You Can See Everything
Let’s begin with a look at the much-maligned Elizabeth Holmes, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud. That fraud involved the device that she oversaw through her company, Theranos, that promised to diagnose a range of problems from a single drop of blood. Intent on getting to the root of who Holmes is, the actor and surrealist comic Nathan Fielder and the documentarian Lance Oppenheim co-directed what is a singularly unique kind of documentary that they titled You Can See Everything. Like other nonfiction filmmakers before him, from Michael Moore to Ross McEwee, Fielder makes himself as much of a character as he and Oppenheim do Holmes. And the result is a film that is as self-referential as it is compelling, continually observing itself as it progresses through its 2-hour-and-54-minute running time. It’s not clear that we ever learn who Holmes really is, though we learn quite a bit about her partner Billy Evans – yet it’s fascinating to watch how Fielder and Oppenheim play with the documentary form to create something that feels alluring, sometimes off-putting, other times comical and yet never less than original all at once.
The Social Reckoning
It would be interesting to see how many people came out of seeing The Social Reckoning and immediately checked their Facebook account. Because in detailing the real-life story of Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager who revealed the company’s habitual disregard of safety protocols in the drive for ever more profits, this Aaron Sorkin creation should frighten anyone with a social-media presence. Mikey Madison, who won a Best Actress Oscar for the 2024 film Anora, proves that she is more than a singular talent by playing Haugen as an uptight-but-determined woman who bares everything to the investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz played by Jeremy Allen White. Jeremy Strong stars as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, taking over from Jesse Eisenberg who portrayed Zuckerberg in Sorkin’s 2010 film The Social Network. As always in Sorkin projects, which date back to TV’s The West Wing, The Social Reckoning is an intense, political, muckraking film that lightens the mood on occasion when one character or another delivers a clever quip. But regardless of whether you’re a fan of Sorkin’s work, this much is clear: Be afraid, be very afraid, because Facebook, Google, X and the other platforms know you better than you know yourself.
The Devils
1971 was a banner year for Ken Russell. In February his Tchaikovsky biopic The Music Lovers was released, and in December his musical comedy The Boy Friend premiered. In between, in July, came The Devils, which he wrote and directed, adapting the story from both a nonfiction book by Aldous Huxley and a play by John Whiting. The story involves the French city of Loudun in the year 1634 when, during the plague that has ravaged the country, a convent becomes seemingly bewitched and the sisters accuse the priest Father Grandier (played by Oliver Reed) of possessing them. For religious and political reasons, the Catholic Cardinal Richelieu uses the accusation to destroy Loudon’s walls … and Grandier in the process. Russell uses this basic plot to create a surreal, manic and madcap depiction that has the likes of Vanessa Redgrave barking like a demented dalmatian amid writing naked bodies and scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating and widespread condemnation. But you have to give him credit: Russell existed in a mold that few other filmmakers have dared to emulate.
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