Movie Review: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Joe Berlinger.   

Written by: Michael Werwie based on the book by Elizabeth Kendall.

Starring: Zac Efron (Ted Bundy), Lily Collins (Liz Kendall), Kaya Scodelario (Carole Anne Boone), John Malkovich (Judge Edward D. Cowart), Jeffrey Donovan (Utah Defense Attorney John O'Connell),Angela Sarafyan (Joanna), Dylan Baker (Utah Prosecutor David Yocom), Brian Geraghty (Florida Public Defender Dan Dowd), Jim Parsons  (Florida Prosecutor Larry Simpson), Haley Joel Osment (Jerry Thompson),Macie Carmosino (2 Yr Old Molly), Ava Inman (4 Yr Old Molly), Morgan Pyle (8 Yr Old Molly), James Hetfield (Officer Bob Hayward), Grace Victoria Cox (Carol Daronch), Terry Kinney (Detective Mike Fisher), Grace Balbo (Teenage Molly). 

 

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is a Ted Bundy movie that makes no real effort to understand who Ted Bundy was. In most cases, that would be a failure for a movie like this – we go into biopics of famous people, even people famous for being, well, extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile, to see what makes them tick – to get inside for a little while to see what was there. But this movie doesn’t do that. It presents Bundy as Bundy presented himself to the outside world – mostly, how he projected himself to Liz Kendall (Lily Collins), his longtime girlfriend, who stuck by Bundy for a long time after he was arrested, and started going on trial for the shocking murders he committed. Even when she is able to break free, it’s not a clean break – she’s haunted by him, and the vision she had of him, versus the vision of him presented on the news. It’s driven her to alcoholism and depression. And she isn’t really able to let go of him until the final scene – when he’s already of death row in Florida – when he finally really gives her a glance at the other Ted Bundy – the one who killed all those people. This is perhaps the least violent film I have seen about a serial killer – but it’s still extremely disturbing.

 

Casting Zac Efron as Bundy was an inspired choice by director Joe Berlinger. Efron, the former teen heart throb of High School Musical fame, has attempted to do some interesting work in his post teen idol days – and has proven surprisingly adept at picking the right projects for himself, from Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy (not well received, but he’s quite good in it) to the Seth Rogen comedy Neighbors to The Greatest Showman. Hell, he came out of Baywatch completely unscathed. He is a movie star, even if Hollywood doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with him. Here, he leans into Bundy’s charm, his nice guy appeal. There is a reason Bundy was often able to talk women into his car, when they should have known better, in order to murder them. And there is a reason he became a celebrity once arrested – one with many adoring female fans, who thought he was handsome and charming. Bundy, of course, was the antithesis of what you expect a crazed serial killer and rapist to look like. That’s why he succeeded.

 

We see Efron throughout put on that charm. From his first date with Collins’ Liz, when he comes home to her house to discover she has a daughter, and doesn’t bat an eye – hell, he even makes them both breakfast the next day. It’s fairly early in the movie when he starts being arrested – in Utah for kidnapping, then being extradited to Colorado on murder charges. Liz goes to see him, talks to him on the phone. He has an explanation for everything, and it makes sense – kind of. Berlinger resists the urge to do the easy thing here – which would be to contrast the domestic tranquility of Liz and Ted’s life with the murders he commits. We don’t see any of them.

 

Berlinger knows Bundy and his story well – he made The Ted Bundy Tapes, that four-hour, four part Netflix documentary released earlier this year about Bundy, and during the course of this film, he will have recreated many of those famous moments. Efron has clearly studied Bundy and his mannerisms and voice a long time, and does an expert job at mimicking that. But it goes beyond that as well – much like in those interviews, there are moments when Efron allows the darker side of Bundy to emerge – sometimes just for a fleeting moment – when it can become truly frightening. But then he recovers, and goes right on.

 

There are a few things to hold the film back from being truly great. The first is I’m not convinced the film really has all that much interest in Liz herself. Collins isn’t give all that much to do after Bundy is in jail – expect to drink and smoke a lot, and stare off in space to signal her depression. It makes sense to see Bundy just from her point-of-view, but then, I kind of think we should have seen her more clearly than we do here. (the movie, I think, is more interested in Carole Anne Boone, the woman who becomes Bundy’s girlfriend when he’s already in jail. Played in a very good performance by an unrecognizable Kaya Scodelario) And second, I think Berlinger falls a little too in love with recreating those famous moments we saw in the documentary in this film. One could argue it makes sense – again, if we are seeing Bundy through Liz’s eyes, at this point, her only interactions with him was through the TV screen. Still, it makes the whole thing seem a little more surface level than it probably should be.

 

The final scene is a stunner though – I’m not sure if it’s based on reality or not, but it fits the movie almost like an exclamation point – a definitive end to their relationship, and perhaps the only sign in the movie we have that there may actually be a human being inside Bundy, who until then was complete husk of a man.

Classic Movie Review: Brother's Keeper (1992)

Brother’s Keeper (1992)

Directed by: Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky.

 

Four year before they made the excellent Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills – a documentary that spawned two sequels, and is often held up as one of the best true crime docs in history, Joe Berliner and Bruce Sinofsky made Brother’s Keeper – a “true crime” doc in a lower key than the other film. It focused on the case of Delbert Ward – and his brothers. They lived in Munnsville, New York – a small town of only a few hundred people – one of those places where everyone knows everyone. And everyone did know the Ward boys – four brothers who didn’t bathe very often, came to town riding a couple of tractors, and basically kept to themselves on their large farm. While no one in town could rightly be called friends of the Ward boys – they weren’t enemies either – everyone basically kept to themselves. That is until the second oldest Ward boy – Bill – was found dead in his bed one morning – and Delbert was charged with his murder.

 

The Ward boys are not very smart – although, whether Delbert and the others actually suffered from intellectual disabilities, or whether they simply choose to remain mainly cut off from modern life, and hence no wise to its wise, is open for debate. Bill, the brother who winds up dead, had been suffering for a while – coughing and wheezing, complaining of pain in various places, etc. There is no evidence that any of them ever went to a doctor – so when Bill wound up dead, everyone assumed it was natural causes. But the cops find some evidence that confuses them – there’s debate as to whether a pillow was used to smother Bill, and some strange results on the autopsy. The police haul Delbert in for questioning – while there were four brothers, there were only two beds, and Delbert shared with Bill. They get a “confession” out of Delbert – but did they trick it out of him, coax it out of him – bully someone who wasn’t smart enough to know his rights to confess to something he didn’t do? The state at first floats the idea that it was a mercy killing – and then starts talking about something darker, and more perverted than that.

 

If you’re thinking this is going to be a documentary about a small town divided – you’d be wrong – while a few people do wonder if Delbert really did kill Bill as a mercy killing, no one in town wants to see him go to jail for it. They hold fundraisers for his legal defense fund – and the surviving Ward brothers become more accepted in the community than ever before. The case draws national attention – the filmmakers show the brothers watching themselves in a segment with Connie Chung for example. But what Berliner and Sinofsky capture is deeper than those segments on the show – because they stay there for so long, that everyone ends up simply accepting their presence. One of the other brothers, Lymon, is painfully shy in almost all social situations – but eventually he is able to open up to the camera – at least somewhat. The same is true for Delbert – who’s more articulate with the filmmakers than he is anywhere else.

 

The filmmakers also capture this small town brilliantly – and the attitudes in it, and why the police officers and the prosecutors – both from “the city” (what city? Who know, who cares) never do understand. I do worry that we’re going to spend the next four (or God forbid 8) years comparing everything to Trump, and Trump’s America – but you can certainly see the attitude many talk about contributing to the rise of Trump in this film. The locals talk about how everyone from the city thinks they’re all a bunch of idiot hicks – and they look on them, and think they can walk all over them without noticing. The prosecutor describes Delbert and the rest of the Wards as “outcasts” in their community – and he may not really be wrong – but the community would rather have their own outcasts, than someone from the city. The feeling that led to Trump’s rise didn’t spring up overnight – you can certainly see that in this film from 25 years ago. Yet, you can also see the humanity in rural people – some of whom are more open minded than you’d think (as one older man says even if there was sex going on between the brothers, who cares – it’s none of his business).

 

I won’t reveal the outcome of the trial – although I don’t think, the way the film is structured, that it’s ever really in doubt – especially when we get to the trial scenes themselves, which can be painful to watch. Paradise Lost and its sequels will always be the films that Berlinger and Sinofsky are remembered for – say what you want about them, but they are among the only films ever that you could argue saved someone’s life – but Brother’s Keeper is another triumph for the pair – and one of the best documentaries of the 1990s. It deserved to be more widely known.

Movie Review: Whitey: United States of America vs. James J. Bulger

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
Directed By: Joe Berlinger. 

Everyone seems to agree that James “Whitey” Bulger is a multiple murderer – the man ran the Boston underworld for decades, especially after the crackdown on the rival Italian Mafia. Bulger ran everything in Boston, and would kill those who got in his way – and then, right before a long overdue indictment was about to come down in 1995, he fled – remaining at large for 17 years, before finally being arrested and brought back to Boston to stand trial and finally face justice – even if at the age of 83, he isn’t likely to spend much time in jail. Not even Bulger seems to be denying that he is precisely what they are accusing him of being – a gangster who would kill, or arrange to have killed, anyone who got in his way. What is in question – even after the 2013 trial of Bulger – is what role, and what responsibility, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have in Bulger’s crimes. The FBI says that Bulger was an informant for them during the 1980s – and the information they received from him helped to make many arrests, including decimating the Italian Mafia. Bulger, however, claims that he was never an informant for the FBI – and the relationship really went the other way. He paid FBI agents, in particular John Connelly, for information so that he could stay ahead of law enforcement. He also claims he had a deal in place with a former US Attorney, that he wouldn’t charge Bulger with any Federal crimes as long as Bulger protected him. No matter which one is true however, many of the families Bulger’s victims are just as mad at the FBI as they are at Bulger. Why didn’t they arrest him sooner. Why did they do nothing to stop him from killing their family members. Why does it seem like the FBI protected Bulger and didn’t pursue him. Joe Berlinger’s documentary on the subject is a fascinating examination of the ins and outs of the case – and allows everyone to have their say (although the FBI refused to be interviewed, other government officials and prosecutors are interviewed, and call Bulger’s accusations ridiculous).

The effectiveness of the movie is somewhat undercut by the fact that Berlinger has to get almost all of the information from secondhand sources – Bulger's lawyers, or spokespeople, or FBI documents or trial transcripts, as the judge would not allow cameras into the courtroom during the trial. But while the movie certainly would have benefited from more firsthand testimony, the film still does provide a rather comprehensive portrait of government corruption – no matter whether you think Bulger was an informant or not, it is impossible to watch the film and get the impression that the FBI behaved well in this situation – at best, they received bribes from Bulger, gave him information and looked the other way while he was involved in at least 19 murders. To Bulger, the only thing he wanted to prove at trial is that he wasn’t a government informer – and that he didn’t murder the women he was accused of killing. He wants to be seen as an honorable gangster – whatever that is.

The movie is a fascinating portrait of one of America's most notorious true crime stories of the later part of the 20^th Century. But because of its limitations, it’s also one of those documentaries that may actually work better as a feature film – which we will apparently get with Johnny Depp playing Bulger. What we do get in Whitey: The United States of America vs. James J. Bulger is fascinating – but I think there`s even more to this story than the movie shows.

NOTE: I saw this film over the weekend when it aired on CNN – which presumably meant that the film I saw was slightly altered from the theatrical version that came out in June.

Movie Review: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory *** ½

Directed by: Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky.

The story of the West Memphis Three – Damien Echols, Jessie Miskelly and James Baldwin – finally had a happy ending on August 19, 2011 when the three men, now in their 30s, were released from prison following an plea agreement related to the 1994 case that sentenced Misskelly and Baldwin to prison for life and Echols to death row for murdering three 8 year boys. When documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky first went to West Memphis to document the trial and interview all involved, they thought they’d be making a documentary about how three heavy metal obsessed teenagers turned violent and murdered three innocent children, perhaps in a Satanic ritual. What they found instead was much more disturbing. The police, having no leads and no evidence, ended up focusing on Echols because he was known around town as “weird”. He dressed all in black, painted his fingernails and in a country music town, loved heavy metal music. They expanded their questioning to his friends, and eventually got Jesse Misskelly, who is mildly mentally handicapped, to confess to the murders after over 12 hours of questioning – only 40 minutes or so that was actually recorded. It doesn’t matter that even in the part that was taped, there was massive inaccuracies in Miss Kelly’s story – saying for example they abducted the boys at 9 in the morning, when really they didn’t go missing until after 7 at night, or saying that Echols and Baldwin had raped the boys first, although there was no evidence of that on the boys bodies. There was really no evidence of any kind – the boys were found naked and bound at the bottom of a river, and all blood or DNA evidence was washed away. Miskelly was convicted at his separate trial first, based on his confession that he recanted. But since he refused to testify against Echols and Baldwin, the confession wasn’t even admissible in their trials. But it didn’t matter – the media attention for the case had been so widespread, including the details of the confession (aside for the inaccuracies) that jurors went in with their minds made up – and Echols and Baldwin were also convicted.

The first Paradise Lost movie was released in 1996 on HBO, and the resulting controversy was nationwide. People were outraged, and the West Memphis Three had a large number of new followers and donors to their legal defense team, who filed appeal after appeal. But all appeals had to go through the same judge who tried the case, and he wasn’t having any of it. He rejected appeal after appeal, despite the mounting evidence of the teenager’s innocence. The filmmakers made Paradise Lost 2 in 2000, and showed the defendants as changed young men from the years behind bars, and raise more questions about their guilt. Now 10 years later, they are back with Paradise Lost 3, which details everything the new defense lawyers have uncovered, for their appeals. The version that I saw, at the Toronto Film Festival, is not the final version. The filmmakers finished it on August 15, just four days before the young men were released. They are adding footage of that to the end of this movie, in time for the New York Film Festival, but weren’t able to have it edited in time for TIFF.

Paradise Lost 3 has some shocking moments in it – I will never be able to get the image of the murdered boys out of my head, but nothing shocked me as much as the fact that John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the victims, who in previous films had gone off on more than one rant about how evil the killers were, having mock funerals for them, shooting fake bodies of them he made and declaring they were going to burn forever in hellfire, admitting that he was wrong. He looked at the new evidence, and sees the boys were innocent. He is still a fascinating character in this movie, but time has dampened him. He’s not even the most logical counter-suspect anymore – but another of the boy’s stepfathers is.

Few films can actually claim to have saved someone’s life, but the Paradise Lost films can. Echols thanks the filmmakers on camera in this film, saying that if they weren’t there right from the beginning to document the case and bring it national prominence, then he is convinced the State would have executed him by now. He’s not wrong. Echols has changed a lot over the years – no longer the defiant, bratty but extremely intelligent teenager who said in the first film that he would remembered forever as a boogeyman, even though he was innocent. He seems calm, his hairline is receding, and the son he had who was just a baby when he was put away is now almost as old as he was. Jason Baldwin has gone from the baby faced, soft spoken young man he was, into a balding, larger man in his in 30s. And Miskelly still seems very similar to how he was, but he too has aged. A lot can happen to a person over the years – to these three more than most.

I have no idea what Echols, Baldwin and Miskelly will do with the rest of their lives now that they are out of jail. I guess they could do anything they want. Their plea agreement allowed them to “maintain their innocence, but admit the prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them” – probably a way for the State to Protect themselves for a lawsuit. But that doesn’t really matter – after spending more than half their lives in jail, they are now free.

But who really did kill those three young boys? I doubt it’s a question we’ll ever have an answer to. The West Memphis police are not about to reopen the case, and the DA won’t want to try anyone even if they do find someone. That would be to admit that they were wrong. And one thing we’ve learned from the Paradise Lost trilogy is how anyone in power refuses to admit when they’ve made a mistake. Those three murdered children deserve better than that.