Personal documentaries rarely operate under the aesthetic and narrative rules of horror films, incorporating shocking Shyamalan-esque twist endings, but Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father does, so it’s fitting that Oscilloscope are beginning its roll out on Halloween. When filmmaker Kurt Kuenne’s childhood best friend Andrew Bagby was killed at the age of 32, almost certainly by his years-older jilted girlfriend Shirley Turner, Kuenne began filming testimony from his friends and family as a memorial to his lost friend. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that Andrew’s probable killer, who though charged with the crime had not yet been extradicted from Canada, was pregnant with Andrew’s child, and as Andrew’s parents Kate and David moved to Newfoundland and fought for custody of the baby, Kuenne drove across the continent from California to conduct interviews. At that point, he restructured the project: it was now a filmed letter addressed to baby Zachary, about the man his father was. But before Kuenne finished filming, the story would take another, much more devastating turn. It may be impossible to talk about Dear Zachary in terms of craft without spoiling the real-life twist which compromises the integrity of its structure, but I’ll try to be as vague as I can. …Read more

I know star power isn’t what it used to be, but doesn’t it seem like we still give Al Pacino more credit than he’s worth? Despite his receiving an Oscar fifteen years ago, the guy hasn’t been a completely dependable actor in more than two decades. And yet a lot of people write about his upcoming movies as if they could maybe, possibly, hopefully be on par with the actor’s ’70s work. I’m not denying that he’s excellent in a few films of even the past ten years (particularly The Insider), but let’s not forget he was also in Gigli, so it isn’t like he’s making the same smart choices he was making as a younger man.

And now here’s 88 Minutes, another movie that attempts to give us a thrilling plot in real time, a la 24. But despite such a gimmick working with old films like High Noon and 12 Angry Men, when it’s presented as a gimmick, and clearly as the only reason a movie is made (as in the cases of Nick of Time, Timecode and Phone Booth), it always comes off as forced and (obviously) gimmicky. But at least Pacino is in it, right? Eh, maybe if American moviegoers still gave a damn about marquee names. Maybe that’s why 88 Minutes was released to many foreign markets six months to a year ago; star power is still marketable in many places outside the U.S. Meanwhile, Sony is finally dropping the thing here on April 18.

I can’t say that I would never see a movie just because Pacino is in it (I can’t wait to see him as Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story, only because the idea is half-genius, half-ludicrous), but even my nostalgia for a seemingly real time movie like Dog Day Afternoon (it’s not in real time, but it feels like it) can’t get me to see 88 Minutes just for him. And there doesn’t appear to be much else that’s appealing about the generic frame-job film either.