some crime that went awry. It’s later revealed that it’s a botched drug deal. Barbara has three choices: (1) Commit the perfect crime. (2) Call the police. (3) Drive away and do nothing about what she saw. The rest of “Sew Torn” shows what happens when Barbara makes each of these three choices.

Committing the perfect crime is what’s shown first. In this scenario, Barbara intricately threads yarn to each gun and to her car so that when she puts her car in motion, the guns will move close to each man to reach each gun. What happens next is exactly what she was expecting: Each man shoots each other. Barbara then backs up the car and steals the briefcase full of cash. This “perfect crime” scene is the entire plot of “Sew Torn” short film, which does not show what happens to the seamstress after she drives away.

The feature-length “Sew Torn” shows what happens after the seamstress drives away and thinks she has committed the perfect crime. Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that Barbara encounters several other characters in the movie. The younger gunman’s name is eventually revealed as Joshua Armitage (played by Calum Worthy), and the older gunman’s name is Beck (played by Thomas Douglas), whose job was to supervise Joshua.

Other characters in the movie are Joshua’s gun-toting father Hudson Armitage (played by John Lynch), who is a wealthy crime boss; a nosy elderly neighbor named Oskar (played by Ron Cook); and the town’s eccentric police chief Ms. Engel (played by K Callan), who is also the town’s notary and works as a wedding officiator on the side. “Sew Torn” has some compelling thriller sequences, but after a while, the characters in the movie might be a little too cartoonish for some people’s tastes. The movie uses a recurring motif of segueing to different scenes by showing a sewing machine stitching words with yarn.

Connolly does a very good job as the central character, considering that Barbara remains emotionally aloof for most of the film. “Sew Torn” is stylish on a technical level, but some viewers will have a hard time connecting emotionally to the movie, which keeps its characters fairly two-dimensional. If want to see a richly detailed movie about people with memorable personalities and interesting lives, “Sew Torn” is not that movie. If you’re in the mood to watch a unique movie to see how someone tries to get out certain dangerous predicaments with sewing skills, then “Sew Torn” is worth watching.

Vertigo Releasing released “Sew Torn” in select U.S. cinemas on May 9, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on June 13, 2025.

Review: ‘Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,’ starring Swamp Dogg, Moogstar and Guitar Shorty

May 23, 2025

by Carla Hay

Swamp Dogg in “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted”

Directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson

Culture Representation: Taking place in California’s San Fernando Valley, the documentary film “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” features an African American and white group of people cast of characters discussing the life and career of singer/songwriter Swamp Dogg.

Culture Clash: Swamp Dogg (whose real name is Jerry Williams Jr.) has had ups and downs in his career, including hit songs and being dropped by Elektra Records in the 1970s for his extreme left-wing views on the Vietnam War.

Culture Audience: “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Swamp Dogg, music from the late 20th century, and documentaries about unconventional entertainers.

Moogstar in “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is a unique documentary reflecting underrated singer/songwriter Swamp Dogg: eccentric, rambling, creative, and unpredictable. Some viewers won’t like this nonconformist storytelling style, but others will appreciate it. The movie gets its title from the fact that the swimming pool at Swamp Dogg’s house is being painted while he tells his story during this biographical documentary, which blends archival footage with footage filmed specifically for the documentary. By the end of the movie, the artwork painting in the swimming pool is revealed.

Directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is narrated by musician/visual artist Greg Grease. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival. “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” jumps back and forth between being a retrospective and being a present-day chronicle of what Swamp Dogg was doing with his life at the time this documentary was filmed.

Swamp Dogg was born as Jerry Williams Jr. on July 12, 1942, in Portsmouth, Virginia. He’s not a household name, but he’s written about 2,000 songs and worked with 500 artists, according to Grease’s narration in the documentary. Swamp Dogg has co-written some well-known hits, including Gene Pitney’s 1969 song “She’s a Heartbreaker” and “She’s All I’ve Got,” a 1971 song originally recorded by R&B singer Freddie North and made more famous by country singer Johnny Paycheck.

Black artists who make music tend to be stereotyped as only capable of working in certain genres, such as R&B, funk, dance, hip-hop, jazz and blues. Unlike many of his peers, Swamp Dogg defied those stereotypes by also working in country music as well as R&B and funk. His unconventionality didn’t catapult him to superstar status, but he’s been a well-respected artist precisely because of being so authentic to himself.

“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” begins by showing the pool painter arriving at the Swamp Dogg’s house in California’s San Fernando Valley. Also living at the house are Swamp Dogg’s musical partners Moogstar and Guitar Shorty, who also give their insights and commentary. The documentary shows some of the trio’s jam sessions and songwriting collaborations, which aren’t spectacular but aren’t terrible either.

Swamp Dogg and Moogstar have a relationship that’s similar to the musical partnership that George Clinton and Bootsy Collins had when they were band members in Parliament-Funkadelic. Moogstar has a persona that’s reminiscent of Collins because Moogstar dresses flamboyantly and often talks in “trippy” ways, like he’s on another planet. Guitar Shorty, a longtime venerated blues musician, is not as talkative as Moogstar. But since Guitar Shorty is in the same age group as Swamp Dogg, Guitar Shorty’s has a valuable perspective of certain eras that he lived through long before many other people in the documentary were born.

Swamp Dogg gives a brief overview of his earliest years in the music business. In 1954, when he was 12, his first recording “HTD Blues (Hardsick Troublesome Downout Blues)” was released on the Mechanic record label in 1954. Back then, he used the stage name Little Jerry Williams and continued to record under than name into his teenage years and 20s. In 1964, he had a minor hit with “I’m the Lover Man,” a song which he wrote. His breakthrough song as Little Jerry Williams was “Baby You’re My Everything,” which reached No. 32 on the R&B single chart in 1966.

Throughout the late 1960s, he continued to work as a solo artists and as a songwriter and producer for other artists, including Patti LaBelle & the Blue Belles, Dee Dee Warwick and Doris Duke. It was during this period of time that he also began collaborating with Gary U.S. Bonds (real name: Gary Anderson), who’s had a prolific career as a singer/songwriter. By the end of the 1960s, Williams wanted a change and reinvented himself.

Williams changed his name to Swamp Dogg in 1970. The 1970s were a decade that also marked his transformation as an outspoke political activist. He began to experiment more with the then-emerging genres of funk and psychedelic soul. But this experimentation also included getting scathing criticism for his 1971 album of cover songs “Rat On!,” which was a sales flop.

In the documentary, Swamp Dogg speaks with fondness of joining the “Free the Army” tour, an anti-Vietnam War tour that also featured left-wing progressive Jane Fonda and Dick Gregory. The documentary makes this statement: “His radical political views got him placed on the FBI’s watch list and dropped from Elektra Records.”

Swamp Dogg candidly shares that the 1970s were a decade of his greatest commercial success and most destructive personal excesses. He spent a lot of time back then recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. “I became a millionaire down there,” Swamp Dogg comments. “I was eating Zoloft like you eat M&Ms.”

All the drug-taking made him paranoid that people were out to trick him and kill him, Swamp Dogg says. It was a period of time when he bought nine cars that he didn’t need. Swamp Dogg reflects on his tendency at the time to want to show off with material possessions: “I wanted to be grand, but that’s not what it’s all about.”

Swamp Dogg, who says he is accustomed to having strong women in his family, gives credit to his wife Yvonne for being a steady presence in his life and keeping him from getting too out of control. The couple got married in 1963. Yvonne became his business partner, who managed many his dealings in the volatile music industry. Yvonne died in 2003, but the documentary has some archival footage of her.

Swamp Dogg’s daughter Dr. Jeri Williams (whom he calls his “main daughter” out of his five daughters) is interviewed in the documentary. She says she “feels sort of bad” that he put some of his career to the side to help raise her and her siblings. She compares her father to being a like a CIA operative with secrets, because she says that there are many things in his life that she doesn’t know about and he won’t discuss.

“Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” shows the expected array of clippings from magazine and newspapers, as well interviews and appearances on radio and TV, for the “blast from the past” parts of the documentary. Not surprisingly, some of the footage is grainy, which fits this scrappy, low-budget documentary just fine. There are slightly amusing mentions and clips of Swamp Dogg’s 2021 appearance on “The People’s Court” (a reality TV show for small-claims court cases), when musician Lloyd Wright sued him $1,425, for non-payment of 19 musical tracks. Swamp Dogg lost his case on “The People’s Court” and didn’t seem bothered by it in the show’s post-judgment interview with him.

Aside from Swamp Dogg’s confession to having a drug problem in the 1970s, he doesn’t get too revealing in the documentary about any of his personal shortcomings or scandals. The documentary is quirky in telling some things that we really didn’t need to know about Swamp Dogg. For example, Swamp Dogg says that he got a vasectomy in 1996. He claims it was Yvonne’s idea.

The documentary shows Swamp Dogg getting some celebrity admirers as visitors while his pool is being painted. They include actor/comedian Johnny Knoxville, “SpongeBob SquarePants” creator Tom Kenny, animator Mike Judge (best known for “Beavis and Butt-Head”), visual artist Art Fein and songwriters Jenny Lewis and John Prine. Lewis and Prine collaborated on some of the songs on Swamp Dogg’s 2020 album “Sorry You Couldn’t Make It.” Toward the end of the documentary, there’s footage of a backyard barbecue party for Swamp Dogg’s house, with some of these famous guests in attendance.

Some famous entertainers have the type of personality where a “hangout” documentary is a better fit for them, compared to a “tell all” exposé. Swamp Dogg is one of those artists. A great deal of “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is nostalgic. But the overall feeling is that Swamp Dogg isn’t stuck in the past and is still living life to the fullest in the present.

Magnolia Pictures released “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” in Los Angeles on May 2, 2025, and in New York City on May 9, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 1, 2025.

Copyright 2017-2025 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX