Deception, Religion, and Whales: Three Great Watches at the Theater

            This was an incredible week at the movies, and I did not even get to see everything! There were five new releases this week, and I was able to make it to three of them. One was based on a book I had read, one was a documentary, and one came from filmmakers previously attached to a Marvel movie. All three were fun, so let’s get into it.

            The movie I was most excited about was You Can See Everything. There was almost no buzz around it until it premiered in a surprise screening at a film festival a month or two ago. Critics’ word of mouth was that it was amazing and could even be a Best Picture contender. That would be a first: a documentary has never been nominated for Best Picture. The discussion is now happening, and the film has the highest average rating ever on Letterboxd—but does it deserve it?

            The documentary is three hours long. People have said it does not feel that long, but I disagree. It does not drag by any means, yet even in the theater’s comfortable seats, I was feeling the runtime. My back hurt, and I checked my watch a few times to see how far along we were—something I do not do during the best movies. Still, it was interesting throughout.

            The premise is that Nathan Fielder moves in with Elizabeth Holmes’s family a month before she goes to jail for defrauding people through her company, Theranos. The machine she promoted was supposed to run numerous tests on a single drop of blood. It was going to revolutionize medicine, but it could not perform all those tests—only some of them. Her argument, at least to Fielder, was that someday it would be able to run all the tests, but it was not there yet. That was the disconnect. Fielder seemed to believe her, but then the movie had two more hours to go.

            Once Holmes is in jail, access to her becomes much more limited, so the film focuses more on Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans. In the first half of the documentary, he seems a little controlling, but he comes across as far more malicious when the focus shifts to him. He has power of attorney for Holmes while she is in jail, so he can basically do whatever he wants on her behalf. Hearing about what he does leaves you feeling gross.

            When Fielder gets a chance to talk to Holmes in prison about this, she does not seem too concerned, even though Evans appears to be acting in ways that clash with the person she seemed to be in the first part of the documentary. That left me confused. Obviously, Holmes was convicted of taking advantage of others, so it makes you wary of her, but she also comes across as sympathetic and strange. At times, it seems possible that a miscommunication between her and the investors led to the entire issue. Yet her partner’s griminess in the final two acts made me more wary of her, especially when she continued to profess her love after learning some of the worst things about him.

            Sadly, the documentary leaves you wanting a little more. Because we cannot be privy to the final two interactions between Fielder and Holmes while she is in prison, the film makes you question what really happened. He stages a fun reenactment, but no matter how hard you try to recreate an exchange, it will be very different from the real thing. Either way, the documentary was incredibly entertaining and kept me interested throughout. 4 stars.

            Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother was originally released in a limited run, but it slowly made its way into wider release, and I loved it. The people involved in this movie were originally supposed to make a Blade reboot for Marvel, but that project ended up in production hell, so they made this movie instead. Thankfully, Marvel missed out. In return, we got an original story starring one of the best actors working right now, Mahershala Ali.

            This is a violent family drama. Latif’s wife dies, leaving him alone to care for his three children of varying ages, including a baby who will drink only breast milk. Latif was once a hit man, and despite his best efforts to leave that life behind, he keeps getting pulled back in. Now his family is in danger too, so he has no choice but to try to end the violence once and for all.

            The aspect of the movie that drew me in most was its religiosity. Latif is Muslim, and a man at his mosque commissions him to take out a conservative Christian leader, Pastor Hwan. Hwan is about as conservative a Christian as you could imagine: he carries guns and takes hard-line positions on every aspect of the Bible. He has essentially used Christianity to create a cult, and now he is coming after Hatty. Hatty is not a great guy either, but he is Muslim, and Latif owes his security guard a favor, so Latif is supposed to protect him.

            Latif seems knowledgeable about his religion, but he is by no means a regular practitioner. Pastor Hwan, meanwhile, practices regularly but does not seem to uphold Christianity’s values. A religious war is unfolding, yet religion appears to serve as a false pretext for senseless violence. It all comes to a head when Latif, armed with a samurai sword, tries to take on roughly ten radical Christians by himself. They have assault rifles, so, of course, he is shot multiple times. But his daughter prays for his safe return, and he is resurrected. He comes back to life, and Hwan lets him leave.

            Something similar happened to Hwan when he was in the military. He was caught in an explosion, and after his mother prayed for him, he came back. This is why the theology interested me so much: here are two very different people from different religions whose loved ones use prayer to save them. Because the movie centers mainly on a Muslim family, I would love to hear the director discuss his vision and what he was trying to say. The film could be about the power of prayer in general, but it also seems to suggest that family is the one true religion worthy of devotion. 4 stars.

            Lastly, there is Whalefall. It is based on a popular novel that I read over the summer. Like many horror movies now, its central theme is family drama. A teenager’s dad was too hard on him, so he ran away. His dad later died from cancer, and the teenager refused to visit him. Now he must reckon with his decision and his grief—inside a whale.

            His dad died by suicide after jumping into the ocean rather than letting the disease completely overtake him, so there were no remains. His son dives into the ocean hoping to retrieve at least one item that might give his family some closure. Instead, he is swallowed by a whale and must fight for survival as his air tank runs out inside its belly.

            This movie’s premise is extremely difficult to execute on film. The filmmakers had to build a set that looked like a whale’s stomach, and they also faced the problem of the book’s internal monologue. On the page, we can read the protagonist’s thoughts while he is trapped inside the whale. In the movie, however, he has an air regulator in his mouth, so there is only so much he can say aloud. That makes this a very physical acting job and a difficult role. The result was good enough, though. I was not disappointed. 3 stars.