The Mole: Undercover in North Korea

Terrified of the horrors of totalitarianism, "the mole went down the rabbit hole." Of all the rabbit holes out there, one could do far worse than exploring the one about North Korea, for any country so secretive almost begs to be examined. 

Yet with a complete ban on a free press and no freedom of travel (and the fact that Americans have been prohibited by the U.S. State Department from traveling there since 2017 when Otto Warmbier was sentenced to life imprisonment for stealing a poster from his Pyongyang hotel and eventually returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state), how could one not crave information about such a state?

My own fascination with North Korea was sparked when I moved to Seoul in 2009. There, I watched my first documentary of the country, Crossing the Line, about an American defector living in Pyongyang. Despite eventually leaving Korea, I never stopped thinking about the northern half, which I believe to be illegally occupied by a despot and the only fat man in a country of starving people. My own rabbit hole was during the pandemic (the same year The Mole: Undercover in North Korea was released), watching loads of fascinating footage by Russian YouTuber Anton Lyadov/"Anton is here" as he pretended to be a lawyer living in Pyongyang. I therefore don't blame anyone for becoming fascinated with North Korea and even wanting to go undercover.

For the mole in question (a retired chef named Ulrich Løvenskjold Larsen from Denmark) in this documentary, directed by Mads Brügger, we're told a lot of his own motivation had to do with his formative years, in which he befriended young East Germans after Germany reunified and the Cold War ended. He's at the heart of this story. The title ("Undercover in North Korea") is a bit misleading—hardly any of the mole's (or viewer's) time is spent in North Korea. It doesn't provide you with what life can be like for an average North Korean, as documentaries like State of Mind, Out of Breath, and My Brothers and Sisters in the North or books like Without You, There Is No Us or Nothing to Envy do. Instead, it focuses on the mole. He's retired because of some kind of illness that is never explained, but Brügger explains that after Ulrich viewed Brügger's 2009 documentary The Red Chapel about two comedians who travel in North Korea under the pretense of a cultural exchange, he reached out to the filmmaker to inform him that he had been infiltrating the infamous Korea Friendship Association and would like to know if he would be interested in turning the project into a film. Brügger was not thoroughly interested, but didn't cut ties and instead let things fall as they may. Given that Brügger is banned from re-entering North Korea, Ulrich and his espionage might be an avenue to continue to explore the nefariousness of Kim Jong-un's government, so they kept in touch.

The main villain here is not Kim but Alejandro Cao de Benós Les y Pérez, the Spanish president of KFA and kind of a chubby and uninspiring Bond villain. At one point, he is described as a small dictator in his own universe, leading a band of peculiar eccentrics who have found some sort of community in Western groups that believe they see through the "propaganda" that is the narrative around this tyrannical hermit kingdom. (He's also a bit of a racist, using language I would rather not repeat, but he also is an equal-opportunity offender, opining that Brits are very dirty.) Alejandro may be Spanish, but he is a wannabe-North Korean, constantly referring to Kim Jong-un as "the Grand Marshal" and the pronoun "we" when referring to DPRK. For example, when luring the mole and a potential buyer, he says, "We can do things that no other country can do." What are these things referring to? Quite illicit things, to be frank, namely in attempts to skirt sanctions that have made it hard for the regime to gain funds. 

Throughout years and years of going undercover as a Western simp for North Korea, Ulrich brings a possible investor named Mr. James to Alejandro in the hopes of North Korea selling weapons despite the sanctions. Mr. James is obviously not a real investor but instead a former French foreign legionnaire and convicted drug dealer. His name is Jim Mehdi Latrache-Qvortrup; he's a very charismatic fellow with a maniacal laugh who looks like he could be the Danish Billy Zane and also straight out of a Bond film. From here, their adventures take them to Uganda, where they come up with a plan to "buy" an island so the North Koreans can secretly build the weapons under ground. What about the people living there? Mr. James and the North Koreans need to "remove people without causing friction," so they get the Ugandans to agree to trick the locals into thinking that Mr. James is there to build a hospital, and that's why they must leave their land. "Now," the Ugandan says after they've come up with their plan, "let us pray." 

I mentioned that Alejandro is uninspiring; he is also clumsy. When discussing Brügger privately with Ulrich, he vents and vents and wags his finger at the North Korean officials who fell for Brügger's stunts in The Red Chapel, insisting that had they simply informed him, he would have been able to discern the act and stop them from losing face on the world stage (again). The irony is almost painful, for Alejandro repeatedly misses several hints that practically slap him in the face that something is amiss. One such scene is the most suspenseful in the entire film. 

Has this film changed Alejandro's perception among the regime in North Korea? It's difficult to say. He doesn't seem to have appeared in as many documentaries about North Korea as he used to. We do know that two years later, a U.S. federal arrest warrant was issued against him, but he is still at large. "I thought it would lead to the arrest of Alejandro Cao de Benós," Brügger told Variety five years ago. "All of this made me contemplate that maybe he is a double agent himself. Never say never." What about the consequences for North Korea as a whole? Having been essentially the last country to drag itself out of the COVID-19 pandemic and recently becoming a firm ally in Russia's fight against Ukraine, the new funds have allowed its economy to grow nearly four percent, the largest in almost twenty years. Kim Jong-un proudly walked beside Vladimir Putin and their host, Xi Jinping, in Beijing last year to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The Kim dynasty is unlikely to go away anytime soon.  

Some scenes in The Mole come across as goofy and should have been discarded, like when Brügger has Ulrich get some sort of training from an ex-CIA agent. Like much of anything about North Korea, these scenes and the better ones feel almost like science fiction. North Korea indeed is something that if you explained it to an alien who had never heard of such a place, they'd probably think you had made it up. That's one of the reasons why a film like The Mole: Undercover in North Korea is so important. For the tankies who defend the regime and lie about it (the Alejandros of the world), they are caught red-handed. I hope Brügger finds a way to make more documentaries like this. It's a fascinating look at amateur espionage. 

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Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America

Whenever there is a horrifying moment in the United States of America related to race, there is sometimes a knee-jerk reaction to it. "That's not who we are" is more or less the usual refrain. For conservatives, this "isn't who we are" because, regardless of what people of color have told everyone about their experiences, racism is simply a case of a few bad apples. Liberals, however, though they mean well, are often ignorant of history. One would hear many white liberals shout "this isn't who we are!" when the Trump administration would put children in cages, apparently oblivious of the fact that so much of the history of the United States features such ugly episodes. 

Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America is a documentary that aims to tear apart both fallacies. It's a film that is similar to An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary featuring Al Gore's presentation attempting to alarm audiences of the reality of global warming. In a similar style, Who We Are splits between a presentation with a fancy PowerPoint by Jeffrey Robinson, a former deputy director of the ACLU and the founder of the Who We Are Project, and personal anecdotes about Robinson's own experiences with racism mixed with interviews with the mothers of Black men killed by the police. Many of these moments, whether they be the interviews with these mothers or Robinson talking with a white coach at his Catholic school who tried to protect him from racism, are powerful, as is much of Robinson's more objective presentation, which details what he calls tipping points, moments when the United States (as he puts it) moved one step forward and three back in terms of racial justice and fairness. For example, Reconstruction and the civil rights laws of the nineteenth century were replaced by Jim Crow, and the gains from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s were diminished by harmful policies that followed, such as the War on Drugs. 

As one can imagine, the film very much is a history lesson. On tours, Robinson shows viewers the silent yet horrifying reminders of racism in the country, from fingerprints of enslaved people in bricks, to trees still standing where Black people were lynched, to the steps of what used to be Black Wall Street in Tulsa before the infamous slaughter in 1921. Other usual beats are there, such as the Electoral College's racist origins, the racist lyrics of the later verses of "Star-Spangled Banner," The Birth of a Nation, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Fernando Wood, and the fight to remove statues paying tribute to Confederate traitors and slavers. During his presentation, he includes a passage from the South Carolina Slave Code of 1740, which outlined that "the slave may be kept in due subjugation and obedience." His point is that the laws of the United States have often been a fundamental component of anti-Black racism in the United States. "The law picked a side," he tells his audience. 

If there is a problem with the film, it is that it is too similar in style to An Inconvenient Truth (so much so that it could have alternatively been titled "An Inconvenient Truth About Racism"). Beyond that, the movie (like many others similar to it) preaches to the choir. In one scene, Robinson discusses the causes of the Civil War when he sees a pro-Confederate flag rally. Chatting with an older white man, Robinson does circles around him and his lack of logic, to the point where the other man seems to concede that if Robinson were to enslave the white guy, he would be okay with that (as long as he were to be treated "like family"). The white guy is wearing sunglasses, but his facial expression is basically emotionless; it's clear he just wants this to end. Despite likely being exposed to different (and obviously stronger) arguments, the man does not recant his original position. The war was fought because of economic reasons, he maintains, and it was not due to slavery (which was, again according to him, okay in many instances because the enslaved people were often treated as family). Robinson gets back into the vehicle and is completely exhausted. "Facts were not that important to this gentleman," he says. 

But that's a frustrating thing about Who We Are. Few of the many white people who disapprove of Black Lives Matter or the only twenty-five percent of white people who think that people of color are treated more harshly by the police are likely to see this documentary, and those who do are unlikely, I believe, to have their opinions be changed. The movie works for its audience (those who already walk into the film agreeing with Robinson) because these are the arguments that have always worked for this group. For the other group, their arguments are simpler: the United States is not racist—end of discussion. It's easy to see how they could think that; it is, after all, how many of them have been taught to view racism in this nation. Green Book won Best Picture only three years ago because many people (even those infamously pesky liberals in Hollywood) still think that racism only existed in the South, it ended in 1968, and the solution to it is to simply put white people with people of color, and the problems will magically disappear.  

This is probably most notable when Robinson plays excerpts from Donald Trump's infamous remarks confusing Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. Robinson pauses, then points out how a few things there are a little problematic. The audience laughs. He then goes on to explain the reasons why this is problematic—how Jackson had died long before the war had started, how Jackson had enslaved people—but it doesn't matter. The choir likely already was aware of the weird and ignorant way Trump would praise Jackson; those who (literally) still adore Jackson and think he was a populist "man of the people" probably will think that they, too, are being laughed at, and will likely turn it off by that point.

Who We Are is a good documentary. It's an important documentary. It's a documentary many (especially younger people) really ought to see. But the target audience should actually be people who would be more vulnerable to falling for these notions that racism "isn't really who we are," that it's not a part of this country's DNA. They are the ones who need to hear these arguments and understand the reality of the situation. The film will, however, likely fall flat for them.  

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Some Kind of Heaven

If I am about thirty-four and a half years old, that means that I have roughly been on this Earth for 413 months. Of those 413 months, twelve of them have been spent visiting and even at times living in The Villages. The Villages is the largest retirement community in the country, with well over a hundred thousand retirees living in this retirement fairyland in the middle of Florida. A person in his thirties certainly stands out, especially if he's driving a golf cart. But drive one I did during periods of house sitting, visiting, and even staying for several months in between contracts. As a U.S. citizen living abroad, I still use my parents' address in The Villages as my permanent residence, and I often catch myself whispering to whoever needs my address (the bank teller or the pharmacist, for example) that "I really don't live here."

You also might have heard of The Villages. Perhaps you've heard the dirty rumor that The Villages has the highest STD rate in the country, which was basically debunked a few years ago by villages-news.com but might forever be in the public's imagination thanks to a 2009 article in the New York Post that included gossip about a couple getting caught having sex in their golf cart, rumors of a black market for Viagra, and cops talking about breaking up men jousting with their canes to fight over women. You most certainly heard of The Villages if you were following last year's presidential election, thanks to constant media coverage of the community's supposed disappointment in Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with articles from Business Insider, New York magazine, the Associated Press, NBC, USA Today, and many others. (At any rate, Trump won Florida 51 to 48, winning almost seventy percent—practically identical to his 2016 result—of Sumpter County, where most of The Villages is.) Or maybe you just have an older relative who escaped the cold of northern states and has found their own slice of heaven in Florida. With all this awareness of The Villages, it was inevitable that some kind of film would be made about it. It's very fortunate for moviegoers that the unavoidable film was in capable hands. 

With all that you have likely heard of this unique part of the country, there is almost nothing I can tell you about The Villages that you won't learn in the new documentary titled Some Kind of Heaven. Directed by Lance Oppenheim (a Floridian making his directorial debut here) and produced by Darren Aronofsky, this film will show you all the good, bad, and ugly of a community self-described as "Florida's friendliest hometown." "You come here to live," one resident says. "You don't come here to pass away." Within the first sequences of the documentary, you'll see how The Villages offers something for everyone—synchronized swimming, rowing, pickleball, and golf courses aplenty are just some of the activities available for residents. There's even a club for people named Elaine. The documentary, however, is not as concerned with the almost idiosyncratic vibe there but instead four residents: a married couple named Anne and Reggie, a widow named Barbara, and a bachelor named Dennis. 

Barbara is the most normal of the four. She's from Boston, a place she desperately wants to return to. Her husband passed away, and she's working full time at a job she doesn't particularly like. She tells the interviewer that her time in The Villages "hasn't been the fantasyland" she hoped it would be, right before she bursts into face-saving laughter as her dog starts humping the cat. Audience members will certainly feel for a person like Barbara and others who have not found the happiness they thought they would find there, like Dennis, who lives in a van and illegally parks for the night on Villages property. He fully states that his intention is to find a wealthy woman whom he can move in with. Much of Anne's story focuses on her crumbling marriage to Reggie, a very peculiar individual struggling with addiction to THC. Some of these characters' paths take some unexpected turns, especially when the law gets involved.   

During the times I housesat for my parents in The Villages, I usually would go outside only for things like going to see a movie or getting groceries. I avoided everything else at all cost, and other than doctor appointments, there was little else I found in common with the permanent residents (or semi-permanent ones coined "snow birds," those who retreat to northern states during the miserably hot and humid summers). I've seen enough of The Villages—with its humidity, omnipresent golf courses, and deep-red conservatism—to know that it's not for me, and it never will be (even forty years from now). Knowing The Villages so well might have impacted how I responded to Some Kind of Heaven, and I'm not sure if it helped or hurt my enjoyment of the film. The target audience therefore is people who have never been there or even heard of it. Actual Villagers will probably be wondering why they've bothered to watch a movie that shows them their daily experiences, although the film's occasional melancholy likely preaches to the choir that is those who have moved there and haven't found the paradise they were hoping for.

Other residents of The Villages—the people who've truly fallen in love with this wonderland in a country they don't recognize anymore—might be insulted. True, some of the film's perspective is predictably smug, with an attitude that shouts "look at all these old geezers running around here!" Yet much of Some Kind of Heaven is equal parts inquisitive and informative, as many great documentaries are. And viewers will likely find themselves rooting for the four Villagers we follow (especially Barbara), even when they do foolish things. Much acclaim should be given to Oppenheim for channeling a style that embraces surrealism while being humanist at the same time. There isn't much of a thesis in this documentary, but it really shines when focusing on the four characters. Perhaps it was easy for Oppenheim to get these folks to spill the beans so easily; older people, after all, are more trusting than younger people. Hopefully their children and grandchildren won't be too upset at him. 

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Bigge: I Got a Story to Tell (And a List of the Greatest Notorious B.I.G. Songs)

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is a new documentary on Netflix about Christopher Wallace (better known to all as Biggie, Biggie Smalls, and the Notorious B.I.G.) that in roughly ninety minutes will tell us "what rap planet this guy came from." That's fundamentally sort of the problem with the film. It's a fine documentary (or at least fine enough), especially for music fans and in particular rap and Biggie fans. But it's a documentary that wants to tell you everything. Biggie's music won world-wide acclaim; simply letting us hear more of it would have better accomplished the film's objective, and yet we hear surprisingly little of it.

Most of what we get instead are talking heads. Many of these are necessary, though, like when jazz musician Donald Harrison talks to us about how he recognized Wallace's talent for music early on. Faith Evans (Wallace's widow and collaborator) and Sean Combs also provide essential narratives of what the actual Christopher Wallace was like, not simply as an artist but as a person.

But the most compelling scenes feature Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. An immigrant from Jamaica and a fan more of country and western music than gangsta rap, she has been protective of her son's legacy since his death, and her voice can be heard on several Biggie tracks and the final album he appeared in: The King and I, by Evans. Voletta's candor is almost slightly ironic because any criticism that has ever been issued towards Christopher Wallace (aside, I suppose, criticism of his lyrics) has been from his mother. Yet her discussion of her son further humanizes him in a way much of the rest of this documentary fails to do so. They are candid moments that help enlighten viewers on the narrative behind some of his lyrics.

Voletta's immigrant identity clearly had an impact on her son's music. One of his best songs ("Respect" from the album Ready to Die) takes heavy inspiration from Jamaican music. Being the child of an immigrant, we are told, also helped Biggie be established as an "outsider," and one wonders if this added to his natural shyness. However, one will likely be disappointed if they wanted more of a character study of Christopher Wallace, though the documentary certainly is a film for musicologists with its discussion of the musical inspiration for Wallace and his impact on the music world. 

But that can only take a film so far, and the essential problem with Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is that most audience members (including critics) get bored easily by biographical films, as they can be quite dull and fall heavy on the telling side instead of showing us something new. Biographical documentaries are not much better. The usual elements are all there: a rags-to-riches story of a musical genius who also had a lot of tragedy and drugs in his life. Essentially, you've seen this before.

What fans of Biggie already knew—that his rap was a different kind of rap, that his music was loved around the world, that his collaborations with Puffy made them comparable to other brilliant artistic pairings (like Coppola and Pacino or De Niro and Scorsese, we're told)—they will be reminded of in this documentary. But if fans were hoping for something more, they are likely to be disappointed. It often simply feels like talking heads reminding us that he was a genius. Simply listening to his songs is a much more potent lesson than most of what is found here.

The Greatest Notorious B.I.G. Songs:

50. Real Love Remix
49. The Reason

48. Legacy

47. One More Chance

46. Just a Memory 

45. Memory

44. Suicidal Thoughts

43. Tryna Get By

42. Don't Test Me

41. Miss U

40. Tonight

39. Split Your Game

38. Hold Ya Head

37. 1970 Somethin'

36. Ultimate Rush

35. Hustler's Story

34. Beef

33. I'm With Whateva

32. Rap Phenomenon 

31. Another

30. Hope You Sleep

29. Come On

28. Going Back to Cali

27. Warning

26. Sky's the Limit

25. Somebody's Gotta Die

24. Ten Crack Commandments

23. Biggie

22. I Gotta Story to Tell

21. Unbelievable 

20. Dead Wrong

19. Who Shot Ya

18. Ready to Die

17. Would You Die For Me

16. Let Me Get Down

15. Notorious B.I.G.

14. Everyday Struggle

13. Notorious Things

12. What's Beef?

11. Gimme the Loot

10. I Love the Dough

9. Juicy

8. Things Have Changed

7. Living in Pain

6. Kick in the Door

5. My Downfall

4. Mo Money Mo Problems

3. Big Poppa

2. Respect

1. Hypnotize 

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A Thousand Cuts

The term "death by a thousand cuts" comes from the Chinese word "lingchi", which, according to Wikipedia, translates as "lingering death" or "slow process". In case your imagination isn't gory enough, lingchi was a torture and execution practice for roughly a thousand years, and in some cases there could be as many as three thousand cuts to the human body in the awful ordeal. Death could be achieved in as little as fifteen minutes, although some emperors ordered as many as three days of cutting. 

Three days is minuscule compared to four years, which is how long Rodrigo Duterte and his ruling PDP-Lapang Party have controlled the Philippines. Elected in 2016 as a populist and nationalist, Duterte is notorious around the world for the extra-judicial killings as a result of his so-called War on Drugs. News organizations and human rights groups have claimed that the death count may be as high as 12,000, including 54 children in the first year. 

Duterte may be infamous abroad, but he is beloved at home. The majority of my Filipino friends strongly support Duterte and his War on Drugs. The reasons why never really make sense to me; they'll usually say something about Filipinos needing a paternalistic or authoritarian figure to manage things and keep order. Opinion polls also show clear evidence that Duterte (sometimes nicknamed "Duterte Harry") remains popular, with numbers as high as 91 percent, even as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the country and the War on Drugs continues. Typically, Filipino presidents rank much lower. 

His popularity has remained sky-high despite critical reporting from journalists like Maria Ressa, co-founder of the online news site Rappler. Ressa, a 2018 Time magazine Person of the Year, has been a critic of Duterte's, and she has paid the price for it. The documentary A Thousand Cuts, directed by Ramona Diaz, focuses on Ressa and Rappler's reporting on the War on Drugs and the government's draconian response to their work. In addition to following Ressa's story, A Thousand Cuts also shows its audience other journalists at Rappler, like Pia Ranada and Patricia Evangelista, as well as the senatorial campaigns of Samira Gutoc (a Duterte critic) and Ronald dela Rosa, a big, bald, and bold police general who is short on policy specifics (other than that he's with Duterte) but does a lot of out-of-tune singing for his supporters at rallies. Duterte does not appear as frequently as Ressa, but his presence is always there, whether it be through his government's targeting of journalists or another dead body in the streets. 

Some critics (especially those who admire Duterte) might describe A Thousand Cuts as one-sided, but this would be unfair. If an audience member is looking for balance, they would surely see it in the senate races; both of the candidates get about equal screen time to share their point of view. Beyond that, a "both-sides-of-the-argument" type of approach in this documentary would have made it too thoroughly bland and didactic in the wrong way. And for authoritarian leaders, a fair-and-balanced approach is not appropriate. Does a guy who has an approval rating in the nineties (despite botching a pandemic response and murdering thousands of people) really need a film to present his side of the story? 

Riaz and her team have done a commendable job editing all their footage and archival footage covering so many complex topics and getting their audience invested. People from the U.S. may take special interest in such a film because of the similarities between Donald Trump and Duterte, but there's no reason why someone from Canada or Sweden or Japan, for example, wouldn't also find the film fascinating. One element that will help keep audiences' attention is Sam Lipman's score, which, while not an omnipresent part of the documentary, does help A Thousand Cuts feel increasingly like a political thriller as it inches its way towards the denoument. 

With the way Diaz has presented everything, it's difficult to watch A Thousand Cuts and not notice obvious similarities between the Trump experiment in the United States and the Duterte experiment in the Philippines. Both have demonstrated the dangers of populism and "law-and-order" brutality, as well as attacks on the media. Early in the documentary, Duterte calls Rappler a "fake news outlet...pregnant with falsity." Both Trump and Duterte certainly have benefited from actual fake news and vitriol on social media sites like Facebook. (The #ArrestThoseBitches is seen in A Thousand Cuts, presumably referring to Ressa, Renada, Evangelista, and others.) Duterte is much more blunt than Trump. With Trump, he would often test limits by "joking" or re-tweeting someone. Duterte doesn't do that. He's much more direct. "If you end up dead," we hear him tell a journalist in the film, "it's your own fault." They both boast about their genitals, but even in that Duterte is more descriptive, as we see here. Ressa notes that while her sister lives in New York and she lives in Manila, both of them are ruled by similar leaders, "macho, populist, sexist at best," she says, "misogynistic at worst." They both use anger and fear to divide and conquer, she tell us.    

The difference between the Philippines and the United States, though, is that Trump eventually lost in the U.S. True, Trump came to power (by losing the popular vote and with the help of Russia) and then won the second-most votes in the 2020 campaign. He tried to overturn the results, and his supporters violently stormed the Capitol to try and prevent the transfer of power. But it failed. Journalists haven't been convicted in the U.S. for reporting on politicians. Ressa notes that if authoritarians can get away with it in countries like the U.S., they surely can get away with it in countries like the Philippines. 

But alas, it seems she's wrong. Trump is out of power and unusually mute, facing possible (yet increasingly unlikely) conviction. His approval rating was in the thirties, not nineties, and the growing consensus is that he will be historically ranked as one of the worst, if not the worst. Duterte, however, while term-limited, seems to be readying the presidential palace for his daughter. His war has been a failure but continues nevertheless. Ressa has been convicted of cyberlibel. It's possible that Trump or someone like him could win in 2024 or beyond, but it's just as likely that this will not be the case. Duterte's legacy, popularity, War on Drugs, and persecution of journalists, however, seems unlikely to go away. The cuts could keep coming.

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Get Me Roger Stone

As expected, Donald Trump has just commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, his longtime friend and political advisor. Apparently, according to the White House, children and teachers can risk their lives going to school during a pandemic, but prison is too medically risky for Mr. Stone, who was convicted on seven counts this year, including witness tampering and lying to investigators. He was sentenced this February to over three years in prison. This episode was yet another reminder of a seriously flawed justice system, one in which Trump seeks to throw those toppling statues of slavers in jail for ten years but will bail out his buddies. Stone certainly has company. He is one of seven Trump associates who have been found guilty of criminal acts since 2016; the others include Trump's former lawyer (Michael Cohen), former campaign advisor (George Papadopoulos), and Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman. Manafort is a longtime partner and friend of Stone's and is interviewed in the Netflix documentary Get Me Roger Stone about this infamous politico.

Written and directed by Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, Get Me Roger Stone does not offer an attempt at repackaging and redeeming a rightwing figure like another Netflix documentary called Mitt did only a few years before it. If you hate Roger Stone, your hatred of him will only be fanned. If you don't like the guy but find yourself frequently defending him to your progressive friends, seeing a documentary like this might only make you more uncomfortable. Nobody likes Roger Stone, so I don't need to go any further with a third category.

In the documentary, Stone describes himself as an "agent provocateur". Trump describes him as a "dirty trickster". Stone happily wears that badge, as he frequently does the Nixon pose, embracing this image of a counterpuncher who doesn't always follow the rules with tremendous glee. He dresses the part as well. Everyone has seen pictures of him in those ridiculous suits and a bowler hat and glasses that make him seem as if he's begging to be punched. The schmuck even drinks a martini while being interviewed here. All rightwing provocateurs like to think of themselves as Bond villains, but Stone doesn't make the grade. He's not a Bond villain, but more like a 1960s Batman villain, an agent of chaos more in the mold of Caesar Romero than Heath Ledger.

Two years ago, Trump went to Twitter to hilariously cry that because he "won" on his first try (what adult talks like that?), he was not just smart, but a genius. But that's not true. I mean, obviously he's neither smart nor a genius. But aside from the fact that he lost the election by nearly three million votes, his first political adventure was in 2000, during Trump's efforts to be the nominee for President of the United States of the Reform Party (which surprisingly still exists). Trump sought the Reform nomination, and ironically argued the nominee shouldn't be Pat Buchanan because Buchanan was too racist. Who served as one of Trump's advisors? Roger F-ing Stone. Trump lost the race for the nomination, which Buchanan won. Stone then returned to Trump's inner political circle in the early days of his next campaign before he was fired (or before he quit, as he says). Stone is assumed to have recommended Manafort to be Trump's campaign advisor before he, too, quit (and now sits in prison, unable to get Trump's sympathy in a way Stone has).

Get Me Roger Stone progresses in a similar way to the renowned 2003 documentary The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris. Like Morris, Bank, DiMauro, and Pehme get Stone to discuss his "rules" or lessons. There are so many rules he likes to dish out, but the only one you really need to understand is the first one he tells us: It is better to be infamous than not famous at all. He has an almost humorous way of finding himself in every sort of major U.S. political event, including both stolen elections of 2000 and 2016. He was a Nixon aid and was even discussed during the Watergate hearings. Regarding his Nixon fetish, he's a contrarian to be sure; no one likes Nixon, and nobody talks about him in positive ways. But Stone does, and the affection seems genuine. Stone has a tattoo on his back of Nixon's face, and his mother, according to the documentary, once told him that his religion is politics and his god is Richard Nixon. After Watergate, he became close with McCarthy's guy Roy Cohn (that Roy Cohn), who likely also served as a mentor to Stone in the dark arts of political fighting. (It was Cohn who introduced Stone to Donald Trump.) Along with Manafort, their partner Charlie Black, Lee Atwater, and later Trump, Stone championed the fight-dirty-but-win attitudes the Baby Boomer New Right has cursed us with.

Despite how rat-like he is, Stone comes across sometimes in a remarkably charming (yet insufferable) way. Among others interviewed in Get Me Roger Stone are Jeffrey Toobin, Tucker Carlson, and of course, Donald Trump. But they're all boring to listen to compared to Stone. He also makes surprisingly compelling arguments. "Hate," he tells the interviewer, "is a stronger motivation than love." Democrats learned that the hard way after their silliness about "when they go low, we go high" got them nowhere. Charismatic and knowledgable were not two adjectives I associated Roger Stone with before watching Get Me Roger Stone.

However, since the documentary was released, Stone has been different. The man is certainly not well. In his disposition from earlier this year, he sat like a rabid dog, aching to bite his peculiar teeth into the flesh of an opponent. By that I mean he literally chomped his teeth, as if they had a mind of their own and were willing to screw up his life even more than he already had. Any normal person who has had to witness an unhinged rightwing uncle ruin everyone's Thanksgiving with a rant about the so-called Deep State will surely recognize this when watching the clip. For a man who seems to revel in making everyone else angry, it is utter bliss to watch him so easily lose his shit.

The one small sliver of solace one can find in the saga of Roger Stone is a simple fact: By now, other than fringe alt-right figures who pose an undeniable threat to the United States and to civilization, no one likes or admires a person like Roger Stone, and surely no one will mourn when he finally leaves us. Even most of the people interviewed in the documentary don't heap praise on him. His daughter admits he's a trickster, and his wife tells us that when she met him, she thought he looked like a member of the Hitler Youth.

All of this nonsense has been normalized these past few years. "Now the children's table is the adult table," someone says in the documentary. How true that is. In 2015, at the first GOP debate, Trump was asked about all the money he had given to politicians before he himself became one. (Trump's money giving is addressed in Get Me Roger Stone, as well.) "When they call, I give," he said. "And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me." For a man who is a serial liar, that is a profoundly honest and accurate statement, one that would have likely cost him a generation or even a decade or two before. But these are different times, partly because of guys like Roger Stone. The documentary is successful at drawing lines between Nixon to Stone to Trump. Stone complains in the documentary about it all being "a swamp", the term Trump often uses to shift blame for not solving problems. It may be a swamp, but it's a swamp that celebrates Roger Stone as a founding member.

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Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

Charismatic, completely selfless, laid-back, so intelligent. This is how many describe a young man named Andrew Bagby. With surgical precision in its massive use of editing, we're introduced to Andrew through these interviews and archival footage, like movies he made with his friends when he was a kid. Andrew loved appearing in the films of his buddy Kurt Kuenne, the director of Dear Zachary, when they were young. They even got Andrew's parents to act in them. As Andrew was saving for medical school, he still donated $2,000 to help fund Kurt's first movie. One can understand how monumental of a person he was.

It becomes fairly evident that Bagby was killed. "Why did Andrew get killed?" a young boy asks. Surely, we will find out.

This movie is part biography, part crime story. The life, times, and murder of Andrew Bagby. Some archival clips of Andrew and interviews with colleagues and friends at time seem superfluous. There are anecdotes of him biting his nails and always wearing shorts. As a narrator, Kuenne consciously or not gets this, because he literally stops showing the interviews. "You gotta know what happened," he says. "The whole truth." Someone hurt him, the young boy is told. A very bad person.

Her name: Shirley Turner, a former classmate of Andrew's in medical school in Canada. Something wasn't right with Shirley, many observed. She had finished her residency but was not practicing. She had three different children who had three different fathers. And she made inappropriate remarks about her intimacy with Andrew to his ex-fiance. When he moved back to the U.S. to become a family medicine practitioner, she followed. She acted, as one interviewee explained, possessive. After his murder, she became the primary suspect in the murder. In the footage we see, Shirley does not necessarily come across as callous, but something is certainly off.

If how an audience is to emotionally react is often based on the guidance of people (and, equally, to music), then those roles are primarily given to Andrew's parents, the two who appear on screen the most. They cry, they swear. They provide examples of incident after incident of negligence in lawyers and judges in the criminal system in Newfoundland. A significant portion is devoted to how "the system" failed. The law is slow (part of the slow pace is due to a disagreement on the English and French translation of the law), and they are helpless. Allegedly, one of the judges gave Shirley advice on how to write her own appeal; another judge allowed her back onto the streets after giving her praise for being a person who is "quite capable" because she is a doctor, but only after Shirley promises to behave herself (white privilege anyone?). The official reason the judge gives is that Shirley was accused of killing one person, and that did not represent the public at large.

By now the audience has been told that Shirley gave birth to a young boy named Zachary, who was given back to Shirley after she was released. And many times, the Bagleys had to spend a considerable amount of time with Shirley in order to spend time with Zachary. Going to the movies, swimming lessons, and they never brought up the trial. To be in the same room with the person you're convinced is the killer of your son while you're trying to play with your grandchild, the son of that accused murder, would require nerves of Herculean level. At any rate, much of their testimony of those experiences will likely send chills down your spine.

Kurt's documentary about his friend and what happened to him took on new meaning several times. It was not simply going to be a memorial film for a young son about his father, but a documentary about a horrifying crime, similar to HBO's The Jinx or Netlifx's Making a Murderer. If you've seen either of those miniseries, you know that the content can be rather disturbing at times. That certainly is the case with Dear Zachary, released about eight years before both of those series. When this movie reaches the pinnacle of disturbance, it features the type of sound effects and editing used primarily in horror films, with a clear reason.

I found the film basically as entertaining as the other two I mentioned and perhaps a little more. They are certainly of the same type of documentary. This one, however, is much more disturbing.

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Mitt

On October 3, 2012, the day of Governor Mitt Romney's triumphant defeat of President Barack Obama in the first presidential debate before the election, I wrote a forceful (to the say the least) article on why I thought Obama should be re-elected over Romney. It was mostly an editorial on reasons I thought Obama was more or less effective as our leader--healthcare, economic stimulus, taking out Bin Laden, LGBT issues, etc. were all covered. The article practically skipped any mention of his opponent, save for the final paragraph. Calling him a "weak opponent," I issued the usual charges: Romney is a flip-flopper. Romney is "severely conservative," as he put it. Romney is bad for the country. "It's not his far-right conservatism, his omnipresence of position changes, or the dire state of our economy and standing in the world should he become president that frighten me," I wrote. "It's his character."

Romney, at that time, disgusted me. His 47 percent comment, addressed here in Gregory Whiteley's new documentary about Romney's campaigns for president, was one of the most blood-boiling comments I had heard from a presidential nominee. I regret questioning Romney's character, and one part of the article I also regret is in reference to Romney's car elevators. The revelation, first revealed in a Politico article from May 12, 2012, opened with this: "At Mitt Romney's proposed beach house, the cars will have their own separate elevator." In the documentary "Mitt," we see a behind-the-scenes moment with Romney and his family, who complain about then-Senator (and now Secretary of State) John Kerry criticizing the Romney family's car garages. "That was because of my wife's MS," one of his sons tells Mitt to say, "you A-hole."

A simple Google search did not show results suggesting Mitt Romney had in fact installed the garages for his wife, Ann, due to her multiple sclerosis. But there's no reason not to believe the defense. The point is that if the defense is true, then criticizing assistance for those with disabilities is further evidence that we're living in hyperpartisan times and that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And so Whiteley's documentary does not aspire to be combative, like Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," or thoroughly thought provoking, like Errol Morris' "The Fog of War." The aim of this movie is simply to show you the behind-the-scenes of both of Romney's campaign, and perhaps for you even to like one of the most unlikable candidates for president in recent memory. In regards to the second goal, it's actually effective.

How lucky Whiteley was when the Romney family approved of the making of a documentary about his first campaign for president back in 2006; surely he could not have imagined that this would in fact be a six year journey, an intimate portrait unlike that of any other candidate in 2008 or 2012. We are reminded of the fascinating race that was 2008; the Democrats, with their history-making candidates, and the Republicans, awkwardly trying to show the country they weren't George W. Bush. At the time, you will recall, the nomination seemed to be Rudy Giuliani's for the taking (Rudy Giuliani?), and John McCain, who initially started as Giuliani's main opponent, kept sinking and sinking and sinking. Romney stood as sort of the most credible conservative alternative, yet conservatives were very suspicious (and rightfully so) of Romney due to his frequent flip-flops. Romney, aware of this perception, tells his advisers and family members that he is the "flipping Mormon." Watch McCain's sucker punch, seen in the documentary, to Romney, mockingly calling him "the candidate of change."

But also consider Romney's response. He tells McCain that the "I know more about foreign policy than you do" argument is flawed. Romney was right. The first presidential debate between McCain and Obama focused on foreign policy, and yet not only did Obama actually beat McCain, but McCain lost the election, largely because of the Iraq War and the economy. The point I'm trying to make is that Romney is seen frequently in this documentary as a very astute candidate. He humbly calls himself a flawed one, one who doesn't really fit the Republican mold, and yet time after time in this film he is right. 

One time he was wrong however, is the actual election night, which is where our film opens. He doesn't have the president's number. Why would he need it? To concede, of course, and yet he hasn't even written a concession speech. Think of previous failed candidates--Mondale, Dukakis, Dole--they all knew, as everyone did, that they were going to lose. Romney, on the other hand, apparently really thought he was going to win, and who can blame him? After all, he probably was listing to the wrong pundits. (Next time he should read the greatest book on presidential elections, "The Keys to the White House.") One particular scene that I enjoyed was the very final one. I won't reveal it, only to say that it answered a question I'm sure many have had about losing presidential nominees: where do they go when they lose? In this scene, Mitt and Ann Romney seem content, about as content as someone can be who lost two consecutive presidential elections. But they're alive, as are the beautiful members of their family. Life goes on. The long day closes. 

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Afghan Star

Havana Marking's "Afghan Star," the winner of the 2009 Best Director and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, is perhaps the most interesting look at a country we should, but probably don't, know a lot about. As the title suggests, this is a documentary about Afghanistan. Not about the current and never-ending war there, but, again as the title hints, a documentary regarding the "American Idol"-style television contest, "Afghan Star." To say this show is dangerous for the performers is an understatement, particularly for the female ones. One of them in particular, after she is voted off the show, strips her hair of its cover and dances around the stage for one last performance. The grin of a Westerner's face would likely fade as we then see the reaction of her countrymen and women. They are not pleased. "Afghanistan is an Islamic country," one of them says. Even though she is eliminated, we see her struggle to get back home and avoid the copious amount of threats from conservatives.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country, as well, and yet their definition of what is acceptable for women is radically conservative, even by Afghanistan's terms. Considering also that the world has gone through great liberalization in this past decade, it's stunning to see that in a part of the world where women not only studied with men but also sang rock music to shouting fans is now a region where young girls are shot in the head for attending school. Music is forbidden? Why? I can only tell through brief conversations that conservative Muslims believe music has traditionally been seen as distracting Muslims from their religious duties. But what about video games? Why is permissible to be distracted by them? This is something I will never be able to comprehend. But this is a documentary made for Westerners who would like to get up and one second cheer and another lecture. My reaction was similar to the one I had after watching Alison Klayman's "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry." While Westerners may be encouraged, what do most folks in Afghanistan and China have to say about these topics?

As hackneyed as it sounds, you're likely to learn a bit more about Afghan culture through this documentary than you do on the nightly news. Consider that the final contestants are from different ethnic groups--Hezara, Pashtun, and Tajik. I suspect the average viewer would be a bit surprised to see, frankly, what these folks look like. Some folks, particularly Westerners, might wonder why they don't look like Arabs, as it seems the rest of the world lumps Islamic countries all together into the Middle East. I remember several years ago, there was an English language learner at our school in the Czech Republic. She was from Kazakhstan (or one of the "-stans," I can't remember which), and a colleague of mine remarked that "she looks so Asian." I think Americans need to be aware that 1) Asia is not simply Japan, China and the Koreas, but a whole host of nations, and 2) we need to rethink how we "see" ethnicity. A person from Afghanistan most likely does not look too similar to a person from Oman. Regardless, there are stories here that need to be told. Those of people who hid radios during the Taliban rule. As the war begins to end (theoretically), it would be interesting and anxiety-inducing to see what kind of stories we can expect in the next documentaries about Afghanistan.
 



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Power Trip

Electricity is connected to hope. No electricity leads to insecurity, humiliation and vulnerability. These are some of the main sentiments in Paul Devlin's documentary "Power Trip," detailing the struggles of the company AES providing electricity to the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet Union era.

But for many Americans, perhaps this is a bit difficult to understand. Historian Robert Caro slept outside one night in rural Texas to help him understand just how much electricity meant to pre-electrification America. The United States has never had to deal with a strenuous shift from communism to capitalism, like Georgia has. Georgia, however, still is a developing nation with its citizens on monthly salaries of less than a hundred U.S. dollars. Americans are hurting, but everyone still finds it necessary to use air conditioning, regardless of the fact that air conditioning tricks your body into thinking it's hotter outside, produces greenhouse gas emissions which increases global temperature, and regardless of how expensive it is (not to mention the risk to one's health). Americans take electricity for granted. As I type, I am not under a deadline to finish this before the power goes out.

Film critics are told to leave all ideology, religion and prejudices behind when they view a film, but that doesn't mean they can't allow nostalgia to influence their reaction to viewing a film. For me, watching "Power Trip" reminded me of my time teaching and living in Georgia. I was happily reminded of numerous things: their love of home-made wine, the powerful choruses heard throughout the country and this film, and their proud tradition of hospitality but also suspicion: the giant statue of Mother Georgia in the capital, Tbilisi, holding a bowl for greeting guests and a sword for fighting off enemies, something they've had to deal with for centuries. Georgians are the best dancers in the world, and we get to see some of that. But it also reminded me of the suffering. A two minute walk from our school stood a decaying tea factory. It provided me with some interesting exploring and bat-viewing, but reminded me of the countless other decaying buildings around the country. Once on a trip to the Black Sea, a friend and I could only spot falling-apart buildings; there was also a random cow tied up, and my friend declared it the city's petting zoo.

The film begins about ten years after Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union. An American energy company named AES has purchased Telasi, the Georgia energy company. But AES discovers just how difficult the job is: they're dealing with people unaccustomed to paying for electricity and having it turned off if it isn't payed for, and with a population making an average salary of fifteen dollars, trying to pay twenty-five dollars for electricity is basically impossible. The company finds that ninety percent of its customers aren't paying their bills, and so ninety percent have their power cut off. When the Americans came, Georgians expected they would have electricity twenty-four hours a day; now, however, AES is running an unsustainable business. It's as if the terrible things the Soviets told Georgians about Americans are coming true. "I don't trust the Americans!" an angry Georgian shouts.

The aggressive tactics might be a bit difficult for Western audiences to reconcile. In one case, we are told of electricity being cut for the airport just as a plane was about to land; the money was paid immediately. But in another, an old man says that he and the other members of his family have disabilities and cannot afford to pay for his electricity. He is told that he will not receive an exemption and must pay like everyone else. The man who tells him this is the company's manager, a British man who always arches his eyebrow, which is mocked by cartoons and teenagers alike.

Like "Capturing the Friedmans," "Power Trip" does not tell you what to think or even how to think. It provides just the facts, or more often just the emotions. An audience might feel anger at the corruption depicted or sympathy for Georgians without electricity, but they're not explicitly motivated to do so. Part of the reason I liked the movie was because of my time there, but those who have never heard of the country will likely also be captivated by its themes. There is a mystery to Georgia, and "Power Trip" explores it.

Have things improved? I would, having lived there almost a decade after "Power Trip" was released, say that it has. The film was released just before the Rose Revolution, which forced President Eduard Shevardnadze out of office. The power at my host family's home would go out probably once or twice every other day. The power was next to my room, so I usually climbed up to press the white button to turn it back on. Sometimes it didn't turn back on, and my host father would have to play with it, his cigarette dangling from his mouth. Sometimes it went off because we were using too much power, so we'd have to unplug appliances (usually the water heater) and sometimes it went off for some other reason, but considering the village I lived in was so rural it didn't have indoor plumbing, I think it's remarkable that we had that much electricity. I wonder what Georgians would make of "Power Trip."

One last thing about Georgia and electricity. The film details many Georgians illegally connecting their electricity. When I was in Georgia, an older woman was cutting the electrical wires to sell, and accidentally cut the wrong switch. The result: the entire country of neighboring Armenia was without internet. My Western friends and I never heard anything else about her, but we partly suspect she's in prison.

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Encounters at the End of the World

In 2005, "March of the Penguins" had outgrossed all of the Best Picture nominees for the Oscars--"Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Capote," "Good Night, and Good Luck," and "Munich." The next year, "Happy Feat" won the Best Animated Film award. There is a man--not a penguin--interviewed in the beginning of Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World." Several moments later, the audience is introduced to a driver of 67,000 pound trucks. He is an idealist not concerned with money, or safety for that matter, as is evidenced when he discusses his time in the Peace Corps. Later there is a plumber who is part Apache and part royal family of the Incas. Another traveled through Africa in a truck and barely escaped several times.

Herzog makes it clear that this is not another film about penguins. There are penguins here, obviously, since it takes place in Antarctica. There is a sad moment when a penguin rushes towards the Arctic oblivion, and the humans are commanded not to interfere. There is no explanation known to humans why some penguins do this. Regardless, it happens, and the penguin is certain to die.

But Herzog is more concerned about those watching, studying, and appreciating the penguins and other aspects of Antarctica. This is a documentary about people living here--what brought them there and why they stay. They are people who, at the time of the filming, were living in an environment where for five months there is a lack of night, and at times looks like an ugly mining town. The weather they operate in is freezing, but the sea lions are certainly less frightening than the bears of "Grizzly Man." The people there are living on ice, a dynamic, living entity, as described by one of them.

This is a beautiful documentary, partly because of the natural elements Herzog and his team have captured on film--the seals which make Pink Floyd-like sounds, and the serenity of the ice is majestic. Herzog shows us the usual beauty of Antarctica, but again, this is a documentary about people, and Herzog narrating comments little on the visuals of the land, and instead the experiences and stories and episodes of the people. Some of the researches here, for example, reserve their excitement in discovering three new species (they celebrate later), and some watch B-science fiction films. The newcomers have to wear white buckets on their heads to simulate the lack of visibility during snow storms for survival school.

The filming crew finds a linguist who notes the irony of being "a linguist on a continent with no language." The young man goes on for a quite a while about the extinction of languages, which must be paraphrased by Herzog. Later, an interviewee (who also is a survivor of the Iron Curtain) cannot articulately put together his thoughts like the linguist can. As it becomes apparent that he does not enjoy remembering his haunting memories, Herzog assures him that he does not have to talk about them. Just as in "Grizzly Man," Herzog treats his subjects appropriately and professionally, even if he finds them a bit odd (save for a pogo stick enthusiast searching for Guinness records, who is interviewed away from Antarctica and does not receive much appreciation from Herzog).

Extinction is a theme that is constant here. Herzog criticizes those who do not address the extinction of languages across the globe. He notes that the crew is pessimistic about global warming and aware that humans will not be around forever. One human creation that does seem permanent is Shackleton's cabin, which still stands just as it was before, nearly a hundred years ago, and resembles an "extinct supermarket." To suggest that Herzog often has a gloomy outlook of the world would not be an original statement.

There are penguins in this movie. In fact, the triangular relationship of some penguins described in the film would have been much more enjoyable than either "Happy Feet" or "March of the Penguins." This is a very-well made film. Actually, I have yet to see a bad Herzog film, and hope that no such thing exists.

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