A soldier's story and a would-be movie are at the core of Erik Nelson's doc, A GRAY STATE

Unless I missed it embedded somewhere in the soundtrack of the new documentary, A GRAY STATE, I heard no mention made of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder during the film, and yet everything about the later life and untimely death of David Crowley -- the Iraq/ Afghanistan war vet whose body was found, along with those of his wife and four-year-old daughter, shot to death in their Minnesota home (the three are shown below, with their dog, who survived the slaughter) -- fairly screams out PTSD! And the more this movie uncovers about the character and mental state of Mr. Crowley, the crazier he appearing to be becoming.

TrustMovies knew little to nothing about Crowley prior to seeing this film, so he had no preconceived ideas regarding this fellow, who apparently was some sort of hero of the alt-right movement (which I abhor). And while the man seemed happy enough to join the U.S. Armed Forces post 9/11 to fight in Iraq, after being told he could come home once that deployment finished, only to learn he had been redeployed in Afghanistan, this betrayal, as he saw it, simply added to what he already felt during the Iraq deployment regarding the ways in which our government had betrayed its soldiers fighting there, as well as the people we were said to be "democratizing" in the mid-east.

Now, it doesn't take an alt-right believer to find all of the above quite true. But, hell, what western democracy, save perhaps those of some Scandinavian countries, has not by now completely sold out its citizens to the interests of the wealthy, the corporations, Wall Street and the banks? But Crowley, post wartime, decided to become a filmmaker and shoot a movie that would show a USA taken over by a government bent on destroying the lives and the "rights" of its citizens. As directed by Erik Nelson, shown at left, the documentary is certainly interesting enough, as we follow Crowley's would-be "career" and the never-made film, to be titled Gray State, that was the non-existent centerpiece of that career..

From what Mr. Nelson has cobbled together for his documentary -- lots of archival images and footage, interviews with family and friends  (Mr. Crowley's father and Crowley's wife's business-partner and friend are both quite intelligent, appealing and moving in their statements) -- what we can ascertain from all this is that Crowley himself talked a great game and did not in the least live up to all his blather.

From the snippets we're shown of the would-be director's Gray State movie, as well as the cart-before-the-horse trailer he made for it, his movie offers little more than random acts of violence inflicted upon American citizens. Despite Crowley's ability to fill a wall with "signifiers," as above, having to do with the movie and/or maybe America's betrayal (à la the usual CSI investigation), the man seems to have accomplished nothing approaching a real movie.

One can certainly understand why the alt-right, in its blinkered stupidity, has come up with various conspiracy theories regarding the family's death, a couple of which we are briefly shown here. Yet as to the motive for what happened to the family -- by the police investigation, by much of what we are shown in the doc, as well as by even Crowley's own father -- it seems to me that the younger Crowley's inability to produce what he promised his backers and fans (which can also be seen, by the way, as part and parcel of his PSTD behavior) resulted in his taking the easiest, as well as the most awful, way out.

So, yes, this story is about as depressing as it gets, but still I wished for more insight to be provided by this documentary. Instead we seem to glide over the surface of just about everything here. How and where did David and his Muslim wife, Komel, meet and bond? That would be good to know. Showing us more of that much-talked about "trailer" for his film might also have provided Crowley with more credibility. Perhaps the most striking scene of all comes as Crowley's two Hollywood backers listen, astonished, to a recording of what their "wonder boy" really thought about them and the manner in which he felt he had to "con" them.

Along the way we witness the idiocy of so much social media (and that irredeemable asshole Alex Jones), and we hear and view a David Crowley who seems, almost from the get-go, to be a little bit nuts. And then increasingly so. Still, the fellow did get a Gray State movie made, after all. It's just one that offers a very different viewpoint from his own and has been directed by someone else.

From A&E Documentaries and First Run Features, A Gray State opens in theaters this Friday, November 3, in New York City at the Cinema Village, and on Friday, November 24, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. Otherwise, wait for it on DVD, streaming and most likely the A&E Network one of these days.

Dan Krauss' THE KILL TEAM asks the question, What kind of soldier is fighting our Mideast war?

Around this point in time, most thinking Americans will have by now asked themselves, What has our country achieved from its 12- and 13-year wars in the Mideast? Followed by the answer, Nothing. And then, of course, much less than nothing, for the negatives just keep piling up. The latest of these, movie-wise, is the new documen-tary THE KILL TEAM, which details how one American family, the father a veteran of Vietnam, his son now serving in Afghanistan, the mother looking on in horror, as the story of a group of American soldiers who murder Afghans for sport first surfaces via the son to his parents, who try to alert the military to no avail. The son's life is threatened by his own platoon members, as well as by man in charge. Eventually, the son -- a whistle blower undergoing the punishment our country reserves for these people -- is prosecuted for murder by the military.

Whatever faith you might have in America as a working democracy will be further shredded by this new documen-tary directed, produced and photographed by Dan Krauss, shown at left. In it we meet that aforementioned family of Adam Winfield, below, the 21-year-old infantryman who blew the whistle -- and paid the price.

We already understand what kind of government lied us into the second of these wars, while dropping the ball thoroughly regarding the first one. The current government continues this ugly farce without ever calling into judgment the earlier administration that ought to have been criminally prosecuted. With this movie, we can now call into question what kind of soldiers are fighting our wars. The answer is not a happy one: bullies, sickos and sheep-like creeps in far too high a number.

If Mr. Krauss' film only gave us the testimony of the Winfield family, this would be enough to grab and move us. Oddly, it is the testimony of some of the other fellows in Adam's platoon (shown below and further below) that rather seal the deal. These fresh-faced kids/killers will soon have your jaw somewhere in the vicinity of your knees.

You won't want to hear and see all this. There will certainly be no rush to theaters to embrace this documentary in the manner that audiences did with, say, Searching for Sugar Man. But the film exists. It is on record, as it were. And this is very important. .

That said, I wish the film were better organized and better made. Even at 79 minutes, with a lot of pregnant pauses as the film moves along, there is not enough content here to fill up the air space. We get repetition when we want more information.

Still, the story staggers, and the idea that there are many more similar situations out there will no doubt occur to viewers. (At right is shown one of our soldiers, grinning, with his Afghan "kill.") How does one take something like this "in" and process it? I don't know. But we need to. And I am grateful that Mr. Krauss, for all the film's shortcoming (honesty is not one of these), has given us the opportunity to try.

I also find myself wondering how Mom and Pop Winfield are managing these days (there they are, above, flanking Adam). Certainly as much as their son, these people are true American heroes. We owe them, and Adam, our gratitude.

The Kill Team, from Oscilloscope Films, opens in New York City this Friday, July 25, at the FSLC's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, and in Los Angeles on August 8 at the Landmark NuArt. In the weeks to come it will play another half dozen cities. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates.

Côté & Henriquez's grim YOU DON'T LIKE THE TRUTH: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo

So what kind of folk hang out as prisoners in Guantánamo? For all the secrecy that surrounds the abuse, if not out-and-out torture, of these inmates -- which we've caught snippets of it documentaries such as Laura Poitras' very interesting THE OATH and the Whitecross/ Winterbottom hybrid The Road to Guantánamo -- the world at large has not been given much of a view inside the place. Now comes the U.S. theatrical premiere of a documentary by Canadian filmmakers Luc Côté (shown just below) and Patricio Henriquez (further below) that takes us there via a 99-minute movie culled from seven hours of surveillance during the questioning by Canadian intelligence, over a four-day period, of a Canadian teenager accused by the USA of being a war criminal.

YOU DON'T LIKE THE TRUTH: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo is the result, and TrustMovies would be lying if he did not tell you that this is difficult movie to sit through. But I'm afraid, it is also de rigueur for film buffs, documentary-lovers and any Americans -- hell, citizens of any country -- who want to know what we (and this came as a surprise to me) the Canadians are doing to the detainees. While we see no physical torture here, the metaphysical kind, the nasty mind-game-playing, is horrible enough.

The film is mainly composed of the surveillance video taken during the period in which Canadian intel-ligence tries to get our boy, Omar Khadr, to confess to things that -- over time and with some further investigation and documentation by various reporters -- we learn are simply untrue. The videos them-selves (below and at bottom), blurry and uninteresting (except, of course, for what is going on) are visually boring but shockingly on- target, audio-wise. One lengthy scene in which Omar (below), deliberately left alone, sobs and cries for his mother, is enough to reduce strong men to tears.

This is a grueling documentary for a number of reasons, chiefly that the filmmakers have no real access to their subject -- only to the surveillance visuals. Consequently they must rely on interviews with some of Omar's former cellmates, lawyers, newspaper reporters, psychiatrists and even Canada's former foreign minister Bill Graham.

By far the most interesting interview is with a fellow named Damien Corsetti, who worked as an interrogator in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "I did very bad things," he tells us.  "I became that monster that was written about me." And yet Corsetti finally blames the Canadian people (and by extension their government) for not protecting this boy upon his arrest. "I -- a cold, calculating son-of-a-bitch -- had more compassion for this boy than his own people." (Omar is shown above, at the age at which he was imprisoned, and below, as he appears now.)

The person you will probably most remember from this grim film, however, is Omar's Canadian interrogator: peppy, smart-assed and beyond reprehensible. Doling out lies on top of lies, he leaves his charge in a state of depression that grows worse from day to day. Though it was America who arrested the boy and charged him, it turns out that his own country, Canada, never tried to help him gain his freedom and instead became part of the nasty charade of fake justice/fake victory/fake-just-about-everything (except death) that has been the hallmark of our two current wars.

Yes, the movie raises more questions that it can answer completely. Omar was indeed with the Taliban when the attack occurred, but this does not mean that he was any part of its operation. His dad had left him in its care, and in the attack he was nearly killed and hardly capable of the murder of the American soldier for which he stood accused. (Investigative reporter Michelle Shephard pretty thoroughly debunks the government case in her section of the film). Finally, the movie stands as yet another example of American post-9/11 folly -- in terms of justice, human life and simple economics -- this time unfortunately abetted by our neighbor to the north.

YOU DON'T LIKE THE TRUTH: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo opens tomorrow, Wednesday, September 28, in New York City at Film Forum for a one-week run. Click here for screening times in New York, and here for past and upcoming screenings, worldwide.