Gillespie, Patricia E

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares199 Views

    ‘They Called Him Mostly Harmless’ Review: Digital Sleuthing

    by

    In this schematic HBO true-crime documentary, amateur detectives take the lead in the quest to identify the body of a male hiker.In 2018, an emaciated male body was found in the Florida wilderness. Blood work showed that he was healthy, with no drugs in his system beyond Tylenol. Among his belongings were food and money, but no phone. The man had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. Several hikers recalled encountering him within the eight months before his death — he was handsome — but they only knew him by his trail name, Mostly Harmless.Mostly Harmless did not want to be found.Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, the HBO true-crime documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless” is, on one level, about the quest to identify the body. Hikers, a detective, and the Wired journalist who wrote the articles that inspired the documentary, feature as talking heads.But the other, arguably more unsettling, half of the story centers on the amateur detectives who helped crack the case — all middle-age women involved in a Facebook group dedicated to the cause.This artless documentary, composed primarily of interviews and B-roll footage (of walks along the trail from a first-person perspective; the amateur detectives looking at their computers, brows furrowed), mechanically pieces together the mystery. It’s a film for those who don’t know the outcome, playing upon the viewers’ thirst for answers as it chips away at a clearer portrait of the man.More interesting is the film’s meta-true-crime dimension, which links the case’s obsessive amateurs to a broader fascination with the genre and its fraught form of escapism. Dead ends and false leads aggravate the digital sleuthing hive (a cancer survivor testifies to the online harassment he faced after being falsely identified as Mostly Harmless), and petty rivalries ensue between the Facebook group’s leaders. The documentary doesn’t treat them with outright mockery, but the tone is mildly condescending — a feeling heightened by an outcome that points to the futility of it all.They Called Him Mostly HarmlessNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Max. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Fire that Took Her’ Review: An Unflinching Portrait of Pain

      by

      This documentary charts the case of Judy Malinowski, a young mother who suffered debilitating burns after being set on fire by a man she had dated.The experiences of Judy Malinowski, an Ohio woman who testified in her own murder trial, could have been cooked up by the novelist Jodi Picoult in an alarming courtroom melodrama. Instead, this true story’s themes of domestic violence, traumatic injury and addiction are unpacked in the straightforward documentary “The Fire That Took Her.”Anchored by interviews with Judy’s family members, particularly her mother, Bonnie, the film recounts how Judy, a young mother of two daughters, began a volatile relationship with a man named Michael Slager. According to Bonnie, Michael manipulated their family and enabled Judy’s drug addiction, casting himself as her savior while supplying her with heroin. Then, amid an altercation in 2015, Michael doused Judy in gasoline and set her on fire.Miraculously, Judy survived for nearly two years after the attack, and the documentary frequently includes footage from the hospital room where Judy resided and received care. In interviews, the director Patricia E. Gillespie has said that while pitching the film, people often asked whether she could cover or blur Judy’s face to shield audiences from her burns. Gillespie refused, and her resolve to train her camera on Judy gives the film an unflinching quality.Testimonies from the detectives and attorneys on the case beget a host of true-crime clichés. Far more startling and heartbreaking, though, are the scenes of Bonnie at home with Judy’s daughters. Seated around the kitchen table, Bonnie gently debriefs them on their mother’s medical and legislative battles. To watch these girls strive to comprehend the incomprehensible is a singular kind of agony.The Fire that Took HerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More