I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the whale of a tale “Whalefall,” the pulpy and pious “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” the documentary “You Can See Everything” and the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action “Street Fighter.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the whale of a tale “Whalefall,” the pulpy and pious “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” the extraordinary doc “You Can See Everything” and the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action “Street Fighter.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “You Can See Everything,” a new documentary now playing in theatres, disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, once the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, allows a film crew led by Nathan Fielder into her home.
CAST: Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, Billy Evans, Amanda Seyfried. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.
REVIEW: “You Can See Everything” is being billed as a documentary, but it is more than that. The set up is part reality TV, part fly on the wall and part something else. Something unusual and completely unique.
Five weeks before Elizabeth Holmes was to start her 11 ¼ year sentence for defrauding the investors in her health technology company Theranos Inc, she welcomes a documentary film crew into the home she shares with partner Billy Evans and their young children. They promise “radical transparency,” hence the title “You Can See Everything.”
Directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim move in with the family, intending to capture everyday life and the days leading up to her incarceration. “I think this is the moment in time to capture this story before I’m gone,” Holmes says.
But, what was planned as a five week shoot blossoms into a three-year journey that offers more questions than answers. The Holmes case has been debated in the Amanda Seyfried series “The Dropout,” in print and docudrama, but never as it is here.
The film’s first half is pretty much what you might expect from deadpan king Nathan Fielder. In lowkey fashion he asks intrusive questions, often dripping with skepticism, to pry some sort of accountability from Holmes, who more often than not remains an elusive, inscrutable character.
By times it’s as if Fielder and Holmes are engaged in some sort of staring contest as answers hang in the air between them. It’s a portrait of an awkward public figure and her controlling, chatty husband Billy Evans with some heartfelt moments. In one quiet sequence Holmes, just days away from incarceration, realizes the harsh realities of the life that awaits her. It’s authentic, poignant and one of the few times Holmes allows her real feelings to come to the fore.
It’s in the second half, when it becomes a companion piece to the first hour. that the movie falls down the rabbit hole.
There will be no spoilers here but know that by this time Holmes is in prison, unavailable to the filmmakers. Evans is revealed as a strategic puppet master, albeit one devoted to his wife and children.
What makes the movie so ingenious, and entertaining, and justifies its almost three-hour running time, is the way it approaches its themes.
Without giving away the film’s secrets I can tell you it uses the tropes of documentary filmmaking—re-enactments, fly-on-the-wall camera work, etc—to ask questions about journalistic ethics—How close a documentarian should get to their subject?—the nature of truth—Is it a lie if you really believe it?—and what role the media plays in forming narratives about a famous, or in this case, infamous person.
It’s heady stuff, an exploration into the very heart of perception, self-deception and ultimately, human unknowability. The movie ponders whether Holmes is a victim or a manipulator or if she is a product of a post-truth society where performance equates with authentic.
“You Can See Everything” sees everything, and yet, somehow the more it sees, the less we really understand about what makes Holmes tick. But it’s a wild journey, a documentary quite unlike any other and highly recommended.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers. Directed by Lance Oppenheim.
REVIEW: A sly look at ambition, ego and losing one’s self to the dark side of a job, “Primetime” is a slice of arthouse drama that wonders where entertainment ends and responsibility begins.
Based on the 2007 Esquire magazine article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich, “Primetime” sees Robert Pattinson play television journalist Chris Hansen, host of “To Catch a Predator.” The hidden-camera show that saw Hansen unmask child predators by confronting adult men who sought to meet underage girls for sex. “Do you watch television? Well, there’s something you should know. I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC. And you’re about to be a part of television history.”
The controversial show is accused of vigilantism, manipulation and of entrapping its subjects, but nonetheless, is a ratings hit but the ambitious Hansen wants more. “I want something that matters,” he says. “No more bottom feeders. I want a whale.”
To dethrone prime time juggernaut “Lost,” Hansen, working with the Murphy, Texas police department, arranges a sting of a prominent local official with disastrous results. “We’re gonna be bigger than Lost!” Hansen brays, unaware that his quest for ratings at any cost will place him in the uncomfortable position of being at the center of a story.
Director Lance Oppenheim, working from a script by Ajon Singh, takes an arthouse approach to the story. The story of “To Catch a Predator” is, of course, the film’s core, but the filmmaker is more concerned with blurring the line between reality and performance.
Hansen and the decoys, hired to lure predators, perform, rehearsing their lines in advance, and, in the film’s first recreated sting, Hansen enters the scene, flamboyantly whipping aside a curtain to great dramatic effect.
Pattinson hits a career high here, handing in a heightened performance that captures Hansen’s grandiosity without turning him into a caricature. It’s strange work, marked by odd facial expressions and movements, as though his inner thoughts are manifested outwardly. It’s weirdly affecting, both cartoonish and sinister. His voice and practiced cadence evoke Hansen, but it is the off-kilter body language that grabs the character’s spirit.
Despite Pattinson’s Oscar worthy work, and some nice turns from Merritt Wever as Hansen’s “I don’t do feel good” producer and Skyler Gisondo as the aspiring actor hired to be a decoy in their show’s stings, and the stunt casting of Jeff Zucker, who portrays himself at the time when he oversaw programming at NBCUniversal, “Primetime” doesn’t dig deep. It’s a well-performed television satire but it doesn’t offer much insight into Hensen or the audience’s collective thirst for judgement.
