Author Archives: Matt

Montreal in Film and Why Mommy is Better Than The Score

Well, I did it, Andrew from Fistful of Films. I watched Mommy. Andrew’s made no secret of his appreciation of this Cannes sensation- now I get the picture on his masthead- and after the film resurfaced during Thursday Movie Picks a couple of weeks ago, I vowed to finally give this a watch.

First, I’ll say that I liked Mommy better than The Score, the Robert De Niro-Edward Norton heist movie from 2001 that I watched the night before. Like Mommy, The Score is filmed and set in Montreal, where I spent the first twenty-four years of my life. I know the city well, well enough to know that Quebecers don’t sound like that. The accents and dialects (more French than Quebecois) aren’t a big deal and most non-Canadians may not even notice but they’re distracting for me. Mommy’s already off to a good start just by being a Canadian film with actual Canadians.

The actors in Mommy get more than just the Franglais right. As mother and son, Anne Dorval and Antoine-Olivier Pilon always manage to make their increasingly complicated feelings and relationship believable, if not always likeable. Both Die (Dorval) and Steve (Pilon) are immediately off-putting. We are warned from the beginning that Steve can be a lot to take but I was unprepared for foul-mouthed and deliberately provocative style. Even Die, Steve’s long-suffering mother, is tough to take at first, presenting herself immediately as arrogant and confrontational through some pretty cocky gum-chewing.

I warmed to these characters quickly though. Die first. We quickly see how out of control- even dangerous- Steve is and I couldn’t help seeing her as a mother doing the best she can with an impossible situation. Steve has his charming- even sweet- side too. His feelings of guilt over ths burden he thinks he must be to his mother rise to a scene in a karaoke bar where he deliberately causes a scene in order to derail Die’s flirtation with a lawyer who she thinks can help with her son’s situation. The relationship between mother and son is unpredictable and at times a little strange but makes sense as we realize that they can’t help feeling that all they have is each other.

This relationship is written and acted to perfection even if Mommy isn’t. Dolan devotes way too much time to a stuttering former teacher who lives across the street without any real justification for doing so. I also could have done without the unusual 1.1 Aspect Ratio that is distracting at best and counter-productive during the more cinematic sequences that Dolan seems to love.

Have you seen Mommy? If you have, I would love to hear what you thought of the final scene.

Movies Set in a High School

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As I’m writing this, Jay and Sean must be driving home from Sean’s twenty-year reunion. It’s got all of us thinking back to our high school days and our favourite high school reunion movies. Funny how Wandering Through the Shelves seems to be on the wavelength.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)– Jay revisited this one just a couple of weeks ago preparing for the reunion. John Cusack has never been cooler as a hit man coming home to his own ten-year reunion. First of all, I’m a sucker for Prodigal Son Returns movies. Second, I loved seeing Cusack return to high school since many of us remember him from ten years earlier in high school movies like Say Anything. Oh, and the soundtrack is just perfect.

Election (1999)– Speaking of actors we knew from high school, Ferris Bueller is back as a teacher trying to sabotage an election for school president. Director Alexander Payne is the master of cringe-worthy moments and the satire always rings true. There were definately some Tracy Flicks in my school. Both Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon do their best work ever here.

Elephant (2003)– Here’s one I’ll never forget. Gus Van Sant offers no theories or explanations as to what the motivations of the shooters were in his depiction of a high school massacre. Based in part on the Columbine shootings, we follow several students through what at first appears to be just an ordinary day at school. Once the massacre begins, the film is harrowing and unflinching, refusing to even try to make sense of things.

Movie Malarkey: The sequel

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Welcome back to another edition of Movie Malarkey where we, being the Assholes that we are, try to bluff you into buying our fake movie synopses. We loved the responses we got last week so much that we thought we’d try it again.

The obscure movie title of the week is Eegah. Believe it or not, this is a real movie and only one of the summaries below is accurate. The rest are just Malarkey (and thanks to Joel for suggesting it).

a) After Roxy hits a 7-foot giant caveman named Eegah while driving through California desert, her father returns to the scene in hopes of snapping a photo of the giant. When he fails to return home, Roxy and her boyfriend realize they must rescue her father from the terrifying Eegah – a creature who, like any of us, just wants to be loved.

b) Twenty men set sail on the Eegah for adventure, profit, and a chance at a new life they think will favour them once they set foot on New Land. Only two men survive to the end of the journey, and even they are unprepared for the culture they find once there. One thing’s for sure – there’s no going back.

c) Veronique and Michel are a couple of young newlyweds who suffer the agonizing loss of their newborn daughter just a year into their marriage. To save their relationship and heal their hearts, the pair decide to hike the Eegah desert together, but will grief transcend the unforgiving landscape?

Vote by poll and\or comments on which you think is the REAL movie synopsis for Eegah.

SPOILER: ANSWER BELOW!

Eegah, a “beloved” (rating: 2.2 out of 10) comedy from 1962, directed by Arch Hall Sr and starring Arch Hall Jr, with the amazing Richard Kiel appearing as the 7-foot caveman (oddly, since he’s 7’2 in real life). It had a budget of just 15K, but it still manages to make you wonder where the other 12k went. This movie is listed among The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made by Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson. And this guy knows bad movies. The sound recordist was such a failure that almost the entire movie had to be dubbed in post-production, and badly. And the assistant camera operator got so cozy with the terrible movie motif that he went on to make The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? – which, yes, is a real movie title for some reason. Bet you can’t guess what that one’s about!

Still, this movie had some success at drive-ins that summer, and managed to make the director a million dollars, which, if he’s still alive today, I bet he still laughs about.

Thanks everyone for playing along!

Movies for Kids That Adults Would Enjoy (Non-Animated)

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Wandering Through the Shelves’ caveat at the end made this a tricky one. There are so many G-rated animated films taht I adore. I really had to dig deep for liv action family movies for me to endorse, especially since I already used up Babe in Live Action Fairy Tale Adaptations.

Home Alone (1990)- It makes it easier when the movie for kids came out when I was a kid. All I needed to do when rewatching it for the first time in twenty years was remember what it was like to be a ten year-old ewatching this for the first time. When I was a kid, I watched it for the sadistic finale. As an adult, I love Catherine O’Hara’s quest to get home to her son and got a kick out of how resourceful Kevin becomes. The casting is perfect from Pesci and Stern to Hope Davis as a French ticket agent.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)– If my calculations are correct, this may be the last time that the once great Jim Carrey was actually fun to watch. His homicidal master of disguise dominated the previews but the three kids- an inventor, a reader, and a biter- are the real stars. When all the adults are either despicable or clueless, these three take care of each other without ever having to set traps. Although not nearly as dark and unfortunate as Jude Law’s narrator keeps warning us (the parents die in every movie, bud. This isn’t that unusual), SOUE has a wicked sense of humour and genuinely touching moments.

Hugo (2011)- Does this really count as a kids movie? One of Scorsese’s better post-Goodfellas films, Hugo is pure magic for any age. The scenes in the train station- where people get on and off trains and work in various shops-were especially spectacular in IMAX 3D and scorsese’s love of movies has never been more apparent. Not sure I can picture Hugo as the next Spiderman though.

Movie Malarkey!

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Welcome, one and all, to our first ever round of Movie Malarkey!

The aim of the game is thusly: an obscure and vague movie title will be selected. Without looking it up, two of us will attempt to guess what the movie is, based solely on the title, and the third will write up a synopsis of the actual movie. Your job, dear reader, is to guess which one is the REAL movie, and you shouldn’t be looking it up either. You can vote via poll or by comment. Anyone who wants to participate in the coming weeks can leave a comment. Same goes for anyone who’s go the perfect vague title.

This week the movie title is: Phffft! Our entries are:

a) When a washed-up Broadway actor’s girlfriend is kidnapped, her captors demand $3 million dollars in ransom. To raise the money, he must reassemble the cast of his hit musical Phffft!, including his volatile ex-wife and two men sharing a horse costume, in order to raise the money.

b) An acrimoniously divorced couple can’t seem to stop running into each other in various surprising ways while being counselled by their confidantes to keep their distance, until one night they find themselves in a nightclub doing the mambo together. Can a rekindling be far behind?

c) Roslyn and Kara were the two most popular girls in school, until the bus crash. Now Kara is in a coma, trapped in limbo, with the ability to move things with her mind and only helping her friend from beyond will wake her up. But what will Kara do when Roslyn starts crushing on Kara’s boyfriend? Find out in the latest teen comedy from the writers of She’s All That.

ANSWER:

As many of you guessed, the answer is b) – the divorced couple who end up “doing the mambo.” Although I’d venture to say that if you guessed a) you are even more correct since that is clearly the superior movie synopsis, and one I wish existed. Phffft is a 1954 film starring Jack Lemmon. It gets its title, rather randomly I think, from Walter Winchell’s gossip column of the times. When a celebrity couple split, he called it a phffft. So there you have it.

Mother-Son Movies

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I dedicate my submission to Wandering Through the Shelves’ Thursday Movie Picks this week to my own mom. She gave me life and unconditional love and, on Mother’s Day, I took her to brunch.

Toni Collette is no stranger to playing a mom with a lot on her plate but she’s never been in more over her head than in The Sixth Sense (1999) Single mom Lynn Sear has no idea that her 10 year-old son can see dead people but she can tell that something not right with him. To me, her performance as a mother who just wants to help but doesn’t know how is the best part of the movie and Haley Joel Osment’s scenes with her are far more believeable than his with Bruce Willis. I expressed my enthusiasm for the final mother-son scene in the movie in 10 Movie Moments That Took My Breath Away.

Speaking of kids who see dead people, seven year-old Damian is frequently visited by dead saints in Millions (2004). There’s a whole lot going on in my personal favourite of Danny Boyle’s films but- for the purposes of our belated Mother’s Day- Damian’s obsessions with saints seems to come from the conviction that his recently deceased mother must be a saint now herself. The appearance of his newly-sainted mom at the end of the film is just plain beautiful.

When his parents separate after 17 years of marraige, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) defends his father (Jeff Daniels) and rejects his mother (Laura Linney) in The Squid and the Whale (2005). Walt idolizes his father so much that he basically becomes his clone. When following in his father’s footsteps starts getting him into trouble and he starts seeing his dad’s true colours, he is surprised to find himself thinking of treasured memories of his mother from long ago- before he had chosen sides.

Meanwhile in San Francisco…: 6 Simple Steps to Liking a Shitty Movie

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Finding myself at a midnight screening of The Room on Saturday, I was completely unprepared. If you haven’t already seen Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece of unintended comedy, the first thing you need to do to get the most out of your experience is to manage your expectations. You’re not going to enjoy this movie the way you would, say, Birdman, The Imitation Game, or even The Avengers. Wiseau, who is equally misguided as producer, director, writer, and star, has made what Entertainment Weekly went on to call “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”. Several theaters around the world screen The Room on a monthly basis, drawing enthusiastic “fans” every time. It’s a bad movie but they seem to enjoy it. Here’s how you can too.

1. Remember, kids. You don’t need alcohol to have a good night out. Unless you’re watching The Room. You’ll need a few drinks to wash this one down.

2. Don’t, under any circumstances, watch this one alone. You’ll need a movie buddy. Maybe even a whole group. Choose your company well. They should be able to make you laugh easily. The more sarcastic the better. There’ll be lots to make fun of.

3. If you catch a screening, be prepared for people to talk, even yell, during the movie. That’s part of the fun. Several rituals have developed over the years from the Room cult, involving pre-prepared responses for specific parts of the movie. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with those. You can pretty much yell whatever you want at the screen. This is one theater you will not get shushed.

4. Pay attention because the director didn’t. The plot holes, continuity errors, and technical fuck-ups are glaring and, if you’re keeping your eyes open, you won’t be able to believe what survived the editing process. Watch out in particular for the front door. The actors will often need you to remind them to close it.

5. There’s no easy way to get through the many awkward sex scenes. My advice is to just be thankful that Wiseau didn’t get his way. He wanted them to be twice as long.

6. Beware falling spoons. It’s tradition in some theaters to hurl a handful of plastic spoons at the screen during several scenes because… well, you’ll see. You can bring spoons of your own or just wait for them to literally fall into your lap.

Consider yourself warned. If you go in prepared, you should have as much, maybe even more, fun than you would at a movie that you thought was actually good. I’ve never actually been to a Rocky Horror screening but this is a little like I imagine it to be.

Just off the Top of O-Ren Ishii’s Head: 10 Death Scenes I Will Never Forget

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I’m not really a Final Destination kind of guy but with stock dwindling at my favourite video store just two weeks before it closes, I settled on a movie that my friend had been trying to get me to watch for months. Final Destination 2- so far left on the shelves by eager shoppers looking to take advantage of the store’s Everything Must Go policy- has a death scene that apparently I just had to watch.

Watching the movie, I couldn’t be sure which scene she meant. There were a lot. Could it be the lottery winner who slipped on some spaghetti and got his head smashed in by a falling fire escape? Or the grieving mother who was decaptiated when she got her head caught in an elevator door? Turns out I should have been watching for the teenager who was crushed to death by something- what exactly I can’t be sure, things happen fast in this movie- while chasing away some pigeons. Apparently, if you watch closely, he explodes long before anything falls on him. How does she know? She’s watched it in slow motion. Several times.

While I may not have even been temptedc to check the tape on that one, it got me thinking of my favourite on-screen passings. After all, we just saw some real beauts in Mad Max: Fury Road on Friday. Here’s my attempt at a Top Ten. I left out a lot out, I know. How about you? What are some of your favourite scenes that I might have missed?

10. Count Laszlo de Almásy The English Patient (1996)

One of the movies that I am most likely to meditate on the finality of death after watching. Once we’re gone, everything we’ve felt, everything we’ve feared, everything we’ve loved die with us. It’s painful to watch Ralph Fiennes suffer from his burns throughout the movie and when Juliette Binoche’s Hana agrees to help him end his agony once and for all, I could almost feel his last breath. Even though, technically, the scene ends before Laszlo does. Before this act of mercy, Hana reads him this.

“We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we’ve hidden in like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We’re the real counttries. Not the boundaries drawn on maps, the names of powerful men”.

9. Phil Groundhog Day (1993)

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Condemned to live a bad day over and over until he gets it right, Phil (Bill Murray) uses this opportunity to try new things without having to wake up with any consequences. He makes a move on the girl he likes and punches the guy he doesn’t. He runs around town playing hero. He even gives dying a try. His suicidal phase is one of the funniest and darkest parts of the movie. (I haven’t seen the movie in awhile so I can’t remember if it’s made clear to us whether Phil is counting on waking up the next morning or hoping not to).

Before my favourite of said suicide “attempts”, Phil calmly walks into the lobby ignoring the pleasantries of the hotel staff and steals their toaster. Phil calmly prepares himself a nice hot bath and takes the toaster in with him. This scene would also make my list of Top Ten Reasons I Love Bill Murray.

8. Captain Frye The Rock (1996)

Ed Harris’ General Hummell is a madman but he really does think he’s doing the right thing. It’s the mercenaries he brings with him to sieze Alcatraz Island that make me nervous, especially Captain Frye. Played with his usual sneer by character actor Gregory Sporleder, there’s just something not quite right about this guy. He always seems to be wishing he was pushing an old lady down a flight of stairs.

A lot of these guys die for their cause in spectacular fashion but director Michael Bay saves the best for last when chemistry geek/action hero Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) shoves a vial of sarin gas in his mouth and smashes it with his fist. Neither Bay or Cage have gotten much right since but they did good here. This guy had it coming.

7. Sydney Barringer Magnolia (1999)

P. T. Anderson gets our attention right from the start and manages to hold it for Magnolia’s entire three-hour running time. Seventeen year-old Sydney Barringer jumps from the roof of his nine-story apartment building only to have his suicide attempt interrupted both by a safety net installed by some window washers and by a shotgun blast from a sixth floor window that killed him instantly. His unsuccessful suicide became a successful homicide when his own mother accidentally fired a shot while threatening his father during a heated argument.

Anderson didn’t come up with this story on his own. It’s an adaptation of a sort of urban legend that had been circulating for years but it sets up the strange events that follow perfectly.

6. Guy in elevator Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling is a charmer. He swept Rachel McAdams off her feet both on and off screen and even taught Steve Carrell how to be a smooth talker. Just don’t get on his bad side. This guy’s not fucking around. He understands the golden rule of action movies. When someone’s giving you trouble, sometimes you’ve just got to stomp on their face until they’re dead. He doesn’t carry a gun much in Drive but why would he? He’s got his boot.

5. Edward Bloom Big Fish (2003)

The deathbed scene in The English Patient inspires me to meditate on death. Big Fish inspires me to reflect on life. Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) finally understands the value of myth and the key to good storytelling while seeing his father (Albert Finney) through his final moments. For most of his adult life, Will stubbornly told stories with “all of the facts, none of the flavour” but, when his father asks him to tell him “how he goes”, Will ad-libs a fantastical story fit for Ed’s remarkable life- one that undoubtedly touched so many others, even if the details are a little embellished. I still get chills when I watch it.

4. Cecilia Shepard Zodiac (2007)

I feel crass talking about an on-screen depiction of something that actually happened in the same post as the twisted thrills of Drive but there aren’t many scenes in 21st century American film that are more effective. All the recreations of the Zodiac killings in this movie are almost impossible to watch without some temptation to look away but this one at the beach is the most chilling. I felt a wave of anxiety every time I found myself anywhere secluded for weeks after watching this movie. The Zodiac killer was never caught or named but this faceless killer- now probably long gone- still haunts me.

3. Elle Driver Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

I only allowed myself one Quentin Tarantino entry on this post and I could have easily done one just on the Top Ten Tarantino Death Scenes. He’s the guy that knows how to do it, whose mind seems to take him to to places most of us wouldn’t dare. Daryl Hannah’s Elle puts up quite a fight against the Bride but the fight’s pretty much over when Uma Thurman’s antihero plucks out her only good eye. Adding insult to injury beyond anything I can imagine, poor Elle hears a sound that can only be Uma crushing it beneath her feet. Good and pissed but with nothing much she can do about it, Elle thrashes about unitl a poisonous Black Mamba finishes her off.

Elle Driver was an assassin and a bit of a sadist but I can’t help but feel just a little bad. What a way to go.

2. Spider Goodfellas (1990)

Everyone has a favourite scene here and I could have probably done a Top Ten just on this one movie but Spider (Michael Imperioli) really gets a raw deal. After finally being able to get back to work after being shot in the foot by Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), the poor waiter finally stands up for himself and tells Tommy to fuck off. Tommy’s gangster buddy love it and tease Tommy until he loses it and empties his clip into the poor guy, shocking his buddies. “What the fuck, Tommy? We were just kidding around”.

Tommy’s a funny guy (yes, sort of like a clown) and I sure did miss him after he gets whacked. But he really was a mad dog. It’s probably for the best that he never got made.

1. Lester Burnham American Beauty (1999)

This also made my list of Movie Moments That Took My Breath Away. Lester makes it very clear from the start that he won’t survive the movie and the final moments are filled with tension as we wait for something to happen. Writer Alan Ball presents us with three suspects and we’re not sure until after the killing shot is fired who murdered Lester Burnham.

The murder is beside the point anyway. The tragedy is that Lester dies in pretty much the instant that he finds inner peace. His life flashes before his eyes as he reflects on all the beauty in the world. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry. You will someday”.

My Own Little Piece of Nostalgia

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Back in December, I posted one of my first ever reviews on this site of George Lucas’ classic of nostalgia American Graffiti. This is how I closed my review.

“I can’t think of many teen party movies that were made by such a celebrated and talented filmmaker. Rent it.”

In response, fellow Asshole Jay couldn’t resist leaving one of my favourite comments ever on one of my posts.

“I think “renting it” is your own little piece of nostalgia, Matt. Apart from you, I’m not sure I know anyone who rents movies anymore.”

Apparently she’s right. Tru elgin th is, I still do rent movies. Or did. Until Elgin Video announced on Thrusday that it was closing its doors after 25 years in business. I can’t say it came as a surprise. What small business that charges five dollars for a three-day rental could ever hope to compete with a more convenient and less expensive Netflix subscription. Even if every fourteenth rental is free. (Trust me, 14 comes quick when you’re an Asshole). Stores like this have been fighting a losing battle with the internet for years.

The first thing I do when I rent a DVD is assess the damage. Without even thinking, I immediately turn it over to see just how cracked it is and before inserting it into my player, I usually can’t help thinking about where else it’s been. Worse even, who among us hasn’t felt the disappointment that follows the elation of finally having tracked down You Only Live Twice only to have it start skipping just when it’s getting to the good part.

Maybe what comes too easily isn’t fully appreciated. When I was sixteen, I waited months for Supercop to come to video and- when it finally did- my video store (now long gone, barely even making it through the nineties) only had one copy. After weeks of feeling behind empty cases to find nothing there, you’d better believe I relish every kick, stunt, and badly dubbed line of dialogue when I finally went to the store at exactly the right time. I’ll even miss crawling around on my hands and knees because I know From Here To Eternity’s got to be down there somewhere.

When Elgin Video closes at the end of May, there won’t be many- if any- places like it left in Ottawa. It really is a shame. Last month when I discovered that they had Heathers in stock, it was nice to have a friendly staff of fellow cinephiles to share my excitement with. Like the girl behind the counter who, going above and beyond the call of duty, presented me with a list of 25 Movies Based on Young Adult Novels to help me with a particularly challenging Thursday Movie Picks. Or the guy behind the counter who knew more and had seen more than I did (something I rarely encounter and will even less rarely admit). I vowed that one day I would stump him. Now I never will.

I can’t help feeling an end of an era- one that I seem to have clung to longer than most. I’m a resourceful guy and- if I’m in the mood to watch Blood Simple- I’m sure I’ll find a way and may not even have to crawl around on all fours to do it. I’ll love watching the movie’s I love and hate watching the movies I hate as much as ever. It’s just finding them won’t be as fun as it used to be.

True Story with Matt and Jay

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Both James Franco and Jonah Hill play against type in True Story, a dark true crime drama about the relationship between accused murderer Christian Longo (Franco) and journalist Mike Finkel (Hill). Franco has done his fair share of serious roles in the past (is there anything he HASN’T dabbled in?) and Hill has even been nominated for two Oscars but seeing them in a movie together primes me for gay jokes and arguments over who’s giving off more rapey vibes. They both did a fine job, Hill in particular, with Franco a little too self-consciously creepy, but I found the casting distracting.

Well, you hope that Franco is playing against type, but I guess we never really know what lurks beneath the pubic-hair beard. It was a bad casting choice; one or the other may have worked, but not both together. In fact, I’m not even sure I would keep Franco on my short list. He did the dead eyes thing a lot, and at first I thought, okay, that wouldn’t have been my choice, but at least he’s committing…but the more I knew about the character, the more I felt I needed to see grief or deviousness or SOMETHING. And yet I still enjoyed our little outing, dinner and a movie, trying Lansdowne Cineplex VIP’s new spring menu (though hasn’t it been spring for all of our visits?), indulging in a delicious lobster grilled cheese sandwich and a couple of raspberry-watermelon gin spritzes.

Poor Mike Finkel. One minute a Pulitzer feels like it’s right around the corner, the next he can’t even get hired to write a snowboarding piece. Maybe I’m a little jaded but I found the way he adjusted the details in order to tell a more powerful story easy to forgive. The film even tries clumsily to draw parallels between the stories of Finkel and Longo, the latter of whom strangled his wife and three children and stuffed them into suitcases. Not sure I see the connection.

Yeah, that was a weird angle. It’s like the writers felt they had an interesting story but had no idea how to present it. But Finkel’s indiscretion did feel relatively minor, having attributed a few extra details to a profile about African children. Did all of those things happen to the one kid? No. But he was telling a bigger story, and I suppose you and I could see that while his superiors valued cold facts over a story that moves. Either way, the rest of us would call those white lies at best – in a generous mood, maybe even “fudging” or “embellishing”, you know, the way I fudged the truth up there where a) I claimed we had dinner and a movie when in actuality we saw a movie, and then had dinner and b) I characterized the grilled cheese as delicious although in reality I found it to be ambitious movie food but ultimately soggy in the middle and overly crispy around the edges – so much so that I feared you were about to shush me at any moment.

Longo accuses Finkel of being more like him than he’d like to admit. After all, Finkel did profit financially from telling this story. Is it a fair comparison? Not only did Longo murder his family, he shows no remorse and lies compulsively to protect himself. Was his a story that needed to be told- by Finkel or by the filmmakers- or is this more attention than he deserved?

I didn’t see them as being very similar at all. Multiple homicide is not equal to getting paid to write. I think Finkel was a bit motivated by career-redemption – it certainly kept him from following up on some serious red flags, and I think he may have been more guilty of journalistic negligence here than in his kerfuffle with the New York Times. He was a weak man but I don’t think he was a bad one. As for your last question, I’ve been thinking on that so much that I wrote a whole post about it – watch for it soon.

There may have been a good movie in here somewhere. Maybe if it really focused on the somewhat bizarre relationship between these two men instead of the maturation of these two actors. Or if it asked the right questions. It’s revealed at the end that the two men still speak semi-regularly. WHY?! There may be a much more interesting story there than the one told in True Story.

Agreed. There was nothing in the movie that suggested that these two would or could remain friends. One of the last scenes has Longo asking Finkel what he has personally lost by befriending him – seems like a friendship-ending thought to me. I also felt that they didn’t properly address the whole stolen identity aspect, and the verdict feels a little…out of the blue. But the part that I find myself dwelling on the most is that end title card that read something like – Christian Longo went on to write for many publications, including The New York Times, from death row. Finkel never wrote for them again. It really made me feel like our social priorities are horribly fucked up.