I was 15 years old when R. Budd Dwyer killed himself on live TV. Many stations refused to show the full footage, like KDKA, WPXI in Pittsburgh broadcast the footage uncensored on an early newscast, as they believed that kids wouldn’t be home to see it. That said — there was a snowstorm so many of us were home early. Many kids reacted just like they did to the Challenger crash, with dark humor being the only way to deal with it. I’ve since learned that a study of the incidence of the jokes showed that they were told only in areas where stations showed the uncensored footage.

Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer attempts to tell the story behind the man who killed himself with a .357 Magnum after being implicated in a scandal with Computer Technology Associates (CTA)

The Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Dwyer had run as a common man from a small town and throughout this documentary, this fact — and the feeling that he let down his hometown and the people that believed in him — is drummed home.

Everyone has a side to their story in this, including the last interview filmed with his wife before she died and his children. There’s also some incredible scenes William T. Smith, the person whose testimony convicted Dwyer. I wonder how much of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul character of James Morgan “Jimmy” McGill/Saul Goodman is based on this guy. He really seems to be a real-life Bob Odenkirk character.

This is a balanced documentary that really lets you come to your own conclusion. Sadly, I feel like politics have only gotten worse since Dwyer’s death.

The film also impacted me because Dwyer was often at the center of tape trading in the days before the internet. I’m a big fan of sites like the Found Footage Festival, who recently discussed with David Cross how he started trading tapes. My history of video mix tapes is similar — there was always someone who had a VHS tape at a party that had something you had only heard of. There were things like Pastor Gas, where televangelist Robert Tilton was overdubbed with fart noises. There was always Faces of Death. And there was always grainy footage of R. Budd Dwyer ending his life on live television.

We became desensitized to it. As each progressive generational dub was made, the footage became as hard to see as our morals. There was always a race to find the next crazy thing, to see something we shouldn’t see. At that time, there was just a strange subculture that wanted to own these moments. I’m not saying that everyone wanted to see extreme things. But the majority of mixtapes were often chock full of things like this.

Watching this film, I remembered seeing Dwyer more times than I’d like to think. And the suicide has reverberated throughout pop culture, inspiring songs like Marilyn Manson’s “Get Your Gunn” (complete with a sample of Dwyer’s voice), Kreator’s “Karmic Wheel” and Filter’s “Hey Man, Nice Shot.”

This film made me think about my ethics and about tape trading before the internet blew finding a clip wide open. And most importantly, it made reconsider a man that I’ve always thought was guilty and took the coward’s way out because his back was to the wall. Trust me — it’s not as simple as that.

If you’d like to see this for yourself, check out the official website or watch it on Amazon Prime.

Unarius means Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science. Since 1954, from their headquarters in El Cajon, California, they’ve worked to advanced a new “interdimensional science of life” based upon “fourth-dimensional” physics principles. This is not just the story of their church. It’s the story of the love between Ernest Norman and his wife Ruth across the galaxies and eons of time.

My question is, if the church doesn’t harm anyone, if they live as good people, what’s wrong with their love for space brothers? What’s the harm in the movies that they make? They seem much more well adjusted than many churches I’ve attended.

The other teaching of the church is the belief loop, where they can see a movie, see it as a past life experience and then create their own film documenting that fact. That means Star Wars is real. Any movie that you love can be as real as The Bible to you.

Then, there’s Charles Spiegel, Ruth’s longtime assistant and eventual successor. One day, while traveling cross-country, she confided in him that he was Lucifer. Seeing as she called herself Archangel Uriel, one wonders what their relationship was really like.

Some members also see themselves as the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus and they are making up for that in this life by following Ernest Norman. Hey — is that any stranger than what others believe?

Ruth Norman predicted — many times — that 33 alien ships would land here on Earth, starting in 1974.  Charles Spiegel predicted 1980 and was wrong as well. After numerous dates came and went, they began to focus more on improving humanity here on Earth.

I’ve been interested in the Unarius Church since seeing them on Letterman in the 1980’s and compilations of their videos at the long-lost Mondo Video in Los Angeles. This film only confirmed my suspicions of how magical they really are.

Want to learn more? The Unarius Church website is a great place to start. And if you want to watch the film, it’s available on Amazon Prime. Or you can visit the film’s official site.

People always wonder, why would someone join a cult? How could someone give away so much of their freedom to get nothing back into return? A few minutes into watching this film and your answer will not be so clear.

The Source Family was an attempt at creating a utopia. Between a famous health food restaurant on the Sunset Strip to an outlandish rock band and constantly being surrounded by gorgeous women, you can see how their leader, Father Yod, started to believe he was some sort of prophet.

This isn’t one of those documentaries made by people ready to laugh and not understand the mindset of the group. It was inspired by the book The Source: The Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family, which was written by Isis Aquarian and Electricity Aquarian and edited by Jodi Wille (who co-directed this film with Maria Demopoulos).

Once the group flees to Hawaii, things get out of control, leading to their demise, as well as the death of Father Yod. All of this is captured on film, as the Source Family recorded everything.

Even more amazing is that so many members of the group have gone on to lead amazing, fulfilling lives. Between the music, a large amount of actual footage and the way that it’s all sewn into an engaging storyline, this documentary does more than unfold. It inspires.

If I were alive in the early 70’s, I wonder if my spiritual journey would take me to a group like the Process or the Source Family. When we were young, a journey to the Krishna Temple of Gold in West Virginia was enlightening and frightening at the same time. So were the many visits to churches and shrines across the country. At times, I wish that I could find that childlike wonder and worship that adulthood seems to take away. That’s why I don’t laugh or wonder why anyone joins a group like this.

You can watch it on Amazon Prime or head to the official site to learn more.

We really do go see new movies sometimes. But as late, our luck has been horrible. The Nun was painful, after all. But we’d seen the trailer for this film a few months back and it looked like Becca’s favorite kind of movie (and Sam’s least) — Gone Girl-style suburban true crime murder mystery. The actual movie, however, deviates wildly from the promise of the trailer.

I saw this movie under protest. After all, I wanted to see Hell Fest. Or The Predator. I could have even hate watched Venom. Because I have been the unfortunate recipient of Gone GIrl — not to mention movies like it such as The Girl on the Train and other works by its author like Sharp Objects and the upcoming Widows — viewings in the triple digits. The funny thing is, I ended up liking it way more than Becca.

Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick from Twilight and Pitch Perfect) is a craft vlogger and single mom who constantly outdoes every other parent through sheer energy. But under her mania lies some pretty dark secrets and little to no real friends, not to mention a man. Emily (Blake Lively) is also a working mom, but is more known as a PR director for a major fashion company. These women couldn’t be more different — Stephanie prefers to hide in the background and apologize while Emily isn’t afraid to stand out and offend everybody.

The friendship between their children brings them together and the playdates their kids have to build the foundation for their fast friendship. They are soon trading confessions: Emily is frustrated with her husband’s lack of success. And Stephanie slept with her half-brother and may have had a child with him, which led to the death of both him and her husband.

Emily then asks for that simple favor: can Stephanie babysit Nicky while Sean is in London and she has to tend to a work emergency? That favor extends for days as Emily goes missing. And once her body is found in a Michigan lake, all hell breaks loose.

That’s when this movie descends into the twists and turns of a whodunit (but not a giallo, as much as I was wanting some black gloved killings and Ivan Rassimov to show up), with Stephanie caught in the midst of Emily’s psychotic ways, Sean’s devotion to her and her suddenly growing popularity amongst the local moms and her internet audience.

The film goes way over the deep end, bringing in the giallo staples of the unknown twin (actually triplet) and a family history of violence and insanity. Jean Smart shows up for all of a minute as Emily’s mother here. 

A Simple Favor is the first movie that Paul Feig has directed since his divisive Ghostbusters reboot. I enjoyed the style in the film and the soundtrack, particularly the usage of Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie and Clyde (actually, the film has multiple Bardot songs).

This is a movie unsure of what movie it really wants to be. Is it a mystery? Is it a comedy? Is it both? It never truly becomes anything, wildly shifting in tone to the point of absurdity — and not in a good way. That said, Lively and Kendrick are quite good in this, much better than anyone else in the film.

I always ask Becca if she has anything she wants to add to our review. She said that she’d give this movie a D or an F, because she wanted it to be closer to the thriller the trailer promised. And she wonders if Anna Kendrick only plays the parts of ditzy nice girls who apologize too much and get into shenanigans all the time, to which I answered, “Yes, I think that’s pretty much who she is in real life.”

Also: I call bullshit on a major plot point. Emily pays cash to rent her car from  Budget Rent-A-Car, which doesn’t allow vehicle rentals without a credit or debit card, much less a valid driver’s license. They would have had a full record of Emily renting the car. It would have been much simpler if she had someone else rent her the car and then paid that person. I realize that I’m being anal retentive about plot holes while I let gigantic ones in Argento movies pass by like bullets through the doorhole in Opera. But come on, people!

Of note, this was based on a novel by Darcey Bell, which has wildly different plot points, such as Emily only being a twin and being less complicit in the death of her sibling, as well as a completely different ending.

Postscript: As we left the theater, we noticed that there were only three other people there. One was an older gentleman in a full three piece suit who sat in front of us. Behind us was a younger couple that Becca asked about their feeling on the film. No one really liked it all that much and the older fellow called me sir while we talked and remarked how much better he likes Agatha Christie than modern mystery. We walked out of the theater late and alone on a Sunday night only for us to realize that the older gentleman was driving his son to a date. His son had to be in his late 20’s/early 30’s and the older man waited in the car for his son to embrace his date and kiss her goodnight. When we said goodbye, he said, “Have a nice week.” It was perhaps the sweetest and strangest thing that has happened to us in some time.

If you think the United States is in bad shape today, perhaps you should check out this film, made well beyond the news bubble and the 24/7 headline cycle. The 1970’s were fucking bleak.

If you thought mass shooters were because of video games or that we just suddenly became a more violent society, sit through this movie. It’s brutal. It will assault you. It will take your name. It will own you.

Director Sheldon Renan suffered from depression for a year after he finished this film, as was editor Lee Percy. Even the John Lennon vigil at the end, added at the request of Japanese producers to help the movie end on a positive note, had people shoot at one another. That ending is somehow even more downbeat than anything else, after a movie where Sirhan Sirhan cries about killing RFK and you see more of the Zapruder film than you knew existed.

How destroyed was Renan? He went on to write the screenplay for 1990’s Lambada. What the actual fuck.

The voice of this film is incredible and it comes from Chuck Riley, who did the voiceovers for these trailers: The Godfather, Child’s Play 2, Die Hard and many more.

The writing comes from Leonard Schrader, brother of Taxi Driver writer Paul, who was inspired to do this movie after writing a film called Hollow Point for Roger Corman. As he researched that movie, he met so many hitmen and spent so much time with them, he learned exactly how killers planned and executed hits.

There’s even a one-on-one interview with the Edmund Kemper, where he calmly discusses killing his mother and young women. That said — the goal of this film isn’t Mondo Cane exploitation.

According to a New Republic article, it wanted to erase the line between killers and the audience. Renan said Schrader “wanted to turn the audience into murderers. He wanted [viewers] to recognize that in themselves, ostensibly so that they would do something about it.”

As they worked on the film, Reagan and Lennon were both shot. Things did not get better. Things are bad now. So often I use film to hide from reality, but this movie makes you face it.

There is a lot here I never knew about, like Tony Kiritsis, an Indiana man who held a mortgage broker hostage while hosting a press conference in the most polite manner possible. Of course, he also had a shotgun wired to the man’s head that was ready to go off if he was shot by the police.

Some feel that this movie glamorizes the killers. I would refute that and say that it makes you see the senselessness of their action. As the former president of a Zen meditation center, Renan gave them a forum because he believed that “you just have to feel compassion for everybody — you just do. I do, anyway. For me, it was a journey into the depths to try to get some understanding.”

This is a movie that I think everyone should watch. It’s sobering. It’s maddening. And it approaches art.

This film was never released, distributed, televised, or made available for sale in the USA until it finally received an official release from Severin Films. You can also watch it on Amazon Prime.