Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father.

"Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is the most shattering documentary since Capturing the Friedmans," writes Marshall Fine. "Kuenne takes an intensely personal topic and pulls the audience in, until they are as emotionally invested as he is in the story he is telling."

"For sheer technical prowess alone, Dear Zachary is one of the best works of sheer film editing since Oliver Stone seemingly broke the mold in JFK," writes Erik Childress at Hollywood Bitchslap. "Like that film, Dear Zachary unfolds like a masterful thriller that still nevertheless loses respect for the wake its tragedies have left.... Dear Zachary is one of the best documentaries you will see and it may actually be the best that I've ever seen."

Updated.

"[I]t's extraordinary to finally see a film worthy of comparison to Errol Morris's seminal The Thin Blue Line arriving two decades later," writes Martin Tsai in the Voice. "[I]t easily trumps any thriller Hollywood has to offer this year."

"I can safely say that in all my years of cinematic escapism, this is the first time a movie has made me want to commit an act of murder," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm not."

"Not merely a tribute to a by-all-accounts great guy, the epistolary Dear Zachary doubles as an engaging news piece; it triples as a cutting critique of the Canadian justice system’s bail procedures, extradition laws and child-custody practices," writes Henry Stewart in the L Magazine. "In an era surfeited with cheaply produced DV-and-iMovie documentaries, Dear Zachary stands out as the work of a true filmmaker."

"At once a personal documentary about the murder of his best friend and a polemical rant against the Canadian justice system for coddling a dangerous sociopath, it wants to provoke outrage," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

"Though the movie has been shown at Slamdance in Utah and other festivals in the US, the target audience for Dear Zachary, says Kuenne, is the Canadian voting public, which he hopes will change the bail and extradition laws in Canada after seeing the movie," writes Susan King in the Los Angeles Times.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Kuenne "about his emotional journey while making the film, the importance of laughter, and how his film saved a 15-year-old's life."

At the SpoutBlog, Brandon Harris talks with Kuenne about his "Media Diet."

Noah Forrest talks with Kuenne for Movie City News.

And indieWIRE interviews Kuenne, too.

Updates: "The common refrain when describing Kurt Kuenne's documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is that you shouldn't - that the shocking events that occur over the course of the film should blindside audiences as much as they blindside the filmmaker and his subjects." Alison Willmore at IFC: "But you wouldn't be watching Dear Zachary if it were merely the film Kuenne first set out to make."

"Personal documentaries rarely operate under the aesthetic and narrative rules of horror films, incorporating shocking Shyamalan-esque twist endings, but Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father does, so it's fitting that Oscilloscope are beginning its roll out on Halloween," writes Karina Longworth. "In its title and initial structure, Dear Zachary sets up a foundation which it knows it's going to pull out from under us, and that makes it every bit as emotionally manipulative as a studio film."

New York's David Edelstein is pretty rattled. If you're touchy about spoilers, he's got a few right up front, not only for Dear Zachary but for other films as well. You could, though, slip in around the middle, leading to: "A scant five minutes after the film ended, I emailed Kuenne: 'What at present is the status of Justice Gale Welsh? Has she commented on the case? If there is someone still alive who ought to be "brought to justice" on the occasion of the film's release, it is her.' I considered writing a letter ('Dear Canada...'), then decided to save my fury for this review. Dr Doucette got his comeuppance, but Welsh endures. I want her disbarred, disgraced. I want her... There, you see? This is the immensity of the feelings this movie evokes, lynch-mob feelings, because there is no end to the grief, no way of filling the hole."

Posted by dwhudson at October 31, 2008 10:15 AM