THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR (B+) - This energetic documentary is driven by police body-camera footage as it recounts the battle between a cranky middle-aged woman and the neighbors she relentlessly harasses, focused mostly on kids playing near her home during summer break.
The miserable woman -- most of us might recognize the type; growing up, our baseball-confiscating neighbor was Mrs. Smith -- happens to be white and most of the residents around her are black. Tensions are always high, and she is a frequent caller to the local Florida police department. There are so many calls, that officers are on a first-name basis with many of the folks, and there is enough body-cam video to stitch together a full narrative of the events that lead to violence and consequences.
Filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, in fact, might be too in love with the gimmick -- a little too faithful to the body-camera footage, which sometimes can muffle dialogue or create confusion among the characters, sometimes blurred out. But as shtick, it's effective, and the story is compelling. This neighborhood "Karen" suffers from irrational fears, though you can't help thinking that the kids, at times, are toying with her.
The jittery cameras -- especially when an emergency occurs -- ratchet up the tension. It is tough to watch a father have to break bad news to his children and console them. It is also fascinating to watch the woman in question, Susan, reckon with the fallout of what happens. Interrogation-room scenes become curious psychological studies, matching any TV procedural. Gandbhir curates a sharp examination of how Americans struggle to live side by side in peace (and quiet).
REBEL ROYALS: AN UNLIKELY LOVE STORY (C-minus) - There is an interesting premise here, but this cheap production about a European princess marrying a gay American con man (and ex-con) never rises above a bland tale of fish-out-of-water true love.
Rebecca Chaiklin, coming off her success with the Netflix series "The Tiger King," offers up an odd combination of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Real Housewives of Oslo." She introduces us to Norway's Princess Martha Louise, a divorced mom who is willing to shed her royal duties in order to wed Durek Verrett, a self-styled shaman who scans as gay, though he claims to be bisexual. He also is black, and Chaiklin has plenty of opportunities to photograph him surrounded by a sea of white Norwegian faces.
The film opens with promise, as Verrett is quite the dandy and a tantalizing leading man who might have ulterior motives, and Martha, with her teen and young-adult daughters, is a sympathetic human face of an exhausted celebrity. But we're playing in the minor leagues here -- this isn't exactly the House of Windsor or the love story of Edward and Wallis. And the final third of the movie is indistinguishable from your basic basic-cable wedding-planner reality show.
Verrett's diva act and new-age snake-oil antics grow weary, and it's difficult to get as jazzed about this "romance" as the tabloid-hungry Norwegians seem to get. It feels like the one who scammed here is Chaiklin, who probably thought she had a sizzling story to tell.
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