Female Film Critics 24/375
Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn’s documentary film Another Body tells the story of one woman’s nightmare when she discovers that her face has been deepfaked onto pornographic videos on the internet. Becoming a DIY detective is her only hope to solve the mystery in a very different kind of whodunit.
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“Stranger danger!” Generations of kids took that rhyming parental warning to heart, learning that seemingly friendly grown-ups weren’t necessarily as benign as they appeared to be. Of course, that was before social media utterly transformed the way young people engage with each other — and the world. And in the days before discovering so-called online friends aren’t necessarily friendly — or even who they claim to be.
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Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei who was responsible for killing 16 women across 2000 and 2001, the gritty true crime surfaces of the film barely disguise the intensity with which Ali Abbasi and his collaborators seek to reveal something much bigger about Iranian society, using this case as a shocking lens to see broader problems when it comes to gender politics. Tight, taut and not one beat out of place, Holy Spider captivates from start to finish; it gets its claws in and refuses to let go
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Skye Borgman’s documentary Girl in the Picture is the tragic tale of a 20 year-old, blond-haired woman who barely knew her own identity. Her body was found on the side of the road in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April, 1990. Hospital staff noted many ‘older’ bruises on her body, along with scratches on her chest, and immediately suspected her husband Clarence. Known as Tonya Hughes, she was an exotic dancer with a two year-old son, Michael. Problem was: the real Tonya Hughes died 20 years ago.
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The extraordinary layers in this true crime story are carefully peeled back in a fashion that hooks the viewer almost immediately and never lets go. This is a particularly bizarre and unsavoury set of events — and it’s complicated — but with in-person interviews and recreations, filmmaker Skye Borgman moves seamlessly back and forth in time to drop shock revelation after shock revelation. This is a dip into the heart of darkness as to the fate of women and children — violence, vanishing, kiddie porn and other horrors — and for all that some mysteries are cleared up, the movie ends with many questions unanswered.
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The Girl From Plainville is inspired by the texting suicide case in which 17 year old Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for coercing her boyfriend Conrad Roy to kill himself. There was a documentary on the subject called I Love You, Now Die released in 2019, but this narrative brings something more, because it can be as subjective as it wants to be. Elle Fanning as Michelle Carter is so magnetic you can’t take your eyes off her, and Chloë Sevigny, who plays Conrad’s tortured and grieving mother Lynn Roy, is as heartbreaking as Fanning’s is chilling.
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‘Cropsey’ is an urban legend that haunted Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman while they were growing up in Staten Island, NY. In this 2009 documentary, the filmmakers return to their childhood environs to investigate the myth about the elusive boogeyman, wacko and supposed satanist who allegedly lived in the abandoned ruins of the notorious Willowbrook Mental Institution, which he used as a base for abducting and killing local children. Ultimately, the discovery of the body of a missing girl proved the legend to be true.
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In Ursula MacFarlane’s documentary, The Lost Sons, lead subject Paul Fronczak, searching for his own identity, walks the line between curiosity and egocentricity in a way that is often off-putting. Fronczak’s personality is part of what is being examined in this convoluted true-crime story about newborn abduction, family secrets, and identity. The film will be most appreciated by diehard genealogists, but it has an extended running time that is far too padded to keep any other armchair detectives or true crime nuts engaged.
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NBC has granted a straight-to-series pickup to The Thing About Pam, based on one of the most popular true-crime stories to come out of its venerable Dateline series and its companion podcast. Zellweger, who will also executive produce, will make her broadcast TV series debut in the six-episode series.
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Most true-crime tales center on the crime itself. But Finding Yingying isn’t most true-crime tales. To be sure, there is a crime: a harrowing, heartbreaking, haunting one. To this award-winning documentary’s credit, however, the literally gory details play a much smaller role in the overall picture than they generally do.
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