Reviewed: ‘Eephus,’ ‘Chaos: The Manson Murders,’ ‘Mickey 17,’ ‘Delicious’ and ‘Silent Zone’
‘Eephus’ (2024)
If you need a baseball fix before the Red Sox’s opening day, this drolly nostalgic work by first-time feature filmmaker Carson Lund may be just the thing. In it, a bunch of old-time ballers play one last game at a park in the autumnally speckled hills of Central Massachusetts (Douglas, to be exact) before the lot is torn up and a school built. The time is somewhere in the early to mid-1990s, when the Curse of the Bambino was still a thing, but besides 1970s Sox hurler Bill “The Spaceman” Lee appearing in a small part, there’s no mention of the hometown team or MLB at all – these are just local dudes with day jobs playing for Adler’s Paint on some team called the River Dogs. It’s unclear if they ever play other teams, are in a league or just play each other. The ragtag and grizzled lot are cut with character as deep as the wrinkles on their mismatched uniforms. Many have paunches, and others casually sip beer and offer laconic barbs as they warm up for a sleepy match that begins with the sun high in the sky and concludes with the aid of headlights as a cold October evening rolls in. It’s a long, lazy marathon that Lund builds as a dryer, tamped down version of Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!” (2016) with the same level of respect and love for the game that John Sayles imbued in his unheralded “Eight Men Out” (1988). Adding local flavor is legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman as the voice of the radio broadcast announcer. The title refers to a super slow, arcing pitch that came into being in the 1940s and makes a knuckleball look like blazing heat. It’s rare but gets an every-now-and-then use due to its ability to daunt and confound batters – try it a second time, and it’s to the moon. For lovers of the game, this nostalgic slow roll is right down the strike zone. (Speaking of the Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino, I have been part of a season ticket holder group since that game was played out in Douglas, but I almost missed seeing the Sox reverse the curse, something you can read all about in my “The Season That Almost Wasn’t” published in Slippery Rock University’s lit mag SLAB in 2007. You’ll likely get paywalled, but here’s a publicly viewable version posted last year on Substack.)
‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ (2025)
Keeping with legendary Cambridge-based documentary filmmakers, the latest from Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” “American Dharma”) tackles the unshakable enigma of Charles Manson, his cult and the grisly Tate-LaBianca murders they committed. Fifty-plus years later, the inconceivable acts of Manson and his “family” loom like they happened yesterday. Morris’ rewind is kind of chaotic despite being organized into neat chapters, throwing a lot out there without resolving things as the filmmaker normally does. The Beach Boys, Doris Day, a Kennedy assassination, the CIA and LSD experimentation all make their way in, and the film’s peppered with frequent segues to Manson songs played off his one record – believe it or not, the diabolical manipulator was not a bad singer-songwriter; the Beach Boys even recorded one of his tunes, which, in a way, led to the Tate murders. It’s all based on a similarly titled 2020 book by Tom O’Neill, who claims the race war theory put forth by lead prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi was fabricated for courtroom theatrics so Bugliosi could get rich off writing “Helter Skelter.” This feels a tad like conspiracy theory. More interesting is the archival footage of Manson, creepy and charismatic, and the chilling confessionals from his followers who did the killings, though most informative and credible are former prosecutor Stephen Kay, who worked alongside Bugliosi, and Bobby Beausoleil, a songwriter who joined Manson’s cult and is still in jail for carrying out an earlier murder at Manson’s behest. (His testimony is delivered from telephone interviews. It should be noted that he’s up for parole this year, so there’s that.) Morris and O’Neill put a lot out there, but the most compelling part of the film is the maniacal puppet master, his cold, aloof rantings, hold on his subjects and ability to skirt the law and authorities even when he was a known sociopath and likely high risk to the public. The film makes one want to go back and rewatch Quentin Tarantino’s rescript of history, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (2019) to cross reference fact and fiction. No matter, Manson, his minions, their crimes and courtroom antics remain a fresh and lurid annal of American history.
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