OK, so we're a bit shallow ...
ESCAPES (B+) - This documentary consists, essentially, of former B-actor Hampton Fancher telling tales about Hollywood, leading to his transition to writer and producer, eventually shepherding "Blade Runner" to the big screen. Who is Hampton Fancher, you say? That's part of the point. He flew below the radar, appearing in a lot of westerns in the '50s and '60s. And he was quite the woman chaser, courting, among others, Teri Garr and Barbara Hershey way back in the day. He had been a bit of a drifter and grifter in his teens, striving in vain to make it big as a flamenco dancer.
Writer-director Michael Almereyda, who last scored with the sci-fi drama "Marjorie Prime," has a blast using old clips of Fancher on-screen to playfully illustrate and punctuate Fancher's Hollywood stories. Meantime, Fancher drones on telling tall tales that are most likely mostly true. An extended section pays tribute to Brian Kelly (the father on TV's "Flipper"), Fancher's close pal known for his sense of humor and his huge thirst for female companionship before being seriously injured in an accident in the early 1970s, ending his acting career. But Fancher and Kelly bought the rights to Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel "Do Androids Really Dream of Electric Sheep?", shaping it into Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" over the course of a decade.
Akin to "De Palma," this simple construct plops a septuagenerian in front of the camera (or merely in voice over) and lets him ramble for our lurid enjoyment. The 89 minutes fly by.
BIG SONIA (2017) (B-minus) - Heartfelt and well meaning, this biography of a holocaust survivor suffers from a case of the cutes. It's a love letter to Sonia Warshawski from her granddaughter, Leah, who co-directed this quaint family album. Sonia, who was ripped from her mother's arms at the gas chamber, lost her family during World War II but eventually found her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, and started a family.
The film has two tracks: we follow along with Sonia, a spry 92-year-old, as she speaks publicly about her experiences, and we observe as she begins dismantling her beloved tailor shop, which was the last surviving business in an abandoned mall in Kansas City. Each track distracts a bit from the other. The audiences she addresses are mostly captive ones -- dull school children and sympathetic prisoners. There's plenty of emotion, but some of it feels forced and overdone. We hear from Sonia's children, and there are hints that she could be a handful -- one son lives in northern California and seems somewhat estranged.
Sonia is a pistol, and her story is inspiring. This documentary, however, rounds her edges and puts a Lifetime Channel spin on the last 75 years of her life. The 93 minutes tend to drag.
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