LifeTime Blog Permalink Page
No Good Things
by Vadim Rizov
There are four main points of interest in All Good Things. The first is that it"s actually being released after years in the Weinsteins" post-Miramax purgatory (director Andrew Jarecki was forced to buy the film back). Secondly, it"s Jarecki"s follow-up to Capturing the Friedmans, one of the most discussed documentaries of the last decade or so, thereby automatically meriting attention for his first narrative feature. Next on the list is that it"s based on the true four-decade saga about one Robert A. Durst. His and everyone else"s names have been changed, but the film strives to stick to the historical record, as befits a documentarian; it"s been sourced carefully, the factual gaps bridged with conjecture, which is a shrewd idea to effectively present someone as a triple-murderer. In retelling the tale of how Durst (here "David Marks") married, made his first wife mysteriously disappear, and wound up some twenty years later with a dead roommate chopped up and found in Galveston Bay, we have some lurid pulp effectively defanged of all thrills. This is as boring as multiple homicide gets, dramatic material inexplicably presented as listless social drama. Unhappy son, blame dad and brood; familiar terrain.
BlogLifeTime.com
