Author: swampflix

Britnee’s Top 5 Staircase Tumbles

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stairs

Who doesn’t love a good tumble down the staircase? They’re just so dramatic and over-the-top! I love them so much that I’ve decided to share my Top 5.

1. Death Becomes Her (1992) – Meryl Streep is better than everyone at everything, even falling down the stairs. Although there is more than one scene where her character, Madeline Ashton, takes a dive down a flight of stairs, the first fall takes the cake.

2. Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) – As Velma Cruther (Agnes Moorehead) is being very vocal about ratting out the film’s antagonist to the sheriff, a chair is smashed over her head and down she goes. Should’ve kept that mouth of yours shut, Velma.

(Note: that tumble takes place @1min30sec in that clip, but there are plenty of other great falls included there as well – even some from this list).

3. Kiss of Death (1947) – Ma Rizzo (Mildred Dunnock) is violently pushed down a stairwell in a poorly- constructed wheelchair. The wheelchair is so crappy that it falls apart before making it to the bottom. That poor “lyin’ old hag!”

4. Maternal Instincts (1996) – “Sorry? It’s too late to be sorry!” Delta Burke’s tumble down a set of industrial steps is the highlight of the film.

5. Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) – Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) gets kicked down the stairs by her repulsive husband, and while it’s one of the films saddest moments, never has a fall been so graceful!

-Britnee Lombas

Back Street (1961)

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backstreet

fourstar

Based on the 1931 novel by the late, great Fannie Hurst, Back Street is a tragic film about the relationship between a man and his mistress. There are two other versions of this film that I have yet to see, but it’s only a matter of time until I get to the 1932 and 1941 Back Streets. I doubt that they will be able to top the decadent set designs and costumes from renowned designer Jean Louis, but I’m sure each film has an interesting take on this legendary love story.

Rae Smith (Susan Hayward) and Paul Saxon (John Gavin) meet by chance as Saxon is passing through Nebraska on military business, and they fall in love almost instantly. The problem is that Saxon is a married man. Once Smith finds out that he is married, she cuts him off and moves from Nebraska to New York as a form of therapy. She ends up running into him in New York after she has established a career in the fashion design industry. She rejects him once again and shortly thereafter earns an opportunity to move to Rome in order to expand her business. She immediately accepts, mostly because she wants to dismiss all chances of running into Saxon again. Guess whom she runs into in Rome? I swear he’s got some sort of tracking device on her. Once she runs into him, along with his entire family in Rome, she decides to just give in to the affair of her dreams. Of course, this doesn’t last for long and everything starts to fall apart as expected.

What I love most about this film is its ability to keep such a raunchy situation so classy. Their love just feels so authentic, mostly thanks to Hayward. I’m a pretty big fan of John Gavin, but this definitely wasn’t his best performance. He was just this sort of strange statue hanging around the set majority of the time (a very handsome statue at that). However, Hayward was, as always, astounding. Thankfully, the film focused more on her character than Gavin’s. Back Street is a film I watched years ago that I’ve kept on the back burner, but after watching it again recently it’s slowly becoming one of my favorite classics.

-Britnee Lombas

Jack Reacher (2012)

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jack reacher

three star

campstamp

Imagine a world without Scientology, a world without Katie Holmes, a world without Oprah’s couch. In this alternate universe Tom Cruise’s decade-old public meltdown never happened. Cruise is still top gun in all of our hearts. Every film he stars in is a major success. Beautiful women throw themselves at his feet. He merely needs to show up & wink at the camera to win us all over and collect his giant paycheck.

This isn’t a world we get to live in all the time, but we are allowed to visit. For instance, last year’s surprisingly entertaining Edge of Tomorrow saw Tom Cruise in full movie star mode, smooching ladies & killing space aliens in a violent version of Groundhog Day. Even Edge of Tomorrow is a little too eccentric to recall vintage Tom Cruise, though. If you’re looking for purely smug, top-of-the-world, Days of Thunder Cruise you have to go back to 2012’s Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher is a straight-forward Tom Cruise vehicle. It’s not stylish. It’s not cool. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is: a loud & dumb action movie. Think less The Guest and more Face/Off or Road House. Cruise, who of course plays the titular Jack Reacher, is so deliciously full of his smugly sexy self here. He drives maniacally, flirts with co-star Rosamund Pike like she owes him something, has the problem solving skills & inherent knowledge of an omnipotent god, and delivers smartass one-liners before every inevitable kill (those one-liners take a nastily sexist left turn in a particularly anachronistic bar fight scene). If you have any affection or nostalgia for Cruise before Oprah’s couch outed him as a total weirdo, Jack Reacher is a sight for sore eyes.

Bonus Points: All of this Tom Cruise talk is truly burying the lede. The real Jack Reacher story is that auteur director Werner Herzog plays the movie’s villain. Herzog’s role is minimized in the film the same way it’s minimized in this review. He doesn’t appear onscreen until nearly an hour in and delivers maybe one or two speeches, but the potency even a couple lines from Evil Herzog is something to be cherished. If you have no affection for vintage Cruise (or loud, dumb action movies in general) you owe it to yourself to at least watch Evil Werner Herzog perform here in the film’s best two minutes.

–Brandon Ledet

Jack Reacher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Rich Hill (2014)

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rich hill

fourhalfstar

“God has to be busy with everyone else. Hopefully he will come into my life. I hope it happens. It’s going to break my heart if it don’t.” – Andrew

Andrew, Harley, and Appachey are teenage boys living well below the poverty line in Rich Hill, Missouri. Population: 1,393. Each boy has their own dreams, but the reality of their grim, rural surroundings severely limits their chances of obtaining them. Andrew, a sweet, hardworking athlete who loves God and his family, shows the most promise of the trio, but is constantly uprooted by his father in the search for steady employment. Then there are Appachey and Harley, whose anger and frustration sometimes lead to darker outlets. Appachey is a skater who wants to teach art in China one day. Rebellious and prone to violence, he lives in dilapidated squalor with his chain smoking mother and sisters and often gets into fights at school with students and administration. He seems irrevocably lost. Harley is funny and good natured but also socially awkward, lethargic, and obsessed with knives. He is taken care of by his grandmother after his mother is imprisoned for trying to kill his step dad, who Harley claims sexually abused him.

There are thousands of cities in America like Rich Hill, with thousands of children like Andrew, Harley, and Appachey. Small, impoverished working class communities where poverty, prison, drug abuse, and violence are the daily norm and hopelessness and lack of opportunity coincide with high school football, church, and 4th of July parades. Directors (and cousins) Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo chronicle this bleak slice of Americana with empathy and an open heart. Maybe it’s because the filmmakers are from Rich Hill, but they thankfully do not make this an issue film or a political statement. Instead the film’s focus is squarely on the boys who obviously trusted the filmmakers as they share intimate and painful details of their lives.

Stylistically, the film feels less like a documentary and more like a Terrence Malick film; its poetic realism and evocative score help capture the beauty in these bleak settings. Rich Hill is one of the great modern American documentaries and deserves to be held in the same regard as other modern classics like Hoop Dreams. Sobering, yet ultimately uplifting, it is a hauntingly powerful capsule, a mosaic of the impoverished working class, and a critique of the American Dream.

You can watch Rich Hill right now on PBS.com through Feb. 3, 2015.

-James Cohn

2014’s Doppelgänger Movies & Their Unlikely Doubles

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doppelganger

2014 saw the wide release of an unusual bounty of films about doppelgängers. Besides comic book superheroes it had to be the most common cinematic topic of the year. As early as Spring there was a heap of press citing similarities between Enemy & The Double, two doppelgänger movies based on doppelgänger novels both titled The Double (one by José Saramago & one by Fyodor Dostoyevsky). I joked that if they shared a distributor (they don’t) they should be released on home video as a combo pack. It turns out that besides one (admittedly major) detail in premise the two films actually have very little in common. As the year went on I found the true spiritual doppelgängers of Enemy & The Double in highly unlikely places, as well as a few more doppelgänger movies & their own unlikely partners.

Of course there are possible spoilers for all titles listed in bold below.

The Double (2014) & Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)
Although Richard Ayoade’s The Double didn’t deliver the similarities to Enemy that I expected, it wore other, stranger influences on its sleeve. It not only boasted visual cues picked up from David Lynch’s oeuvre, but also intentionally mirrored Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The Double’s similarities with Brazil are so purposeful Ayoade’s film could be considered a long-form homage. What’s infinitely more surprising to me is the similarities it shares with the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan comedy Joe Versus The Volcano.

There’s a good deal of humor lurking under the surface of the Lynch & Gilliam influences Ayoade pulls from, but The Double is more of an unambiguous black comedy, its own dark humor resting in plain view. Its sinister amusement with depression & the grim life of an office drone positions it as more of a modern descendent of Joe in terms of genre. The Double’s Jesse Eisenberg’s work life is so surreally awful the only character in cinema I can compare it to is Tom Hanks’ Joe. The set design in both characters’ offices are achievements in over-the-top blandness. They both ache with yearning for coworkers who don’t know they exist. They even both serve clueless megalomaniac bosses portrayed by gifted character actors (Wallace Shawn & Dan Hedeya, respectively).

Admittedly, the resemblance fades after the first half of Joe. When the plot catalyst hits Joe (a life-threatening “brain cloud”) the protagonist gets to escape his oppressive life as a faceless worker & embark on a grand adventure in search of the titular volcano. The Double doesn’t allow its catalyst (a second Jesse Eisenberg, one less akin to George Michael Bluth) to shake things up in the same way. Ayoade instead forces his protagonist to see his grim, thankless life through to a bitter end.

Enemy (2014) & Stranger By The Lake (2014)
James & I once got in a particularly nerdy argument in a dive bar about the merits of Enemy. He was a huge fan of the film (it made his Top Ten list for the year after all), while I found it interesting, but far more self-serious than it needed to be (or maybe than I wanted it to be). Trying to discern what aspect of our personalities split us on the film (probably his love of & my aversion to philosophy), I brought up another recent release we were split on: Stranger By The Lake. In my attempts to defend Stranger in that conversation I noticed a common theme between it & Enemy. Both films feel like cryptic allegories for the dangers of carnal desire.

In an unfairly linear (& likely false) synopsis of Enemy, the protagonist’s libido tempts him to stray from intimacy with his pregnant wife to the point where his personality is split into two dueling halves. This split (again, in a deliberately simple analysis) leads the doppelgänger Jake Gyllenhaals into a deadly world of adultery & spiders. The protagonist in Stranger By The Lake, a man who regularly cruises for sexual activity on a gay nudist beach, feels a similar carnal pull. His two closest relationships, an unlikely friendship with a schlub he finds physically uninteresting but personally magnetic & a sexual affair with a very attractive man he knows to be a murderer, split his time in the same libido-driven downfall that corrupts the Gyllenhaals.

When viewed in a certain context, Enemy & Stranger can be interpreted as spiritual doubles in the parables they tell. Whether you value one over the other or not is, of course, a manner of personal preference.

Coherence (2014) & The One I Love (2014)
Two of 2014’s biggest surprises were the read-too-much-about-them-and-you’ll-ruin-them Coherence & The One I Love. Of the pair, Coherence was more of the critical darling, while The One I Love was more-or-less thought to be an interesting picture that couldn’t stick the landing. Personally, I believe The One I Love to be just as great (if not better) than Coherence. Both films push their supernatural left-turn premises to outlandish places while remaining grounded & emotionally potent. Together they help carve out a modern Romantic Horror genre (within which they’re the tiny indie equivalents to the major studio RomHorror Gone Girl).

Common assumption would suggest that Coherence’s rightful doppelgänger would be a Twilight Zone episode (particularly the classic “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street”) but it’s inseparable from The One I Love in my mind. This may not be the most surprising pairing on this list, as The One I Love also owes a hefty debt to The Twilight Zone. Enjoyment of both movies is ideally enhanced by an ignorance of their basic plots, something so delicate I fear I’m wrecking it by including them here. They both do a lot with a little, squeezing impressive mileage out of small budgets & a few great actors.

Again, my preferences & James’ were at odds over these titles, as Coherence appeared on his best of the year list & The One I Love appeared on mine. In this case we both liked both movies a good deal, though. There was no nerdy dive bar discussion necessary.

Honeymoon (2014) & Slither (2006)
Speaking of Romantic Horror, the under-the-radar Honeymoon works like Invasion of the Body Snatchers by way of Safety Not Guaranteed. Its calm, pragmatic approach to its supernatural my-wife-is-not-my-wife plot recalls the vibe of Coherence & The One I Love more than any other doppelgänger pairing on this list. All three films make the most extraordinary plots feel like conceivable relationship troubles that every couple goes through from time to time. Honeymoon is not alone in this world & the comparisons to Body Snatchers are especially well deserved, but I found other surprising similarities in the central relationship of James Gunn’s 2006 slapstick horror Slither.

Besides its own debt to Body Snatchers, Slither is wildly different from Honeymoon in tone & intent. Where the escalation in Honeymoon is calm & measured, Slither throws everything (including buckets of viscera) against the wall to see what sticks. However, the gradual escalation of unignorable changes in a spouse’s behavior binds them together. In Slither, the antagonist Grant Grant (played by world-class creep Michael Rooker) initially seems a bit out of it to his wife following an incident in the woods. The changes in his behavior spiral out of control in the most horrifying (and shockingly funny) ways imaginable. Honeymoon’s horror hinges on its own in-the-woods behavior altering event, but the results are decidedly a quieter form of terror, as opposed to Slither’s fever-pitched absurdity.

These movies aren’t broadly linked in their approaches to horror, but instead in the detail of their threats’ gradual revelations to the ones they love.

The Face of Love (2014) & Birth (2004)
The least successful film on this list artistically, The Face of Love attempts the grounded approach to the paranormal Coherence & The One I Love achieve, but ultimately falls short. Despite an interesting premise & some great performances from familiar faces Annette Benning, Ed Harris, and Robin Williams, the film never breaks through the trappings of an undistinguished trifle. Part of the problem is that an eerily similar plot has been executed so well before in Jonathan Glazer’s Birth.

The Face of Love mirrors Birth’s story of a woman who improbably meets her husband after his death, but takes it to less ambiguous, less visually striking territory. It’s not a bad movie exactly, but instead a mediocre version of its superior double. Both movies tackle the grieving process in an unusual manner, but Birth does it better. There are images & moments from Birth that will stick with me my entire life. I expect I’ll forget most of The Face of Love within the month.

It’s a bit unfair to include a movie here only to suggest that there’s a better version of it out there, but in the end it’s the doppelgänger’s job to kill its weaker double. It’s only natural.

-Brandon Ledet

Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money (2011)

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wrestlingjesus

twohalfstar

The very last pro wrestling documentary I watched when assembling my Top Ten list for the genre was GLOW, the story of an over-the-top 80s glam wrestling promotion that saw brief success on television. Wrestling for Jesus was a jarring, smelling salts follow-up to GLOW. It pulled me out of GLOW’s glitter-covered reverie only to wake me on the small-town poverty side of wrestling. This is the wrestling of backyards & gymnasiums, where audience members were likely to have attended high school or at least church with the performers. Where the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling bragged about how they were the greatest show on Earth, the men of WFJ thought themselves to be, you know, pretty good and some of them would even like to maybe get paid a small sum of money for risking life-altering injuries in the Lord’s name.

The wrestlers who express interest in making a modest amount of money for their time and compromised health are secular defectors of the Wrestling For Jesus promotion. WFJ, as a non-profit organization, accepts donations for their live events, but those donations are directly given to the church. The events themselves are an extension of church in a way. Performers’ promos boast about their ability to spread the gospel & sermons are delivered from the ring after matches. These men are wrestling solely for Jesus, to bring new followers into their faith through sports entertainment, not to make money. As far as recruitment tactics go, it’s a fairly convincing one.

However, participation in WFJ isn’t entirely selfless. At the very least the WFJ community helped the titular T-Money overcome the grief surrounding his father’s suicide. T-Money’s triumph over his grief may have been short-lived, but he basically thanks WFJ (an organization he runs with his wife) for saving his life. As the film progresses, his WFJ-aided recovery gradually reveals itself to be one step on a long road that would see rougher patches (like his own suicide attempt & a domestic violence arrest). T-Money sounds conflicted at times about whether he believes WFJ is a positive or negative long-term influence in his life, confessing that sometimes he hides his true personality in the community’s presence. It’s likely he’s also hiding his true self in the camera’s presence. The refusal to follow this thread of thought to a satisfying conclusion is the documentary’s fatal flaw.

There’s a sense that T-Money is on the brink of a personal epiphany that the movie doesn’t stick around to discover with him. When one of his fellow WFJ performers breaks his neck in the ring, T-Money is moved to tears in his proclamation that he wishes it was his own neck that had broken instead. The injured wrestler appears to be pleased with his time in WFJ, believing he had sacrificed his body to a noble cause. T-Money appears less convinced, but the movie doesn’t follow him long enough (or push him to speak honestly enough) to find out what that means.

Unresolved ending aside, the filmmakers do a fine job of remaining objective when they could easily have made their subject look foolish or evil. That objectivity doesn’t exactly shield the Christian wrestlers from the incongruity of infusing religion into a sport built on camp & violence, but it does allow them to be sympathetic even as the phenomenon feels increasingly bizarre. Wrestling for Jesus was far from the most essential wrestling doc I’ve seen in recent months, but also far from the worst. WFJ‘s Achilles heel is that its fascinating subject could have made for a much better movie if only the filmmakers had allowed it more time to develop & pushed for more honesty. If director Nathan Clarke couldn’t afford to dig deeper, his film could have at least benefited from some of GLOW’s outlandish hubris. There’s nothing like some old-fashioned self-aggrandizing to cover up a lackluster wrestling program.

Wrestling For Jesus is currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

Swampflix’s Top Films of 2014

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snopiercershoe

1. Snowpiercer – A high-concept dystopian sci-fi parable, our choice for Movie of the Year is likely to leave you with more questions than answers. However, if you avoid getting wrapped up in the literal mechanics of how its world functions or in its generic political philosophy, there’s an excess of violence, absurdity, and genuine heart bending over backwards to entertain you. It’s a wildly exciting ride for those who stop questioning its methods and instead submit to its charms.

2. The Babadook – The best horror film of 2014 is flooded with genuine scares essential to the genre, but its true threat is more intimate & psychological than what you’d find in a traditional monster movie. The Babadook will linger in your mind for days, months. Maybe forever.

3. Gone Girl – The Lifetime movie this film pretends to be in its first half is merely a cover-up of the excessive, sociopathic spectacle lurking under the surface. Fincher proves again that he can do no wrong.

4. Interstellar – Grand, epic, visually striking. The volume & variety of complaints surrounding this wonderful film has got to be the most hilarious joke of 2014.

5. Blue Ruin – A grim, realistic, edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller that hits familiar beats carved out by directors like Jeff Nichols & The Coen brothers without ever feeling redundant.

6. We Are the Best! – A heartwarming story about three adolescents discovering their inner punks. These kids are the best.

7. Under The Skin – Haunting. Sparse yet loaded with unforgettable images & sounds. Glazer is a genius.

8. The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson seems to be testing just how much Wes Anderson people can take with his last couple of features. When he’s working with images this strong & performances as hilarious as Ralph Fiennes’ is here, we can take a lot.

9 The One I Love – A romantic trip into The Twilight Zone that’s both hilarious & thought-provoking. We’re not sure if Romantic Horror is a genre, but this film might qualify if it were.

10. Venus in Fur – Disregarding Polanski’s personal life, you have to give him credit here for turning a delicate premise into such a humorous, sensual, and metatextual success. Venus is brilliantly acted, masterfully escalated, and wonderfully critical of both sex politics & theater as an art form.

HM. Obvious Child – Approaching a sensitive subject from a sincere & deeply empathetic place, this film deserves to be recognized as one of the all-time great romantic comedies. Or at least one of the best in recent memory.

-The Swampflix Crew

Read Britnee’s picks here.
Read James’ picks here.
Read Brandon’s picks here.

I Think We’re Alone Now (2008)

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tifanny

fourstar

Obsession with celebrities is something we have all experienced. Whether it’s scribbling “Mrs. Jonathan Taylor Thomas” on every inch of a notebook or writing absurd fan fictions about the members of One Direction, we have all participated in some form of celebrity obsession. But what happens when a celebrity obsession is taken to the extreme? Sean Donnelly’s 2008 documentary I Think We’re Alone Now focuses on two individuals that have an excessive obsession with Tiffany. Yes, Tiffany, the teen pop sensation from the 1980s. Jeff Turner (age 50) and Kelly McCormick (age 35) are both very bizarre individuals that share an unconditional love for Tiffany. She is more than a fantasy girlfriend or celebrity crush; she is their God. Tiffany ultimately consumes their lives.

When I first watched this documentary, I couldn’t help but find humor in the quirky lives of these two super fans. Turner’s peculiar laugh while he explains how Tiffany previously placed a restraining order on him made me chuckle. McCormick’s room filled with pictures of Tiffany and handwritten signs professing love to her brought out many deep belly laughs. I quickly became obsessed with this documentary about obsession and forced many people to watch it with me. It wasn’t until I watched the documentary for the fifth time that I started to notice something beyond the film’s humor.

I saw something more in Turner and McCormick than just two twisted, disturbing stalkers. I saw two lonely, misunderstood adults that are filled with passion and no one to share it with. What I love the most about them is their honesty. They say exactly what is on their minds, whether its reality or part of the fantasy world they created. There’s no sense of embarrassment or shame when either super fan elaborates on their Tiffany obsession. There are a few scenes with Turner and his emotionally abusive stepfather that were absolutely heartbreaking. He doesn’t have many close friends and one can assume he has a very unsupportive family that doesn’t give him the love and attention he deserves. McCormick is intersex and explains the struggles and emotional pain she has endured throughout her life, and much like Turner, she doesn’t have many friends or family members in her life. There is such a huge lack of love and understanding for both Turner and McCormick, and they believe Tiffany is their hero, an Aphrodite that serves as their guardian and protector giving them the strength to go on.

All in all I Think We’re Alone Now was the most uncomfortable 61 minutes that I’ve ever experienced. My cheeks were so sore from constantly cringing, and I caught myself constantly covering my face with my hands and peeking through the cracks of my fingers. That’s why I love this documentary so much. I commend Donnelly on his method of filming this documentary because it gives viewers the ability to be a fly on the wall in the lives of these two obsessive super fans. Turner and McCormick give a much deeper meaning to Tiffany’s one-hit wonder.

-Britnee Lombas

Britnee’s Top Films of 2014

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hobbit

1. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – A magnificent ending to the king of all trilogies (in my opinion). Peter Jackson spends no time pussyfooting around with intricate storylines. Instead, the film jumps right into the action that fans have been anxiously waiting for.

2. Gone Girl – What starts out as a film that would most likely end up on the Lifetime channel turns into a sociopathic extravaganza. The film becomes so extreme that it’s very easy to miss the 5 seconds of fame granted to Ben Affleck’s penis.

3. Veronica Mars – What happened to V. Mars after the much-loved television series came to an end? So many questions that have been sitting in the minds of Marshmallows for years are finally answered with this Kickstarter-funded flick.

4. Into the Woods – This is a film that you will love or despise with every bone in your body. It’s literally a Broadway musical with CGI graphics coming out the wazoo.

5. Maleficent – More like Magnificent! Angelina Jolie was born for this role.

6. August: Osage County – “I really shouldn’t be laughing at this” will be going through your head the entire time. Black comedy at its finest!

7. The Babadook – An intimate, heartfelt horror film that lingers in your mind for days, months, maybe even forever?

8. The One I Love – A romantic episode of The Twilight Zone that offers lots of laughs and food for thought.

9. Snowpiercer – So many questions surround this unsettling dystopian flick, but the answers aren’t served on a silver platter, making this film an engaging experience for all viewers.

10. No Good Deed – Honestly, it’s pretty bad, but at the same time it’s tons of fun!

– Britnee Lombas

Brandon’s Top Ten Pro Wrestling Documentaries

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wrasslin

Between a few friends’ recently renewed enthusiasm for professional wrestling & my own recent introduction to the wrestling-heavy comic book series Love & Rockets, something happened in me last September: I started watching again. I’ve easily watched more pro wrestling in the past four months than I have in the last decade. A young fan during the sport’s famed Attitude Era, I lost my enthusiasm sometime in high school, a loss I now regret. Not keeping up with wrestling over the years meant missing out on large doses of my favorite two elements in popular media: camp & violence.

Approaching the sport as an adult, however, camp & violence weren’t entirely enough. I also craved context, something I never questioned as a teen. In addition to the countless matches I’ve watched in recent months, I’ve also been greedily consuming documentaries on the sport. The following list is the most helpful films I’ve found in my search for context. Together, they combine to explain to outsiders just what makes wrestling so fascinating & how it evolved to become the violent, campy spectacle it is today.

1. Beyond the Mat (1999) – Widely considered the Citizen Kane of the genre, Beyond the Mat is more of a love letter to the sport than an objective documentary. The 90s vibe is potent here. Vince McMahon is drunk on the power the Attitude Era has afforded him (a level of power he hadn’t tasted since the 80s). The close friendship detailed between hardcore legends Mick Foley & Terry Funk is movingly sincere. The devastating Jake “The Snake” Roberts scenes could conceivably have been research material for Aronofsky’s masterful film The Wrestler (right down to the troubled relationship with his daughter). The narrator’s urge to explain the basic appeal of a sport he loves, a sport that to many people “isn’t real” feels antiquated, but it’s more than forgivable given the time of production. If you’re looking for a beginner’s guide to appreciating pro wrestling as entertainment, this movie is a great place to start. If you already have any affection for the sport you will still love every minute of it, even when it makes you feel like shit.

2. Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998) – While Beyond the Mat documents the state of pro wrestling at the height of the Attitude Era, Wrestling With Shadows does a fine job of defining exactly what made that specific era so distinct. Wrestling icon Bret Hart struggles within the film to reconcile his own 80s-minded ideals of what the sport should be (especially in how it’s viewed by children) with the extreme late-90s direction it was going. There’s also some essential insight into Bret’s father, Stu Hart’s “The Dungeon” training room and the infamous Montreal Screwjob incident involving Bret. Both topics are interesting in how much the camera reveals as well as what it withholds. Is there more to the story than what we’re told? Hard to tell, but it’s still very informative even when mysterious. Unfortunately, Wrestling With Shadows also boasts the worst soundtrack I’ve ever, ever encountered in a documentary (a depressingly common problem with the genre). It’s a truly laughable distraction in an otherwise entertaining movie.

3. I’m From Hollywood (1989) – Andy Kaufman’s posthumous “documentary” (more of a mockumentary, really) about his wrestling career is unambiguously an angle, a continuation of an in-ring storyline. In the 80’s Kaufman fashioned himself an infamously effective heel by proclaiming himself the Inter-gender Wrestling Champion and challenging women in the audience to step up as his opponents. This escalated to a very public feud with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler that both men sold beautifully. It’s both amazing & unsurprising how well pro wrestling fit into Kaufman’s fucking-with-your-reality style of comedy. In its finest moments I’m From Hollywood is a document of how the demented, proto-Tim Heidecker genius Kaufman utilized the sport as a form of high art. It works best when interviewees like Jerry Lawler & the late Robin Williams are committed to the joke, as opposed to folks like Tony Danza who refuse to play along.

4. GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (2012) – A few of the docs on this list play into the self-aggrandizing of wrestling promos that make their subjects sound like The Best Thing Ever. The GLOW documentary excels at this showy brand of self-promotion that’s so inherent to the sport; it really does make GLOW look & sound way better than it could have conceivably been. This makes sense, considering the 80s wrestling company/television show it documents (“the only all-female wrestling show there’s ever been”) was firmly invested in the entertainment end of “sports entertainment”. The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling could wrestle, no doubt, but they mostly started as amateurs (hopeful actresses & models) roped into the business in boy-band levels of commercial-minded schemes & manipulation. The story of GLOW is the story of a brief, unlikely cultural phenomenon fueled by 80s glam, over-the-top camp, novelty rapping, and genuine beasts & bad-asses. All of this precious material is backed up by a wealth of televised footage to support the interviews & the best soundtrack of any film on this list (provided by outsider post-punk geniuses ESG).

5. Barbed Wire City: The Unauthorized Story of ECW (2013) – It’s difficult to find a truthful, comprehensive look into the legendary Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion among the various failed attempts. Barbed Wire City is a godsend of a corrective to that problem. Easily the best take on the subject to date, it features interviews from both world-class shit-talker (and morally-questionable businessman) Paul Hayman and the very people he built up & arguably screwed over. Barbed Wire City also postures ECW as the wrestling equivalent of the Roger Corman Film School, where talents would develop ideas & characters in a gritty environment before moving onto the big leagues (to the organization’s demise). It distinguishes itself from other docs in the genre by featuring interviews with old-school ECW fans (including a dorked-out Billy Corgan) who helped make organization special just as much as the performers did. Its actually-listenable post-rock soundtrack also assists in making it a godsend among its peers.

6. The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling (1999) – A (mildly-condescending) history of old-school “wrasslin”, The Unreal Story explains how pro wrestling adapted from traveling circus to television mainstay. Although Steve Allen’s snarky narration in this TV doc prevents it from achieving the heartfelt love-letter status of Beyond the Mat, it does a great job of giving the evolution of the sport a historical context. My favorite outlandish claim from The Unreal Story is that Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting wrestling came with ancient promos that included insults threatening to make opponents “bleed before the Pharaoh” . . . brother. Not only is this history lesson informative (especially in its profiles of old greats like Gorgeous George & Ricki Starr), but it also offers a strange perspective of a time when 90s media did not know how to handle the Attitude Era’s sudden surge in popularity except to look backwards.

7. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (2004) – A fascinating profile of the pioneer crop of 1950’s women wrestlers, it’s mostly comprised of modern interviews fleshed out with brief clips of televised matches, photographs, stock footage & era-defining television clips from game & variety shows. I’ve seen a few lackluster wrestling documentaries that are put together this way, but Lipstick avoids mediocrity by giving a mic to women who rarely get to speak at length & covering a subject that rarely gets its due time in the spotlight. It also serves as an interesting account of how pro wrestling evolved from the traveling carnival circuit to television, making it a sort of companion piece to The Unreal Story. At the very least, it’s like spending 90min kicking back a six-pack with the world’s coolest, most foul-mouthed old biddies.

8. Scott Hall: The Wrestler (2011) – A 20min ESPN short recommended for those who aren’t depressed enough by Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ story arc in Beyond the Mat. Documenting “Razor Ramon”/Scott Hall’s struggles with substance abuse, his own role as an absent father and the damage pro wrestling has inflicted on his body & his mind, the intimacy of this movie will destroy you. For folks seeking fame & recognition within pro wrestling, this doc should serve as a reminder to take care of themselves in the process.

9. MTV’s True Life: I’m A Pro Wrestler (1999) – This trifle boasts some valuable locker-room footage from the Attitude Era that serves as a strange time capsule of both a period when wrestling was a white-hot commodity and when performers Chyna & HHH were white-hot romantically. Most importantly, though, there’s some essential insight into the toll the training process can take on a fresh body as well as the dedication it takes to survive that toll. The short-form doc is a tryptic depicting life before, during, and after pro wrestling fame, a surprisingly balanced & thoughtful approach, considering it’s an MTV production.

10. Pinfall (2011) – An even more focused look at the pro wrestling training process than the True Life episode mentioned above, this small-scale short follows British wrestling fan & amateur filmmaker Adam Pacitti as he attempts to train for a wrestling match in just one month’s time. Pacitti initially enters the process with the wrong mentality & wrong physicality (especially in regards to his belief that he could properly train within a month) and is relentlessly punished for his naivety. In its most valuable contributions to the genre, the film offers both a unique look at the exact training patterns new wrestlers must follow as well as the disconnect between the hubris of what a fan believes they can accomplish in the ring & the harsh realities of a sport outsiders don’t believe to be “real” at all.

-Brandon Ledet