Doc Catch-Up x3

John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (dir. Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens)

Director Michael Almereyda is best known for dramatic features like his millennium-refresh of Hamlet 2000 (shoutout to Alex Ross Perry's Videoheaven) and the sublime ‘90s vampire flick Nadja. But he is not unfamiliar to the world of documentary. Here he teams up with Courtney Stephens, whose mid-length Terra Femma impressed me a lot in 2021, to make a film about—much like Stolen Kingdom below—an odd little corner of history. Dr John Lilly was a man who sought to communicate with dolphins and whales (yes, he inspired Mike Nichols’ The Day of the Dolphin) while also being really into psychedelics.

I must say, I wasn’t surprised when that particular pivot happened. It just makes sense.

For one reason or another, I never really clicked into this documentary, framed as it is as irreverent and kooky more than deeply disturbed. It’s almost as if there is just too much good stuff to hook into. The brain, unlike somebody who may actually on LSD, doesn’t know where to focus as the filmmakers moves from one genuinely insane fact after another. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office unfortunately relies too heavily on the wild story turns than it does on turning that into something that is the equal of its subject. Watch Ken Russell’s Altered States instead, a movie from nearly 50 years ago that nonetheless does more compelling work from its out-of-the-box story (it’s also inspired by Lilly).

Stolen Kingdom (dir. Joshua Bailey)

Stolen Kingdom is one of those strange little bits of Disney-related ephemera that pops up every now and then outside of that company’s tightly-guarded castle. Entertaining if slight, Joshua Bailey’s documentary sits alongside the likes of the lo-fi paranoia flick Escape from Tomorrow filmed within Disney World and Sean Baker's The Florida Project filmed just outside of it, or Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour vlog about her time at the Star Wars: Galactic Cruiser theme hotel. Bailey's film charts the people who sneak into closed or unused parts of Disney theme parks and film their escapades for online glory with the added extra of theme park collectors who spend much time and money on purchasing, legitimately or otherwise, Disney remnants.

Centred primarily around the disappearance of a very particular animatronic named Buzzy, Bailey’s film infiltrates a league of underground rule-breakers all of whom are varying levels of what might be called neuro-spicy. The mystery of Buzzy and the quasi red string theories that it provokes in people is perhaps a far less interesting than the general vibe of it all, which is ever so off-kilter and strange. I wish Bailey had perhaps honed in more on that. The interlopers largely wear out their welcome across a very brief 74-minutes but their videos do offer a perverse curiosity when assembled here together. More so, personally for me, than they could independently if they just appeared on my social media feed. There's something really fascinating here, but I just don't think Bailey, working here with a team of editors, had found a more striking way of presenting it.

Ghost Elephants (dir. Werner Herzog)

Werner Herzog has always been among the most purely curious of filmmakers. There’s a reason why he is the only filmmaker alive to have made feature films on all of this planet’s seven continents. Whether he is making documentary or dramatic features, there’s always a spark of an idea that carries out of the screen to the audience through his passion and, yes, that indelible narration full of purple Shakespearean prose.

For Ghost Elephants, I think it is fair to say that there are not too many filmmakers who would go out into the wilds of Africa to maybe capture footage of an animal that possibly doesn't even exist. Unfortunately, in this instance, what he and his subjects got out of Ghost Elephants is potentially very different to what the viewer will. In this instance, it feels like maybe it could've been something else for National Geographic because I don't know if it really works. Maybe we needed more time in the museum, or with elephants more generally. I actually think it could have worked best as a 45-minute IMAX documentary. By its very nature, Herzog can’t quite offer enough to satisfy as much as many of his other great works about the natural world.

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