Deprogrammed takes a hard, long look at cults and those that save people from cults, while questioning all sides for their dogma and dedication. It offers no easy answers, but is no less fascinating because of it.
Some weird stuff happens when you’re asleep, just about everyone can attest to that whether they just half-remember an unusual dream or their susceptible to sleepwalking. But The Nightmare points out that for some people there’s something bad waiting for them in the dark when they go to sleep. A horrible force that makes them fear the very act of lying down to rest. The unusual nature of sleep paralysis is the subject of The Nightmare, and as for the movie itself, it’s an unusual way to address the subject. The Nightmare, in essence, is a horror documentary, set-up like a horror movie, shot like a horror movie, and delivered like a horror movie. Perhaps the most based on a true story “based on a true story” horror ever made.
Even those not so thoroughly ensconced in Canadian politics know who Danny Williams is. He was the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from 2003 to 2010, and while he may not have been the head of the most powerful province, or the richest, or the most influential, or the most culturally significant, he did make a name and a reputation for himself as its leader. Danny, the simply titled biographical film about Williams, chronicles his pre-political life, and his tenure as perhaps the most influential provincial politician in Newfoundland since the quarter-century reign of Joey Smallwood from 1949 to 1972. It’s likely that only real politicos would consider a documentary about retired politician from Canada, but there is a universality to the story that the politically ignorant might appreciate.
If I told you that someone told me a story where the nuns were the villains, you’d scoff. Nuns, as the bad guys? What kind of topsy-turny world is this? Nuns can be casually cruel, wrapping your knuckles with a ruler if you step out of line in school, or they may occasionally harbour actual criminals (Nuns on the Run, Sister Act), but villains? Never. Well, the way the Vatican reacted to a group of American nuns advocating for the poor, the sick and the disenfranchise – you know, the stuff the church is supposed to be about – you’d think that Sister Simone, Sister Jean and Sister Chris were the Joker, Penguin and Two-Face of Catholicism.
There was a fairly famous commentary in Wired a couple of years ago by Patton Oswalt that essentially came down to the comedian telling today’s movie geeks that they have it too easy. There was no internet to follow the development of a film blow-by-blow, there was no Internet Movie Database to learn who all the primary people behind the film were, and a home video was months, if not years, after the initial theatrical run, rather than weeks. In essence, the technology has taken the effort out of it, and truthfully, the same can be said about the art of filmmaking as well. Digital cameras, Photshop, Final Cut, it all means you can make a movie at home look like a top-notch professional effort.
I’m not sure if it’s the intention of Alex Winter to carve out a niche for himself as the chief explainer of the digital age, but it seems like that’s what he’s doing. In 2012, he released Downloaded, a look at how Napster and file sharing has changed the music business and the perception of copyright, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of how computers and the internet have changed things. Winter’s latest, Deep Web, tackles notions of privacy, intelligence and law enforcement in the internet age through the story of the man who may or may not be the most prolific drug trafficker in history.
Sometimes the most complicated endeavors start from such simple intentions. In 1973, French director Claude Lanzmann was hired by the Israeli government to make a film about the Jewish people, their past, their culture, and their history. Lanzmann had already made a documentary about the country itself, Israel Why, so he had impressed his financial backers well enough to trust him with another project, a two hour film that was supposed to take 18 months to complete. Instead, the result was 10 hours long, edited for five years from over 300 hours of footage shot for nearly seven years in six languages. But the result was Shoah, the documentary masterpiece that is one of the most exhaustive records of the history of the Holocaust.
Zack Little has landed the dream role. For 88 years, a small town in the foothills of Witchita, Oklahoma has been home to a yearly Easter pageant, the longest running Passion play in American history set against the bizarre backdrop of a detailed replication of the Holy Land smack dab in America’s Heartland. Drawing a local cast of hundreds, and the technical support of hundreds more, the spectacle of Witchita’s yearly tribute to the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ is a production on par with many Hollywood blockbusters. Now, Little is the star of this multi-generational effort, playing the role of a lifetime as Jesus Christ, but Zack has a secret that may call his capacity to play the King of Kings into question amongst the highly religious participants of the production.
