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.

First of all, the production value is excellent, save for one scene towards the end, for what I imagine was quite a small budget. And I found the acting to be above your average Hollywood, not to mention an Indie film. Perhaps because of a number of experienced actors that are in it. No household names, other than Sorbo, but fine actors in their own right. I was especially pleased with the young leads, always difficult to find good ones.

The action runs quickly although not smoothly at all times. There are holes in the plot but the story seems secondary to me. Far from being tedious, the film brings forth ideas which are not in the mainstream and explains them fairly well. I found this quite refreshing if anyone can name a film which is as interesting in expressing a pro-government position please let me know.

To summarize: pros: good-looking film for a small Indie, I was very pleased with the acting, an interesting and decent exposition of fresh ideas, something the industry is desperate for. Cons: a fairly unexciting story line and a muddled ending. Watch if you have a curious mind. 8/10

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.

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.

Jeez Louise, where do I even start? Calling this movie a "train wreck" would be an insult to train wrecks. I doubt any train wreck could ever be as abominable as this movie is. Heck, I would rather be in a train wreck than watch this again. I've seen better acting in home movies (better production values, too). The dialogue is laughably bad. The pace is leaden. It's so torturously slow that it makes The Blair Witch Project look like a Road Runner cartoon. On paper, it sounds like a "so-bad-it's-fun" movie, but it's not. It's really not.

Imagine watching a grainy recording of paint drying, played in super slow motion, narrated by Gilbert Gottfried. Imagine further that you are being tickle tortured, having toothpicks stuck under your fingernails, and having teeth extracted without anesthesia all at the same time. Imagine further still that you are being force fed the contents of a septic tank while all this is happening.

If you can imagine all of this, then you have a pretty good idea of what watching this is like.