Alongside Night

One of the ten worst English speaking movies of all time. Strap a suspected terrorist in a chair to watch a loop of this movie and in between screams he/she will confess to John F. Kennedy's assassination or to being behind fluoridation of drinking water ... for the love of Allah, just please stop the torture. Alongside Night is a pure vanity project by the book's author J. Neil Schulman. There are Youtube videos by 12-year-old kids that have more professional production values than this movie. Heck, there are silent movies made 100 years ago that were more professionally produced. The book could have come to life in a captivating movie if Kevin Sorbo had been able to bring in the production team from his old Hercules TV series, and the script had been written and the movie directed by professionals who know how to capture and entertain an audience.

While I'm sure its target audience, those who are already familiar with the source material, will probably enjoy this movie, for those of us in the mainstream, the whole thing comes across as a poorly thought out political screed. There's unexplained jargon thrown around, massive plot holes (the economy has collapsed, yet Vegas is still full of green grass? One of the least hospitable environments for such?), and a general tedium. The whole thing is clearly aimed strictly at its believers, or maybe those involved were so close to the material that they couldn't see the problems. Sorbo is properly credited as a lead, not just a day or two of filming, but most of the acting is passable, at best. Apologies for the lack of details, but I saw this a few months ago, and the finer points have mercifully faded from memory.

Knowing something about the difficulties in the making of this movie, I sat in genuine open-mouthed awe.

Author, producer, and director J. Neil Schulman just died a couple nights ago, as I type, and I have cried buckets already. Watching this astonishingly good movie, I have cried even more: What an extraordinary talent we have lost.

J. Neil and I never met, but we exchanged many communications. I felt we were more than acquaintances, and we were certainly allies.

I have been impressed by his writings for decades now, and recently I discovered his short posts on Facebook were often hilarious.

J. Neil was an advocate of human liberty. I notice many of the negative reviewers here dislike that concept. They prefer authoritarianism, or even tyranny, judging by their words. Of course they won't like this movie.

But it is so good, it has such an engrossing story, and it is so well acted, so well directed, so well photographed, one need not be in philosophical agreement to appreciate, admire, and like "Alongside Night."

Of course I was predisposed to like it, but what I saw just overwhelmed me with its inventiveness and great production values, and even a good score.

My only complaint, and I am crying as I type this, is that I didn't see and review this excellent creation so J. Neil could know how much more I admire him, how much more I marvel at his talent, after watching "Alongside Night."

I do highly recommend this movie, and hope millions of people will buy a copy. It won't help J. Neil now, and he desperately needed the money in his last years, but it will be a tribute to him, a small way to say "J. Neil Schulman, R.I.P."

My Movie Review of "Alongside Night"

A little long in running time but ultimately worth watching. Destined to become a Libertarian Cult (In A Good Way) Classic. The opening music and title animations first grabbed me. I couldn't help thinking of James Bond film style theme music which the director/writer/producer J. Neil Schulman might have been aiming for. For a relative insider to the Libertarian movement since the early 1980's, the film was a banquet of Movement Munchies and inside insights. Liberty Movement outsiders can expect to find themselves a little disoriented at times (but hey, what good is Artistic License if you can't or don't use it?) Production values were 80-90% up to big screen snuff but nonetheless impressive considering the lower end budget. Major character acting was mostly tightly delivered and mostly believable, but maybe around one line in twenty would tend to come off with a self-conscious or slightly awkward dialogue feel. Consistent Universe Issue: For a Country supposedly on the verge of Massive Civil Unrest and The Next Great Depression, the movie scarcely manages to convincingly depict this, save for well-groomed mobs moving through well-maintained streets. But I can give that a pass because of the budgetary limitations. Plot elements and devices sometimes fluctuated between cleverish and near-cartoonish, but not quite severely enough to demolish the consistency of the Film's Universe. There remained a tone of unkillable optimism mingled with deja vu familiarity that seduced me into this adventurous future next door. Then Global Climate Science Denial gets a gratuitous groan of a cameo. Dammit. A cheap shot, a buzz kill and an intellectual fractional reserve. This seriously undermines the films value as an infomercial for the Liberty Movement. Libertarians are usually supportive of empirically derived evidence and nominally pro-science. (I don't think NASA scientist James Hansen had a Marxist wealth redistribution scheme in mind when he first correlated Venusian climate facts with implications for our own planet.) Big Corporate Fossil Fuel and people who uncritically sign on with the profit-motivated "Merchants Of Doubt" (see the excellent book) PR Fraudsters are only hurting the validity of their causes. (Exxon knew what it was attempting to bury in the early 1970's even before Hansons work.) A better, fresher air debate is certainly desirable and possible, but "Information Should Not Be Subject to A (Hard Party Line) Vote. A more Libertarian economy will value rational economic decisions including "True Cost Pricing" of so-called economic "Externalities." All in all though, I'll give "Alongside Night" 3.5 stars out of 5. Schulman stakes out valuable artistic territory by calling attention to the risks for Statecraft to shipwreck all we value about free human civilization and "Alongside Night" (mostly) convincingly conveys it with the Gravitas it deserves.

Alongside Night is a fast paced drama / action adventure with significant implications for our future. It's full of great actors and well directed. Instead of relying on special effects and chase scenes it has a well thought out plot structure. The characters are interesting and appealing. You really get invested in what is happening to them. It's based on a novel that came out in 1982, predicting the massive economic problems facing the world now and has been upgraded to fit in well with the present day, futurism that is coming true before our very eyes. I strongly suggest that you see this movie before reading the novel to avoid spoilers, but I read the book when it first came out and still found it entertaining, a damn good movie.