Tiffany Rhynard’s documentary focuses on Moises Serrano, who came to the U.S. at the age of 18 months with his illegal immigrant Mexican parents. The Serrano family settled in rural North Carolina and lived without legal problems until 2007, when state laws began to crack down on the ability of illegal immigrants to have a driver’s license or obtain college scholarship funds.
During the early 1960s, singer Dean Reed tried and failed to achieve stardom in the U.S. music scene. But he found a surprising level of popularity in South America, particularly in Chile, and for most of the 1960s he was a ubiquitous figure in the continent’s entertainment industry. Miguel Angel Viduarre’s documentary traces Reed’s unlikely stellar rise in South America, with rare recordings and film and television appearances that show the handsome performer perfectly at ease with Spanish-language lyrics.
Barely seen since its 1922 theatrical release, this silent epic is a major surprise: a charming, entertaining adventure that contradicts the long-held prejudices by film scholars against the costume dramas starring the much-maligned Marion Davies and produced by her lover, publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst.
It’s “The Bye Bye Man,” or as I call it “Honey, We Ripped Off Slenderman.” In all honesty, “The Bye Bye Man” actually looks like a weak Senator Palpatine cosplayer who died from toxic poisoning from his face make up and became a demon who likes to rip off his shtick from The Babadook, Freddy Krueger, and your every day mime. I’ve experienced scarier stories in young adult sections at public libraries, and could come up with a monster ten times more imposing, and with a name that doesn’t automatically inspire me to chortle under my breath. A movie this bad could only inspire me to gather my thoughts of bewilderment in an itemized list.
BOOTLEG FILES 600: “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” (1968-70 television series).
LAST SEEN: Bits and pieces can be found on YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It is a bit complicated.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not in its original form.
Contemporary children’s television is a fairly boring scene that offers little in the way of genuine fun for the young viewers. Indeed, some shows are so lacking in energy and personality that you can’t help but wonder if the programming is designed to narcotize the kiddie audience into a state of numbness.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a hardcore film and horror buff and one of the first shots of a horror movie I ever recall watching was the scene in “Psycho” where Marion Crane is stalked in her shower and mercilessly stabbed to death. It’s a scene I’ve seen at least a thousand times since I was a child and its effectiveness and impact have never worn off for me. Every scene, every second, every single shot is so deliberate and meticulous that Hitchcock creates an entity on to itself in a genuinely flawless horror film. It’s not often you’ll find a full length documentary about one shot in an entire movie, but the iconic moment with Janet Leigh is a sequence that warrants so much examination and analyses. It’s every bit the symbolism and metaphor audiences of the fifties weren’t expecting.
Did you see “Scream 4”? Do you remember the finale and surprise reveal, as well as the reasoning for the murderer’s devious deeds? Well, then you’ve seen “Tragedy Girls.” It feels a lot like Tyler MacIntyre loved the finale to “Scream 4” so much that he took that one twenty minute explanation, and transformed it in to a ninety minute movie that presents glimmers of brilliance, but stumbles quite often. While many will liken “Tragedy Girls” to “Heathers,” it’s actually about as smug and annoyingly self-satisfied as films like “Detention” and “Easy A.”