Author Archives: Doc

Girl in the Picture (2022)

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January 31

January 31st is here and the 2025 Genre-ary comes to a close with a Netflix documentary called Girl in the Picture, which was based on the books A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon by Matt Birkbeck.

According to IMDB, “A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.“

This was an excellent documentary covering the tragic story of a young girl named Sharon Marshall. Or at least, it was a young girl who was known as Sharon Johnson. She had been abducted as a child and then raised as the daughter of Franklin Delano Floyd, a kidnapper, murderer and sexual abuser.

Sharon suffered years of abuse at the hands of her “father.” He would use her to make money by making her strip and offering her for sex to other men.

The story also included a boy named Michael, who had been kidnapped by Floyd as well. The boy disappeared and the question about what had happened to Michael was part of the film.

One of the best things about this doc is that all of the mysteries surrounding these people are solved. A lot of times these docs do not have a sense of closure because mysteries are left unsolved. Here though, thankfully, everything is revealed.

It is such an emotional story of pain and loss, but it also gives a great story about how people can help by doing whatever you can.

Girl in the Picture is available on Netflix.

And with this, the 2025 Genre-ary comes to a close.

Invasion on Chestnut Ridge (2017)

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January 30

Today, the penultimate day of the 2025 Genre-ary, I watched a documentary from the series Small Town Monsters. I have seen other episodes from Small Town Monsters before and they are usually a fairly well done look at these unexplained phenomenon. Invasion on Chestnut Ridge is yet another solid doc dealing with the paranormal.

Chestnut Ridge is an area of Pennsylvania where there have been numerous unexplained reports of everything from bigfoot to UFO sighting to giant birds with massive wingspans.

According to the doc, it seemed as if there were a rush of reports during 1973/74 with all kinds of weird things going on. The doc had witnesses giving their stories, including things like UFO sightings and bigfoot encounters, all of which are sufficiently unnerving. One wonders what these people actually saw. Many of them seemed to be reasonable and decent people (Admittedly, there was the one guy with a 2nd Amendment shirt on where the number two was a snake).

I have always been more willing to believe in many things. I do think there is (or was) something called a bigfoot. I am not opposed to people from outer space (though I am not sure if they are able to travel here), but above all else, I enjoy the stories. Small Town Monsters does an excellent job of presenting these “out there” accounts in a enjoyable way.

There was one funny moment. They were interviewing a witness who had seen a thunderhawk and they were blurring out the wording on his shirt. However, the man bent down to describe how the bird had been sitting, and the blur did not go with him. We saw that it was a Steelers shirt. I laughed out loud at that. I wonder why they couldn’t get the blur to follow him down. I know that was a minor thing in the doc, but I thought it was funny.

The doc also detailed the Kecksburg UFO crash in 1965. Something crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania and witnesses went to see. It was a metallic object shaped like a walnut and that the military showed up and removed it. Of course, specifics are shaky and, like all UFO sightings, it is hard to determine what it was that these people saw.

Admittedly, the doc does not provide any concrete evidence of any of the stories they tell about, outside of the eye witness accounts from many year prior. I still found these stories intriguing and entertaining at least. Are any of them real? Who knows. It is one of those unsolved mysteries.

EYG Favorite Comic Cover of the Week

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January 30

Todd! It was White Savior!

I was talking with Todd at Comic World tonight and I was joking about the old issue #3 curse. It seemed as if the independent series for a short while always missed #3 for me, and I tried to remember that book that Drew had taken home that was supposed to be mine. I couldn’t for the life of me think of the name of it. I kept thinking The Last… something. I knew it was a four issue series from Dark Horse, but I couldn’t place the title. Finally, on the way back home, the word WHITE popped in my head and then it was just a matter of moments before I got to White Savior. Strangely enough, it still did not feel right, but I checked the internet and it sure was. That was a real relief getting that off my mind.

This week’s medalists are a FIRST!

Bronze Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Variant Cover E

Cover Art by Mark Spears.

What a cool cover with all of the monsters around the witch, who looks spectacular. This was in honor of a Marvel series of covers from a few years ago and it is awesome. Godzilla is up there too. Mark Spears is on fire.

Silver Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Cover A

Cover art by Mark Spears

Frankenstein’s Monster is adorning this cover looking as if he in the electric chair. Will that get rid of Frankie? I don’t know but this cover A is another amazing piece of artwork from Mark Spears. I wonder what is next….?

Gold Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Variant Cover G Metal Cover

Cover Art by Mark Spears

Absolutely stunning. Despite dropping a pretty penny for this rare cover, I think it is worth it. I love Jaws and this cover captures the terror of the man-eater perfectly. Mark Spears makes history for our site. This is the first time that the same artist has all three medals in one week. It is also the first time that three covers of the same issue placed in the top three. We had Spider-Gwen place in two medal position once last year, but this is the first time for all three places. It is not quite February yet and I do not think anyone will be catching Mark Spears for the Cover Artist of the Year from EYG.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man S1 E1, E2

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Spoilers

“Amazing Fantasy”

“The Parker Luck”

There is no fictional character that means more to me than Peter Parker. I have spent my entire life loving Spider-Man. He has been an inspiration to me and my own core beliefs come from him. Every time I see a new Spider-Man project, I am both excited and a little nervous.

Nervous because there is always a chance that the project will be bad. I have gone through that a few times. And to be honest, seeing the initial images from Disney +’s new Spider-Man series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, I was a little more nervous than usual.

However, after seeing the first two episodes of season one, my fears were alleviated. I loved these episodes. Even though the show did take some leeway with some things, YFNSM seemed to get the flavor, the tone of Spider-Man right.

One of the original issues I was afraid of was the animation style, but as the episode continued, it did not bother me at all. In fact, i think it worked very well with the character of Spider-Man.

I thought the show was funny and gave us a real good look at this Peter Parker, which is MCU-adjacent. While there are definitely connections to the MCU (Hey there, Left Hand Free), the differences are here too. It sure appears that Norman Osborn is going to be the Tony Stark figure in Peter’s life as the scene in Peter’s apartment with Aunt May was basically reenacted with Norman in Tony Stark’s place.

I love the balls this series is showing. I could tell immediately that there would be plenty of hatred on the internet because of certain “woke” items. I hate that term, by the way. When I first saw Harry in the first episode, I knew there would be some hate-spewers coming for this show. The gender swapping of Curt Connors will surely get some ignorant comments too. Fine. None of that bothered me.

Even the spider bite did not upset me. It certainly was different than any other version of Spider-Man, but that is not a bad thing. The spider was not from Oscorp in the original comics, yet the we’ve seen that happen in other Spider-Man versions.

The choice of Nico as Peter’s friend is intriguing. I have always enjoyed this character in the different comics. The football player is not Flash Thompson, but Lonnie Lincoln, who, by the way, we know from the comics as Tombstone. Amadeus Cho, a Shuri-like Wakandan also show up. The side cast is very eclectic. Great Dr. Strange cameo too.

Spider-Man has had some awesome animated series in the past with the 1990s Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man, but it also had some shows that felt way too childish. I was concerned this would fall into that category like Ultimate Spider-Man. After the first two episodes, I feel as if those fears have been put to rest. It may not be in the same range as those first two I mentioned, but I think this has some real room to grow.

Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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January 29

With just three days remaining on the Genre-ary for 2025, I watched an Oscar-nominated doc called Catching the Friedmans, another tough watch because it centered around a teacher and his son who had been accused of sodomy and sexual abuse of kids.

Director Andrew Jarecki, who was the director behind the amazing docu-series, The Jinx, was the driving force behind this documentary.

According to IMDB, the “Documentary on the Friedmans, a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family whose world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes.”

There are plenty of scenes in this movie that came from home video recordings taped by the Friedman family themselves. Most of these scenes were really tough to watch considering the way some of this was portrayed. It painted a horrible picture of most of these people. There was a dramatic scene taped at Jesse Friedman’s trial of a parent chasing after him screaming that he had raped his son. Unbelievable.

Elaine Friedman seemed to be a spiteful woman, but it is hard to imagine the situation she found herself in daily. Her husband was a pedophile. Her sons hated her. A lot of the recordings by her kids had her screaming like a banshee. She did not come off looking well. Then, the final scene of the doc seemed to go against everything that the doc had shown us up until that point.

The doc sheds plenty of question on the case overall, especially when it came to Jesse. Arnold, the father who was an admitted pedophile, said that he had committed sexual abuse on two kids, but not the countless number at school.

I’m not sure how I felt about this doc because the voice seemed to be all over the place. I’m not sure what the doc was telling me about this story and it felt as if details changed throughout. I do not have a better understanding of what the truth was in this case or to what level these people were guilty or innocent. Maybe that is the idea with the doc… that truth may be elusive and that you may never know for sure what is happening in the heart of a family.

There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (2011)

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January 28

Today’ documentary for the Genre-ary was a doc from HBO MAX called There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane.

According to IMDB, this documentary looked at… “The accident made national headlines: a suburban mother drove the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in New York and crashed head-on into an SUV, killing herself and seven others. In the aftermath, Diane Schuler was portrayed as a reckless drunk and a mother who cracked. But was she the monster the public made her out to be…or the perfect wife and mother that many say she was? Investigating the case six months after the accident, this documentary searches for answers to a mysterious and senseless tragedy.”

This was an interesting documentary. The story of Diane Schuler was an odd one. It looked as if she had just been drunk and high and wound up in a tragic accident that killed eight people. Moat of the doc featured Diane’s husband, family and friends and their POV of the situation. They were all certain that there was no way that Diane could be a drunk who drove her car into another vehicle. They were all very determined that this was not possible.

The problem was that all of the evidence of the case pointed to Diane Schuler was drunk and high at the time of the accident. The family of Diane did not provide any possible evidence outside of their denials.

Through the entire documentary, it felt as if some piece of information was missing. The motivation of Diane is questionable. I do not understand why she may have been drinking vodka and smoking marijuana. There was a point of contention about a possible tooth that abscessed, but that did not feel like the overall answer.

There is also another weird event involving an investigator hired by the family who had Diane’s specimens retested, but never got back in touch with the family. This was a truly bizarre aspect of the story. Near the end, Diane’s sister spoke with the investigator who said that he had sent the results and that they were the same as the original one. This was strange.

Some of the images of the accident was just tough to watch. There was a warning at the beginning of the film, but they still caught me off guard.

There seems to be something missing in this story, and sadly, we will never know what it was. Such a tragedy that cost the lives of several humans, including four children.

Last Breath (2019)

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January 27

As we enter the final five days of January, we are coming down to the last documentaries in the Genre-ary. The doc I selected for tonight was a harrowing tale of survival under the most unlikely of circumstances. I watched the doc called Last Breath on Netflix.

This doc was released in 2019, and there is actually a big budget movie set to release at the end of February starring Woody Harrelson about this very story.

According to IMDB, “A deep sea diver is stranded on the seabed with 5 minutes of oxygen and no hope of rescue. With access to amazing archive this is the story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.“

Diver Chris Lemons had his umbilical cable severed during a saturation dive and he was stranded around 100 meters beneath the sea. Somehow, Chris was able to survive for around 30 minutes on the five minutes of oxygen that he had.

The doc is an absolutely stunning accomplishment as it uses real footage from the moment, collected from body cameras and actual radio audio to tell this story. It spoke with the other crew members who were desperate to find Chris before it was too late, but who were fearful that it was already past time.

It was amazing to see these images of Chris atop the structure in the unlikely position among the blackness of the sea. It was powerful watching them pull Chris into the vessel and giving him two deep breaths. They did not believe that they were going to be able to save Chris, and yet they never gave up in their attempt.

This documentary has made me more interested in the movie coming in February, where I had limited interest before.

Football

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Football

Coach screamed “go go  subs” . It was at the NFL Chiefs camp I was drafted and the 5 pick in the draft. I ran in and I was a QB, “Down set hiiik” I snapped the ball one of the D line break thru i scrambled to the right side of the field them i let it go it went flying

 Zip 

I flew past everybody straight to Jim Hardy (one of our WRs). But at the last second, an interception that was my first day at the training camp, my first snap. I screamed in rage.

That night when I was about to leave the camp when the coach called me over I knew I was done for. He said “follow me we need to talk…” 

When I arrived at the office he “said take  a seat”. 

“Ok I know you are trying your best but we might have to cut you if you don’t lock in.”

 I sat there for a minute or two before I broke the silence. 

“ I really am trying to do my best but I…”

 ” DON’T CARE” said the coach “ YOU WILL GET CUT, FIGURE IT OUT.” he told me. I went into my car and drove out.

When I was driving home I was muttering to myself the whole time about how stuipd that

  dream of mine was. To be in the NFL. I saw a gas station and decided to stop and get a snack and some gas. When I went in, I heard a lot of screams. I walked in and I said “What’s wrong?” That’s when I saw him, a short guy, 5 foot 6, mask, with a glock. I started panicking. 

He said, “Go to the ground with your hands behind your back.” 

 I went to the ground. 

He said, “Give me your money.” 

I said “no,”

 He pointed the gun at me as I rolled out of the way. He fired again and missed his shot. I jumped up on him and he fell to the ground. I grabbed his gun and threw it to the side. Just as the cops came in and arrested the guy, they said thank you but next time not do that again. 

I got into my car and drove home. I wasn’t really thinking about the chance of being cut off the Chiefs roster. I was just thinking about how I almost died. I was so busy thinking about that that I zoned out and wasn’t paying attention to the road. “BOOM” everything went black.

I woke up in the hospital and I screamed, “What is going on?” 

The nurse came over and said, “You were hit by a deer while on the road.”

 “Ok, I need to go to football practice. How long has it been?” 

“About that… you might want to talk to your coach.”

 I thought to myself, “Oh no, I got cut, didn’t I? Then the coach walked in with a worried look. 

He said, “Tim we got a problem” 

“What” I said.

 “Well it’s been 5 months.” 

“ FIVE MONTHS!” I screamed. I looked outside and I saw it was fall outside. 

“And even worse” said the coach.

 “What could be possibly worse?”

 “Jones has been injured”

 “ Oh crap”

 “Yep,” said the coach, “we need you to play and you’ve been in a coma for 5 months.”

The next day I went to practice and everybody was depressed. I knew what they were thinking, “We are cooked.” 

When the coach said “starters,” he didn’t sound happy. I went out very nervously. I snapped the ball. I was very rusty and I almost dropped it. I scrambled down to the 10 yard line for a first down. This was my chance to prove myself. Down, set, “hike” . I snapped the ball and I saw an opening. I let it fly, straight dot to his chest  

“ Touchdown,” said the coach, smiling. 

My other teammates were shocked alright Everybody said the coach practice is over we all went home the next day was the first game.

I woke up early in the morning and drove to  practice. We warmed up and drove to the Bronco stadium. We didn’t win since 2025 with Patrick Mahomes now in 2100 we had not been in a Super Bowl since then so when we arrived we warmed up then the announcer said let the game begin and I went on the field and said “hiiik”                 

The X-Files S7 E19, E20, E21, E22

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Spoilers

“Hollywood A.D.”

“Fight Club”

“Je Souhaite”

“Requiem”

And with this, season 7 of The X-Files comes to a close. Perhaps one of the most inconsistent seasons of the show, with some real highs and some real lows.

The first three episodes on the list were all based in humor. One that really worked well, one that was so-so and one that was maybe the worst episode of the series.

“Hollywood A.D.” was ridiculous in all the best ways. Mulder and Scully being followed by a movie producer, who was full of puns and jokes, and a movie with Gary Shandling and Tea Leoni. This was written and directed by David Duchovny and had enough wink-winks to make the episode work.

“Je Souhaite” was the middle ground episode as it featured a Genie granting wishes. Honestly I got a lot of Twilight Zone vibes from this episode, which ended like the Disney movie Aladdin did. I found this silly too, but the humor worked more than it did not.

“Fight Club,” on the other hand, is one of the worst episodes I have ever seen of the X-Files, rivaling “First Person Shooter”. Kathy Griffin played two characters who were doppelgangers of each other and in love with a man who also had a doppelganger. Oh, and pro wrestler Rob Van Dam appeared. This was one where the humor did not work and the story was so stupid and incoherent that it seemed as if everyone was just going through the motions.

Then in “Requiem,” the season ended with the show going back to its roots, quite literally, as the show returned to the Oregon town that appeared in season one episode one. It also returned actors who had appeared in that episode. Returning as well was Smoking Man, Krychek, and Marita Covarrubias and Krychek apparently murdered a wheelchair-bound Smoking Man by pushing him down the stairs. It sure looked like he was dead this time, but I know he did not die here. Besides, it would not have been satisfying having Krychek be the one to knock off the a-hole.

Mulder then gets abducted by aliens in full view of Skinner, setting up Mulder’s absence moving forward. Scully tells Skinner that she was pregnant, even though she does not understand how (I mean, she knows how… but she was supposed to have been unable to become pregnant after her abduction).

“Requiem” set up the series with some real cliffhangers that allowed the series to continue into the 8th season. Many times during the 7th season, it really felt like it was going to be the final season and that the creative juices were gone. Part of that may have been the end of the conspiracy and wrapping things up, like Samantha Mulder’s disappearance, as they did.

Flight Risk

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Mel Gibson has fallen quite a bit since Hacksaw Ridge almost ten years ago.

His new directorial work, Flight Risk, is a silly, 90’s style action movie that produced as many eye rolls as it did action moments. I have to say though that I did not hate this movie. It was just not very good.

According to IMDB, “In this high-stakes suspense thriller, Academy Award® nominee Mark Wahlberg plays a pilot transporting an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace) to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.“

Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace were both decent in their roles and they both made me care about their characters, even though they both did really stupid things that if you would take five seconds to think about, you would do something different.

Mark Wahlberg is a long way from an Academy Award nominee in this role. He is so over the top that he was tough to watch.

Of course, we all knew what the situation was, because this film gave it to us in the trailers. Wahlberg was a hitman trying to kill Topher Grace, who was turning state’s evidence.

There was a leak storyline that was probably the dumbest of the storylines. When it was just the three of them in the airplane, the movie was much better. Dockery’s character, Madolyn, was so mistrusting of everyone, except one that I would have started to doubt immediately.

There were some funny moments, mostly from Topher Grace, but nothing that was going to make this a better movie. It was not a satire or a parody. It was just trying to be a dumb action movie. With that as a goal, the film is a success.

I did not hate myself for watching this, but I would not recommend anyone go out to the theater to see Flight Risk. You see most of the movie in the trailer anyway. However, this would not be the worst film on a lazy weekend on streaming.

2.8 stars

Misha and the Wolves (2021)

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January 26

My favorite type of documentary is the ones that have a story that it tells you that is totally unbelievable, but it is true. Previous docs that I loved in this manner included Tickled, The Imposter, Three Identical Strangers, and The Jinx. There is a new doc that shocks you with its twists and turns among this harrowing story of a young girl surviving the Holocaust by living with the wolves.

According to IMDB, “Misha and the Wolves is the dramatic tale of a woman whose holocaust memoir took the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher – who turned detective – revealed an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.“

I don’t want to spoil much of this tale, so all I will say is that the story told by Misha in her memoir, which became a huge selling book, is compelling enough, and what happened following its release is even more so.

This doc is well told, with some excellent editing and design. It grabs you with the story immediately and then expertly weaves through what remains for the run time.

There are some questions left at the end which made me want to know more, but the doc is truly surprising.

Misha and the Wolves is available to stream on Netflix.