A CONVENIENT TRUTH: Dominick Bagnato's new mockumentary tackles energy and immigration

Obviously stepping off from that popular and Oscar-winning doc of nine years ago, An Inconvenient Truth (note not only its title but its poster art), this new, very hit-and-miss but sometimes surprising and funny mockumentary by first-time/full-length filmmaker Dominick Bagnato will soon have you questioning exactly what and who his film is actually satirizing. My guess is practically everyone and everything about our currently clueless and far-too-entitled nation. As the movie begins, we are introduced to a California congressman, Coleman Burleson, who has recently recanted his earlier campaign against the idea of global warming only to come up with a brand new "proposal" on this subject -- slowly unfurled -- that he insists will solve a number of current problems.

I am not going to tell you what this proposal is (not to worry, it's neither modest nor Swiftian) -- most of my peers will no doubt spoil it for you, anyway -- because much of the fun arrives precisely at the moment (and via the music) with which Mr. Bagnato, shown at left, unveils his idea. Unfortunately, this very idea has already been presented to us alert viewers who have seen the fine British TV series Black Mirror. There, it was handled in a dark and serious way. Here, it's mostly a hoot.

Because Congressman Burleson (Alan Berman, above and below, right) is from California, a state that has a certain amount of illegal aliens arriving consistently from Mexico, his idea not only impacts the environ-ment but also everything from immigration to energy, racism and obesity.

How all this is explained proves a little too catch-as-catch can. Some of the sections are funny and work well  -- the Congressman and his gosh-I-didn't-know-he-was-illegal gardener (Guy Wellman, above, left) and our politician's wife (Elise Rovinsky, below), ever helpful, hopeful and getting tipsier with each new glass and scene -- others fall a bit flat due to over-reaching and not enough clever ammunition.

But as the film lasts only 82 minutes, it passes relatively quickly and every time you grow a little tired of it -- boom -- you find yourself laughing again, whether it's from the scenes with America's new Minute Men (below)

or the just-folk interviews with various people, most of whom offer a happy, utterly naive attitude to just about everything in their world.
How American!

Though he occasionally nudges a bit hard, Bagnato's humor is more often of the quiet and subtle type, never more so than in the funny, clever moment on which he concludes his little film.

A Convenient Truth, from Living Daylights Pictures, opens this Friday, February 20, in New York City at the Quad Cinema.. Elsewhere? Don't know, but surely the film will be available on DVD and streaming soon.

NOTE: the following personal appearances for Q&A's at the Quad: 

 Fri., Feb. 20th - 7:30pm (Premiere screening w/cast and crew members) 

 Sat., Feb. 21st - 7:30pm (Lead actors - Alan Berman & Kevin Hauver) 

 Sun., Feb. 22nd - 3:30pm (Editor - Charlie Pinto) 

 Mon., Feb. 23rd - 7:30pm (Writer/Director Dominick Bagnato) 

 Tues., Feb. 24th - 7:30pm (Actors Joshua Ryan & Nick Magliocco) 

 Wed., Feb. 24th - 7:30pm (Writer/Director Dominick Bagnato) 

 Thurs., Feb. 25th - 7:30pm (Producers  Charlie Pinto & Patrick Steward)

UPPER: The Upper Footage on VOD for the next 3 weeks--watch a midnight movie, only at 12AM!

Whew -- this is one oddball concoction! How you feel about it will greatly depend, I suspect, upon what you know about the film going in. I would suggest that you do a little web surfing prior to watching UPPER aka THE UPPER FOOTAGE so that you will come to it with more knowledge than TrustMovies possessed when he made use of the critics' Vimeo link to access and watch the film. He was a lamb to the slaughter, as it were, and when he came out of the experience, he was one angry lamb. On the other hand, as the film's producer, an energetic and enthusiastic young lady named Tiffany, suggested, it might be best that everyone have the kind of experience that TM had -- by going into the film blind and believing.

Shades of The Blair Witch Project hang over Upper, and yet this is an infinitely better job of movie-making than was that now nearly 15-year-old crap-fest. The differ-ence? Blair Witch had a mammoth and very smart advertising campaign via the then newly burgeoning internet. The campaign was great; the movie not, but by the time many audiences realized this, their ticket money had already been scooped up into the coffers of the dis-tributors. It was an event, however, and so, in its way, is Upper, the director of which is said to be a fellow named Justin Cole (shown, sort of, at left).

The film is said to have had a terribly difficult time reaching audiences because it is a "found footage" video that shows a very privileged young man and his cohorts bringing home a young girl (below, with he face obscured to protect her poor family), coking her up, watching her vomit and grow sick and finally drop dead -- and then covering up the whole disgusting mess.

Fun, huh? Oh, yes, and all of this has been videoed by one of the friends, after which the said video appears online, very briefly, and is used to blackmail the wealthy family of Blake Pennington, the entitled young snob at the center of all of this.

Does that Pennington name ring a bell with you? No? Then maybe the missing girl's will: Jackie Spearo. Not hers, either? That was pretty much my experience, too, but then I often do not follow the latest gossip, so I imagined that I had simply missed all references to this case. Not quite.

Yet so much that's shown here rings bells -- the wealthy 1 % bell, the teens on drugs and sex bell, the parents who enable bell. And so on. The young people shown on this "found footage" tape seems very real indeed. "If these kids are actors," I found myself murmuring, "then they're damned good ones."

The "documentary" divides pretty nicely into thirds: the set-up, the event, and the follow-up. If the first two thirds are prime, the last one levels off some and may have you questioning the veracity of the whole thing. Yet your own "take" on situations such as this will probably carry you along quite well. You'll either see these kids as the entitled assholes of America, or maybe, if you are very young and relatively brainless, you might see them as "cool."

However you look at them, I think you will look at them -- if not eagerly or angrily, then with sadness at the shocking waste of natural resources that modern-day America can so skillfully manage. Upper/The Upper Footage, with a running time of just under 90 minutes, opens tonight, Thursday, November 21, for a three week VOD run -- at midnights only. To purchase tickets, click here and then click on Buy Tickets on the menu line at top.