“Canceled: The Paula Deen Story” (featured image) 
Director: Billy Corben

If there’s one thing America loves more than a rags-to-riches tale, it’s one in which the person who has attained such heights falls hard.  Case in point: You likely remember Paula Deen, the Savannah celebrity chef who, when deposed in a 2013 lawsuit about whether she had ever used the N-word, in any context, replied “of course.”  The backlash was swift and predictably brutal, with Deen losing not only her TV show and millions of dollars but her reputation.  Was she treated unfairly or not harshly enough?  As is typical when judging someone else, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Billy Corben (“Cocaine Cowboys,” “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty”), whose films typically feature real people of complexity facing a moral quandary, has assayed such territory before.  He sits down with Deen, now 78 and seemingly at the end of an unlikely trajectory.  (Her remaining restaurant closed in August.)  Deen’s first statement for Corben’s camera underlines perhaps all too well the need for this documentary: “When they lay my body down, I don’t want my tombstone to say, ‘Here lies the body of a racist.’”  Convincing a fickle public is a tall order, but she’s out to try.

Long before the scandal, Deen’s story contained the stuff of possibility in this unique country of ours.  Married at 18 and soon the mother of two, Deen followed her alcoholic husband Jimmy from job to job, with his interregnums of unemployment punctuated by too many beers.  Sensing a chance to reclaim her narrative, Deen and her two sons, Bobby and Jamie, started hustling with a catering business out of their home.  When health officials came knocking, she begged, borrowed, and took out as much money as possible to open the Lady & Sons restaurant.  (Deen tells Corben that, severely overdrafted by opening day, she nonetheless pleaded with her bank for an additional $200 in cash to make change for the restaurant’s first night in business.)  By then, Deen’s first husband was gone (he stole from her business), forcing the entrepreneur to work twice as hard, as a single mother, to win over diners to her unique Southern food.  Her reputation increased, and at the unlikely age of 47, Deen became a TV personality after being discovered by Gordon Elliott.  In addition to newfound riches and a show on the Food Network, her celebrity friends included the Obamas and Oprah.  There were also troubles, including that Deen hid her diabetes while still peddling fattening food.  Anthony Bourdain decried her at seemingly every opportunity.

Then came the fall, precipitated by Deen’s hiring her brother Earl “Bubba” Hiers to run his own restaurant.  (His moving to Georgia was “the beginning of the end,” Deen’s son Bobby says.)  A former employee claimed Bubba watched porn on the job, sexually harassed the staff, and tossed around racist language at will.  As his employer, Deen was deposed and, in that infamous moment, asked about the N-word.  Deen clarifies in the film that a White Southern woman born in the 1950s was rather familiar with the term; however, the last time she used the word was in reference to a bank robber who held a gun to her head in the 1980s.  Hardly justifiable, but perhaps understandable in the heat of the moment.  Yet that was decades before the Bubba scandal broke, but that “of course” proved to be an anchor she could not shake.

“I want my soul back…to lose your reputation is like losing your soul,” Deen tells Corben.  Many of her friends, associates, and former employers—including several people of color—come to her defense for consistently hiring Black staff and helping out the community in general, while simultaneously not excusing “the word.”

There is no happy ending in sight.  Deen remains a media pariah a dozen years later, and as her early champion Gordon Elliott observes, third acts in American lives are incredibly unlikely.  When she admitted to using the word, the context was lost entirely, her lawyers let her down by not protecting her, and the public was quick to forget that the person suing Bubba was, in fact, White, not Black.

Deen was among the first high-profile people to be “canceled.”  In 2025, the internet is a cesspool of negativity, harboring words and views far worse than what got Deen in hot water.  People today seem not only less likely to forgive but far, far less willing to apologize, as Deen earnestly did.  And, as the unfortunate murder of Charlie Kirk makes only too plain, the stakes in American discourse are not only higher but more likely to result in violence.  God help us.

“Canceled: The Paula Deen Story” recently premiered at TIFF.

“Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror”
Director: Linus O’Brien

It’s been fifty years since “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” tapdanced its way into fishnet stockings to the midnight circuit.  It’s never a bad time to look back on one of the seminal cult classics, and who better to take us on that strange journey than Linus O’Brien, son of “Rocky” creator Richard O’Brien.

Richard O’Brien starts the doc by visiting his childhood home in New Zealand.  In the middle of town is a statue of himself, as his character Riff Raff, at the exact spot where he used to cut hair as a wee lad.  If he had told his customers, he said, that someday his likeness would stand in the middle of town, wearing fishnet stockings no less, “They would have called for the men in white coats.”  His early journey entailed hopping a boat for a five-week voyage to London (his accent is notably British versus Kiwi), where he sought to make his way in the underground theater scene.

O’Brien knew from a young age he wanted something else, once blurting out to his parents that he wanted to be “the fairy princess” from the stories.  He eventually married and had children, though we learn he once asked his own wife if she would still love him even if he transitioned to a woman.  That spirit of gender fluidity certainly informed the original stage “Rocky Horror Show,” what with its cross-dressing and explicitly gay material—to say nothing of Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry), the slinky transvestite who leads innocent Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) on a peculiar odyssey of sexual awakening replete with song and dance galore in the film version.

In addition to the three leads (Curry, who suffered a stroke in 2012, nonetheless brings his memories and his gravitas to the interviews), the junior O’Brien interviews nearly the entire living cast and crew.  More important to the doc is the exploration of the “phenomenon” that Rocky Horror engendered in the culture, not only with weekly repeat viewings for devotees but also providing a safe space for LGBTQ youths, estranged from their communities, to find a new family in those ritualistic repeat viewings, replete with dress-up, props, and collective audience talkback.

It is Richard O’Brien himself who is truly “the star” of “Strange Journey,” for without his inspiration and his guitar, neither the songs nor the cult of Rocky Horror would have ever existed.   As he—and his fictional creation—reminds us, don’t dream it; be it!

“Stranger Eyes”
Director: Siew Hua Yeo

This rather unusual psychological thriller from Singaporean writer-director Siew Hua Yeo (“A Land Imagined”) delves into the depths of grief, obsession, and paranoia.  It all starts when Junyang (Wu Chien-Ho) and Peiying’s (Anicca Panna) toddler Little Bo disappears from a public park, almost certainly kidnapped.  DVDs of the couple with their child start showing up in their mail slot, indicating something nefarious is afoot—yet no ransom or other demands accompany the videos.  What does the mysterious stalker want if not money for an exchange?

That’s the springboard from which Yeo sets into motion a unique cat-and-mouse-and-cat (you’ll see) tale that avoids familiar genre trappings.  Flashbacks reveal the identity of the voyeur, but his reasons for taping the couple are rather complex and will keep you guessing as to how the scheme eventually plays out.  (Dare I say it, the voyeur comes off as more than a bit sympathetic.)  A new character and third-act revelation seem to come out of nowhere, but there’s a certain poetic justice to how that person fits into the overall arc.

Acclaimed Taiwanese actor Kang-sheng Lee brings gravitas and a certain sadness to a key supporting role.  And Vera Chen as Junyang’s live-in mother Shu-ping, in keeping with the themes of the film, sees far more than she lets on in a story that relies so heavily on security footage and hidden cameras.

Steadily unnerving and playing out steadily but tensely, “Stranger Eyes” is one of the year’s most intriguing films.

“Doin’ It”
Director: Sara Zandieh

A rather entertaining, and quite bawdy, comedy that you might call “The 30-Year-Old Virgin.”  Maya is an Indian-Canadian young lady whose mother and grandmother sent her to India following a rather publicly embarrassing moment with her boyfriend on a high school stage (it’s both far worse and way funnier than you might imagine).  Now an adult, Lilly Singh is Maya, who talks to the camera as she returns to Canada, still a virgin but not quite as pure as snow (and with a sailor’s mouth to match).  Maya heads to the local school, hoping for a job in tech, but instead, the principal (Ana Gasteyer) informs Maya that her staff needs to up its diversity quotient.  She’s hired, yes, but to teach sex ed.

The script by Singh, Sara Zandieh, and Neel Patel wrings plentiful laughs from a gag-filled runtime as the virginal Maya educates her teen charges in the ways of the birds and the bees.  The supporting cast is filled with talented actors, including Sabrian Jalees as Maya’s bestie pal Jess, a rather uninhibited lesbian, and Stephanie Beatriz as Barb, a school cafeteria worker who audits Maya’s sex ed class for complex reasons.  There will, of course, be romantic prospects for Maya, including fellow teacher Alex (Trevor Salter), if only she can silence her grandmother’s no-no voice screaming constantly in her head.  True, the romance between Maya and Alex may feel hackneyed at times, but unlike “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Doin’ It” doesn’t quite follow the map in terms of getting them successfully past the finish line.

“Doin’ It” is consistently funny, with both visual and potty-mouth humor to spare.  The film treats Maya, in all her complexity, as a nuanced person with complicated feelings about intimacy, and who deflects her pain away with humor.  Also, it’s refreshing to see a movie where the students act as teens rather than “kids” or Aaron Sorkin-esque wise beyond their years.  Maya takes the questions from her students seriously, and one student says (likely standing in for many, many teens out there) that it’s refreshing for an adult to treat them with respect rather than condescension when it comes to that most sensitive of subject matters.

Far too many comedies would rather shock than amuse, but “Doin’ It” successfully does both simultaneously.  Singh, as writer and star, is a peaking talent with a bright future ahead of her.

“My Dear Théo”
Director: Alisa Kovalenko

As the war in Ukraine appears no closer to ending, the job of documenting its horrors has often fallen to citizen-journalists as much as professional newsgatherers.  One such intrepid reporter is Alisa Kovalenko, a Ukrainian volunteer soldier who crafts a video documentary for her son Théo, who is safely far from the front.  Amid the carnage, Kovalenko offers reassuring love letters to her son, which stand in marked counterpoint to the madness all around her.

Kovalenko’s film is haunting in its naturalistic simplicity of watching Ukrainians at war.  Among the scenes that are surreal in their ordinariness are Ukrainians shepherding cows in from the field after being nearly bombed to smithereens.  Other citizens put out fires caused by incendiary devices dropped from above.  “When you’re not afraid, it’s more dangerous,” one commando observes in a peaceful field, as the sound of enemy fighter jets swooping by overhead is heard.

The doc’s final images are of soldiers we have come to know in the film, along with the dates of their death or disappearance superimposed beneath, thus further underlying the brutal nature of this terrible war.

My Dear Théo recently bowed at the Camden International Film Festival.

“The Case Against Adnan Syed (new episode)”

Director: Amy J. Berg
Premiered September 18th on HBO

Amy J. Berg produced this multi-part series for HBO in 2019, ending with her subject still in prison for murdering his girlfriend.  Syed and his team of lawyers and well-wishers have long claimed his innocence, but the series offered no hope as his legal appeals continually failed.  In 2025, Berg is back with a new installment, called “The Tree Grew,” in which Syed’s new attorney Erica J. Suter works with his longtime attorney Rabia Chaudry to clear his name, if they can.  They find an unlikely ally in Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, who is open to setting aside Syed’s conviction if the evidence exonerates him.  Donald Trump, never one to miss an opportunity to weigh in, calls Mosby a disgrace; she smiles and says she wears that moniker as a “badge of honor.”

Syed’s father wears a Freddy Krueger shirt the day his son finally walks out a free man, a detail I found impossibly charming.  Meanwhile, new evidence may at last point to the person who murdered Hae Min Lee in 1999.  Berg is conscious to include the ongoing grief of her family as the man they have long believed took her life has the chance to leave his cell behind for good.

Even knowing how it all ends, the journey is painful and frustrating.  “The system is not designed to deal with innocent people,” Syed, who was incarcerated for over two decades, says.  Part of reworking that very system is having the fortitude to say, “We were wrong.”

Now available on HBO Max.

“Death of a Ladies’ Man”
Director: Matthew Bissonnette

Gabriel Byrne (remember him?!) stars in this offbeat flick about Samuel, a Montreal man who comes home one day to find his wife engaged in rather energetic sex with someone else—which she justifies by reminding him of the many, many other women he has screwed in the same marital bed.  In the very next scene, Samuel holes up in a bar, where his hockey player son comes out as gay (“You’re cool with this, right?” the son asks).  Shortly thereafter, he visits a sex worker, who is about as unenthused for the handjob as its recipient.  From there, it’s a downward spiral for Samuel, who finds his long-deceased father Ben (Brian Gleeson) somehow in his den smoking a cigarette.  More strange visions come Samuel’s way, and he soon learns they result from a brain tumor.

With time running out and his hallucinations increasing, Samuel departs for Ireland.  At a village convenience store, he meets a clerk named Charlotte (Jessica Paré), asks her out, and soon they are swoonily enjoying walks among the hills of Erin as a band follows their every move (just go with it).  More musical numbers erupt at the strangest of moments, including during a crucial AA meeting.

To describe the plot of a film such as this ruins the surreal experience of joining in on an existential ride of a man struggling not only with his own mortality but a lifetime of regrets and hurting others, to say nothing of his alcoholism.  Yes, the hallucinations can be a little over-the-top at times (Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” shows up at one point to triple-underline a particular beat). Still, it’s that kind of movie where magical realism is to be taken, essentially, at face value (see also my favorite film of 2022, “Bardo:  False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”).  Just enjoy the ride.

“Chain Reactions”
Director: Alexandre O. Philippe

It’s been half a century since “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” redefined low-budget horror filmmaking.  In this love letter to that naughty little film, director Alexandre O. Philippe has famous fans of the flick share their recollections of encountering it.  (Regrettably, “Massacre” director Tobe Hooper and the main cast have all since passed on.)  Patton Oswalt says his first-ever movie memory was seeing “Nosferatu” projected at a Halloween party as a child, and “Massacre” further opened his mind to what horror could be.  Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miiki, known for such extreme horror films as “Audition,” says that because of “Massacre,” “everyone thought Texas was a dangerous place.”

Due to budget constraints, “Massacre” has far less actual violence in it than you remember, but it’s the uneasiness and the sheer nihilistic bent that gave the film such an edge. As one interviewee observes, there is no logic in “Massacre”; these people just exist.  Australian writer and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas rhapsodizes about its forbidden nature: Because it was “very forbidden and bad for little girls,” she wanted to see it all the more.  Heller-Nicholas also said that the bad print that made its way to the antipodes reminded her of the Outback aesthetic of homegrown Ozploitation fare, thereby deepening her appreciation.

Perhaps Philippe’s best “get” is Stephen King, who opens by sharing that the most upsetting movie he saw as a kid was “Bambi,” whose forest fire qualifies it as a horror movie, King believes.  Thus commenced a lifelong love of the genre that has made him a very wealthy man.  King also praises Hooper’s seat-of-your-pants aesthetic, which required creative solutions on such a slim budget.  Too many films today are made by committee, King says, which he says dilutes the thrills.  Tobe Hooper never had to kowtow to anyone while making “Massacre.”

It’s doubtful “Chain Reactions” will make any new fans out of the notorious fifty-year-old film, but for those who continue to be fascinated by its darkness, this doc shows that you are indeed in good company.

“The Other”
Director: Joy Sela

Joy Sela commenced this rather heavy project to bring together Palestinian and Israeli interviewees prior to the attacks of October 7th, 2023.  Unsurprisingly, many on both sides say that they were raised to believe the “other” was a subhuman monster.  Sela films many sit-down interviews between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, who typically acknowledge how complicated the history of this region—and the fact that the conflict they inherited remains difficult to solve.

Then the film switches to what happened after Oct. 7.  Understandably, feelings are hot and, as one man says, “what we are transferring to our children” will only continue the cycle of violence and hate.  However, the conversations between Sela’s Arabic and Israeli subjects do continue, as they must if this terrible conflict is to ever end.  A Palestinian man even hugs his weeping Jewish friend, who lost both of his parents in the October 7 attacks; though a seemingly minor gesture, it is a sign of shared humanity.  Another Palestinian, whose Gaza family was killed in IDF reprisals, says the discussions with his Jewish neighbors must continue as he believes too strongly in the future to ever give up.  Others feel very differently.

In the film’s first interview, a man asks, “why is it impossible?” to have peace in Israel and Palestine.  There are no easy answers, but so long as people on both sides of the conflict continue to ask, there is at least some semblance of hope, however quixotic.

“Are We Good?”
Director: Steven Feinartz

Marc Maron, the comedian and host of the “WTF Podcast,” has had a rough time, much of it in the public eye.  During COVID, his longtime girlfriend Lynn Shelton passed away suddenly, leading to some of Maron’s most vulnerable moments on his podcast, on stage, and, even now, in interviews with director Steven Feinartz and his team.  In a stunning moment, Maron—who long suffered addiction and various substance abuse troubles—says that it was Shelton’s love that convinced him, finally, that perhaps he might love himself too.

“Are We Good?” is less a hagiography of the stops along Maron’s remarkable career and life and more an attempt to learn more about how he has transmuted that grief into new laughter for his audience.  Patton Oswalt, who also lost a spouse, famously appeared on his podcast to offer empathy.  Although Oswalt doesn’t appear as a talking head in the doc, other interviewees include W. Kamau Bell and David Cross.

Maron remains a curmudgeon.  However, despite his angst and his deserved anger at the hand dealt to him, we see him not only planning his sixtieth birthday party but also appearing there in the company of a new love.  Doubtless, the pain of grief remains, as we all know, but at least friends and loved ones act as a partial salve.

Opened nationwide