Catfish

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Catfish is that its filmmakers – Henry Joost, Areil Schulman, and Yaniv Schulman – were naïve enough to think that its viewers couldn't see what was coming, or that they actually thought anyone think they were genuine, interesting people. Ever since AOL chatrooms and IM, people have been fabricating lives on the interweb. Now with the ease of social networking via Facebook, it's all the easier. Fear not: I have not given anything away about the film's super-secret reveal, nor have I spoiled the experience for you because, really, anyone having grown up in the age of chatrooms and IM knows that people lie on the internet. So, the first 30 minutes of the film works as a kind of suspense film: our protagonists lead us on a journey motivated by nothing more than mischief and curiosity. Here, the filmmakers show an uncanny ability to keep the viewer interested despite knowing what most likely lies ahead for Yaniv as he seeks to find out about a girl named Megan with whom he's been having a "Facebook relationship" with. Megan is the older sister of Abby, a child prodigy of sorts, saw one of Yaniv's photos in a New York magazine and painted it; this intrigued Yaniv to the point where he received a package from Michigan where Abby and Megan are from. Yaniv corresponds with other family members, but when a late night Gmail chat involves a song being sent where Megan claims ownership…things get a little messy and the boys want to confront Megan about it.

Here's the deal: taken at face value the film works as it keenly observes the folly of entering into such a relationship. However, and this is a big however, the film fails when we finally see what this whole thing is about (and no, I don't care if it's real or not…my inkling, though, is that it is real and that Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix soured everyone on docs that appear to be fake…and then end up being fake). The only way to do this is to talk about the film's final 30 minutes. So stop reading if you haven't seen the movie, and I'll continue after the jump…




…

…

…

…



Okay. So, Yaniv finds out that there is no Megan and that Abby never painted the pictures. What he does find out is that Angela, who is very real, has fabricated the whole thing because, essentially, she like Yaniv's smile. But it's really not that simple. As the documentary continues to pervade the life of this poor woman, we learn that Angela is married and takes care of two mentally retarded sons that are her husband's from a previous marriage. Abby is just as a little girl would be: she's no prodigy, and in one of the film's best scenes she is asked by Yaniv how often she paints…and she replies: "You're confusing me!" in a way that only a little kid who is telling the truth can.

It's about this point in the film, too, the point where everything that's been hyped about the film's awesomeness hinges, feels faux. I was willing to go with the film, and quite honestly, was hoping that the big truth was that Megan was real…just not like her picture. Sometimes the obvious isn't so bad. I would have liked to see how the filmmakers responded to that, but it doesn't help a documentary film when your hosts ushering you through the events are pretty unlikable people. And as the suspense of the first half of the film gave way to exploitation tactics and an icky exhibitionalism, I couldn't respond to the film any longer because I didn't feel like its filmmakers were genuine people. Sure, they wanted to find the truth – whatever that is in a situation like this – but that lingering 20 minutes of the film where their camera catches Angela caring for her two sons as one repeatedly slaps himself in the face struck me as the most curious of decisions. Why? Are they really learning something that they couldn't already ascertain from their juvenile motel conversations? It's a question that kept creeping up as the film chugged towards its faux-poignant, disingenuous conclusion. I mean is it really interesting to us to see a final title card that informs us that "Yaniv is still on Facebook"? Was there ever any doubt? Was this a dilemma that was broached? The only dilemma for Yaniv was how he was going to get out of this sticky situation, and since his friends were filming the whole thing, lest he look like the cliché, heartless, young Manhattan douchebag…he sticks around until the bitter end making it even worse on Angela. (Nevermind the extremely false title card that informs us of how many friends Yaniv has, and that one of them is Angela*.)

There are some things to like about the film, though (again, this is what makes it so damn frustrating…I really wanted to love this movie): The aforementioned opening of the film that pieces together everything that's simultaneously cool and annoying (and dangerous) about the social networking experience, the way the film parcels out its information like the best of suspense films, the way that documentaries can show the potential for powerful moments through dumb luck and happenstance. I also liked the way the filmmakers, despite their disingenuous tone at the end, do show a clashing of cultures – Manhattan and Michigan – in the beginning moments of the filmmakers' trip into Michigan. It's an interesting contrast that sets the viewer up nicely – like most of the film, which is, in fact, a setup – to think that there's going to be some kind of major epiphany by film's end.

Sadly, though, the film is ultimately a miss. It's a misfire of exhibitionalism where instead of peering into the lives of people we would otherwise know nothing about, we instead walk away feeling gross for having been a fly on the subject's wall. A documentary should never make you feel that way (unless it's fake and being played for drama or shock effect); it should never make you feel like you regret having gone on the journey with the filmmakers. I learned nothing I didn't already know about the perils of online relationships and falsifying information through various social media outlets. I would venture that most viewers of Catifsh know this, too, and so it comes to be that the big super-secret reveal of the film (which I would like to add that I am glad, like with any movie, that I went into this film with no knowledge about its content) ultimately falls flat and leaves the viewer not so much with a "wow!" feeling but with a shameful, gross feeling. Which is too bad, I would have liked to get to know Angela and her family and to better understand why she creates such a fairy-tale world that caused her to user her young daughter and lie to her husband. Instead, the filmmakers show their immaturity by not taking us to the genuine depths of the film's real subject (read: Angela) and instead have a false sense of caring about the world that Angela inhabits.




*This was the tipping point for me. I was ready to concede that film worked on me for about 40 minutes and call it a good, but ultimately disappointing, movie; however, when the title cards came up – a trick filmmakers use that almost always feel phony – and told me that Yaniv, a guy I cared nothing about for the 82 minute running time, is still on Facebook made me roll my eyes to the point where I decided to pan the film and be a bit harsher than I probably should have been. As a curiosity, the film is worth seeing.

Catching up with 2010: Capsule Review - Best Worst Movie

Best Worst Movie is great if you’re a fan of Troll 2, but otherwise it’s a bit of a boring documentary that seems to be discovering the same thing over and over: the film has a cult following, and the actors are varying degrees of embarrassed about the film. The film is really about George Hardy; he’s a dentist who does good work for his Alabama community, but when he catches wind that Troll 2 is a popular roadshow film he decides to jump on the circuit and be a part of the mania. The most interesting thing about this overlong documentary is that Hardy sees the difference between cult fans in small venues and the type of horror fans that flock to large conventions. In the most telling scene from the film he converses with fellow “one-and-done” horror actors as an entire row of tables consists of people who appeared – briefly – in one of the Nightmare films. When Hardy sees this, and the subsequent rejection of his “stardom” (he’s basically reduced to pimping his own bad movie and merchandise), he promptly turns on the people that seem to adore him the most. The most salient point Best Worst Movie makes is, I suppose, that there are two types of horror fans, and the die-hards (read: the one’s willing to spend LOTS of money) see horror in its most non-ironic form, and this just doesn’t work for what Hardy is trying to do with the Troll 2 roadshow. There’s a reason why the people involved in the Upright Citizens Brigade are willing to pay George Hardy money for an appearance at their club, and why the dudes dressed up as Freddy and Jason at the major horror convention haven’t even heard of Troll 2. The reason for this is the most interesting part of the movie. If the documentary would have been a short – a film about the phenomenon of Troll 2 and bad movies in general – then it would have been an easy recommend. But as it is, Best Worst Movie is a mild recommendation for fans only. There’s just too much wasted time in the middle of the film, and I really disliked the tone of certain scenes where it felt the filmmakers (the person who directed the documentary was the child star of Troll 2) were just trying to embarrass the director (Claudio Fragasso) by showing how inept he was in not seeing the irony in the film. Now either that was a point of the film, or I was completely fooled by Fragasso who maybe understands the irony of the film’s appeal and just plays the straight man; however, I feel what many feel is what makes Troll 2 the best worst movie: it’s genuine. Therefore, I don’t think Fragasso is being ironic at all here, and that makes the scenes focusing on him even more painful to watch because here’s an entire room of people ripping on a man’s work in front of him, and he just doesn’t get it. I never thought I would feel sympathetic towards such a hack filmmaker, but damn if I didn’t feel that Fragasso was somewhat of a tragic figure by film’s end. I don’t think that was the filmmaker’s intent, though, and that confusion in tone is why I can’t fully recommend Best Worst Movie.

Summer of Slash: Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

Here's an interesting and entertaining documentary that is ultimately unsatisfying because it omits important slashers like Black Christmas or the imports from Italy. However, the film does includes great interviews with other important slasher figures besides Craven and Carpenter and Savini, which makes it a tad more interesting than I was anticipating. You get to hear from the people who created The Prowler and The Slumber Party Massacre and My Bloody Valentine and Graduation Day, and many others. And that is what makes it an engaging documentary: we actually get to hear from the people who cashed in on the success of the Craven's and Sean Cunningham's (who is a hack that got lucky…and he kind of admits that in the film). One of the things that is annoying about the documentary, though, is that the interviews are rarely stationary as the interviewees walk around talking about the genre and the camera is constantly moving with them (even if they do stop for a second). I don't need to be "entertained" during an interview…what the people are saying is interesting enough, but the makers of this documentary failed to understand that.

Throughout the documentary though there are interesting and amusing anecdotes about the making of seminal slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13^th – my favorite being the latter where director Sean Cunningham explains that he came up with the newspaper ad for the film before he even had a script, and that ad forced him to seriously get moving on his idea for his exploitation film. The film then moves from those two seminal American slashers (read: the first two to make money of the "silly" subgenre) to all of the copycats and money-grabs that came after. It's amazing to think about the success and the impact of Firday the 13^th, a film so bad that it still boggles my mind why people in the documentary really don't properly cite Bob Clark's wonderful Black Christmas (which gets no mention at all) or Bava's equally masterful Bay of Blood (briefly mentioned) as the templates that American slahers uses to make their money and popularized horror films which then got the studios involved in bidding wars for these films.

The always entertaining Tom Savini's is interviewed throughout (since he was really more responsible for Friday the 13^th's success than Cunningham was) and he shares an amusing piece of advice he got from George Romero when working on Dawn of the Dead about how you begin thinking about a film: Romero's advice was to think of ways to kill people first, then you have your film. As mentioned earlier the chronology of the rise of the slasher film appropriately begins with Halloween, but I can't reiterate enough how disappointing and frustrating the film is in how it refuses to acknowledge the influence and importance of Black Christmas, instead giving all of the credit to the commercially successful examples like Halloween and Friday the 13^th.

After spending a good chunk of the film on the importance of Carpenter and Cunningham's films, the documentary then begins to turn into nothing more than a TV special (it reminded me of those awful countdowns Bravo use to do) as it moves too quickly through important slasher subjects like the Final Girl (perhaps because they couldn't get interviews with any of the actresses), but it would have been interesting to hear about those roles affected their lives and careers (something Craven broached in his New Nightmare) , especially actresses like Amy Steel (my favorite, and the most bad ass, Final Girl from Friday the 13^th: Part 2) or Heather Langenkamp (again, her plight is well documented and fictionalized in Craven's New Nightmare). The documentary only briefly discuss the influence of Italian and Canadian slasher films. My Bloody Valentine (Canada) and Bay of Blood (Italy) rightfully get a lot of the attention, but what about oddities like Visiting Hours or Stagefright, from Canada and Italy respectively? It's interesting how they talk about the reaction to people from other countries cashing in on the American subgenre, but what's ironic is that those American slashers would have never been profitable had it not been for some of these films that they cribbed from.

Silly slashers like Happy Birthday to Me and He Knows You're Alone and April Fool's Day are mentioned. Also The Prowler – which is one of the most flawed slashers, but amazing to look at (both in set design and gore effects), gets some mention before they delve back into the The Friday the 13^thfranchise and how Paramount wanted to kill off Jason thanks to the backlash against the slasher genre (which is funny, because Friday the 13^th: Part 3 is one of the goofiest and least violent slashers), and then the birth of the "sophisticated" slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street (which of course devolved into one of the silliest franchises ever, further destroying the already decaying and over saturated subgenre) – a film I still think holds up exceptionally well.

Other tidbits I enjoyed, even though they only received a passing mention: The importance of the biggest "Holy Shit" moment in the subgenre from Sleepaway Camp, as one interviewee states his hypothesis that Neil Jordan saw that film and decided to rip it off for The Crying Game. The "dorm killer" spoof The Slumber Party Massacre and how its feminist writer and director actually thought the film wasn't perpetuating the female stereotypes often found in slasher movies. All of this is punctuated nicely with an interesting clip shown from an old Siskel and Ebert show where they accost the genre for its treatment of women (Siskel attributes it to the growth of the woman's movement). This is the most interesting part of the documentary as people involved in the genre talk about its biggest critics just not understanding what they're doing. I do agree with Siskel and Ebert on some of their arguments – especially in the hack-directed/starred, exploitative films – but I do think they stack the deck a bit as in the clips from the show we them discussing advertisements for low rent slashers like The Bogeyman and Don't Answer the Phone, rather than focusing on some of the better made slashers.

The film then moves on to the big controversy surrounding the rather terrible and banal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night in which a psycho in a Santa suit rapes and kills a woman. This caused a grassroots campaign by oversensitive mothers to get the film removed from theaters. Really, the film had little effect because it was such a lousy movie, but the marketing guys were geniuses covering up the blemishes of their movie with a great ad campaign that made the movie seem a lot nastier than it really was. The film concludes with the mention of Scream, and how Craven is a genius, and then moves on to mentioning some of the new voices of the slasher genre like Rob Zombie and Greg McLean.

It's an interesting documentary for any fan of the genre, and if you're a die-hard fan then you'll be able to fill in the obvious pot holes in the film's chronology of the slasher film and its most important films. For novices of the genre it does a decent job of showing how the slasher film became so popular, what films were primarily responsible for its meteoric rise, and how the glut of slashers released from 1981 – 1985 killed the genre for good. Huge omissions aside, it's a fun and entertaining, if not disappointingly short, documentary.

DVD Review: Not Quite Hollywood

As an unabashed fan of exploitation cinema I have to say I feel pretty ashamed to admit that I had no idea there was an Australian subgenre out there that is like my favorite subgenre Italian horror. The documentary Not Quite Hollywood paints an interesting portrait of "ozploitation", and for fans of this particularly polarizing subgenre this documentary is a treat: a plethora of rental ideas of forgotten (or maybe never discovered) grindhouse cinema from down under. Quentin Tarantino is interviewed the most throughout the doc and his (usual) unbridled enthusiasm is infectious as he talks about how certain film like Patrick crossed over into pop culture (the Italians ripped it off, of course, and made one of their unofficial sequels to the film) and also influenced his films like Kill Bill. Various filmmakers from the Australian New Wave movement are interviewed (most prominently is Brian Trenchard-Smith of The Man from Hong Kong and Dead-End Drive-In "fame") and discuss the ways they made films that people wanted to see, influenced their respective genres with new, innovative ways to film the scenes, and began to affect a whole Australian subculture and industry where the only kinds of films being made were art films like Picnic at Hanging Rock. I found the history of Australian filmmaking to be fascinating, not to mention the various clips from from films that look surprisingly good (and innovative) for the budgets they had. Of course this should surprise no one if you're a fan of exploitation cinema as these types of films were sometimes the breeding ground for young filmmakers with ideas. 

One of the best moments of the doc comes when Quentin Tarantino is describing a scene from one of the films discussed when he says something to the extent of: (paraphrased) "the best thing about exploitation cinema is that initial reaction as your watching something and you're thinking, 'is this really happening…wait…it is…oh my God! How did they do that? What were they thinking? Why would the actors agree to that?' That uncertainty is what makes exploitation cinema so great." Because it's a pretty good bet that the clips from the movies profiled in this doc are the best parts of those movies (for as "fun" as these types of movies are...they're really boring if you aren't watching them with friends) this is a must see doc for fans of exploitation cinema. 

A question for exploitation fans after the jump...

Does anyone have reviews of the following films? I would love to read more about the following movies:

Razorback

Patrick

Long Weekend

Thirst

The Survivor

Harlequin

Roadgame

The Howling III

Next of Kin

Mad Dog Morgan (in the documentary they show a lot of on-set footage from this film…it's worth the price
of rental, or ownership, for those moments of Dennis Hopper all coked-out) 

The Man from Hong Kong (another film that is discussed at length…there are some great stories to this one, too)

Turkey Shoot

Nightmares

Stone

Stunt Rock (my brother and I have watched parts of this one...) 
Wolf Creek (or any other modern Australian horror films)


Leave the links to your reviews in the comments section. Thanks.

Revisiting 1999: The Top 10 Films of the Year, #8 --- American Movie (Chris Smith)

Here's what we've covered so far:

The Top 10 Films of 1999:

Introduction: The Best Films of 1999
10 - The Limey (Steven Soderbergh)
9 - Affliction (Paul Schrader)


American Movie, the brilliant 1999 documentary, contains a personality that is just as infectious and enthusiastic when talking about film as someone like Scorsese or Tarantino. That person is Mark Borchardt, a Wisconsin native who dreams of making the All-American film someday. However, his struggles to break free from the cycle that slows him down (alcohol, friends, partying) show a person who dreams big, but has always been ankle deep in the mire of small town America. This is a talented individual, you can tell that by listening to him, he’s passionate, too; however, his passion is never enough to break free from the suffocating home life he encounters on a daily basis. He tries to channel that into his filmmaking, but he often fails. What we get in Chris Smith’s documentary is a story about a very specific type of person in a very specific type of town. It’s often a very funny movie (Borchardt is a very entertaining personality), and other times it’s sad and poignant – a movie filled with a lot of truth about how talent gets swallowed up by the deadly combination of alcohol and living in a small town. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen about the passion one person has to get something done and to get away from the place that bums them out.

I would love to visit this town and meet Mark and talk about horror film with him. His story is an underdog one: the struggle to make the movie you feel you were born to make. Mark isn’t an idiot, though; he knows what it takes (money, location, direction, discipline) to make a movie. This definitely isn’t someone who just woke up one day and thought it would be cool to make a movie…this is a living, a job for Borchardt, and he takes it very seriously. He always is talking about how he can’t be sitting around with a beer in one hand and his dreams in the other, he has to act – he needs to do something about his dream. For him it’s survival so he can get away from the town that drags him down.


This guy knows what he’s talking about when it comes to movies, and not just about horror movies. There is a great scene where he is scouting locations and he talks to the filmmakers about some of the great cinematic backgrounds found in Manhattan and The Seventh Seal where characters are sitting around talking, but they have these fantastic images behind them telling the story, too.

Borchardt’s also a great pitch man. I have a feeling that if this guy ever got a budget, just any kind of budget, to make a small indie horror flick, his enthusiasm could sell it to people and make the film a hit. When he talks the crew or potential investors in his film (usually his parents or his Uncle Bill) they listen intently because he speaks with such authority and passion.

This is evident in one scene where he is having a script reading for one of his films. We see amateur actors painfully getting through a screen test. Then the filmmakers cut outside to Mike and his longtime buddy Mark (who is a highlight of the film, no doubt) and is disgusted by what’s going on inside: “They’re making a mockery out of my words, man. It’s a theatrical mockery…” Again, this is a man who is deadly serious about the work he does.

The movie Borchardt is trying to make is called Northwestern, his masterpiece. The story of a 20-something loser in the Midwest whop tries to battle his demons (alcoholism) and break out of his nothing town. However, he just can’t seem to get any momentum with the film (money is running out and he’s been working on the thing for six years), so he goes to his bread and butter to get him some money and rejuvenate his creative juices: a horror film entitled Coven. Mark has been making horror films ever since he got his first Super 8 when he was a kid. Friends tell stories about the films they made entitled The More the Scarier (there were three sequels, too) and how much fun they had even though the camera’s focus was messed up they could see from the onset that Mark was a passionate filmmaker.

Some of the conversations surrounding Coven are hilarious, especially between Mark and one his actors who is one of those small town thespians who takes his “craft” way too seriously. They discuss the title and how it should be pronounced. Mark wants to call it Coven with a long o, and his acting buddy says that’s not the correct way of pronouncing it and it should be called Coven (like “lovin’”) and Mark says “no way, man. That sounds too much like oven, man.”

It’s great watching him direct a scene where he’s trying to put one of the actors’ head through a cupboard that hasn’t been scored correctly. So upon the first few takes his head bounces off the cupboard. “Oh, I’m sorry I tried to put your head through that, man.”. He’s so passionate about what he does…there’s a great scene where he explains ADR to his daughter, and he’s not condescending in the least bit…he speaks to her like a tutor would trying to educate a pupil who is confused by something. This guy lives every moment of the day thinking about film and the movies he’s trying to make.

Mark spends a lot of time philosophizing to the cameras, but the reality of the situation is that he’s like a lot of these small town personalities who want to break free from the mundane areas that drag them down. They can talk articulately about getting out, and they can dream and speak poetically about the American Dream, but they will never break the cycle. There is a bit of sadness and poignancy to Mark’s story – especially when he relays a story about he got a job working for a cemetery and the owner looked at him and said “I hope this is the beginning of a long relationship”, and you see in Mark’s eyes and the way he says “no way, man” that he has no intentions of dying in Milwaukee vacuuming floors at a cemetery – and that’s what makes American Movie such a special documentary. The quiet moments where the viewer is allowed to get into the mind of Mark and see that he’s not unique, there are many people like this who feel suffocated by the dead-end towns they live in.

Obviously Mark and Bill are made for each other; both looked upon as the outcasts of their family, so it’s natural that they bond. There’s a great moment where Mark is hanging out with Bill on Thanksgiving. His mom is out with his brother having a “very sterile meal, talking about very sterile subjects” according to Mark, and his father is up north away from his immediate family. This tells you a lot about Mark’s home life, and why he probably became so enamored with the movies – it was necessary for his to escape. There’s a great moment where Mark is monitoring Bill’s bath on Thanksgiving night and notices a “wicked ass toe nail” that could be “a science photo”. The interaction between the two in these scenes shows just why Bill is willing to finance Mark’s films. They trust each other because Mark is genuine in how he cares for Bill, and Bill is the only one in the family who doesn’t see Mark as a loser.

Of course Bill’s respect for Mark isn’t always clear as one can see in the now famous scene where Mark tries to get Bill to say the line “It’s alright. It’s okay. There’s something to live for. Jesus told me so!” After 30 takes, though, Bill doesn’t get the line right and claims that the whole exercise is “for the birds”. The scene conveys Mark’s passion for getting things right, but it’s also hilarious in that he is trying to get people like Bill to recite lines from a horror film.

The film ends on a telling moment, perhaps a moment where Mark’s naïveté is clearer than ever before. He and Bill are sitting outside of his trailer and Mark asks what his American Dream is. Bill scoffs it off as if he has no dream, Mark replies with “we’ll film you sitting outside of a trailer, man, but we live where you’re sitting outside of a trailer.” Bill then goes off on an emotional soliloquy about the loss of time and the futility of Mark’s endeavors. Once he’s finished all Bill can do is laugh and shake his head like the kid just doesn’t get that, possibly, his future is right in front of him in the form of Bill. The final punctuation mark to the film is some text stating that Bill died months later and that he has left Mark $50,000 for the completion of Northwestern.

Then director Chris Smith does something interesting by showing old black and white footage of Mark working odd jobs and lots of drinking with his pals from high school; perhaps indicating that nothing has changed. Those final images show that Mark may not know what to do with the money Bill has left him, because he lives a cyclical life of hanging out, getting high, boozing it up, and philosophizing big rather than living big. Maybe Mark will break the cycle (he has acted in numerous B-movies since this documentary, but he still hasn’t completed Northwestern), but all of the obvious signs around him point towards a different outcome.

Like any good documentary American Movie lets you into a world that you never would have been aware of prior to watching the film. It’s about specific people from a specific town that is rarely seen in mainstream film, and that’s why they documentary is such a powerful art form – it shows the audience a slice of America that they are infrequently privy to. Smith’s documentary makes me want to hop on a plane and find Mark so that I can sit down with him, have a few beers and talk movies. Not every movie elicits that kind of response from its viewers. This is a special movie.

Extra Stills:

DVD Review: Dear Zachary: A Letter to His Son About His Father

Netflix didn't send my copy of Beyond the Mat on time (it was supposed to come Saturday), so with the USPS not moving today because of the holiday, I figured I'd dust off some notes I jotted down for a movie I watched a while ago.

Kurt Kuenne's documentary Dear Zachary is love letter. Really that's no surprise as the film opens with Kurt narrating talking about how the subject of the film, his murdered friend Andrew, was the star of his home movies while they were growing up together. The film has the warmth and anger one must feel when a close one dies. At times I felt a little odd being let into this world of Andrew, a doctor who, thanks to countless testimonies, we come to find was a great person. There is a mystery surrounding his murder, although the solution is pretty easy, and they even have the killer in custody. But she's allowed to walk free, and this sets off an unbelievable chain of events that are just shattering.

Kuenne uses a lot of tricks to drum up the suspense of his documentary; some of them work, some don't and draw uncomfortable attention to the fact that he his making a film, not a documentary, but overall the effect works because we care about Andrew's death and what will happen to his killer. The documentary is paced like a fictional thriller, bits of evidence are given to the audience throughout the film as the truth is meted out in a way where you find yourself on the edge of your seat incapable of waiting to see what happened next.

The documentary is about Dr. Andrew Bagby son of Kate and David, two people we come to know well as the documentary progresses. Andrew was murdered in the park near his home. A senseless act that has a shocking reason behind it. It's a documentary that, even though you can google the name and find out about the case, I wish not to give any information away. I didn't know much about the film aside from the fact that it was a well regarded doc from last year, so when the story started to unravel, and the truth came out, and crazy thing after crazy thing started happenng...I was in awe.

Andrew Bagby (left) with friend, and the maker of Dear Zachary, Kurt Kuenne

It's evident people loved Andrew as the viewer is privy to all kinds of intimate interviews with family and friends. Andrew's parents obviously fostered a loving household where everyone was invited to partake in their family community as everyone interviewed in the film calls them "mom and dad". Kuenne, obviously close to the subject, interviews the friends and family uncensored; which is rare for a documentary to be so unfiltered, even the medium of documentaries usually has a set way of interviewing people in order to get certain information on to the screen. Sometimes Kuenne lets his camera sit for long periods of time on his interview subjects where deeply rooted anger comes boiling up as the calmness and normalcy of the interview is over, and then after some silence there will be profanity and hatred, a type of venting, that seems too real; I felt weird being in that interview session with them since I, obviously, didn't know Andrew. But man is it powerful stuff. This is especially true in the case of a specific interview session with Andrew's father, David Bagby, who after a lull in the interview goes off on a hate-filled diatribe explaining how he's kill the person who killed his son; and when you find you killed their son, and their connection to everything, it becomes so much more powerful.

I can understand what Kuenne was doing, though. We've all known someone like Andrew, and maybe their still alive and we need to cherish the time we have with those we love; or perhaps we knew someone like Andrew before, like him, their life was take too soon, and this film acts as a catalyst for remembrance. Whatever the case may be, the film is a tremendously powerful, if not manipulative (but what documentary isn't?), experience that lets you in how the death of a well liked person shattered these peoples lives, and reverberated into the future with horrifying consequences as the truth becomes clearer and clearer.

There's a revelation about midway through the documentary that comes as a surprise to us, and as Kuenne who is narrating admits it was a shock to him, that puts these nice people through more hell. However, when you come out of it and the credits roll, you know the wounds will never heal, but you're convinced that these people know what love and community feels like.