Freaknik didn’t survive the end of the ‘90s, and many debate if it was truly something that advanced the cultural mainstream, or just a party that spiraled out of control. Despite all the historical footage and Freaknik’s reputation for being debaucherous, this documentary doesn’t tell a story that is as outrageous as its marketing makes it out to be.

One of the most shocking events the documentary explores is that just a couple of years after the bomb test, there was a surge in infant deaths among the families in the nearby towns. In the decades that followed, there was a large amount of cancer cases that were too numerous to be a coincidence or a medical anomaly. It was clear that the radioactive fallout was wreaking havoc.

Even younger generations of Indigenous Americans grew up being exposed to these images as some of the only representations of their people in American culture. It might take up a large chunk of the film, but it’s necessary in order to understand why sports teams like the Blackhawks and Redskins are offensive. The portrayals are not only inaccurate but dehumanizing.

The documentary starts by showing how the rich heiresses of New York became celebrities and chased by paparazzi as though they were deities. When blogging exploded on the internet, many were dedicated to forming narratives out of the celebrities’ escapades and would slant reality into a salacious tabloid. I was constantly asking myself “Who would choose to get caught up in this world?”

Take neophytes Jeff and Jennifer Karl from Valley, Nebraska, opening right before March 2020, the height of the dreaded pandemic. On the plus side, some customers found isolating in their cars to be a possible solution to enduring the virus. From the start, Jeff’s friends thought his new plan was a crazy idea. Eleven acres that needed mowing each week, $30,000 for a laser projector, and Jennifer’s conviction that “if you have a dream, you can build it” made Quasar a reality.

Bahrani’s skill as a storyteller comes through because in the first third of the movie, Davis comes off as a likable guy who wants to save lives and keep families together, but some dark truths are foreshadowed as the story develops. Davis’s character as depicted here slowly deteriorates, as interviews and events make him seem like he’s desperate to maintain his image as a savior.

The biggest problem with this documentary is the sporadic way that it’s edited – which veers from interviews with Baker to interviews with other directors to old photos and footage of people associated with Baker at a confusing pace with hardly any understandable transition. What’s worse is that the film uses various weird camera angles and visual effects like random bright lights, dark vignetting, random zoom-ins in footage of Baker just walking around or talking on the phone.

During Nixon’s reelection bid in 1972, Martha Mitchell made multiple statements to the press about the underhanded tactics used by his reelection committee. She made waves because women in politics were discouraged from being outspoken, especially in front of the press. When the Watergate story broke, she wasn’t shy about criticizing Nixon and those close to him. The documentary does a good job of showing the viewer the kind of person Mitchell was. She was an animated character in the dry, boring world of humdrum politics. 

While West and Cohen’s documentary never discusses Highland Park, Uvalde, or any of the other 3,800 mass shootings, it is undoubtedly about them. Their anger is palpable, yet the documentary wisely chooses not to dedicate much of its runtime to the January 8 shooting, instead opting to focus on Giffords’ recovery, her family, and activism against gun violence.

Wall and Giles became friends and through gardening, he taught her how to remain optimistic and appreciative of life even when she knew she didn’t have much time left. That became the foundation for Wall memoir Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening. One drawback of the documentary is that it seems like it glosses over Owita’s involvement in all this, and while it does provide background on him, I would have liked to learn more about the man that inspired Wall so deeply.