The Wolfpack

I enjoyed this.

I thought the nature of the family and the back story made the audience easily interested.the cuts to video footage of cinema footage and the boys leaving the apartment was an absolute winner.

While we don't get a full back story on the dad and his impact its impact is evident through the boys interaction with him. His dis like of or non acceptance is pretty evident by the way he acts when the boys finally go on a road trip. I liked it, great footage, easy to like the rogue characters and enough left unexplained to make it a good film overall

Greetings again from the darkness - from the Dallas International Film Festival. In what is one of the oddest real life stories I have ever seen, director Crystal Moselle takes her camera inside the Lower East Side apartment of the Angulo family – 6 brothers, one sister, and their parents. In their spare time, the kids re-enact movies within the apartment using elaborate costumes, sets and props. And no, that's not the odd part.

Despite being mostly teenagers, these siblings have only left their apartment a few times in their life – a very few times … maybe once or twice a year, and not at all one year. They have been home schooled by their mother and are quite charming and articulate, despite the quasi-prison environment. The kids are not abused in the physical sense, but an argument can be made that mental anguish is in play here.

Their movie scenes are fun to watch, especially given their Tarantino leanings with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Ms. Moselle manages to capture a significant amount within the confines of the apartment. Her interviews with the boys are enlightening, but it's the mother that provides the most context. Her regrets and dashed dreams for her kids cause her much pain, and it's quite clear that the dad has some type of psychological vice grip on the family. The dad raises some eyebrows when he states "My power is influencing people". As viewers, we don't see this, but there is physical proof to his claim.

With no shortage of powerful moments, there are still two that jump off the screen. The first occurs as the boys head out on their own to watch their first movie in a real theatre, and then have such a fan boy moment after watching The Fighter. The second involves the mom having a conversation with her mother after not speaking for more than two decades. It's an emotional moment.

We can't help but like the boys and pull for them to find some normalcy outside the walls of the apartment. Their final film project needs no additional commentary as the lead character watches various emotions travel past his window … fitting since a NYC apartment window provided this family its only glances at the real world for so many years.

I thought this documentary was a mess. Sketches of information were given to us and left up to the viewer to fill in the blanks. First and foremost, what is going on with the parents? We know that the father is abusive toward the mother and has kept her virtually locked away from her family and society. Okay, we get that. But then it shows a scene of her out jogging. Hello! Would you care to elaborate on why this woman who has been abused for 20 years is out exercising? Why did she decide to call her mother after all these years? If she is going outdoors now, too then does she plan on leaving him? Does she realize how sick her husband is? Well, we don't know what she thinks because it appears the film maker never asked her.

The father, who is the central character here, is shown as a lazy drunk who either is paranoid or uses his distrust of society as a reason to sit at home all day and drink. Why doesn't the filmmaker get him to talk so we can figure out if he's a leach or mentally ill? Does he abuse his kids, too? If he kept his kids inside all those years, he doesn't seem too upset that they're going out. And wait.....is that him and his wife walking hand and hand through a park together? If you find the 20/20 story somewhere then I recommend watching that instead of this. You'll come away with twice the understanding in half the time.

The six Angulo boys, their sister and their mother live in a low-income New York City apartment with their father, Oscar Angulo, who won't let them go outside. Well, some years they get to leave their apartment and some years they don't. They are home schooled, which in the case of these kids, means watching movies all day, transcribing the scripts and then filming their own versions. These feral, Peruvian John Travolta looking teenagers have probably seen Pulp Fiction fifty times, though they most certainly prefer Reservoir Dogs. Normality, to them, is film. The world they find in film is inspiring, and, coupled with the natural tendency of the captured to escape, they break out, running down the streets of Manhattan, only to be chased down by budding documentary filmmaker, Crystal Moselle. The film begins there. Although the documentary disregards some major questions around the reasons for entrapment and isolation, the boys are fascinating and their impact is lasting. This film inspires the big dreamers; those who are looking to break their shackles.

The documentary that leaves you with many different feelings. The failure of the father with the outside world, the psychological problems, the desperation of his mother, the silence of his mother maybe the cowardly, the communication of the boys with the father was given in a beautiful flow. More lively documentary with video recordings used in the past. Throughout the film you are watching with a lot of questions and emptiness. There is a lot of information, especially about his brothers, but his sister's world is not mentioned. 84 minutes is less, you think "but then" when the movie is over