Category: Netflix

Pulled Punches: My review of “Sly”

November 16, 2023 / Krupsch / 0 Comments

What: Sly

Type: Documentary Feature 95 Minutes

On: Netflix

Worth Watching: Not really, unless Sylvester Stallone was influential in your life.

Score: 2 brain numbing upper cuts (2/5)

After watching the exceptional “Arnold” – I had high expectations for “Sly” – the Netflix documentary about Sylvester Stallone. Sadly, this particular doc is the lesser event in every way. It’s shorter, less insightful, makes a smaller impact and overall is the two things a documentary about Sylvester Stallone should not be: tepid and boring.

It’s hard not to compare the two documentaries because Schwarzenegger and Stallone have been compared throughout their whole career. In the 80’s war of the box office, each one tried to out-do the other as the stories got dumber, the guns got bigger, and they both were household names. However, when it comes to the presentation of life stories, Arnold emerges a hero and Sly falls off a cliff hitting every painful rock on the way down.

The visual choices made for Sly seemed primed straight from the Rocky. Gritty, dimly lit action shots of Stallone moving from one place to another are so stark it’s like watching a home video taken by the movers as they unpack the truck to ensure nothing is broken. The narrative choices also reflect a hero who, even though he has an Academy Award for screenwriting, has a hard time putting sentences together and just sort of huffs through history. While Arnold speaks introspectively of his abusive father as a “broken man from a village of broken men,” Stallone says of his abusive dad, “He was always physical! He hit me! It was hard!” Choppy dialogue and sometimes inarticulate thoughts are punctuated (as sweet relief) by interviews with others – Talia Shire, Arnold, Stallone’s brother, and Henry Winkler – who sort of re-explain what Stallone is trying to say.

The abrupt “And then this happened” narrative (“No one would cast me, so I wrote a film for myself”) bounces from one event to the next with no nuance or details. Sadly, Stallone’s over-reliance on Botox and facelift procedures makes it a hard movie to watch sometimes. The more the camera lingers on his unnaturally lifted eyebrows and bloated face, the more alien he appears. The entire film suffers from “tell not show.” Stallone meanders around talking about movies he made but instead of seeing clips from those films, we are watching him stare out windows or gesture at the rocky statue in his home. The few clips we do see don’t always match the voice-over narration.

There are interesting topics that arise in the film – how he actually wrote 17 screenplays before Rocky, the fact that with Adrienne he was able to do what most Hollywood writers can’t – create a well-rounded, authentic female character who is neither a victim nor a vixen, and how his wife and kids (who we learn nothing about) are everything to him. As quickly as these ideas arise, they vanish like smoke before we can grasp on and get something.

Like most people who were kids in the 80’s I grew up watching Rocky and Rambo – cheering for the underdog and singing Eye of the Tiger. I liked Stallone then, and I like him now. This documentary, however, shows little of the man, the myth, or the movies that made him.

The Price of Longing: My Review of Escaping Twin Flames

November 11, 2023 / Krupsch / 0 Comments

What: Escaping Twin Flames

Type: Documentary Series – 3 Episodes

On: Netflix

Worth Watching: Yes, particularly if you are or know someone living through making decisions out of loneliness.

Score: 4 flaming cups of tea (4/5)

You can be alone without being lonely. However, you can also be in a room full of people and be desperately lonely. That’s nothing to feel shame about. We are social beings, and many of us long for a person to join us in an intimate connection. The more pronounced that longing, the extreme decisions can be made from our loneliness.

The “Twin Flames Universe” did what all MLM-High Maintenance Organizations do – preyed upon a natural vulnerability until its members were financial ruined, psychologically broken, and damaged beyond reason. This documentary, made by the same people who made The Vow, follows several stories of people who joined, gave, ached, and crashed on the rocks of reality.

If you liked The Vow, you’ll be mesmerized by the horror of TFU (the Twin Flames Universe) and find it a similar, only oddly worse, story. In The Vow, Keith Raniere abused people’s longing for success and esteem. In TFU, Jeff and Shalia Ayan abuse people’s longing for love. Raniere profited from over-priced classes, sexual servitude, and branded women with his initials. The Ayans profit from over-priced classes, financial/unpaid employment, and make (non-trans) followers change gender including having reassignment surgery so they could be “twin flamed” with someone else in the group because they have more women than men. Yeah. Let that sink in.

The thing that strikes me, even worse than The Vow, is just how idiotic and unworthy Jeff Ayan is to be listened to about anything. He’s dumb, rude, sloppy, and honestly, I wouldn’t follow him to my mail box. But I’m not lonely, and I can see how that lens, coupled with desperate hope, would lead his ideas to make some sort of hopeful sense. Just how dumb is Jeff Ayan?

1. “I told Jeff that I can’t keep contacting <the man who Jeff said was her Twin Flame> because he got a protection order. Jeff told me, “Protection orders aren’t real.” (she spent a month in jail for stalking).

“A guy from the group IM’d me. Jeff said he was my twin flame. I was 19. He was 33, was under house arrest for drugs, had mental health problems and was unemployed. Jeff said Twin Flames don’t care about those things and I had to move to Oklahoma and be his wife cause or I would be alone forever.” (after a 3-year abusive relationship she finally left).
Jeff grows a scraggly beard and shows a picture of Jesus (white, nicely bearded colonial Jesus) and says that wasn’t a picture of the first Christ (got that part right), but it was a prophecy of Jeff coming as the second Christ (wait, what?).

The lesson is – people don’t follow men like Keith Raniere or Jeff Ayan because of who THEY are. They are scummy idiots. They follow them because of the longing – the terrible soul eating view that they need something – love, success, money, wisdom – to be happy and they believe these jerks can give it to them. If we want to stop the pain of MLM-High Maintenance groups like this – we can’t focus on the perpetrators. We must continue to affirm and support people who are suffering. Empathy is a big part of the answer here.

The film is well resourced, professionally filmed, and has the right balance of fact/feeling. Watch, learn and run tell the others in your life – you don’t need a $2000 class in anything to be happy.

November 11, 2023 / Krupsch / 0 Comments

What: Documentary

Type: Limited Series – 4 Episodes

On: Netflix

Worth Watching: No. Overly long, nothing new, and nothing gained.

Score: – 2 Smoldering cigarette butts and a trigger warning (2/5)

I was intrigued when I saw a documentary was being filmed about the Haysum killing.

When I moved to Virginia in 2007 I was offered a job at 2 places –Fluvanna Women’s Prison (where Elizabeth Haysum was held) and the Williamsburg AIDS Network (WAN). The prison was under a 6-month hiring freeze, and I didn’t want to wait so I took the WAN job. When I was studying Fluvanna for the interview, I learned all about Haysum, who was one of their most “notorious” and pampered inmates. She was kept in a pod by herself (but not in isolation) and she was allowed to write a column in a local newspaper about life in prison. The reason? She had already been there 20 years and had at least 25 more to go. Her case was “famous”, and she appeared to still suffers from rich white girl syndrome.

“Til Murder Do We Part” promises a rich he said/she said whodunit about the brutal stabbing death of Haysum’s parents by the two college age lovers. What it delivers has all the excitement of an old school article on microfiche. You literally could read a PowerPoint slide presentation of the murder and trials and learn everything they show here.

He said: Soering claims he bought the alibi movie tickets and stayed in DC while she went to Bedford and murdered her parents. His confession in Britain was false, because he loved her and wanted to take the blame (until she broke up with him and he discovered the blame could mean life in prison).

She said: Haysum stayed in DC, bought the tickets, and he went and killed her parents. She admits she wanted them dead – because they were trying to control her life, had a lot of money she could inherit, and there was a history of maternal sexual abuse. But, according to Haysum, Soering was the hand that held the knife.

After a flight to England, extradition to the US, and 2 trials – both were found guilty. She was sentenced to 2 consecutive 45-year terms as an accessory. He was sentenced to life.

The series gets all the recorded facts right and lays them out in a row – but for a 4-episode program it adds stunningly little context. “He was a jerk, no one liked him but Elizabeth” is all we really learn about Jens. “She had a drug problem and hated boarding school” is what we learn about Elizabeth. Much of the runtime is just re-readings of their cringy adolescent melodramatic love letters. You know – the kind you wrote in high school and turn red if you read them out loud now?

The series hits a low with its treatment – then and now – of Elizabeth’s claim of a life of sexual abuse from her mother (a distant relative of Lady Astor who thought she as above it all). We watch a lawyer badger the clearly traumatized young woman in the 80’s, then in an age where a documentarian should be at least “trauma informed,” the narrative digs into the “well, that was true” aspect with no empathy, context, or fairness. It is traumatizing to watch how ignorantly this topic is handled.

Both Haysum and Soering were released from prison early (with John Grissom convincing his Democrat friends (via money) that 18 is too young to have such a harsh sentence – the back-end shady deal would have made a much more interesting story) and deported. They had been incarcerated for 33 years. From Canada, Elizabeth is in seclusion and expresses regret. From German Soering won’t shut up and is still banging his “I was innocent” drum that is as unbelievable today as it was then.

If you are intrigued by this tale of rich kids, dead parents, and court – google up an article and read it. Don’t spend your life’s precious time on this plodding retelling.

Sentimental Journey: My Review of “Saint of Second Chances”

November 9, 2023 / Krupsch / 0 Comments

What: Saint of Second Chances

Type: Documentary feature – 1 hr 33 minutes

Where: Netflix

Worth Watching: Not really, UNLESS you love those “old timey baseball stories” old guys tell you in a bar over a beer.

Verdict 3 fouls and a pop-out.

I love baseball, and I love baseball stories but Saints of Second Chances is trying so hard to entertain you with the saga of Mike Veeck (“rhymes with wreck”) then decides to just go full out sentimental that the result is very little baseball and a lot “hey one time. this guy actually….”

Bill Veeck, Mike’s father, represented the last of a bygone age when normal people (not billionaires) could be owners of a baseball team for the love of the game. As the owner of the under-funded sagging Chicago White Sox, Veeck turned to his son Mike to create buzz and revenue. Mike, instead, creates disco demolition night – which started as a dog whistle for young, angry, white males (you know – the grandfathers of those “you will not replace us” tiki torch nazis in Charlottesville) , and ended as a riot that destroyed the field, a musical genre, and his father’s career/life.

The story starts a redemptive arc wherein Mike leaves baseball, starts boozing, drugging, has a son and ignores him, etc. Eventually he ends up at the independent league Saint Paul Saints where he gets a chance to make things right. Except. He doesn’t.

The story creates a “The Natural”-esque myth about the power of baseball and a daughter’s love to change a man, but the reality is – he doesn’t change, and the “Saints” had very little to do with any of the redemptions in the film. (It claims they redeemed Daryll Strawberry, but he literally spent 6 weeks there).

The tough part for me is that Mike Veeck is an unlikeable character. His laugh is so annoying it made my spine twitch every time he does it (and he does it a lot). Bragging and blowing about things no one should be proud of = he operates on the predecessor of “fake it til you make it” (ask Elizabeth Holmes how well that works out) – which was ‘What could happen?” – There is no evidence in the film he ever learns that jumping into crazy ideas without looking at the risk is not a great policy. He consistently repeats the error. Even at his most humbled, dealing with the illness and death of his daughter, he cackles and chuckles about his mishaps. In talking about his “great regrets” – he shows no regret.

I had always heard about the “Disco Demolition” from the music history side of the event – a rock DJ was fired because his station changed formats to Disco. He gathers a following of angry young white people who felt disco and funk (the music popular in black, brown, and gay communities) was replacing their precious head banging and in a stunt to feed the flames, causes a riot at Comisky park that served as a signal to the end of the Disco craze.

I was interested in the baseball side – but there’s not a lot to it. Veeck wasn’t a racist/homophobe/rabble rouser. He was just a guy trying to make money who thought “Hey, what could happen?”. After the ruin, he does it several more times until his wife (the real hero of this story) says “You need to grow up or you’re going to miss your daughter’s whole life.”

Once the film realizes Mike’s exploits have given you all the beery chuckles it has, it turned into a father spending the last days with his daughter sentimental tearjerker. I feel badly for his loss, but the Saints had nothing to do with it or helping him. Veeck is not a bad guy, and he tries to be a good guy, but it’s really not enough to carry a film.

Shot in re-enactments and hyper-cut video, the movie jabs you with it’s elbow all the way through saying “It’s funny? Right? Right?”

It will wear you down, though leave you none-the-wiser. I really wanted this to be a better movie.

For a good movie about the power of local baseball and glory days of bygone teams – watch “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” (also on Netflix).

Fall of the House of Sackler…um…Usher. No Spoiler Review

October 21, 2023 / Krupsch / 0 Comments

Fall of the House of Sackler…um…Usher. My no spoiler review.

What: Fall of the House of Usher

Type: Limited Series (8 Eps) Horror

On: Netflix

Worth Watching: YES – particularly if you are a Poe fan.

My Score: 4 perfect Ravens and 1 missing its wings (4.5 out of 5)

Mike Flanagan can tell one hell of a story. Of course we knew that from the elegant brilliance of The Haunting of Hill House. Through ups and downs, he’s gotten to be a better writer and grown (or recovered) as a director. He’s learned from the only complaint about the thoughtful Midnight Mass (the glacial slow burn start), and the volume of complaints about the terribly boring Midnight Club (dreary backdrops and moody teens are not enough to carry a series).

Fall of the House of Usher starts with a bang and never really stops – it is interesting, visceral, visually stunning and gnarly, and while it doesn’t really give us a faithful Fall of the House of Usher (other than to use it as a frame) – it brings up many of Poe’s works to give something more than an adaptation – it gives us a modern example of what Edgar Allen Poe wanted us to know (about lost loves, guilty acts, devilish secrets and the plight of the rich and the poor) and how he wanted us to feel.

The writing and directing thrives with a wealth of good decisions including:

* The homage to Poe throughout, using his poems, stories, characters.

* The modernization/antiquity balance. Characters start their speeches with the same poetic etherealism Poe used, but about 3 sentences in revert to modern speak and common language. They have their Poe names (Prospero, Napoleon, Victorine) but quickly revert to names we can deal with (Perry, Leo, Vic). Best is the siblings changing of Frederick to Frauderick which fits his duplicity perfectly.

* Giving each of the kids their own Poe story/episode to explore their death, while stringing Roderick (the stand-in for Poe) and Lenore through each episode.

* Sticking with the Flanaverse Cast – Henry Thomas, Kate Siegal, etc. Carla Gugino as “Verna” (you can work that anagram out for yourself) is brilliant, alluring, hypnotic and creepy.

*The Soundtrack – perfect.

* The use of intelligent and thought provoking monologues. Best in the group is Roderick’s “When life give you lemons” speech (note: Make lemonade is not the Usher answer), and Camille’s “We don’t really make anything” discussion of how the wealthy don’t do any of the actual “work” of their riches.

The only bad choice was turning the Ushers into the Sackler family. When using Fall of the House of Usher as a frame, the story drives forward about the Ushers getting obscenely wealthy off a drug that they claim is non-addictive but is, of course, ruining countless lives. Between the many fictional movies and documentaries about the Sacklers, it just seems like a retread.

Do we love the idea of the Sacklers paying for their inhumanity in supernatural ways? Yes. Does the backstory of young Roderick and Madeline doing dirty pharma deeds make the series better? No. By midway, every time a flashback would take us to the younger days, I was instantly bored. And why is Annabel Lee so homely and dull?

My favorite Eps were Masque of the Red Death and GoldBug.

It’s got some jump scares, some deep thoughts, eye popping visuals, and it is worth the time you give it. Come for the comeuppance, stay for the Raven.