With their oddball, often anti-heroic characters and narratives aimed primarily at telling complicated stories aimed primarily at adult audiences than in selling toys or building universes, the films of Richard Shepard (including the likes of The Linguini Incident, The Matador, The Hunting Party and the deeply demented horror thriller The Perfection) have always had a certain sensibility to them that has felt inspired by American cinema of the 1970s. With his latest project, the documentary Film Geek, he demonstrates conclusively that this sensibility was one that he has clearly earned over the years by telling the story of his development as a film fanatic growing up in New York City in the Seventies and early Eighties. Based on the available evidence here, it would seem that if a movie opened in town during this time, Shepard not only went to see it but can tell you exactly where he saw it. From classics like All the President’s Men and All That Jazz to the more dubious likes of Blood Beach to the truncated original run of the full-length Heaven’s Gate, he was there for them and speaks to all of them with the kind of breathless enthusiasm of the true film fanatic. Moviegoing also proved to be a bonding experience between the young Shepard and his often-mysterious father and as the film progresses, it becomes as much an exploration of the complicated relationship between Shepard and his dad (whom we do see in some home movie clips and an excerpt from a film Shepard shot as a kid) as it is between him and the cinema.
Needless to say, as someone whose own introduction to the wonders of cinema occurred during roughly the same timespan as the one covered here, I could relate to Film Geek on any number of levels, right down to owning many of the exact editions of a number of the cinema books that Shepard presents from his own collection. However, even f you were not around to experience this particular era of film history for yourself, it is still easy to fall under Shepard’s spell as he relates his experiences with these films and how they would color and influence his life, including his relationship with his father, and his future work. In effect, the film is like a real-life and infinitely more tolerable version of The Fablemans in its exploration on the incredible impact that popular art can have on people when they experience it in the right way at the right time. Whether you are a hard-core film buff who will be trying to mentally name every film excerpted or someone taking notes on things to check out for themselves for the first time, Film Geek should prove to be an entertaining, edifying and occasionally moving meditation on movie mania that will have you flashing back afterwards on your own personal multiplex epiphanies and, if you are able to, wanting to give your dad a call and maybe invite him out to a movie.
By now, you have probably heard any number of reviews raving that I Saw the TV Glow is the can’t-miss film of the summer and I can assure you that, in the case of this truly unique, visually dazzling and emotionally devastating item, the hype is more than justified. It begins in 1996 with a lonely 12-year-old named Owen (Ian Forman) who is intrigued by a TV show named The Pink Opaque—a hybrid of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Are You Afraid of the Dark? in which a pair of young friends (Helena Howard and Lindsey Jordan) battle weekly evil like the malevolent Ice Cream Man—but is forbidden to see it because it airs past his bedtime. On Election Night, he unexpectedly bonds with moody ninth-grader Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over the show and, after spending one surreptitious night at her house watching it (and getting a glimpse of her grim home life), she passes on videotapes of each new episode to him over the next couple of years (with Owen now played by Justice Smith). Over time, it becomes apparent that Maddy’s fascination with the show runs on a much deeper level and indeed, when the show is cancelled, Maddy herself literally disappears and leaves Owen to face the uncertainties of life without the two things he could rely on. Years later, however, Maddy just as mysteriously returns and regales Owen with a tale that is so wild and implausible that it couldn’t possibly be true. . .or could it?
I Saw the TV Glow is the brainchild of Jane Schoenbrun, whose previous film, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, an intense coming-of-age drama/techno horror exploring everything from gender dysmorphia issues to the dangers of online existence, was one of the breakout hits of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. I thought that film was pretty impressive but with this one, they prove that they are anything but a one-hit wonder. Like World’s Fair, TV Glow has a set up that makes it sound like a straight-up genre film but it is clear that they have no real interest in providing the kind of cheap shocks and familiar tropes that some might expect. Instead, they are more interested in presenting a more intriguing and troubling inquiry into the ways that people use elements of popular culture as a way of finding meaning in and connecting with a world that they cannot otherwise relate to and the emotional damage that can result when that particular show or movie becomes the only thing that gives your life meaning, especially when it eventually goes away. There is a confidence to Schoenbrun’s filmmaking that is almost breathtaking to watch—over the course of the film, they go from moments of inexplicable creepiness to goofiness (the replication of 90’s television aesthetics as viewed in the Pink Opaque clips is spot-on) to scenes of almost unbearable poignancy in the final stretch (particularly one in which a now-adult Owen is reunited with the show that once obsessed him via the miracle of streaming and is startled at what he discovers) and nail each one perfectly, aided in no small part from the highly impressive performances from Smith and Lundy-Paine (who has an extended monologue towards the end that is stunning to experience) and a killer soundtrack featuring new songs from the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Caroline Polachek. Although anyone turning up to this one expecting a straightforward horror film is likely to become frustrated by its undeniably unique take on the genre, those who are in the mood for something a little more off the beaten path from one of the most fascinating new voices in American cinema to come along in a while should not hesitate to check out I Saw the TV Glow, though they should prepare to have it rattling around in their heads and hearts for a long time afterwards.
To describe Ethan Hawke’s Wildcat as merely a biopic is like describing its subject, author Flannery O’Connor, as a mere writer of Southern Gothic fiction—it may be true in the broad strokes there is a lot more to it than that, both for better and for worse. Essentially, it takes two approaches to confronting the life and artistic legacy of the writer of such classics as Wise Blood (1952) and the short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955). In one, we follow O’Connor (Maya Hawke) as she goes to New York to argue with a clueless, though not exactly wrong, editor (Alessandro Nivola) who is advising her on how to make Wise Blood into a more commercially palatable work before returning to her childhood home in Georgia to complete work on the book, deal with her mother (Laura Linney)—who also can’t understand why Flannery refuses to use her literary gifts to write something that people would like to read—and deal with her diagnosis of lupus, the disease that killed her father when she was 15 and which would keep her mostly confined to that house for the rest of her life. In the other, we see reenactments of some of O’Connor’s own fiction, including the short stories “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “Revelation,” in which Hawke and Linney play the female characters while the men are portrayed by the likes of Steve Zandt, Rafael Casal and Cooper Hoffman.
Considering that my main complaint with most biopics is that they always seem to adhere to the same basic narrative formula, there is a part of me that wants to applaud Hawke and co-writer Shelby Gaines for daring to do something quite different here. Unfortunately, while I admire the film’s ambition and the performances by Hawke (who is especially strong in a spellbinding sequence where she is visited by an Irish priest played by Liam Neeson, leading to a conversation engrossing enough to have inspired its own film) and Linney, the mixing of the two approaches never quite adds up—although each one contains a number of gripping and fascinating scenes and the conceit helps to put viewers into O’Connor’s unique mindset, they never quite jibe (and will not doubt perplex anyone who happens to encounter this film with little background knowledge of O’Connor and her work) and I found myself wishing that Hawke had just chosen one approach and stuck with that. Another flaw is that while the film does not shy away from the abhorrent racial attitudes on display in the South during this time, it largely fails to deal with O’Connor’s own questionable beliefs in this regard. Wildcat is not entirely without interest and I do admire its determination to give viewers something different but in the end, you will probably get more of an idea of who she was, both as a person and as a writer, from reading her books than from anything on display here.