Alex & Ali (2014) Reviews

• jaronb94 - your totally clueless...

  troymoser-890022018-02-19

  Everyone involved knew the risks... Ali was told not to bring anything of the sorts. He got in trouble due to the Visa to the US he was carrying. He never told them that. He wasnt honest with Alex or the director. If you think the director set out to ruin everything for his uncle and his uncle's longtime companion for his precious film; then you and I obviously watched a different documentary! Obviously you should watch it again, and watch all of it. The heartwarming "what should have been" is what he was after. He wanted his uncle happy. Sadly things happen in life that don't always go the way we hope. So should he have scraped the project? Hell NO! I found his uncle to take a lot of really awful comments from Ali through out the trip but still was willing to do anything for this stubborn man. It's sad anyone would rather go through what he did by going back rather than just admitting who you really are... Freaking tragic...

• Not the documentary he set out to make

  Red-1252014-10-25

  Director and writer Malachi Leopold set out to film an extraordinary story--the reunion of two men who had been in love for 45 years. Alex was a young U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Iran, and Ali was a young Iranian athlete. The men fell in love, and Alex stayed in Iran until the revolution forced him to go home. The documentary begins 35 years after Alex left Iran. The men had kept in touch, and they decided that it would be possible--and safe--to reunite in Turkey. That should have been the documentary. Do the men still love each other? Do they find each other physically attractive? What about the fact that Alex is HIV positive? Unfortunately, Ali came on the trip carrying documents that were confiscated by the Iranian authorities at the airport. He was allowed to travel to Turkey, but he faced possible prison and torture if he returned to Iran. What were his options, and which option would he choose? That's the documentary that director Leopold ended up making. It's fascinating if you can step back from it. However, it's not a narrative film, so you can't step back. The movie follows the story as it played out, and we have no choice but to go along. This is a tough, honest film. Only go to see it if you're ready for a hard, difficult, ride. We saw Alex & Ali as part of the truly wonderful ImageOut, the Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It will work well on DVD.

• Very disturbing, but not in the way intended

  jaronb942015-06-21

  Watching this at a film festival, I was reminded of the Louis Bloom character in Nightcrawler, who not only benefits from filming intrusive scenes of violence and misery, he actually creates the very horrors he films and then blithely peddles the result as reality 'filmmaking'. In a nutshell, Alex & Ali chronicles the terrible, true consequences of a 'feel good' reality show effort gone horribly wrong. The filmmaker facilitates his uncle, unwell after years with HIV, to encourage the defection from Iran of the uncle's onetime lover, apparently in the naive hope that, after 35 years, the pair of 'soulmates' would be reunited and that Ali would be a companion for the Alex in his final years. Essentially, the director exploits not only his uncle by fueling this dangerous and naive enterprise, he puts into motion events that will cause Ali to be tortured by Iranian authorities, leaving his life destroyed. To his credit, the uncle admits his shame at pursuing this fool's errand, but disturbingly, the director of this piece reveals no ethical reservations in completing the film and shopping it to film festivals. He even creates 'suspense' in the telling of this obscene tale, creating entertainment for the viewer based on the very misery he put in motion. I sat aghast at the screening, watching the filmmaker discuss the events as if he had no culpability in creating them. This film is not 'hard,' as he blithely described it, it is disgusting. Whether the filmmaker is a cynic or merely a fool, I'm not sure. And I don't know which is worse. Alex & Ali represents a nadir of 'reality' filmmaking, competing with 'To Catch a Predator' in presenting true misery as entertainment or, worse, as legitimate documentary filmmaking. Avoid it unless you want to feel complicit in the events this 'filmmaker' sets into motion.