Tag: You Can See Everything

November 2nd, 2026

Wicker: This new release is based off the short story called The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills, which was unknown and unread by me. I came into this with very little knowledge save for a couple of times I had seen a trailer. It stars Olivia Colman, who has had quite a year when you see she was also in Elsinore, coming to a theatre near you in November. It also stars Peter Dinklage (from Game of Thrones), Alex Skarsgard and Elizabeth Debicki (who played Diana in The Crown). Set in a very small rural town, at an unspecified but more medieval time likely in the UK, the simple townspeople are known by their profession. Colman plays the Fish Woman. Dinklage the Basket Weaver, and Debicki is Tailor’s Wife. Skarsgard is the Wicker Man. This is a fable. In this small town, they have very old-fashioned ideas about relationships and marriage. We are shown an earlier marriage ceremony with ordinary townsfolk (the Bottlewasher and his wife) where there is an extremely unusual aspect to the ceremony. In a short scene, we learn plenty about this community. Next we see the Fish Woman, who after taking on her catch walks through town with it and tries to sell it. She is mocked for the way she smells as she clearly doesn’t worry about what others think about her appearance. She has some clever retorts back to those who mock her. The story continues.

Tired of being mocked and jeered the Fish Woman approaches the talented Basket Weaver to make her a husband. She hands over a few sheckles and walks away after the Basket Weaver states “meet at the church in one month”. Fast forward to that day and she meets her usual new husband. He speaks. He is polite. He is aware of community morals and ensures that he meets them. They are married. Their relationship starts as many pre-arranged marriages likely would. Of course there are challenges brought forward mostly with the skeptic townspeople and their small minds and pettiness.

I really enjoyed this movie. It is a clever story well told. Human nature is explored with all its bullying, jealousy, envy, joy, love and connection as well. This is after all a love story between two unlikely people. One who never looked for love, nor expected for it to come to her door, and the other a manufactured man who may just be everything a woman in those times would be looking for. Even those who are pure of heart and intention can have their world turn upside down by those around them. There are some people who find joy in tearing other people down in order to rise up themselves. I am hard pressed to find a more calculating villain than what is displayed here. It is effectively done. The final act is a Moral of The Story most befitting Tyrion Lannister. There is a very good lesson learned among all the townspeople as it unfolds. This was worth my time and money at the theatre. Does it need to be seen at a theatre? Likely not, and it will be in streaming services soon enough. However, there is always something to be said for having a dedicated couple of hours to focus on the screen.

Bad Apples: This is a new release streaming directed by Jonatan Exler. Set in modern day Britain, Saoirse Ronan stars in this movie as Maria Spencer, as a young teacher of children likely around 12 years old. She is a relatively new teacher and she struggles with her class, primarily because there is a disruptive and unruly young boy Danny who keeps acting out. Parents have complained about her class, and with a limited numner of actions she can actually take she feels as though her hands are tied. Danny ruins an offsite excursion and later shows up late and verbally abuses everyone. Miss Spencer is told that “handling difficult children is part of the job” as there are no further resources that the principal can offer. This is a movie with a good supporting cast with actors that I was generally not familiar with.

This is a dark comedy, and a reflection into current scholls and education programs. The resources are spread particularly thin, and large class sizes with teachers acting often as glorified baby sitters means that a mischievous student becomes a focal point and others in the class are unable to show their true talents. Miss Spencer ends up in a particularly difficult scenario with young Danny, and needs to take action. Where things go from here show how difficult that matters can get. A number of things are learned and Miss Spencer does her level best to make the most of the situation, including watching her class and her own teaching effectiveness blossom. Further things happen which puts the whole situation in jeopardy or in the very least in a spot where Miss Spencer is particularly vulnerable. In the final act, things occur which were not expected for me. Overall the story reflects a current reality where a teacher is left with limited options to rectify a classroom situation. Parents are left with the unenviable situation where their own child may have their education set back because there isn’t adequate funding to identify and address the troubled student. The student too may have been pushed through a system where no one wishes to address his real needs but instead just push him along to the next unsuspecting teacher. It can leave that young person feeling unloved and unappreciated. Plenty of themes arise with some quality social commentary. At a time when governments seem to want to regard industry and business more favourably than health care and education for those coming up in society, we can see that this is done with long term consequences for us all. Ronan is one of today’s finest actresses as far as I am concerned, and she plays this effectively. We can sympathize with her and her situation. She is a lonely woman with not much going on in her life, and this job is draining her more fully. If our students don’t have any support, and our teachers feel lost, alone and unappreciated then the long term for the society is going to continue to have unresolved problems.

You Can See Everything – Revisited Second Viewing : I went to see this documentary again with my step-father this past week. He had not seen it, and he was vaguely aware of the Holmes story with Theranos. I went back in enthusiastically knowing that having seen the entirety of the documentary and I would be catching more aspects to it because I already knew where the plot went. In this re-watch, I could focus on the performances and how it the movie all came together.

I enjoyed this even more the second time. There are few reasons for this. I think that the editing of the movie is excellent and against the traditional model for documentaries, which follow a linear chronological flow. This movie is set up in two parts. There is first part with documenting Elizabeth Holmes in her rented San Diego flat with her husband Billy and two kids. A delightful young family. We meet her parents as well. We see the 34 days leading up to her incarceration in the Federal Facility in Texas near Austin. The second half of the movie circles back and raises an issue about Billy and shows the discussion about details before the movie even began. It more fully explores Elizabeth herself and what she knew and what she didn’t know. We see more deeply her relationship with Billy and how he acts as he says knowing what she would be thinking. The movie ingeniously leverages a previous particupant in an Elizabeth TV series (The Dropout) to fill in places where filming can’t be done with the actual Elizabeth. Often pure recollection is used to script those moments. Media, interpretation of facts, human recollection of events, perception and how ones mind works were all at play. There is a fascinating discussion with Elizabeth talking about specifications or capabilties of her invention Edison 1.0 for Theranos. She is asked what her definition of a lie is and she responds “knowingly telling something that you believe to be untrue”. Elizabeth talks often about “her truth”. The key words there for me are “you believe” since a person themself may believe something, but that can sometimes be proven to be false. People can be wrong and mistaken. Elizabeth maintains right up until incarceration that she has done nothing wrong. That seems so perplexing because it was proven in Court that the Edison 1.0 device was not capable of doing the tests that it claimed. The harm of course was that real people went to local drug store labs to have blood work done and it was incorrect. The test results were wrong. So the technological wonder wasn’t ready for primetime. When you deal with people’s health the “fake it until you make it” attitude of Silicon Valley and Steve Jobs just is too dangerous. It isn’t data on a floppy disk that is at risk. It can be a cancer diagnosis. Further Elizabeth’s choice of romantic partner is put into question, and whether she chooses wisely between Suni at Theranos and now Billy. The whole story of how Billy and Elizabeth met was an interesting one. Is she someone who has followed blindly men to her detriment, or is she in lockstep with these men and one of greatest manipulators of our time? The audience gets to choose for themselves. Nathan Fielder is to be commended for bringing forth a new way to see a documentary and effectively telling a compelling story. This is worth your time to see. Some background could very well be useful.

October 19th 2026

You Can See Everything: This is a new documentary that had a tremendous buzz at TIFF in September. It is directed by and stars Nathan Felder, a Canadian film maker who has worked with Rick Mercer before. It is almost three hours long! Felder plays himself as the interviewer for infamous business fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, who was the CEO of test machine manufacturer Theranos, and heading to jail in May 2023. Holmes along with her husband, Billy and their two young children, have rented a beachfront property in San Diego shortly before her incarceration. They invited Felder and his team to live with them and document their life. It is an unusual move provding so much access to a film crew. Holmes had not provided any media access to herself in years as she was convicted in November 2022 for 11 years and 3 months for her involvement in the fraud. This sentence has since been subsequently reduced, and she will be released around 2030. Felder early on brought forward to Elizabeth that he was uncomfortable in being invited into their house because he is a filmmaker and not someone who can talk and debate the virtues of Elizabeth’s espoused technological transformation; Theranos claimed that many biological tests could be performed on any patient anywhere on one single drop of blood. It couldn’t and the criminal activity was associated with the cover-up of that discovery. The movie doesn’t look to relitigate the result of the trial.

I highly recommend this movie. I do this because it is much more than just documenting the final thirty days before Elizabeth goes to jail. There is plenty of that as we are introduced to her quiet life before prison. Walking the beach, feeding her newly born child and watching the infant. But you also see her interaction, which is very powerful with her husband Billy. Billy has his own things going on. Nathan as interviewer is direct and doesn’t mince words, with some humour (intended and unintended mixed in). Nathan has an easy going relationship with Elizabeth and also Billy, both together and individually. He challenges his subjects with tough questions, and pursues further when they look to wriggle away from a flimsy answer. We meet Elizabeth’s parents. A lot of said with no words at all. Looks, sideways glances and interaction with parents and kids. Nathan’s style is effective. At the same time I cannot help feeling that Nathan channels Booger in looks and attitude from Revenge of the Nerds. He is deadpan with long pauses with his subject to allow them to answer.

What works really well is how this movie takes real people and their very dramatic situation and has it turn in unexpected directions. Dropping Elizabeth off at the Federal Peneteniary in Texas is not the end. The story continues on for a few years, with Elizabeth in prison and with limited access. Early on we learned some curious things about Elizabeth and how (apparently) her mind works, but then in the second half some other aspects emerge. The underlying current is there about potential manipulation. Is the CEO of a company really so literal? Does she really not have any sense of people and their intentions around her? Can she really be using such loose language to address very specific situations in her present as well as in her past? So in the second half, quite indirectly we learn a lot more about Elizabeth. The story is very complex with layer upon layer being revealed. What it shows is that we as the public really only see the surface and that so many other things work through this perplexing, complicated and misunderstood woman. There are plenty of very tight shots. Nathan with acne and a couple days growth on his chin is seen time after time. One would think that they have razors in San Diego, especially when you know that you will be filmed in extremely tight shots. Others involved have chapped lips. It can be a little disconcerting but it works in looking for reactions. Ultimately I am not sharing some of the secrets and things that were most defiinitely a surprise to me. I don’t really know what I was expecting. People who I have told about it have reacted similarly by not wanting to see this amovie about a fraudster woman, who they don’t really like. Seeing this with an open mind in what you will uncover for yourself is very beneficial. I expect that this movie will win the Best Documentary Oscar. It is so much deeper than I had expected and I was glad to see it in a completely packed theatre for a 5:15PM showing. This is worth your time to explore someone who you think that you know, and more fully explore the power of the media and entertainment. Sometimes art can imitate life and other times life can imitate art. One thing is certain that Elizabeth Holmes will be remembered for more than what is pronounced in the final act. Check this out.

East of Eden: This is a new seven-part series on Netflix. It is based on the book by John Steinbeck. I have not ever read the book, nor have seen any prior movies on the topic. So I came into this series with no preconceived ideas about the subject matter, save for the fact that it is regarded as a classic American novel. It stars Florence Pugh, who was also a Producer, along with Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee and Tracy Letts. Set in the late 1800s, we follow the Trask family early on with single father Cyrus (played by Letts) with his two boys, Adam and Charles. The Florence Pugh character is introduced in a dramatic way by coming in the middle of the night all battered and bloody with the brothers being either concerned for healing her and her welfare and the other thinking that she should be returned to wherever she came from. She becomes a fixture in the household with brother Adam falling for her.

Things continue and the next generation comes along with some unexpected consequences. It just so happens that there are two more boys and these boys also are growing up with a mother. They have their father, but more importantly a kind and compassionate housekeeper, Lee, played by Hoon Lee, who sees over them and ensures that they get educated and grow and are quality people. The boys grow to be very different. One more scholastic and revered by his father, which would be Aron, and his brother Cal who is more street smart, rough edged and business saavy. Father is well engaged in his own challenges and not really up to facing his fatherly duties. Thank goodness for Lee. Time moves on and the story approaches the beginning of WWI and American involvement in the conflict.

One of the things that this series focuses on is the biblical story of Cain and Abel. I am not religious and the biblical stories go over my head. However some research reveals that Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain the first born was a farmer, while Abel was a shepard. God apparently values the offerings of Abel over Cain, to which Cain takes exception and kills his brother. So in effect the first murder in human history. There is plenty in the story with the Trask family which is reflected in the Bible.

Another aspect for me that was troubling is that the Pugh character is diabolical, verging on evil. She had a very difficult upbringing, and one has to remember the times (late 1800s) and what was available to women. However even with such limitations, the actions of Pugh’s Cathy or Kate are dark. Time and again she seems to make choices which show that she has all but removed any empathy for others, especially men who she regards with disgust. She is the focus in many ways where the lives of those around her revolve. Pugh is a good actress, and this is a meaty part. Not all parts are meant to be likeable, and she embodies it. This is Season 1, so there are more seasons to come. I did find this slow, and the rest of the acting was competent. But it is plenty of time to invest for a story that is dark and somewhat depressing. In both sets of boys there is conflict, disagreement and separation. There are also plenty of uncomfortable parallels in the lives of these boys and their actions. In the end I can’t say that I look forward to another season of this series. Should you watch it, I expect that you would see why this might be the case. In any event, I cannot recommend this.