"The Librarians" and "Mr. Nobody Against Putin"

More spotlights of recent documentaries today, this time focusing on films about the politicization of education systems.

"The Librarians," directed by Kim A. Snyder, profiles several librarians and former librarians from Texas and Florida, who were at the center of the book banning controversies in their states in the post-COVID years.  From the opening frames, it is a film that had my blood boiling, because of the subject matter.  The bans are documented in great detail, shown to be based on the flimsiest pretexts and being pushed by bad faith actors from the very beginning.  Eventually, they are revealed to be the result of a concerted campaign by a handful of extremist Christian Nationalist groups to try and demonize the LGBT community by spearheading a witch hunt of inclusive educators and librarians.  

When we look back on this period in American history, "The Librarians" will provide one of the clearest examples of how the culture war was propagated through fearmongering and misinformation, and the deleterious effects on some of our most vital educational and informational systems.  The film is structured around the interviews with the librarians, who make it very clear that the losers in this fight are always the children who lose vital access to books.  While a portion of the film is spent tracing where the money is coming from that is funding the hate campaigns, I appreciate that little time is wasted on the aims of the Christian Nationalists, whose viewpoint is based entirely in ignorance and intolerance.  Instead, the focus stays on the heroic efforts of the librarians, who do their best to resist not only against their single-minded harassers, but against the complacency of the administrators who often try to appease the mob.  Some of the most uplifting moments I've seen in any film all year are the clips of the students who are inspired to speak out against the bans.

A very stark example of what happens when you don't push back against this kind of politicization of education comes in "Mr Nobody Against Putin," a documentary largely put together by Pavel Talankin.  Talankin is the former videographer and events coordinator of a primary school in the Russian industrial town of Karabash.  Due to his position, he was able to document what happened to his school and its students after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the government made drastic changes to the curriculum and instituted new measures to spread propaganda and nationalist fervor.  Talankin narrates and provides context to his footage, which is very rough and piecemeal, but does a good job of capturing a very personal view of Russia's propaganda tactics in a very specific context.

"Mr. Nobody" benefits from the POV of Talankin, who is exactly the kind of energetic, optimistic personality you'd expect to be working as part of the staff of a primary school.  He spends the early part of the film situating us in Karabash and showing us the ins and outs of school life before the government's disruptive edicts start coming in.  The propaganda itself is fascinating, progressing from heavy-handed justifications for the war being delivered by the teachers, to showy demonstrations of loyalty to the state, and lessons where both the teachers and the students have scripted parts.  Significant efforts are expended on looking the part of Russian patriots, and performing for the cameras, as video documentation of their efforts has to be regularly uploaded to a government website.  It's a fascinating, sobering look at the way old totalitarian tactics and new technology have intersected.

I wish we'd gotten a better look at the lives of some of the individual students, but Talankin is only able to include a very few glimpses of young men bound for the front lines and the families they leave behind.  Considering that Talankin was forced to flee Russia by mid-2024, however, I'm not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth.  

   

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"The Alabama Solution" and "Perfect Neighbor"

All the better documentaries I've watched lately are about social issues that are deeply infuriating, and require more emotional bandwidth to process than I normally have.  It's taken me a while to work up to writing about them, but I definitely want to spotlight these films.  I've got several that I want to talk about, so I'm grouping them by subject matter.  Today, we're going to look at two recent docs that look at the state of the American justice system.

First up, "The Alabama Solution," directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman.  This is an examination of the Alabama prison system, which is in such a horrific state that it prompted a federal investigation in 2016.  Much of the footage of the appalling conditions inside the prisons was captured by the inmates themselves on smuggled cell-phones.  The film follows the lives of multiple incarcerated men, including activists Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray.  We also see the progression of the investigations over multiple years, and an inmate strike that took place in 2022.  Most damningly, the directors also dig into the financial incentives for the terrible treatment of the prisoners, who are exploited as a labor force and fuel the lucrative incarceration industry.    

What is so effective about "The Alabama Solution" is that it is giving a rare voice and platform to the inmates.  The cell-phone footage in particular is acutely disturbing because it shows the world as the inmates view it, unvarnished and uninhibited.  Some of the same subject matter was covered in Ava Duvernay's excellent documentary "The 13th," but "The Alabama Solution" is far more direct and visceral, because we see the abuses up close.  Probably the most important thing that "The Alabama Solution" accomplishes is humanizing its subjects, providing a portrait of the prisoners that stands in direct opposition to the political narrative being used to justify the indefensible actions of those in power.  As with all documentaries about the American justice system, race may not explicitly be a central theme, but the divide between the predominantly black and brown inmates and the almost all-white Alabama politicians is obvious.

A smaller scale, but no less engrossing film is "The Perfect Neighbor," from director Geeta Gandbhir.  In 2023 Ajike Owens, an African-American mother of four, was murdered by her white neighbor Susan Lorincz, in a case that became a subject of debate related to Florida's "stand your ground" laws.  The majority of the film is composed of bodycam and other law enforcement footage, along with audio from 911 calls, documenting the two years worth of incidents involving Lorincz that led up to the killing.  We learn that Lorincz was isolated and paranoid, constantly calling the cops on the neighborhood kids who played on her street.  We learn that she and Owens had had confrontations before, leading Lorincz to claim she felt fearful and persecuted.  From her interactions with law enforcement, we see that she's manipulative, selfish, and holds grudges.    

Susan Lorincz makes for an infuriating subject, who seems to live in her own, miserable closed-off bubble where everyone is out to get her.  However, what's more interesting is how she's treated by the police, especially in the final round of interrogations, which the director includes lengthy, uninterrupted portions of.  The authorities seem to have endless patience with her in every interaction, always polite and giving her the benefit of the doubt, even when her claims are ridiculous.  It's clear that this deference is a tactic in the interrogation scenes, which do not end well for her.  However, it's still striking to compare the treatment of Lorincz to the prevalent image of overzealous policing we see with African-Americans and other racial minority groups.  Director Gandbhir offers little commentary, allowing the footage to speak for itself.  However, an exception comes at the very end of the film, where it is stated plainly that "stand your ground laws" are disproportionately used by white perpetrators against black victims.

Next time, we're going to look at two films about education.  Stay tuned.

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On "Task"

The latest crime miniseries from Brad Inglesby, best known for "Mare of Easttown," is "Task," about a law enforcement task force investigating a series of violent robberies in rural Pennsylvania.  The narrative is split about evenly between the two men who embody the two sides of the investigation.  FBI Agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) is charged with heading up the task force by his superior Kathleen McGinty (Marth Plimpton).  This is a ragtag group that includes a city cop, Aleah Clinton (Thuso Mbedu), a state trooper, Lizzie Stover (Alison Oliver), and a county detective, Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel).  Brandis is a widower, and we also look in on his complicated home life, involving his grown daughters, Emily (Silvia Dionicio) and Sara (Phoebe Fox).

Then there's Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey), who has been committing the robberies with his friend Cliff (Raul Castillo), specifically targeting trap houses run by a local motorcycle gang, the Dark Hearts.  Robbie has a grudge against Dark Hearts leader Jayson Wilkes (Sam Keeley) and his mentor Perry Dorazo (Jamie McShane), who don't take kindly to their drug running operations being disrupted.  Robbie's home life is also complicated, as he's currently living with his adult niece Maeve (Emilia Jones), who is looking after Robbie's young kids for him, but wants out as soon as possible.  For most of the series, the law enforcement and criminal characters don't interact, each pursuing separate goals and dealing with several smaller subplots.  Robbie's past and grudge against Jayson is dissected over multiple episodes.  Meanwhile, the task force soon discovers they have a mole in their midst.

Directed by Jeremiah Zagar and Salli Richardson Whitfield, "Task" is one of the best crime miniseries I've seen in a while.  It doesn't particularly strive for authenticity regarding law enforcement procedures, but rather it's aiming for a more genuine picture of the wider community.  This is a fairly rare thing in mainstream media.  Like "Mare of Easttown," most of the characters speak with Delco accents, nobody is very well off, and broken families are a major theme.  The cast is full of familiar names, and it's no wonder, because the material is fantastic and the characters are unusually nuanced and well written.  Tom Pelphrey and Mark Ruffalo give excellent performances as struggling fathers, but Emilia Jones is the one who really impressed me.  I've seen her in several other projects before this, including as the lead in "CODA," but "Task" is where she really got my attention, playing a young woman trying to hold her disintegrating family together, to her own detriment. 

What I value most about "Task" from a more meta standpoint is that it's not afraid to be a character drama about real people, and specifically real people who are not good at what they're supposed to be doing.  Robbie is a terrible criminal who botches a robbery so badly in the first episode that he instigates a manhunt.  Tom isn't a very good FBI agent either, and two of his team are downright incompetent at times.  However, these are all interesting, realistic people whose actions  do follow a sound internal logic when you get to know them.  Several of the storylines unfold like Greek tragedies or episodes of "The Wire," where wider systemic issues or personal flaws are what doom the characters.  I'll warn here that "Task" is a bleak story, featuring many deeply damaged people, and several of the deaths that occur are upsetting.  However, the ending is a hopeful one.  

I was initially hesitant about watching "Task," because I haven't had much interest in terrible stories about terrible people lately.  And that's not what "Task" is at all.  Yes, it's about crime and criminals, and there are scenes of violence.  However, its outlook is very humane and sympathetic to nearly everyone involved in the story on both sides.  And I find that a very valuable thing.  

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At Last, "The Long Walk"

An adaptation of Stephen King's "The Long Walk" likely would have been more effective a few decades ago, when the spectres of past wars loomed larger in the American collective memory.  However, the film that finally did get made is one that could have only been made now, by director Francis Lawrence, after helming four "Hunger Games" movies that proved that there was an audience for movies about dystopian death games featuring children.  However, none of the "Hunger Games" movies are anything close to as dark and violent and emotionally wrenching as "The Long Walk."  

Set in a dystopian United States suffering deep poverty in the wake of a major war, we watch fifty young men and older teenagers participate in a yearly endurance contest where they walk until only one is left.  If they fall below the speed of three miles per hour too many times, they are eliminated permanently.  Contestants include Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), our major protagonist, Pete McVries (David Jonsson), who he becomes friends with, the troublemaker Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), unflappable Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and others played by Tut Nyot, Joshua Odjick, Ben Wang, and Jordan Gonzalez.  Overseeing their progress and providing encouragement via megaphone is the Major (Mark Hamill), a grizzled representative of the totalitarian government.

This audience for this kind of movie is  limited, naturally, so "The Long Walk" is a fairly low budget affair.  There are no particularly showy effects sequences and the crowds of onlookers from the Stephen King story are largely absent.  However, this allows "The Long Walk" a rare amount of freedom to be as graphic and vulgar and as unapologetically existential as it should be.  The deaths are very explicit and realistically brutal.  The walkers interact the way we expect a group of teenage boys to interact, conversing with constant profanity, crude humor, and slights against each other's masculinity.  We watch them deal with every physical challenge, including how to urinate and defecate during the contest.  But perhaps what's most surprising is that much of the movie is built on conversations that Ray and Pete have about their lives, the state of the world, and how to survive their ordeal both mentally and spiritually.  The pace of the film is never slow, but it is very deliberate, with a lot of long, lingering shots, and resulting in a mood that is often more meditative than I was expecting.      

It's strange to have to point out that "The Long Walk" is as much of a character drama as it is an action or horror picture, but this is probably the best major film about male camaraderie we've had in years.  Despite being competitors, most of the kids in "The Long Walk" almost immediately band together to help and support each other, with only a few outliers.  The deaths are horrible every time, and we see the boys risk their lives again and again to save each other, or try to stave off the inevitable.  There's a particular timelessness to this version of the story, where the characters don't talk like modern American teenagers, but the behavior feels universal and very immediate.  There are echoes of older war movies, naturally, since Stephen King originally wrote "The Long Walk" in the Vietnam War era, but the messages about young men dealing with violence and resistance and futility are still painfully relevant right now.      

Those familiar with the original King story will notice that there are some changes, some small and some large.  Some are just to make the story more filmable - slowing down the pace of the walkers, cutting down on the body horror, and reducing the number of participants.  Some are far more substantive.  Ray Garraty is given much more material, including a new character arc that might raise some eyebrows.  However, as someone who has been waiting for this adaptation for a couple of decades now, I'm happy to report that none of the changes in any way tone down the content of the original story, and the adaptation is ultimately true to King's work in all the ways that matter.    

Finally, the cast is excellent and the best reason to see the film.  Hoffman and Jonsson are fantastic as the leads, but many of the most memorable kids are the ones in the minor roles.  Judy Greer appears briefly as Garraty's mother, and adds so much.  The earnestness of the characters  and relative lack of satirical elements may feel old fashioned at times, but the performances are anything but.  "The Long Walk" joins that very short list of projects that escaped development hell after far too long, and it turns out that it was worth the wait.

  

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Digging Into "The Lowdown"

From FX and Sterlin Harjo, the co-creator of "Reservation Dogs," comes "The Lowdown," a comedic crime series about a Tulsa investigative reporter loosely based on Lee Roy Chapman.  It is highly entertaining, and easily the best new show I've seen all year.

Ethan Hawke plays our hero, a scruffy writer and bookstore proprietor named Lee Raybon, who is always low on funds and habitually pushing his luck.  However, his most defining trait is that he styles himself a "Truthstorian," who is doggedly committed to uncovering the truth.  His latest article, about the powerful and influential Washberg family, appears to have led to the suicide of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), but Lee thinks it was murder.  Suspects include Dale's widow Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), his brother and gubernatorial candidate Donald Washberg (Kyle McLachlan), and some other suspicious characters played by Tracy Letts, Paul Sparks, and Scott Shepherd.  Among Lee's allies are a sympathetic private investigator named Marty (Keith David), an antiquities dealer named Ray (Michael Hitchcock), a reliable employee, Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn), an unreliable employee, Waylon (Cody Lightning), and Lee's thirteen year-old daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Arnstrong).

"The Lowdown" has the air of a throwback for a lot of reasons, as it belongs in both the neo-western and crime fiction genres, and centers around a man with the nearly extinct profession of independent writer for a long-form print publication.  More than that, it's about a self-aggrandizing, barely functional dreamer with a lofty moral code, who seems to be patterning himself off of the pulp heroes of the Jim Thompson paperbacks that he cherishes.  Ethan Hawke plays Lee Raybon with relish, a charming scarecrow of a man who is always sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, and always making excuses for his utter inability to be a reliable father, employer, friend, or partner.  He consorts with a parade of eccentrics, who all grumble about his flightiness, but clearly enjoy his company.  As someone who avoided Ethan Hawk movies in my youth after finding him insufferable in "Reality Bites," Lee Rayburn strikes me as a natural extension of the pretentious young slacker he played in that movie, if he were from Oklahoma and got a lot funnier and more undignified with time.

And "The Lowdown" being set in and around Tulsa is a big part of the show's appeal.  The city is portrayed as an eclectic melting pot with major Native-American and African-American populations.  As Lee digs into the death of Dale Washberg, he keeps coming across old issues of stolen land, ugly bigotry, and those in power having too many secrets.  Eventually a Native street artist named Chutto (Mato Wayuhi) and his grandfather Arthur (Graham Greene) are caught up in the mystery, and Lee has to acknowledge his own privilege as a white man carelessly blundering into other people's business more than once.  The culture clashes are often played for laughs, but the show does quietly make a point of keeping several minority characters at the forefront, and forcing the hero to weigh his own need to tell the truth against what is best for the community he values and depends on.  

I like that "The Lowdown" isn't in a big hurry to solve its central mystery.  Several episodes have an appealing hangout vibe, where a guest star or two drops in for some shenanigans.  Peter Dinklage's episode is a fun one, for instance.  I especially appreciate the looseness of the show's format, where there's room for humorous digressions, a romance or two, and even opportunities for Lee to learn to be a better father. Lee's life is complicated, and keeping on top of everything means constantly switching gears from one situation to the next.  We're constantly hearing snippets of people telling stories and enjoying stories that we'll never have the full context for.  It's a good sign when minor characters keep surprising you with new dimensions every time they reappear, and you wish that there was time to get to know all of them better.  Even some of the villains come off as surprisingly well-rounded and relatable.  

It's interesting timing that "The Lowdown" premiered pretty close to the release of "One Battle After Another," which doesn't really share much in the way of genre or subject matter, but has a very  similar vibe.  You have a constantly floundering white guy, playing at being much cooler than he actually is, chasing after a romanticized ideal of heroism.  Both ultimately discover that they are at their best when they're part of a multi-racial community fighting against a common enemy, and supporting the next generation.  "The Lowdown" may not have the feature film fireworks of "One Battle After Another," but I'd argue it gets its points across just as well, and is definitely just as entertaining.  

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"A Big Bold Beautiful" Bust

Negative reviews are harder for me to write than positive or mixed ones, because I don't like dwelling on disappointments.  However, I think it's important to examine why certain projects don't work onscreen, just as it's important to examine the ones that do.  Our case in point today is Kogonada's "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey," which is a fantasy fable where two people follow the instructions of a magic GPS to go on an impossible existential road trip into each other's psyches.  And I'm the kind of movie watcher who's usually very receptive to heartwarming nonsense like this.  

Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie play David and Sarah, two very attractive people who each separately rent cars from a strange rental service being run by cryptic, mysterious people played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline.  They attend a wedding together, feel an initial spark, and are ready to leave it at that.  However, the rental car's magic GPS voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith asks David if he wants to go on a "big, bold, beautiful journey," which leads the pair to a series of magical doors that send them to the past, to impossible liminal places, and of course, inevitably, to each other.

I've liked director Kogonada's previous films, "Columbus" and "After Yang," but those were very small scale, meditative art house films, designed for very limited audiences.  "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" is aiming for a bigger, broader audience, but retains the same sort of slow-paced, melancholy atmosphere and deeply introspective storytelling.  There are attempts to jazz up the proceedings with a few brief action sequences, a musical number, and plenty of picturesque cinematography, but in the end the narrative is a gloomy slog that isn't entertaining.  David and Sarah are supposed to fall in love, confront their pasts, and heal their wounded hearts so they can go on to live happily ever after together as better human beings.  However, neither of them come off as particularly genuine or interesting human beings, and it's tough to care about what happens to them.

Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie are lovely, winning performers who have no chemistry together onscreen.  They also frequently feel adrift when trying to navigate scenes where they're supposed to be revisiting episodes from their pasts.  There are a few discrete sections that I liked, late in the film, where David and Sarah are forced to confront their exes to discuss their failed relationships, and later have an honest heart-to-heart about their personality flaws.  These actually feel substantive and push the characters towards new emotional territory.  However, most of the time the film feels meandering and far too self-serious.  The magical GPS and rental car employees are clearly fantasy creatures, but seem wary of being too whimsical.  The few attempts at abrasive humor aren't funny, and I was surprised that the pushy GPS never became an actual character, who might have lightened up the mood a bit.

This magical realist premise might seem like a challenge, but I can think of several similar films that figured out how to make it work.  "All of Us Strangers" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" also had love stories that unfolded in metaphysically dubious circumstances.  The Ben Stiller version of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" was less successful, but still managed to generate a kind of propulsive emotional momentum that's utterly missing from "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey."  With movies like this, you have to wholly embrace being in a fantasy story, and "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" displays far too much trepidation to have any fun with itself.  I suspect that Kogonada was trying to ensure that this wouldn't be mistaken for a children's fantasy film, and ended up undercutting himself.

And on that note, one interesting aspect of the film is that it appears to be taking a lot of inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai anime, specifically the way that some of the fantasy and transitional elements are handled.  Note that "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" is longtime Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi's first score for a Hollywood movie, which adds to the effect. There are multiple scenes that I felt would have worked better in animation, and I can't help wondering what  "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" would have looked like as an anime.  Or with non-movie star leads and more go-for-broke fantasy sequences.  Or with a director a little more seasoned and a little less closed-in.

The best thing that I can say about "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" is that it's big and beautiful.  Let's work on being a little more bold next time.

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A Trip To "11.22.63"

Before we get started, I'd like to point out that this Hulu produced miniseries, one of the earliest original titles to premiere on the platform, is no longer on Hulu, but is currently streaming on Tubi.  How's that for a sign of the times?  

2025 was been a banner year for Stephen King projects, so I thought I'd catch up on one that I'd missed - the adaptation of King's time travel novel "11/22/63."  Students of American history will recognize that this was the date when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  "11.22.63." follows the attempts of a man named Jake Epping (James Franco) to stop the assassination after he discovers a way to go back in time to the 1960s.  

So, we have a popular "What if?" scenario being treated with a rare degree of seriousness, but this is still a genre show that requires some genre conventions.  There are a lot of narrative shortcuts in play, such as much of the research being handed to Jake from the start by another, older time traveler named Al (Chris Cooper), who failed at the same mission.  There's also the idea that the past resists being changed by pushing back against major disruptions in any way that it can.  This means that one of the major villains of the piece is an unseen force creating literal deus ex machina plot twists every time the heroes get too close to accomplishing certain goals.  A major new character was also created for the show, Bill Turcotte (George McKay), a young man who becomes Jake's ally in the past and gives him somebody to explain things to.   

The major criticism of the show compared to the novel that I've seen is that it plays up the melodrama while being much less detailed in its examination of the Kennedy assasination.  Initially Jake has to confirm a lot of information, such as whether Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber) was set up, whether he acted alone, and whether there was a conspiracy behind the assassination.  However, the focus quickly shifts to interpersonal conflicts.  The show wisely spends a good deal of time showing Jake's difficulties adjusting to life in the 1960s, and his romance with a librarian named Sadie (Sarah Gadon), who is in a troubled marriage.  The pacing is good, however, and there's no issue with filling eight episodes, or coming to a satisfying conclusion.

"11.22.63." is at its best in its earliest episodes, where it's setting up the rules of the universe and following Jake's initial exploration of life in the '60s.  This is also where we have the most involvement from Chris Cooper, who is easily the best actor in the ensemble.  I like that the series immediately creates a sense of paranoia and discomfort about living out of one's time, even if Jake is well suited to his new life and finds certain aspects of the past better than 2016.  While any supernatural elements are kept fairly low-key, and "11.22.63." avoids the tropes of many other Stephen King adaptations, it's still got enough of an unnerving sensibility that it feels of a piece with the rest of King's work.   

James Franco has retreated from the spotlight since certain allegations came to light in 2019, and I'd forgotten how ubiquitous he was for a few years in the 2000s and 2010s.  While I'm fairly cool on his performance here, he does fine in "11.22.63.," and the vague resemblance to James Dean certainly helps thematically.  He manages to balance Jake Epping being an intelligent schoolteacher with also being a dramatic hothead who is prone to impulsive decisions.  However, I was more impressed with Sarah Gadon, who doesn't usually get roles this prominent, and certainly makes the most of it. 

Of all the Stephen King event miniseries, this is definitely one of the better ones.  I recommend giving it a look, especially if you're apprehensive of King's usual horror stories.  However, history buffs may want to  stick to the book.        

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