Movie Review: Tabu

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Movie Review: Tabu

Tabu
Directed by: Miguel Gomes.
Written by: Miguel Gomes and Mariana Ricardo.
Starring: Teresa Madruga (Pilar), Laura Soveral (Old Aurora), Ana Moreira (Young Aurora), Henrique Espírito Santo (Old Ventura), Carloto Cotta (Young Ventura), Isabel Muñoz Cardoso (Santa), Ivo Müller (Aurora's Husband), Manuel Mesquita (Mário).

I pride myself on being a fairly adventuresome film watcher. I go see everything from blockbusters to indies, from foreign films to documentaries, to the films that everyone sees to the films that almost no one sees. Miguel Gomes is one of those directors who makes films that send those strange film magazines into a tizzy, but whose films are barely seen by anyone else. I know because I read those magazines, and recently one of them – Cinemascope – not only put his latest film, Tabu, on the cover but named Gomes one of the 50 best directors under 50. I remember hearing of his last film – Our Beloved Month of August – because it did so well on the Indie Wire and Village Voice year end critics’ survey, where it stood out because somehow I had never even heard of it before then. So when I had a chance to see Tabu, I jumped at it – I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I must say, I was disappointed. While Tabu is a marvelous looking film – in glorious black and white, that uses the style of silent film for two of its three parts, the movie failed to engage me in the least – either emotionally or intellectually. After a while, I just grew bored.

The movie opens with a silent film, with narration, of an intrepid explorer in Africa. The style reminded me of those old newsreels you sometimes see, as the man braves the jungles of Africa, and the people and animals around it. This sequence was fascinating to me, because I could never figure out what the hell was happening – was this just a surreal joke? Would it build to something?

We then flash to the first real part of the movie – entitled Paradise Lost. In it, a middle class woman in Portugal, Pilar (Teresa Madruga) goes to the train station to meet the young Polish woman who is supposed to board with her for a while – only to be rejected by the girl, who pretends to be someone else. She then goes home, and receives the first of many phone calls and visits from Aurora – the old woman who lives across the hall and Santa, her live-in African caretaker. Aurora has a daughter somewhere in America, who hardly ever visits or calls. Santa is her only real companion, and she doesn’t like Aurora very much – which is understandable, because Aurora doesn’t seem like a very nice person – just an annoying old lady who imposes herself on everyone around her. When she dies, we meet an old man named Ventura – who will narrate the final segment of the film – Paradise. Again, this segment is made in the style of a silent film, which Ventura narrates. It takes place in his youth, in Africa, where he meets and falls in love with Aurora – who ends up pregnant with his child, even though he is married to someone else. Of course, this will not end well for anyone – and a murder will take place, although not the person we expect Aurora to kill.

Reading some reviews of Tabu – most of which were rapturous in their praise – I discover that most people see the film as a kind of statement on Portugal’s past imperialism in Africa. It is true that each of the three segments have some connection to Africa – and see the African people as some sort of exotic “other”, that no one really takes seriously on their own terms. In the prologue and the final segment, no African characters make any impression at all – they are simply in the background, for exotic effect on the characters’ lives. In the middle segment, the only African character is Santa – and even she hangs in the background, as if not sure she is allowed to have an opinion on anything.

If that is the point of the movie, it’s an easy point, and is made early and often throughout the film. It may have been a good idea to give a real role to an African character, but then, I supposed that is beside the point – the point being that while Portugal had control over parts of Africa, like Aurora has control over Santa – they don’t for a second consider their own thoughts or feelings – just how they can serve themselves. A fair point, but not one to build an entire movie around – at least not this movie, which focuses on the shallow lives of the Portuguese characters – which again, may well be the point, but not a very interesting one.

Compare Gomes’ film to that of another recent Portuguese master – Pedro Costa. Costa’s film, In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth – really are masterpieces, even if most people have never heard of them. In them, Costa mixes fiction and documentary, and repeats scenes to make a point. But the people in his movie snap into sharp focus in their sad, lonely lives. Gomes’ film is all style and message, and never engages in terms of story or character. The subtext of the movie may well be interesting – but in order to get people to read for the subtext, you at least have to engage them on the text level. For me anyway, Tabu doesn’t. However if it sounds interesting to you, maybe it will be.

Movie Review: Rust & Bone

Friday, December 21, 2012

Movie Review: Rust & Bone

Rust and Bone
Directed by: Jacques Audiard.
Written by: Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain based on the story by Craig Davidson.
Starring: Marion Cotillard (Stéphanie), Matthias Schoenaerts (Alain van Versch), Armand Verdure (Sam), Céline Sallette (Louise), Corinne Masiero (Anna), Bouli Lanners (Martial), Jean-Michel Correia (Richard), Mourad Frarema (Foued), Yannick Choirat (Simon).

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a melodrama about two damaged people, who help save each other. It’s a somewhat odd choice for Audiard as a follow-up to his masterpiece A Prophet, which is one of the best crime dramas/prison movies ever made. This film is a more standard issue melodrama – one that tries, and succeeds, in trying to make the audience feel sympathy for its two main characters. While the film is nowhere near as good as A Prophet was – it is still a fascinating, heartfelt little film – and contains two excellent lead performances.

The first character we meet is Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), who for reasons the movie never fully explains, no has custody of his five year old son Sam that he barely knows. He travels to live with his sister Anna (Corrine Masiero) and her husband that he hasn’t seen in years. They don’t have much, but welcome Ali and Sam into their home. Ali has no discernible skills – he used to box and Thai box – but he doesn’t much do that anymore. He gets work as a bouncer – and later as a security guard, and working for a security consultant, who specializes in placing illegal cameras in business, that allow the bosses to monitor their employees. It is while he is a bouncer that he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) at a club. She gets hit, and he takes her home – and although she has a boyfriend, he gives her his number anyway.

Stephanie is a whale trainer at park that looks like Marin World to me. We see her during one of her performances – set to Katy Perry’s Fireworks – as she and the other trainers direct the whale what to do. What starts as a fun episode, begins to take on an ominous tone – we know something is about to happen, well before it does. What happens is a horrific accident that takes both of Stephanie’s legs above the knee. Wherever her boyfriend goes, it’s clear he is not sticking around. Her friends and family feel awkward around her – and soon with no one left to turn to, she calls Ali. Surprisingly, Ali treats her like a normal person – which is precisely what she needs. Ali is no saint – we see him cruelly lashing out at his son, and eventually, he’ll get into the world of underground fighting. Both of these people are hurting, and need each other, or else they may just spiral downwards to a point of no return.

The reason to see the movie is the two excellent lead performances. Schoenaerts role will probably remind viewers of his role in Bullhead – an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Last Year – where he played a man with a secret, who feels grossly inadequate, and overcompensates for their inadequacy by building his muscles. That was a great performance, in a movie that tried to needlessly add complexity with an absurd plot. Ali is a similar character – although more vocal than his character in Bullhead, both men feel inadequate, and try to mask their inner pain with the outer shell they show the world. Both men are angry and prone to violence – Ali has just found a way to release that anger in a (marginally) more acceptable way. If Bullhead announces a major new acting talent, than Rust and Bone confirms it. And Cotillard is Schoenaerts equal in every way in this movie. She plays a similar role in some ways – a woman who likes to be desired by men, who used to love when men stared at her, and fantasized about her, but now has to deal with the fact that everyone sees her differently now – not as an object to lust after, but a woman to be pitied. Through Ali, she gets back out into the world – is able to start seeing herself differently than before. She also learns though that Ali may not be someone you want to count on. This is a very internal performance by Cotillard – she doesn’t explode, like many actors would giving what her character goes through, but simply tries to bury it down deep inside herself. It’s some of the best work she has ever done.

I’m not quite sure I buy the ending of the movie. The Craig Davidson short story that was used as a jumping off point for this story had a much darker ending than this – and it seemed more appropriate to the story. And yet, emotionally anyway, I prefer this ending. I may not quite believe it – but I want to. 

Movie Review: The Impossible

Movie Review: The Impossible

The Impossible
Directed by: Juan Antonio Bayona.
Written by: Sergio G. Sánchez.
Starring: Ewan McGregor (Henry), Naomi Watts (Maria), Tom Holland (Lucas), Geraldine Chaplin (Old Woman), Oaklee Pendergast (Simon), Samuel Joslin (Thomas), Johan Sundberg (Daniel), Christopher Alan Byrd (Dieter).

One of the strange things about movies about events where thousands or millions of people die – whether it be the Holocaust or some sort of natural disaster – is that the movie are almost always about the few lucky people who survive. I understand this urge – after all even in the darkest events in human history, audiences want some sort of hope to shine through. This is why we get so many films about the brave people, and the brave Jews, who hid from the Nazis and somehow survived the Holocaust. And it’s why we get a film like The Impossible – which is about the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004 – a natural disaster that killed 230,000 people – and is about the unbelievable but true story of a family who somehow survived. I understand the urge to find a positive story out of a negative one, it just seems odd to me.

The Impossible is about a British family living in Japan, who goes on a Christmas vacation in Thailand. After a few brief establishing scenes – where everything seems idyllic and perfect – the family thrust into a nightmare. While playing at the pool one morning, the tsunami hits out of nowhere – they hear a rumbling, they see trees topple, and then the huge waves crash down upon them. When the initial wave is over, we follow the mother, Maria (Naomi Watts) and the oldest son Lucas (Tom Holland), as they find each other amongst the currents, and fight to keep their heads above water, and struggle to get help. It will be a while before we find out about the father Henry (Ewan McGregor) and the two younger sons.

The scenes of the tsunami are devastating, almost unbearably intense, violent, chaotic and bloody. Brilliant aided by CGI and excellent sound work, these scenes are the best in the movie as we are thrust into the midst of all the chaos. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona – whose breakthrough film was the stylish Spanish horror film The Orphanage, loved by many but not by me – this movie, at its best, is an impeccably crafted tale of survival against all odds. Aided by a gutsy performance by Watts, whose performance is mostly visceral, intense and physical and young Tom Holland, who carries most of the weight of the movie on his young shoulders, the first half of the movie is where the film is at its best.

The second half of the film (and here I guess I should provide a Spoiler Warning even though I don’t plan on getting too specific) is also quite effective, but in a much different way. The visceral energy of the first half of the film is put on the backburner, and the movie becomes more inspirational – a film that wants to wring tears out of its audience. And that it does – at least it did for me (but I find that since becoming a father last year, I much more vulnerable to tears while watching a movie). This second half, while effective while the movie is running, left me feeling bad after the movie ended – bad because I think the filmmakers laid everything on too thick here, tries too hard to get you to cry. I don’t mind when a movie earns the tears it produces, but I do get a little angry when I feel a movie is just bald face manipulative of me. And while I think The Impossible is a fine film – even in the second half – I also have to say that I think this movie crosses that line a little bit.

But having said that, I have to say The Impossible is still a highly effective film – very well-acted by everyone and well-directed by Bayona, who does some very nice work in the later scenes, choreographing some complex sequences that reminded me of Spielberg. The Impossible is a good film – to some, who don’t mind being this manipulated by a film, it will be a great film. I just wish the film hadn’t quite stacked the deck so much, because had it played things a little straighter, it could have been a better film.

Movie Review: Sound of My Voice

Movie Review: Sound of My Voice

Sound of My Voice
Directed by: Zal Batmanglij.
Written by: Zal Batmanglij & Brit Marling.
Starring: Christopher Denham (Peter Aitken), Nicole Vicius (Lorna Michaelson), Brit Marling (Maggie), Davenia McFadden (Carol Briggs), Kandice Stroh (Joanne), Richard Wharton (Klaus), Christy Meyers (Mel), Alvin Lam (Lam), Constance Wu (Christine).

Brit Marling is one of the most interesting faces in American indie cinema right now. Last year, she co-wrote and starred in Another Earth, a science fiction film with almost no budget that was more interested in ideas than special effects. Now, she has co-wrote and stars in Sound of My Voice, another film that some call science fiction, although perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. What is accurate however is that like Another Earth, Sound of My Voice was made for not a lot of money, and is far more interested in ideas than the typical Hollywood movie – no special effects here. Just a fascinating little film.

The film stars Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius as Peter and Lorna, an upper middle class California couple, who decide that they want to expose a cult and its leader Maggie (Marling) for the fraud that she is. They plan to pose as new recruits and clandestinely film the meetings for a documentary. This isn’t a large cult – I’m not even sure it has a name – and is really just a handful of people who meet in a basement, dress in white robes, and listen to Maggie’s story. According to her, she is from the year 2054 where a civil war rages, and food is scarce. She cannot leave this basement because the toxins in 2012 are too harsh for her body. She speaks in a calm, reassuring voice. It’s easy to see why people fall for her – she has an air about her that makes people want to please her.

Peter or Lorna are typical, entitled white suburbanites, leading hollow, empty lives. They are precisely the type of people who fall for cults in the first place – the ones who ask themselves “Is that all there is?”. But instead of falling for the cult, they decide to expose one. But it amounts to the same thing – they are no happy with their lives, and want something more – how much more, they don’t even realize.

The reason to see the movie is Marling’s performance as Maggie. She never gets worked up, never outwardly upset, never raises her voice. And yet she pokes and prods at her recruits – tests them by being openly hostile one second, and then comforting the next. She is trying to keep everyone off guard. Like Peter and Lorna, we think she’s a fake from the beginning, but she seems so sure of herself. Even when she’s asked to sing a song from her time, and ends up singing Dreams by The Cranberries, only one person openly questions her on it – and is promptly expelled. She is manipulative in the extreme, but like all successful cult leaders, makes everyone think they’re doing things of their own free will.

I didn’t much like the ending of Sound of My Voice, although I will admit I have no idea how else the movie could have ended. Yet it all seemed too typical to me – too calculated to keep the audience guessing even after the film ends. Like Another Earth, the ending is ambiguous – you can read it however you want to – but unlike that film, this ending didn’t work for me. Still, Sound of My Voice is another unique film for Marling – who has become one of the people you need to watch.

Movie Review: Premium Rush

Movie Review: Premium Rush

Premium Rush
Directed by: David Koepp.
Written by: David Koepp & John Kamps.
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Wilee), Michael Shannon (Bobby Monday), Dania Ramirez (Vanessa), Wolé Parks (Manny), Aasif Mandvi (Raj), Jamie Chung (Nima), Christopher Place (Bike Cop).

The problem many action movies have is that they take themselves too seriously. In among all the chase sequences and gun battles, the rest of the plots often try to make some larger point – or show that the filmmakers have something greater on their minds that simply action. If done well – like Skyfall or the Nolan Batman films – this can elevate the films above the normal trappings of the genre. If not done well, they can become self-serious bores. The charm of David Koepp’s Premium Rush is that it takes absolutely nothing seriously. The film is essentially one big, long chase sequence through the streets of Manhattan, and is pretty much completely unbelievable from beginning to end. But the film knows this, roles with it, and the result is a film that while it may not stay with you, is almost impossibly entertaining while you are watching it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee (like the Coyote) a bike messenger in Manhattan, who once went to law school, but never took the bar exam. He likes being on the streets of New York on his bike too much. His bike has no gears and no brakes – he considers both dangerous – and he basically dodges in and out of traffic, risking his life at every moment of his day. He often plays out what will happen if he dodges this way or that way in the split second before he has to make a decision – and most of the time, if he chooses around, he’ll up being killed by a car.

At the end of another day, he gets one final assignment – pick up an envelope from Columbia University and deliver it to Chinatown. He knows the sender – Nima (Jamie Chung), because she is roommates with his girlfriend Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), and thinks nothing of this delivery. It’s a long ride, and needs to be there in an hour and half, but it will pay him well. So off he heads to Columbia – and picks up the envelope. It’s there where he meets the man who will become his nemesis – Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon), who tells him he needs that envelope back – right now. But Wilee has a code – once the envelope goes into his bag, it doesn’t come out again until it reaches its destination. It would have been much simpler had he just turned it over.

Eventually, we’ll learn the backstory behind everything – what precisely is in the envelope, why it’s so important to Nima to see it delivered on time, and why Monday wants it so badly as well. It doesn’t really matter though. The envelope is a classic MacGuffin – it doesn’t matter what’s in the damn thing, it just matters that everyone wants it so badly.

The movie is extremely well made by Koepp. He doesn’t slow let the movies pace slow down very much through its entire running time, and even if the chases themselves become increasingly impossible, he handles them all with style. If you want to simply turn your brain off and enjoy the ride, then you’ll have a good time. If, like me, you cannot quite do that, you’ll marvel at everything being done in the movie as you try to figure just exactly how they did that.

The two lead performances help the movie a great deal. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a great actor, but here he coasts on his natural charm – but does so to great effect. You instantly like him and that never wavers. Even better is Michael Shannon as Bobby Monday, who seems at times to be trying to amuse himself with wacky vocal ticks, but it’s still a blast to see one of the great actors of his generation let loose and have fun for once.

I’m not going to argue that Premium Rush is a great movie – it isn’t. But damn it, if it isn’t a fun ride for just under 90 minutes. During this time of year, when every week seems to bring an “important” movie to theater, spending 90 minutes at home with this one brought a smile to me face.

Movie Review: The Loneliest Planet

Movie Review: The Loneliest Planet

The Loneliest Planet
Directed by: Julia Loktev.
Written by: Julia Loktev based on the short story by Tom Bissell.
Starring: Hani Furstenberg (Nica), Gael García Bernal (Alex), Bidzina Gujabidze (Dato).

Nica and Alex are a couple who are going to be married in the coming months. Aside from that, and the fact that they are obviously experienced world travelers, we learn very little about them during the course of The Loneliest Planet. They are in Georgia (the Georgia of Eastern Europe, not the Southern USA) and hire Dato to guide them through the beautiful, but largely barren, mountains there. At first they seem carefree – they playfully talk with each other, make goo-goo eyes at each other, and seem pretty much carefree. Than something happens out on in the mountains, and in a split second, Alex makes a mistake, and then recovers. But how does that split second change their relationship? Pretty much completely, as in the second half of the movie, all that playfulness is gone – replaced by a stony silence, before they oh-so gradually start coming back to normalcy – at least what will be their new normal – after that.

I know some critics have loved The Loneliest Planet – with its beautiful cinematography in the mountains - shot in 1.66:1, a narrower aspect ratio than most films. That narrower aspect ratio is used to great effect by director Julia Loktev, especially in the film’s second half, as the vast open spaces of the first half are replaced by ominous mountains than seem to be closing in on the characters. Some critics have liked the performances by Hani Furstenberg and Gael Garcia Bernal as the central couple – said to be American, although neither sound American (probably because Furstenberg is Israeli and Garcia Bernal is Mexican). Loktev is clearly in their love with their faces, which she lovingly frames through the movie, trying to pick up on the smallest of movements. Personally, I think non-professional actor Bidzina Gujabidze is better than either of them as Dato – perhaps because he is non-professional, and is playing a version on himself, he seems more comfortable – more natural than either of the two pros.

But I must say, I was bored by The Loneliest Planet. Loktev gives us no real reason to care about Nica and Alex and their story. She broadly sketches their story at the beginning, and then repeats herself in the first half of the movie – has the inciting incident half way through (which is the film’s best moment) and then repeats herself in the second half. The movie was based on a short story by Tom Bissell, and perhaps it should have been made into a short movie. There just wasn’t enough material here to keep me interested for nearly two hours.

Loktev is a promising director. Her first film, Day Night Day Night, was much better – the story of a would-be suicide bomber going to Times Square in New York. That film also provided no backstory for its main character, but was fascinating and intense throughout. The Loneliest Planet, while beautiful, doesn’t hold the same interest. I see what she’s trying for here – to make the two characters we meet in the first act question everything they know about themselves and each other in the second half because of the incident, but Loktev slows this movie too much for it to have the impact she wants.

TV Movie Review: On Death Row

TV Movie Review: On Death Row

On Death Row
Directed by: Werner Herzog.

Werner Herzog wanted to make a documentary about the death penalty in America – and in 2011 he made Into the Abyss, a stunning film about crime, punishment, violence and poverty in America, that was for me, the best documentary of the year. But before Herzog settled on the story of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett for Into the Abyss, he considered four other cases – and even conducted interviews with the offenders. Not wanting to waste these interviews, Herzog decided to make four mini-documentaries, each 50 minutes long, about their stories. While none provide the depth of Into the Abyss, all four stories are well told by Herzog and simply add to his basic premise – that the death penalty is wrong, even for offenders who are guilty of the crimes they committed. As he says at the start of each of these mini-docs >As a German, coming from a different historical background, and a visitor to the United States, I respectfully disagree with the practice of the death penalty`.

Herzog tells each of the five inmates her interviews over these four films that just because he`s here, it doesn’t mean he likes them – or that he has any interest in trying to prove their innocence – which two of them proclaim. He wants to examine their cases and what led them to do what they do, and what the experience of being on death row is like. He is not really making an advocacy documentary.

The first doc concentrates on James Barnes, one of the only people who will fully admit to his guilt. He was convicted of murdering his ex-wife in Florida, and while serving out his life sentence, he confesses to the rape and murder of a nurse way back in 1988 – for which he receives the death penalty. While talking to Herzog, he even admits to committing at least one other murder. He is a serial offender, who has no hope for rehabilitation. He led a troubled life as a youngster; in and out of trouble from the time he is a teenager – who may have molested his twin sister. Yet, he seems to value family – he wants some sort of approval, or at least acknowledgment for his family. He tries to manipulate Herzog, but he sees through him. This is the most disturbing of the docs, but Barnes is so clearly guilty, so clearly evil – and even rather unrepentant – even blaming the nurse for her own murder, although not wanting to disparage the dead, he refuses to explain why it was her fault.

The second doc is the only one that concentrates on a woman – Linda Carty. This is the strangest, most incomplete of the docs, mainly because I do not think that Carty ever really levels with Herzog. She remains evasive throughout, trying hard to milk sympathy out of the audience. Her case is disturbing, because it involves Carty apparently hiring three drug dealers to break into the apartment of neighbor, to steal her newborn child. She tells the drug dealers that there is nearly a ton of pot in the apartment – which simply is not true. Eventually, the young mother is found dead in the trunk of a car, and her baby found barely clinging to life in a car right next to it. Carty proclaims her innocence, and she does have serious, legitimate concerns about her representation at her trial. But based on what I saw in this documentary, I think she probably is guilty. But because she is so evasive, and the case itself so complex, I do not think Herzog ever really nails this segment down. It does have one of the best single moments in the series though, when a prosecutor says it is easy to concentrate on the criminal, and forget the victim, in these cases. That it is very easy for Herzog to "humanize Carty", to which Herzog very bluntly replies “I do not make an attempt to humanize her. She is simply a human being, period”, which is one of the underlying points to this series by Herzog – the people who commit these crimes may have done evil things – but they are all still human.

Next up is two of the infamous Texas Seven, inmates serving out life sentences in a Texas penitentiary, who inexplicably were able to escape from prison. They didn’t kill anyone getting out of the prison, and survived for weeks on end on the run. One night, while robbing a sporting goods store, they do kill a police officer – for which all are sentenced to death when they are caught. The segment starts with Joseph Garcia, sentenced to 30 years for a murder, which he claims self-defense, who had no part in the murder of the police officer – he was shot outside, while he was still inside the store, but because his co-conspirators committed the crime, by Texas law, he is just as guilty as the one who pulled the trigger. Next, Herzog interviews George Rivas, the mastermind of the escape, and the man who pulled the trigger to kill the police officer. This is stronger than the Linda Carty segment, but not as strong as the other two – Herzog, by necessity, has to spend so much time going over how they escaped, that the crimes for which they found themselves in prison in the first place, and their life on death row, and doesn’t get quite as much attention.

Finally, there is the case of Hank Skinner, in what is probably the strongest of these mini-docs. Skinner was convicted of a triple homicide back in 1993, and vehemently claims his innocence (but does seem to hedge at points, coming up with excuses as to why his DNA may well be on the murder weapon when he eventually gets them tested). Skinner speaks most eloquently on his life on death row – on the Pollunsky unit, and how it felt when he came very close to being executed – only receiving a last minute stay of execution. Skinner gives the clearest picture of what day to day life on death row is like – how dehumanizing it is, and how difficult it is to maintain your sanity.

I think these four documentaries are better taken as a whole than any one segment is. Along with Into the Abyss, it makes for one large film about capital punishment in America. Yes, Into the Abyss is a masterpiece in itself, because Herzog takes the time to flesh out the crime, the victims and their families, the perpetrators and their families, and the people who are tasked with the impossible job of executing these criminals. Herzog does not have the time to do that with any of these cases. And yet, taken together, the movies make a devastating portrait of crime and punishment in America. You can be for capital punishment or against it, and these films will still make you question what you think. That is what great documentaries do – not simply confirm or congratulate you for believing what the filmmaker does, but makes you re-examine why you think it.