Now here’s a twist on the true crime genre: the solution to a 525-year-old murder mystery hidden in the art on a deck of cards. That’s what world-champ magician Shawn Farquhar believes, at least. In Lost in the Shuffle, documentarian Jon Ornoy follows Farquhar simultaneously investigating his theory and creating an elaborate card trick based on the crime.
The cold case at hand (as it were) involves the suspicious death of France’s King Charles VIII, perhaps killed by his queen, Anne of Brittany. Farquhar’s quest takes him to Belgium, Britain and beyond, with the occasional and fully intentional tangent into magic theory.
Ornoy and his globetrotting star almost magically transform deep-niche nerd shit into an engaging detective story, with wonderful animated segments subbing for reenactments. Although not as Da Vinci Code-y as initially set up, their symbol-conspiratorial Shuffle holds appeal to history geeks, homicide geeks, game geeks, travel geeks, sleight-of-hand geeks and even just process geeks.
To whichever group(s) among those you belong — and even if you find Farquhar’s ultimate assertion to be a mighty leap of assumption — you’ll probably fall into the movie’s net. —Rod Lott
In the department of “Careful what you wish for, because you just might get it … provided you’re willing to part with $40 million,” we have ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! The documentary follows South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — but mostly Parker — as they save the Denver, Colorado-area restaurant from extinction following its COVID-hurled bankruptcy.
Rescuing Casa Bonita is the easy part; restoring it to the beloved kitsch eatery of their childhood memories is another. After all, Casa Bonita — actually started in Oklahoma City, which the doc ignores — was renowned not for its Mexican food, but its amusement park touches, from cliff divers and a built-in haunted cave to a gorilla on the loose. Parker and Stone seek to add their own ideas as well, like an animatronic bird that poops bad fortunes. Which is all fine and good, except the building of “beans and chorine” turns out to be a rotted money pit of disrepair and disaster — some potentially lethal.
Captured by How’s Your News? director Arthur Bradford, a frequent collaborator of Parker and Stone, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is largely a contractor’s remodelmentary; aside from the F-bombs, the piece could be mistaken for any renovation hour on HGTV. That’s not necessarily a knock, unless you’re expecting a story as wild and crazy as, say, Class Action Park. Given the famous backers at play here, you might.
But you might also be surprised how sad the doc becomes in its final minutes, as reality catches up to Parker. The turn may qualify as too-little-too-late, but anyone standing in their middle-age era will recognize the folly of chasing your past … the ennui of life passing you by … the acknowledgment of your impending doom …
When Sam & Dave, the classic ’60s soul group, performed their signature hit, “Soul Man,” I wonder how they felt about the Blowfly parody “Hole Man” and if they were proud about it. What about the artists whose original tunes inspired “Y.M.C.(G.)A.(Y.)” or “Shittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”?
Because I definitely would be proud of it … even though I’d sheepishly look down at my feet in total shame and absolute guilt.
I learned of those songs when I discovered Blowfly. When I was a somewhat nerdy, yet eclectic teenager, I was on way to a school marching band competition. Somewhere in the middle of rural Oklahoma, the bus made a roadside stop for bathroom breaks and caffeinated drinks.
I noticed a rack of outré music journals, cult movie zines and, of course, thoroughly profane Mexican nudie mags. All I had was $20 for lunch, but I bought $19 worth of the strange magazines and a liter of Diet Dr Pepper with the change. Oh, yeah!
The music magazine — sorry, I can’t remember the name — had articles about Doug Sahm, Lou Reed and, more importantly, Blowfly (aka Clarence Reid). Reading, learning and wanting to know more about the nastiest rapper, I was heterosexually enamored.
Since then, I’ve encounter him and his music in the most prurient of places — such as a dying record store in San Antonio, a flea market in New York City or a beer-stained trash can in Fort Collins, Colorado, to be sure — all leading to the 2010 film The Weird World of Blowfly.
Although Blowfly died in 2016, this documentary — a cock-umentary, if you will — finds him in the middle of his ill-advised comeback tour. With his history of party records in tow and the help of manager Tom Bowker, he’s trying to make a comeback, but, at 70, it’s harder than it sounds.
Sadly, he’s playing to lackluster crowds in small clubs and, worse, the worst crowds somewhere in Europe. Through the film, we find out that his royalties are gone, he needs surgery on his leg, and, most of all, people have been flatulent on his backstage pizza.
A demented genius, a warped personality and a hyper-sexed fuck demon: This is the Blowfly persona. Yet we instead finding him reading the Bible with his aged mother, goofing around with Bowker’s pre-teen daughter and having a midnight snack of McDonald’s hash browns with ample amounts of ketchup and maple syrup.
I never knew about the two conflicting sides of this man, but talking heads like Ice-T, Chuck D and other performers pay tribute, making sure he stayed a dirty secret in your dad’s party records. To be fair, the greatest tribute comes from Bowker when a slick hipster decries Blowfly, upon which the manager truly castigates, denigrates and dominates the hipster in his own personal hell.
Whether you’ve been taken by “Hole Man” or another one of Blowfly’s infamous bits of wordplay surrounding comically slick crevices, gaping love holes and other places to stick your wanton meat stick, The Weird World of Blowfly is the perfect condom to the real-life cultish career. —Louis Fowler
Aside from the script, performers and digital effects, movies are an amalgam of stuff we find lying around. The alien from John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s Dark Star was just a painted beach ball with rubber feet attached. The crew of James Cameron’s Aliensdouble-dipped into their gear and used Steadicam arms to create the Colonial Marines’ M56 Smartguns. And the walls of the Nostromo from Ridley Scott’s original Alienfeatured a coffee grinder. (Granted, the space truckers probably just need a decent cup of joe every few million miles.)
Props — regardless of what they’re made of — give movies life. Tulsa banker Tom Biolchini, the subject of Juan Pablo Reinoso’s documentary Mad Props, seeks to preserve that life and celebrate props for what they ultimately are: art.
Though it doesn’t seem like this were ever in question, you probably don’t hear much appreciation for visual and technical designers not named Tom Savini, Phil Tippett or Ray Harryhausen. We love their work, true, but maybe we tend to give directors like Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson credit that’s at least partially due to their prop artists.
That compulsion to find and recognize those masters makes Mad Props more endearing than it otherwise could be. Because let’s be real: Watching a hugely successful banker drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusadeisn’t exactly relatable. (Especially when you consider the didactic of that flick was how you shouldn’t obsess over one-of-a-kind treasures — Indy’s dad even shed a tear over it!)
If a wildly prohibitive hobby were all there was to Mad Props, it would frankly be a detached, insufferable trudge of a doc. Fortunately, the film makes a point to profile not just those who collect props, but the people who make and curate them, too. Biolchini has an infectious enthusiasm about this craft.
And while you could make the argument someone who collects a certain thing would want said thing to be recognized as art because that would likely inflate its value, that’s not quite how it would work since these items already command such a steep price. It seems Biolchini genuinely wants to preserve them in an era when less props are taking a physical form at all.
The behind-the-scenes stories Mad Props covers, like the nightmare that was the Goro suit from 1995’s Mortal Kombat, perfectly captures how much effort special effects demand even for just a few minutes’ worth of footage. A giddy Robert Englund recounting the many gloves of Freddy Krueger helps, too.
Mad Props really only wanes with the auction coverage. It just isn’t very interesting and does little to convey appreciation for film. In fact, the documentary finds meaning the further it drifts from the hobby and more into curation and prop production. It also helps that the doc is incredibly easy to watch. At its heart, it’s a light profile of movies and fans who love them. Like, a lot. —Daniel Bokemper
When I was 7 years old, the kids next door came back from the 7-Eleven — which I wasn’t allowed to go to — with something called “trading cards.” Not only did these cards feature full-color photos from everyone’s two favorite movies (Star Wars and Superman), but came with a sticker and a slab of gum. I was extremely, insanely jealous. Still am.
The Hobby, a documentary on the recent resurgence of the trading-card biz, explores the push and pull between collectors and investors. I wish it were more varied in subject than concentrating on two high-stakes types of cards: sports and Pokémon. With select rarities now going for millions on the market, there’s much ado about cardboard.
Director Morgan Jon Fox’s inside-baseball approach may alienate more casual viewers eager for a glimpse into this world. From dealers and podcasters to — just kill me now — a “full-time Pokémon content creator,” interview after interview rattles off price after price of cards they’ve acquired or sold. That makes the doc geared toward people willing to watch YouTube videos of others opening pack after pack, box after box — something more passive and alien to me than watching others play video games.
Although not a total wash, the movie quickly enters a repetitive cycle that’s oddly void of conflict, especially since the end titles hint at later events of hostility and volatility Fox’s camera wasn’t around to catch. Speaking of catching, The Hobby’s graphics aren’t exactly “Topps” in the spelling department, with such errors as “ECLUSIVE” and “FUED.” —Rod Lott
