I am one of those weirdos who tries to watch all the movies nominated for the Academy Awards. Right now while buried under a sheet of ice I decided to stack three gut punches back to back because clearly I enjoy self-flagellation.
The Alabama Solution has a 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, which is insane for a film that feels like a two-hour national indictment of something we all pretend does not exist. It rips open the prison system in Alabama and forces you to watch the rot seep out of every corner of it, with inmates smuggling footage out on contraband cell phones to prove what everyone with half a brain has long suspected. You see overcrowding pushed past any humane limit, where bodies are treated like inventory and survival becomes a daily negotiation. The violence that makes you grit your teeth until they ache, and leaders so blissfully ignorant they would defend this instead of calling for real reform. This one hits home because my people come from that part of the country and good leadership there has historically been rarer than a sober politician. Honestly this film feels less like a documentary and more like a civic call to arms. Five stars.
The Devil Is Busy has no official Rotten Tomatoes rating yet but it feels like it deserves one just for the anxiety alone. This one follows clinic workers who deal with constant harassment, threats, and real danger just for doing their jobs. If you think your day is stressful imagine making life and death decisions while people with megaphones and internet mobs are judging your every breath. It captures the fear and fatigue so well that you will find yourself checking over your shoulder long after the credits roll. It is powerful in its quiet terror. Four stars.
All The Empty Rooms also does not have a Rotten Tomatoes rating yet but it feels like every home in this country should have a warning label after watching it. This short documentary looks at school shootings through the hollow silence left in their wake. This is not a gun control lecture. It is a results of doing absolutely nothing lecture, and it is heartbreaking not because it sensationalizes violence but because it shows what silence and inertia look like in real places with real people. In my community school shootings are not an abstraction they are a fear we live with every day because kids should not be practicing lockdown drills like fire drills. This movie forces you to look at that emptiness in the eye. Five stars.
Three documentaries. Three reminders that watching movies nominated for Oscars is not always entertainment. Sometimes it is therapy with bruises.
