Emilio Estevez didn't bring a lack of ambition to Bobby (Weinstein), his Robert Altman-inspired film about the criss-cross of personalities at L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel on the day of Robert Kennedy's assassination. He didn't lack stars either; the cast reads like a who's who of three generations of actors. But he did bring a sore lack of ideas. Folks muddle through subplots, shots ring out, a mournfully employed RFK speech plays, and the whole pointless thing ends…
The phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" has become cultural shorthand for thoughtlessly conforming to someone else's ideas, but how much do we really know about how the phrase originated? The riveting Oscar-nominated documentary Jonestown: The Life And Death Of Peoples Temple (PBS) helps explain the Jim Jones cult with an astonishing wealth of footage and deeply moving interviews with the handful of former worshipers who managed to escape mass "suicide." The account of the final 24 hours before Jonestown reached its tragic end is particularly powerful…
Hardcore S&M fans are probably the only people who should really be watching Flannel Pajamas (Hart Sharp), not because the film features kink, but because it'd take a masochist to put up with the film's excruciatingly turgid collapsing-relationship drama, and a sadist to actually enjoy watching what the leads in that relationship do to each other. He's cringingly needy, she's distant and mother-obsessed, and they seem to hate each others' friends, families, interests, and desires, in addition to hating themselves and often each other. Sure, some people shouldn't be in relationships, but why would anyone want to watch that being confirmed at such pointlessly unpleasant length?…
The French police procedural Le Petit Lieutenant (Koch Lorber) goes about its business with an unfussy, workmanlike dignity that sometimes scrapes dangerously close to tedium. But its steady accumulation of detail, enhanced by fine performances by Nathalie Baye and Jalil Lespert as a veteran detective and her rookie charge, pays off later, as tragedy strikes and the stakes suddenly become bracingly clear.