A patient receives a controversial treatment in THE GOD CELLS
THE GOD CELLS: FETAL STEM CELL CONTROVERSY (Eric Merola, 2016)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, June 3
212-529-6799
stemcellsmovie.com
www.cinemavillage.com
In his 2014 documentary, Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan Kettering, writer, director, producer, and coeditor Eric Merola investigated the controversy over Laetrile, focusing on Memorial Sloan Kettering science writer Ralph W. Moss, PhD, and the banning of the cancer drug, which resulted in patients flocking to Mexico to receive treatment. Now Merola, whose two-part Burzynski explored the cancer therapy Antineoplastons, turns his attention to the stem-cell controversy in The God Cells, another important documentary that, unfortunately, suffers from some of the same filmmaking problems Second Opinion did. The pacing is awkward, the narrative overly biased, and alternating front and side shots of various speakers are needlessly disconcerting. The film also plays out like an infomercial for stem-cell treatment, which is banned in the United States, so Merola follows numerous patients to Mexico, where they receive the shots and many have experienced remarkable results. Although Merola does note the antiabortion movement’s religion-based fight against the use of stem cells, he instead reveals that the bigger issue in preventing their use in the U.S. is that the FDA is making it as difficult as possible to get the treatment approved because of its potential financial impact on Big Pharma and doctors, who benefit from people taking more and more drugs and coming back again and again for various other, arguably less-successful treatments.
Merola meets with men, women, and children who suffer from lupus, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, severe arthritis, and Parkinson’s, among other diseases, and who report nearly instantaneous recovery after stem-cell injections; in fact, they are shown golfing, rowing, and participating in other sports activities when previously they had trouble just walking. Also singing the praises of stem cells are former football quarterbacks John Brodie and Jerry Kramer and Laugh-In creator George Schlatter. While some doctors go on the record in support of stem cells, others are more hesitant, fearful of retribution from colleagues and the American medical industry. Merola spends too much time with CIRM, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and celebrity doctor William C. Rader of Stem Cell of America, outspoken proponents of stem-cell research. And the film features an overly long section on television director and producer David Barrett (Blue Bloods, Cold Case), who talks about how stem cells saved his life as well as that of his grandfather, ninety-nine-year-old Dave McCoy, who might be deserving of his own documentary. Interestingly, Barrett is the executive producer of The God Cells. Still, it’s a critically vital film that will open your eyes on yet another medical controversy that raises the question: Is corporate moneymaking more important than the health of the individual? The film opens at Cinema Village on June 3, with Merola and special guests participating in a Q&A following the 7:10 show that night.
The main image used to promote James Solomon’s debut documentary, The Witness, is a 1961 black-and-white photograph of Kitty Genovese. In the portrait, she stares back at the viewer almost accusingly; in light of her famous death three years later, it is as if she is calling us all out for the events that happened during and after her murder. In 1964, Genovese was killed by an assailant on a Kew Gardens street while, as the New York Times reported, thirty-eight neighbors heard the screams, looked out their windows, and did nothing. Forty years later, the paper reexamined the case and their coverage and found numerous holes in their original story. That set Kitty’s brother, Bill Genovese, who was sixteen when his sister was killed, on an obsessive mission to find out the truth about what really went down on March 13, 1964, and afterward, when New York City was publicly decried across the world as an awful oasis of urban apathy. Genovese hooked up with screenwriter Solomon (The Conspirator, The Bronx Is Burning) and spent eleven years reinvestigating the case — the two men had actually met in 1999, when Solomon was collaborating on a never-realized fictionalization of the story with Joe Berlinger and Alfred Uhry for HBO. The Witness plays out like a police procedural as Genovese follows every crumb he possibly can, meeting with witnesses, detectives, his sisters’ friends, and such journalists as Gabe Pressman, Mike Wallace, and Abe Rosenthal, the Times editor who wrote the book Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case, which helped turn the sordid tale into legend. “The story doesn’t make any sense to me,” Pressman admitted he thought back in 1964, although no one would question the Newspaper of Record. But Genovese does just that, and what he discovers is nothing short of shocking.
Louis Malle’s first feature-length fiction film, following The Silent World (made with Jacques Cousteau), is a classic French noir that comes with all the trimmings — and was recently restored in an excellent 35mm print with new subtitles. Jeanne Moreau stars as Florence Carala, who is married to ruthless business tycoon Simon (Jean Wall) but is carrying on an affair with Simon’s right-hand man, Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet). Julien plans the perfect murder — or so he thinks, until he has to go back to retrieve a crucial piece of evidence and gets trapped on the elevator. While he struggles to find a way out and Florence waits for him anxiously at a neighborhood bistro, young couple Louis (Georges Poujouly) and Veronique (Yori Bertin) take off in Julien’s convertible and get into some serious trouble of their own. Mistaken identity, cold-blooded killings, jealousy, and one of the greatest film scores ever — by Miles Davis, recorded in one overnight session — make Elevator to the Gallows a splendid debut from one of the world’s finest filmmakers. The film is screening June as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Rain,” being held in conjunction with the