Director: Lana Wilson
Writer: Lana Wilson

Synopsis: A documentary through a series of intimate sessions with psychics and their clients.

Lana Wilson (Miss Americana) enters the world of New York City psychics and clairvoyants in her documentary, Look Into My Eyes. Per Erik Borja, Eugene Grygo, Nikenya Hall, Phoebe Hoffman, Michael Kim, Sherrie Lynne, and Ilka Pinheiro are mediums who hold sessions with various clients. They are, overall, an eccentric bunch. Some are put together more convincingly than others, but none are quite convincing enough to make the audience believe they’re witnessing much more than cold readings, therapy techniques, vague and interpretable language, and some (in)elegant theatrics.

The documentary makes no effort to win over skeptics and often shows the psychics getting things wrong or reaching without success. Lana Wilson doesn’t expect the audience to buy what they’re seeing is real spiritual or psychic communication. What the documentary does achieve is to make you wonder if any of the ‘reality’ matters. 

Why do people go to psychics? Many of the clients in Wilson’s documentary have the pedestrian questions and concerns one would expect when consulting a clairvoyant. Someone is asking about when Mr. Right will come along, another wants some financial guidance, another needs to know if they’re making the right choice for their future. Some want to know if the environment is going to collapse. A family lives in an apartment they think is haunted. Children wonder if their deceased parents are proud of them. 

Other clients have more specific concerns. A young woman needs to know if her birth mother in China who gave her up still thinks of her. A doctor wonders about the child gunshot victim who died in her arms years ago when she was first working emergency. A young man wants to know if his ancestors were slaves and how he can learn to let that legacy go. Then there are the clients of Phoebe, the animal psychic, who want someone to interpret the mysteries of an annoyed cat or a leash resistant dog.

Essentially, the answer the documentary gives is that clients seek out psychics because they are people who won’t judge their questions. Psychics are a safe space for inquiries that therapists or religion don’t want to deal with or deny the existence of. Seeking permission to grieve and to be allowed to grieve in a non-traditional manner has people coming to the psychics. Asking off the wall questions and being treated without judgement has people coming to psychics.

Each of the seven psychics is damaged in some way. Outsiders who found themselves feeling less on the outside when they hung up a sign and opened for business. Many of them were entranced by films, art, acting, musical theatre. One has a degree in theatre studies, another has an acting degree, another is a screenwriter (attempted) and a musical performer. They’re each holding onto a specific pain and their skill is to recognize pain in other people and give them the outlet to express it and provide them with some form of solace. 

Phoebe, the animal psychic, is particularly good at projecting her own feelings of being a special oddball and survivor onto her clients. If she was to go to a therapist, they might use some of her own techniques on her. When one hurt young woman asks her about a faithful dog who helped her through a tough time, Phoebe’s answer about the dog in question might well be made up, but her understanding of what the woman went through is not.

NYC is the kind of place which attracts fringe people, and it sometimes rewards them for their peculiarities. Apart from Eugene, who is a borderline hoarder, carrying around his pain of being rejected because of his sexuality, most seem to be making fairly good money. Lana Wilson follows each of them home and showing them in their apartments with the small and large items they treasure gives the audience a deeper understanding of what makes them believe in their ‘gifts’ and why they feel they must share them.

The documentary doesn’t always maintain momentum, but Wilson’s window into the world of people who provide some consolation to others and who also feel more authentic when giving it, has enough impactful sections to keep the audience invested in certain clients and particular psychics.

Even though there is the element of improv sham – something one psychic embraces somewhat through a particular brand of solipsism – most people get what they came for. A moment where they are seen and made to that something or someone out there is guiding them or forgiving them. 

One scene which won’t be soon forgotten is when the doctor hugs her psychic and openly grieves the young gunshot victim and the young woman she was. What she was really asking was “How do I move on from what I experienced?” No one supported her at the time of the incident decades ago and she’s probably seen too many deaths where everyone remained silent and moved on with their day. The heartbeats of the doctor and the psychic are picked up on the microphone and it is raw and intimate. In that moment, it doesn’t really matter how she got to that place of release, just that she did. 

Another revealing section is when they are all brought together and one of the group is supported with the same vague language they use on their clients and that seems enough for him. Michael earlier admitted he doesn’t know if any of what he does or perceives is legitimate – and he is quite egregiously bad at his interim career while he waits for his big acting break. Yet he and the others believe in something, even if it just turns out to be having people to talk openly about vulnerability. They each have deep seated issues of loss or displacement, and their ‘life path’ has given them purpose. 

The psychics might well be fleecing their clients with their claims – in fact there are times some of them most certainly are, but even if their gifts aren’t real, some people are happy to buy them. Lana Wilson leaves it up to the audience to decide if there is any significant difference between paying someone who has spirits ‘speak’ through them, or can turn a card on a tarot deck, than there is in seeing a religious figure or therapist. If the end effect is comfort or closure, does it matter? 

Look Into My Eyes doesn’t represent the entire community of psychics, mediums, or clairvoyants and it also doesn’t show any of the subjects doing anything malicious or harmful (which can and does happen). It’s a small cross-section of people who are seeking something larger than themselves just as much as their clients are. Look Into My Eyes is a study of seven people who perform and their particularly willing audience. It is a minor entry in Wilson’s documentary oeuvre but a surprising one in its focus on people who need to believe they are special.

Grade: B-

Directors: Max Eggers, Sam Eggers
Writers: Susan Hill, Max Eggers, Sam Eggers
Stars: Brandy Norwood, Andrew Burnap, Kathryn Hunter

Synopsis: It tells the story of a newly pregnant couple who are forced to take in an ailing, estranged stepmother.

Religious horror continues to take the reins throughout 2024, with Immaculate and The First Omen kicking off the year in the spring and Russell Crowe’s The Exorcism (remarkably unrelated to his 2023 film The Pope’s Exorcist) getting us through the summer. Max and Sam Eggers, brothers and collaborators with Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Northman), bring us their debut feature, The Front Room, that carries the banner of religious horror right into the fall. The film follows Belinda (Brandy Norwood) and Norman (Andrew Burnap) as a young married couple expecting their second child after their first didn’t make it through the delivery. Weeks before their daughter is to be born, Norman’s estranged father passes away leading to his very devout stepmother, Solange (Kathryn Hunter), offering them her entire fortune for the opportunity to move in with them and become more involved in their lives. 

A different branch of the Christian faith takes focus in this film, moving away from the quiet, pious nature of Catholicism and more traditional denominations. Solange comes from a Pentecostal background, a grouping of Christianity that emphasizes the movement of the Spirit and prayer leading to miracles. She speaks in tongues and somehow knows things about Belinda and Norman that she should have no way of finding out. Her intuition and assuredness are typical of charismatic Christians and it’s interesting to get this religious angle instead of the buttoned-up, reserved faith we often see in horror. This alone sets the film apart from other similar premises that have come out in recent years. 

The film’s tension and action are all facilitated by Kathryn Hunter as Solange and her faith. It’s difficult to overstate just how peculiar and singular Solange is throughout the movie, and she is by far the highlight you’ll be thinking about afterward. Hunter brings incredible energy to the character that is totally unexpected even if you’ve seen the trailer. Her facial tics and nonstop chatter blow the rest of the cast off the screen. Her performance is truly special, but each of the three actors seems to be in wildly different films. Norwood and Burnap are definitely in a different register from Hunter, yet still aren’t in sync themselves. The stark contrast in performances is extremely distracting and indicative of the entire film’s tonal inconsistency. 

It’s clear what the Eggers duo were trying to achieve on the page, with a few scenes successfully nailing the horror vibe and bringing legitimate scares. Some images are even so disgusting that they are unsettling despite the context around them. For the most part, however, each scene shifts drastically in tone leaving you wondering how you got there. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or be disturbed by some of the things that happen. Maybe that’s the point in some stretches of the film, but the translation from page to screen leaves a lot to be desired and squanders the solid premise due to these inconsistencies. 

The most impressive piece of The Front Room is the cinematography from Ava Berkofsky. There are so many overt religious references through the dialogue itself, but more subtle allusions to Christianity come through the imagery captured by the camera. Beautiful shots of shadows forming ominous crosses combine with slow-moving cameras tracking characters throughout the house. Berkofsky’s use of mirrors is wonderful as well, with a specific slow zoom-in during a conversation between two characters making you wonder how they pulled that shot off. The lighting team also gets time to shine, creating a few terrifying moments during the dark evenings within the house. 

There’s a promising artistic vision on display that leaves me hopeful for the future of these filmmakers despite the downfalls in the execution. The Front Room offers a unique bent on the religious horror front and a legitimately amazing performance from Kathryn Hunter. Things might have become more cohesive if the rest of the film could live up to her antics and commit to even more craziness. 

Grade: D+

Directors: Steven Kanter, Henry Loevner
Writers: Steven Kanter, Henry Loevner
Stars: Claudia Restrepo, Ben Coleman, Derrick Joseph DeBlasis

Synopsis: An emotionally adrift young woman forges an unexpected friendship with a wilderness guide when she and her fiancé take a summer holiday in Jackson Hole, WY

Peak Season is an idyllic trip to Wyoming, where love falters, friendship blossoms, and life’s trajectory is questioned under the microscope. A calm and restrained indie drama in which softness and tranquillity are a healing balm for the ennui of corporate, urban life. While conventional beats of the love triangle often creep in, the film finds inventive ways to inject freshness and introspection into two people following very different life paths. 

Directed by Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner, Peak Season is the follow-up to the COVID drama The End of Us (2021). The film follows Amy (Claudia Restrepo) and Max (Ben Coleman), who are on holiday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Getting away from their work-dominant lives in New York City, they are recently engaged and need to plan their wedding. Things become complicated, though, as Max has brought work with him, both mentally and physically. 

Amy is on a very different trajectory from her fiancé. Having worked at Deloitte, she had a soul-sucking job as a management consultant where “being results-oriented [was] literally the basis of my entire life”. After resigning due to burnout, Amy is taking time to rethink what she wants to do. Her family doesn’t come from rich, white, wealth; but Max does, which is highly evident. Their paths begin to splinter as Amy realizes the quiet life may be just what she needs. 

Calling Max high strung would be an understatement. His logistics and supply chain management job makes him comically shallow. He schedules business meetings while driving the car, gets up every morning for an intense workout routine, and consistently sidelines Amy when they are meant to be on holiday. Emails and video calls are more important than the morning kiss. Coleman does what he can with the character but he mostly amounts to a one-dimensional grunt in a suit. 

Max’s self-centered actions reach an apex when he ditches Amy for a work meeting, so Amy is left with no other option than to attend her fish-flying lesson – that the couple had booked together, alone. Teaching her is friendly wilderness guide Loren (Derrick DeBlasis). Having come from California, Loren left his desk job to become a free spirit of many vocations. A fishing guide, a ski patroller, and a bartender – his multifaceted behavior brings him great pride; he hates the thought of being “put into boxes, and then we die”. 

Loren lives in his car with his dog Dorothy, who yawns with him when they wake up. A friendship quickly sparks between Amy and Loren as they go on many outdoor adventures together, including a hike Max had refused to go on. Loren has been teaching fish-flying for 15 years, a statistic shocking to Amy’s urban lifestyle, where your work life is constantly in flux. They bond over life and their differences but occasionally clash over how society functions. A touching but playful situationship begins to play out as Loren fills the holes Max keeps punching in Amy and his relationship. 

Peak Season is a quiet but clear signal that switching off from the rigidity of routine grants clarity in finding out who you are and what you want. Happiness is not defined by following a life path that has either been paved for you or one to which you’ve grown accustomed. Amy studied and worked in business most of her life, but the second she reaches Jackson Hole, there is freedom, and a weight lifted from her shoulders. The corporate world can be so crushing that life is forgotten for currency, and Amy knows that’s precisely how Max is behaving now. Can she stay with her fiancé, knowing that her world has just been opened as far and wide as the Wyoming landscape?

While this may read like a shallow story of a tourist entering a place unknown to them and going on a journey to ‘find yourself’, Amy is purposefully juxtaposed with Max’s old ‘friend’ Fiona (Caroline Kwan). Early in the film, Max bumps into Fiona, taking his attention away from his fiancée and not even introducing Amy to a woman who was probably his ex-lover. Amy doesn’t sit there and take it, inserting herself into the conversation so Fiona knows who she is. Fiona is visiting for a conference and has no love for the land she is spending time on other than to gain some clout. She’s clad entirely in cheap cowgirl clothes and speaks ‘at’ Amy rather than ‘to’ her. Even cows, to her, are just an attempt to get social media traction.

Mixing Fiona with Silicon Valley tycoons, fears of Jackson Hole becoming a ‘2nd Aspen’, and tourists who claim they want to buy ‘hundreds of acres of land’, Peak Season has something to say about disrespectful, wealthy tourists. It may sound oxymoronic, considering the film focuses on a tourist couple from New York, but there is an effective sub-narrative that critiques the encroachment of tourism on rural areas. 

Wyoming is captured with such reposeful beauty that it becomes almost a fourth character. Tourists who come to these places often have no appreciation of the land and its history – something that Loren is aware of and respects in Amy for not sharing the same attitude. These are two people who bond and connect in places of natural beauty away from civilization and technology. Profitability is the last thing on their minds. 

Derrick DeBlasis remains the highlight of the film, performance-wise. His nomadic lifestyle as a free spirit exudes such freedom whenever he is on screen. Restrepo, as Amy, occasionally comes across as stunted, but her infectious chemistry with DeBlasis makes up for some moments that ultimately feel significantly held back. 

Life can get too busy and too complacent. The natural look and feel of Wyoming matches the journey of Amy and Loren – an untouched beauty that flourishes without any outside tampering. Peak Season is about slowing down, taking stock, and analyzing your place in the world. While its laid-back indie budget sometimes feels overtly apparent; something sincere, engaging, and thought-provoking is going on at its center. 

Grade: B

Directors: Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz
Stars: Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz

Synopsis: Over seven years, three couples involved in the extreme sport of BASE jumping test the limits of love and life itself. Risking everything for the thrill of the jump, their dedication is put to the ultimate test.

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Fly. 

While watching Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s competently made but inert Skywalkers: A Love Story, I kept saying to myself, “These people are so goddamn selfish,” concerning Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus literally risking their lives for social media clout. There’s little reward in what they’re doing other than proving to a digital tapestry that they’re the best at what they do. Their approach to the documentary never peered into the couple’s desire for adrenaline as deeply as it should and left a middling impression on me, as vertigo-inducing as the photography was. The only message I got out of it was that if you want to be internet famous (and fix your relationship), you should climb the second tallest building in the world. Not a great plan. 

Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz’ Fly, which has an exclusive IMAX engagement on September 2 and 3 before making its way to Disney+ on September 25, acts as the antidote to Skywalkers. It’s a documentary that explores head-on how purely selfish the act of BASE jumping is and the risks that come with wanting to selfishly test fate as they try new ways to kill themselves through the act of doing something no man or woman should ever attempt. For the first hour or so, Clusiau and Schwarz focus on the joyful passion of BASE jumping, and the adrenaline rush one gets when jumping out of a bridge or cliff and immediately deploying a parachute.

Some have even taken it to the extreme, using Wingsuits to speed their descent and parachute at the (almost) last minute. Strikingly captured with death-defying GoPro footage, the movie is a must witness on the largest possible IMAX screen you can find, with many figures presented in its BASE scenes on the verge of getting severely injured or, worse, dying. There isn’t a first (or third) person scene in which you’re not on the edge of your seat, attempting to wonder if someone will make it out of their favorite sport alive.

That’s not something that initially worries a jumper like Scotty Bob Morgan, who tells Schwarz he won’t answer his question on what he wants audiences to grasp out of his story if he is not alive by the time the film releases, because he’ll be around, dammit! This egotistical mentality is at the heart of the three relationships that make the core of the film: Scotty and his newfound lover Julia Botelho, Espen Fadnes and Amber Forte, and Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti. The latter act as the first generation of BASE jumpers, teaching the new generation the fundamentals of the sport and ensuring everyone can perform it safely.

Marta has been doing it for over thirty years with zero injuries and knows her limits, while Jimmy continuously pushes them forward and wants to prove that he can do more than he did when he started over twenty years ago. While their relationship is immensely passionate, the movie uses their union as a catalyst for the real and immediate dangers of BASE jumping.

Marta has already lost a past lover to the sport but keeps going. She’s now afraid to lose Jimmy, too, who is taking more risks than he should. The thrilling, edge-of-your-seat GoPro footage quickly becomes terrifying as we see direct footage of people nearly injuring themselves, then severely injuring themselves until a friend takes the last successive photographs of Jimmy performing his wingsuit jump that ultimately led to his tragic demise. 

By far, the film’s scariest scene occurs when we directly see footage of Amber’s almost life-altering injury from her first-person point of view. Her agonizing screams, barely breathing as her parachute went out of control, dislocating and breaking her spine, will stay with me for a long time. The promise of a rip-roaring adrenaline rush is quickly dissipated when Clusiau and Schwarz showcase the grim reality of participating in such a sport. Of course, physical activity comes with a certain set of risks, but some sports are far less dangerous than the ones shown here.

The filmmakers never treat these moments with an exploitative lens but rather question the subjects as they grapple with the direct dangers of an activity like the one they do every day. When Julia ultimately becomes pregnant with her first child, Scott begins to ask himself if all of this is worth it. When you don’t have anything to lose, it may not seem like a big deal if something goes wrong. But when you have something (and, in this case, someone) to lose, why go on? Why take the leap that could end your life in an instant? Yet, Julia still jumps while pregnant. What’s the benefit here? Especially if something goes wrong. 

Questions like these are at the heart of Fly’s darker half after personal tragedy strikes Marta. The sharp cut to her, who is still alive to recall what occurred, is of pure devastation. The two have constantly known their lifestyle to be a dangerous one but is incredibly fulfilling. Marta and Jimmy’s philosophy is simple: it’s best to live a little more than to always sit on the sidelines in fear. But that lifestyle has severe consequences, and no one is ever truly prepared for death to drastically alter their perception of what they believe is the best way to live.

Jimmy tells Schwarz, “Don’t feel too sorry for me. Just be happy that I lived my life how I wanted to live it.” when asked the same question Scotty is asked earlier in the movie. But when we get a first-look account of Marta and Jimmy’s “Celebration of Life” event in Las Vegas every year, it takes on a different significance once Jimmy dies. The leader of the group, the most fearless who’s guided so many people in pursuing the sport, is no longer here to celebrate this incredibly crazy life he’s been at the forefront of with Marta for so long. 

One of the subjects interviewed tells the filmmakers that a class photo is taken at each event with the attendees present. It’s not only a great way to end the event, but it’s also the last time that many will see people here alive because they always lose many to a BASE-jumping accident each year. The person explains this tradition in the most cogent way, fully realizing that this lifestyle will end in injury or death and will still wake up the following day to do it all again.

Of course, it’s selfish, Scotty Bob explains. It may be the most selfish sport ever created, even worse when it’s performed by people who only think about themselves (in one earlier scene, Jimmy almost gets injured and says, “I thought that was it. I thought about Marta…how pissed she was gonna be at me!” Zero regards for anyone else but you.). But it’s also the closest thing anyone can have to experiencing the frailty of human life head-on, one that challenges their beliefs when someone closest to them gets injured or dies tragically. Do you keep doing it, or do you find new ways to live a little?

Clusiau, Schwarz, and the subjects depicted in their documentary don’t have the answers. Nor should they. It’s up to us to figure out how to live our lives, and perhaps this documentary will urge us to do more with the finite time we have left. We never know when it will be our time. We never know when this life will be taken away from us. Why not do something before it’s too late?

Grade: A+

Director: Andrei Ujică
Writer: Andrei Ujică
Stars: Tommy McCabe, Shea Grant, Thérèse Azzara

Synopsis: August 1965, The Beatles arrive in New York for a sold-out Shea Stadium concert. Crowds of frenzied fans fill Manhattan streets, hoping to catch sight of the band from their hotel.

Andrei Ujică constructs his latest documentary, TWST / Things We Said Today (screening Out of Competition in this year’s Venice Film Festival), using conventional and unconventional means to build a cinematic poem. Monochrome archive footage is experimented with as apparitions and drawings of people are placed in it. The old is blended with the new; the gift and curse of technology have made it possible for Ujică to create a project he has wished to create for a while. What is the poem about, you might ask. A time long gone, whose ripples continue to have their effects today in a variety of means. The time the Romanian documentary filmmaker, or more so the people who have borne these memories, is the 1960s America, a period of significant change both in the arts and politically. 

There were many countercultural and civil rights movements, anti-war protests, generational gaps, the construction and deconstruction of folk music, and the birth of The New Hollywood, better known as the Hollywood Renaissance. At that time, the country constantly changed; nobody knew where things were headed. You can say that with each passing decade. But the 1960s were a salient time known for the uniform shaping of society, art, and everything in between. Ujică depicts this through footage of rural life in New York City from August 13th to 15th, 1965–from the arrival of The Beatles in the Big Apple to their concert in Shea Stadium, their first stadium show in America. 

TWST is a wistful poem titled after the band’s track of the same name from their popular record ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. It borrows some of the thematic elements that the song has, although Ujică follows a more spiritual path to reflect the intertwining between nostalgia and dreams. At first, you don’t notice any correlation between The Beatles’ record and the director’s film. The Fab Four have a couple of appearances in the first couple of minutes, and their presence is felt through the footage that the unsung documentary filmmaker is showing us. In each second, whether relating to the New York World’s Fair or the Watt Riots reports seen on television, you get the feeling that they are guests in that sleepless city. 

The manic, overly joyous fans are also a great cause of this sensation, with their excitement on their arrival slowly spreading through New York like sunshine after a few days of rain. However, the moment when Ujică starts to tie TWST with the titular track through the poem dictated, everything starts to blend together in an intriguing and occasionally flimsy fashion. None of the lines from the song are said, but its structure is used to mold this documentary. “Things We Said Today” was a song about nostalgia. Paul McCartney was reminiscing about the present by projecting an idea of the future. Many fans have speculated that he wrote it with a nostalgic tone in mind because Paul knew that his relationship with then-girlfriend Jane Asher would not last, at least with their lifestyles. 

In Barry Miles’s book “Many Years From Now,” McCartney describes this sensation as “future nostalgia,” a term pop artist Dua Lipa later coined for her sophomore record. The first taste of the connection between TWST and “Things We Said Today” comes from the assimilation of the love McCartney had for Asher, as said in lines like “And though we may be blind, love is here to stay, and that’s enough”, with the recollections of a time the narrator holds onto sincerely. This bridge refers to McCartney’s enchantment when stumbling upon love and its various forms. Ujică takes advantage of this by initially showing footage of the Beatlemania-riddled fans saying the many reasons why they love them and their favorite member, later transitioning to a stanza about the power someone’s love has over a person. 

Unlike an unnecessary Hollywood legacy sequel, TWST does not use nostalgia as its main attraction. There is a bit of “homesickness” about how life was back then and that special moment that unified thousands during that three-day strand. It only contrasts “Things We Said Today” and the poem. The connection between lyric and verse may occasionally be an arbitrary choice. This makes the documentary suffer from a distancing aimlessness that undermines its narrative cohesion. I get that Ujică wants to immerse us in this setting by showing footage of people wandering through New York doing their daily activities until the festivities arrive. Yet, it dilutes the documentary’s emotional impact a notch. Well, that is until the last few minutes. 

The viewer is challenged to interpret the fluid interplay between form and content more psychologically to see how we respond to our own present-day nostalgia. McCartney’s final lyrics are: “Someday when we’re dreaming, deep in love, not a lot to say; then we will remember things we said today.” And like so, TWST ends on a touching note. As fans come together to sing the Beatles’ tunes, a liberation of nostalgia and fulfillment spreads across Shea Stadium. This is represented by the butterflies enclosing and popping out of their chrysalis cases. It is like a transformation of the narrator’s remembrance. And the resulting image is striking; that alone makes the documentary worth watching. 

Grade: B-

Director: Uwe Boll
Writer: Uwe Boll
Stars: Gino Anthony Pesi, Kristen Renton, James McMenamin

Synopsis: Follows a NYC police officer along with his rookie partner Angela, as they have a rough day while living the dangerous, and routine job of being a cop in the city.

Whether you want it to happen or not, infamous filmmaker Uwe Boll has made his grand return to the world of movies. First, via an extended cameo in Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, in which he recounts the time he boxed critics who constantly trashed his films (this really happened, by the way) and then tells all of his haters to “fuck off!” in a social media video for Angela’s (Ilinca Manolache) Bobita avatar.

It remains the year’s best scene – and cameo – as it playfully mocks Boll’s legacy in cinema through the filmmaker’s self-deprecating appearance. Jude isn’t a hater and actively respects Boll’s “resilience and his capacity to face and go on even if some people say ‘well, we don’t like what you’re doing.’ But he keeps doing it,” as he said in a recent interview with Eric Marchen.

Now, Boll is back in the director’s chair with First Shift, his first fiction film since 2016’s Rampage: President Down. I could sit here and tell you that the film is bad and take pleasure in vilifying it (as most critics do, apparently) for being nothing more than a poorly made, exploitative cop drama. For sure, its janky editing from Ethan Maniquis (one of Robert Rodriguez’s closest collaborators) does make the viewing experience discombobulating.

It’s also a bit hard to discern exactly where the story is going when it constantly parallel cuts between the film’s main plot thread involving NYPD Detective Deo Russo (Gino Anthony Pesi) and his new partner Angela Dutton (Kristen Renton) on their first shift, and three (!!!) other storylines on an old man collapsing in a grocery store, mobsters involved in a double homicide, and a woman convincing her lover not to commit suicide as he has locked himself in the bathroom.

But there’s something inherently entertaining about watching a Uwe Boll movie so I can’t possibly bring myself to bash his filmography, which contains a wide array of genre works such as Postal, BloodRayne, House of the Dead, In the Name of the King, and, my personal favorite, Assault on Wall Street (unironically! Dominic Purcell is an underappreciated talent). 

Honestly, churning out that many movies in as little as ten years is quite impressive, and I guarantee that no one who spent decades completely lambasting Boll’s body of work has made as many movies as him. Like Jude said, “What sets him apart is that he has many, many films. He has a big oeuvre and a quantity of films. That makes him different.”

First Shift is no Postal, but it’s decidedly Uwe Boll, filled to the brim with grisly violence, flashy photography (though nothing beats the kinetics of House of the Dead’s cemetery shootout), and as much politically incorrect humor as possible, such as in a scene where Russo has had enough of Angela’s ‘wokey dokey’ progressive politics. Of course, if you already hate Boll, this probably won’t change your mind. But if you find something in Boll’s resilience to overcome the many tomatoes thrown at him, perhaps you’ll find some respect in a ‘comeback’ like First Shift.

Most of the movie focuses on Deo and Angela getting to know one another, and it’s not half-bad. Sure, some of the dialogue don’t feel particularly human (such as in a scene where Angela pressures Deo to reveal his past life, with non-stop uses of ‘why?’ being thrown at him), but the chemistry between Pesi and Renton is palpable enough, with the latter stealing the show as First Shift’s best performance. Her personality is quite attachable, and it’s not hard to care more for her than it is for her male counterpart (whom we see meticulously putting on his shoes, his watch, his belt with his badge on, and then slowly making his protein shake in the film’s very long, very tedious opening credits scene).

Still, Pesi manages to sell the character with his eyes, which makes us peer into his tormented psyche. He can reconnect with himself and perhaps soften up a little with Angela when he has to care for a dog, arguably the movie’s most human moment. None of these scenes are played cheaply, and his final conversation with the dog owner (played by Willie C. Carpenter) feels genuinely heartfelt. With scenes like these and rock-solid chemistry at the heart of First Shift, it’s not a disaster and certainly not unwatchable garbage. There are plenty of worse, more expensive films out there that take the audience members as complete fools (*coughsAlienRomuluscoughs*) and suckers them into buying a ticket for nothing more than blatant consumerist fodder that garishly resurrects dead people so the audience can artificially point and clap at a screen.

As deeply flawed as it is, Boll’s filmmaking always feels sincere, even if he’s offended many people (including flipping off audience members after the Kickstarter campaign for Rampage: President Down failed) throughout his career. He always tries to do something creative with his camera, especially in the supermarket collapse, even if it doesn’t work. So many filmmakers nowadays are seemingly afraid of trying. However, Boll has always found unconventional ways to create movement, even if the cinematography here is frequently overexposed and lacks any perception of space.

The rest of the movie isn’t particularly good, and many of its moving plot threads don’t go anywhere. In fact, this entire 89-minute picture can be summed up as patient worldbuilding in which we see two cops on their shift while a mob war is on the brink of starting, from the looks of its rather well-composed scene featuring Garry Pastore as what will likely be the franchise’s big bad. Oh yeah, Boll wants to make First Shift his next big franchise, ending the movie à la Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 with a short glimpse of First Shift: Part Two. Honestly, I’d much rather see Boll go all out with Postal 2 than another First Shift movie, especially when his style feels remarkably restrained here and not much in service of the film’s uneventful story.

But Boll already has another movie in the can, the migrant thriller Run (also starring Renton), and more in the works. Of course, many don’t want him to return to filmmaking, and his movies are always regarded as some of the worst ever made, which will make this particular comeback interesting in the eye of this critic who always had an appreciation for Boll’s no-nonsense demeanor and fearlessness of telling everyone he doesn’t like to “fuck off” (“and fuck you also,” as he remarkably jabs in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World). 

Is First Shift any good? Not really. Does it matter? Not really – Boll’s name will forever be etched in the “history of cinema.” His desire to continue making movies even if audience members don’t want him to (in 2008, a petition urging Boll to retire from moviemaking garnered over 1 million signatures) should honestly inspire as many as possible to continue doing what they love. Sure, First Shift isn’t a good movie and will likely be crucified by critics. But it’s also one of Boll’s most respectable works that wants to patiently reward the audience for sticking with its characters for an all-out event in Parts Two and Three. I doubt it will happen but it’s funny to see this much confidence realized nonetheless. I’d be lying if I said it isn’t fun to see Boll back in front (in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World) and behind the camera again after he tipped his hat and walked away from that world during Rampage: President Down’s post-credits scene.

With First Shift, Uwe Boll seems to be having fun. So should you. 

Grade: C-