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Boston Globe
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Excellence defines this year's Oscar-nominated documentary shorts
'Instruments of a Beating Heart' The New York Times Op-Docs presents this Japanese-language documentary about first-graders readying for a performance of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.' Though they are only performing for their graduation ceremony, the musicians are put through their paces as if they were playing Carnegie Hall. Their conductor/music teacher is strict but fair; he expects every member of his orchestra to practice every day. In the shortest of the five nominees, director Ema Ryan Yamazaki follows Ayame, a student who auditions for the drum part but ends up playing the cymbal. Her struggles to master her part are moving and sweet. This is definitely the crowd-pleaser in the bunch, but I think it will be overshadowed by another music-based entry. In Japanese with subtitles (★★★) Advertisement A still from "I Am Ready, Warden." ShortsTV 'I Am Ready, Warden' Smriti Mundhra's documentary was an entry in the During his three stays of execution, Ramirez was on death row 14 years, and in solitary for 23 hours a day. The film opens after every other legal option has been exhausted, leading us to the day of Ramirez's execution. The title references the last words spoken by Ramirez before he was executed by the state. We hear from Ramirez through interviews and the footage taken of his last days. We also see Texas district attorney Mark Gonzalez attempting to retract his office's original death-penalty sentence on moral grounds. Ramirez's teenage son, Izzy, is also featured in a scene where he takes his father's last phone call. Advertisement Where 'I Am Ready, Warden' shines is in the moments it spends with Aaron Castro. It's hard for him — and by extension, the viewer — to take Ramirez's repentance with anything other than a huge grain of salt. After all, Ramirez fled to Mexico, started a new life, and was almost never captured. Castro is confused by his swiftly changing emotions, and his reaction to Ramirez's execution is the most powerful scene in the film. It's a haunting acknowledgment that closure was never fully achievable. (★★★½) A still from "Death by Numbers." ShortsTV 'Death by Numbers' 'I smile in the face of hate,' says Samantha Fuentes, the subject of the second death-penalty-based short. 'That is my revenge.' Fuentes is a survivor of the Parkland school shooting. Director Kim A. Snyder follows her as she readies to attend the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz. Using an AR-15, Cruz 'Death by Numbers' alternates between Fuentes talking onscreen and reading her diary entries on the soundtrack. These recitations are especially profound, as they give us insight into how she is coping with the situation. As if she is scratching him out of her diary, Cruz's face is covered with an X whenever he appears onscreen. The X is removed at a crucial moment near the end. Though there is some uplift here, the film still makes you angry that so little has been done regarding gun control. (★★★½) Advertisement A still from "Incident." ShortsTV 'Incident' This horrifying and infuriating documentary by Bill Morrison ('Dawson City: Frozen Time') was the hardest nominee to watch. For me, it was also the most important. In the first two minutes of the film, we silently witness the shooting death of Harith Augustus by Chicago police officers. Augustus, a beloved South Side barber, was carrying a licensed gun at the time. Within seconds, he was gunned down. When this incident occurred on July 14, 2018, tensions between police and civilians were high due to the upcoming trial involving the officer who shot Laquan McDonald. ( Morrison lets you decide whether Augustus's death was 'justified.' Using surveillance footage from a nearby camera and police bodycam footage, 'Incident' splits the screen into multiple segments as we watch these perspectives unfold. Editor Morrison does a superb job synchronizing all the footage obtained by producer Jamie Kalven through a Throughout the entire film, the brutalized body of Augustus appears onscreen, forcing you to observe it as chaos and confusion mount in each quadrant of footage. If the Academy is willing to go for the toughest sit, this will win. But I believe their votes will skew toward a feel-good story. (★★★★) 'The Only Girl in the Orchestra' With Netflix behind it, and Errol Morris producing, this is my pick for the Oscar. It's a very entertaining look at Orin O'Brien, the first woman to earn a permanent seat in the New York Philharmonic. Conductor Leonard Bernstein hired her to play the double bass in 1966; she remained there for 55 years. Advertisement Her niece, Molly O'Brien, is the film's director, and the filmmaker's famous auntie grumbles every time she tries to make her out to be 'more important than I am.' As a double-bass musician, O'Brien says she loved the joy of being a supporting player, not the main attraction. Playing with the rest of the orchestra is what she loved most. 'The Only Girl in the Orchestra' has fun looking at some of the sexist things written about O'Brien when she started. One I loved hearing O'Brien talk about her instrument and seeing her with her current students. This short is quite enjoyable and informative, which is why I think the Academy will go for it. (★★★½) Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
The Guardian
13-02-2025
- The Guardian
He wanted his father's killer to be executed. Until his wish was granted
For almost 20 years, Aaron Castro was certain about what had to happen. John Ramirez had to die. Ramirez's execution was the only way to ensure he got the justice he deserved. And it was the only way that Castro, the son of Ramirez's victim, could staunch his bleeding heart, soothe the constant anger boiling inside him, and achieve what had been eluding him for two decades: closure. Castro's desire to see this man die was seeded on the night of 14 July 2004, when he awoke to a cacophony of police sirens and blazing emergency lights outside his house. Sneaking outside, he saw a man's body sprawled out in a gathering pool of blood by the convenience store his family ran in Corpus Christi, Texas. He could tell the dead man was his father, Pablo Castro, 45, only because he recognized his hat lying a few feet away in the dirt. Ramirez, who was 19 at the time and high on drugs and alcohol, had attempted to rob the store. When Pablo Castro resisted, he had lashed out in a frenzy of violence. He stabbed his victim 29 times. The teenage murderer then ran off with all of $1.25 as his spoils. He fled to Mexico, where he remained on the run for four years, until he was arrested, escorted back to Texas, put on trial and sent to death row. Aaron Castro was 14 when his father was killed. For years, the dominant note in his life was anger. 'The majority of the time, I was angry,' he told the Guardian. 'My father was a man who minded his own business, worked hard, enjoyed family and being around his children. He was just trying to survive. Ramirez took him away from us, and for that he needed to be executed.' Castro often imagined how he would respond to news that Ramirez had been put to death: 'Boom. Justice. Closure. The dark cloud would clear.' That's how it would be, he was absolutely sure of it. It didn't quite pan out like that. Captured on camera in a stunning new documentary, I Am Ready, Warden, is a different emotional outcome. In 36 riveting minutes, the film takes the viewer on a white-knuckle ride that, despite the movie's compact length, reaches into the quick of the death penalty's most painful contradictions. Nominated in the best short documentary category at next month's Oscars, I Am Ready, Warden follows the agonizing final days and hours of Ramirez as he faces execution in Texas's Huntsville Unit. By choosing to explore a case in which guilt was never in doubt, the film-maker Smriti Mundhra set out to make a movie about US capital punishment with a difference. While many documentaries focus on the question of innocence, she wanted to weigh other searing ethical issues, such as the possibility of forgiveness, or the prospect of redemption. 'I wanted to examine the death penalty from the perspective of someone who actually had committed a crime,' she said. 'In the intervening years, in their time on death row, how does a person change? Are they the same person as the one who committed the crime?' Mundhra was drawn to the reporting of Keri Blakinger, an investigative journalist at the Los Angeles Times who at the time was writing powerfully about the death penalty for the Marshall Project. Blakinger was tracking the legal challenge brought by Ramirez, who since being condemned to death had found religion and was pressing the US supreme court to allow him to have his pastor lay a hand on him during his execution. Over several months, Mundhra and Blakinger followed the state of Texas as it dragged Ramirez slowly – but with callous cruelty – towards the death chamber. They tracked the inmate as he expressed deep and seemingly genuine remorse as he read out a letter he had written as part of his faith studies to his victim, Pablo Castro: 'I never meant to kill you, but because it happened, it's made me a better person. It's made some vast changes in who I am, you know. And it's a crappy way to say it, but it's the truth.' The movie conveys Ramirez's profound transformation, from the reckless and drug-addled teenager who committed a heinous act to a deeply contrite adult who laments the decisions he made as his younger self. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the state of Texas shows no such capacity for recalibration; it rigidly adheres to its original classification of Ramirez as a ruthless killer who has to be executed. Mundhra and crew are present, camera rolling, during the devastating moment when Ramirez says goodbye to the son he fathered when he was on the run, a few hours before his life is snuffed out. That would seem a hard sequence for any film to cap, but it is one of the surprises of the documentary that its biggest punch lies elsewhere – with Aaron Castro, the victim's son, and his two-decade-long search for 'closure'. The idea that killing a killer can bring closure to families is a cornerstone of capital punishment in the US. It is foundational as a justification for a system said to be reserved only for the 'worst of the worst'. You hear 'closure' invoked wherever major death penalty cases are discussed. Bill Barr, Donald Trump's first-term attorney general, cited it on behalf of victims' families when he set in train the orgy of federal executions that led to the deaths of 13 people – the most intense burst of judicial killings under any president in 120 years. Last week Trump's new attorney general, Pam Bondi, again referenced the concept when she issued a memo promising to revive the federal death penalty. She laid out a four-page paean to state killings, saying they achieved justice for victims 'and closure for their loved ones'. When the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was sentenced to death in 2015, the mayor of Boston said he hoped it would provide 'a small amount of closure'. Twenty years earlier, the then US attorney general, John Ashcroft, had welcomed the execution of Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, saying he hoped it would help survivors of the catastrophe 'meet their need to close this chapter in their lives'. Such words are easily spoken. What is more difficult to assess is whether they bear any truth. There is no simple answer, as the subject has been scarcely researched. One of the only studies into it related to the Oklahoma City bombing. Jody Madeira, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington's Maurer law school, followed 33 families out of the 168 victims of the bombing of a federal building. Her research produced the book Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure. Madeira engaged with the families right up to, and including, the moment when McVeigh was strapped to a gurney, his head held tight with straps, staring straight into a camera. The image of the mass murderer, looking out impassively as he was administered lethal drugs, was beamed on to a screen for the victims' families to witness. The outcome was complicated, varied, and not at all encapsulated in the glib pronouncement of 'closure' that Ashcroft had predicted. Madeira remembers one grieving woman who was shocked to find herself reflecting on McVeigh's humanity at the moment of his death. 'She ended up feeling that the procedure humanized him as well as ending his life,' Madeira said. 'And I remember her saying that she felt like she was falling into him, both in the sense of knowledge, and in the sense of falling into his eyes or his gaze.' Some of the families felt relieved that McVeigh had been silenced and could no longer trouble them with appearances on the TV. Others felt a profound disappointment. 'I would say that of those who expected a huge catharsis, all of them were disappointed,' Madeira said. 'They realized that a chapter had closed – the justice chapter – but that death couldn't close all chapters because it would never bring their loved one back.' Madeira's overall conclusion was that closure, as it is routinely advertised by death penalty advocates, 'is a lie. It tells grieving families that they need to wait for the execution to heal, and that's the most traumatic and damaging thing they could be told – because healing or forgiveness has to come from inside.' Aaron Castro was initially hesitant about participating in a film centered around his father's murderer. He was skeptical about the film-makers' intentions, and whether they would treat his dad's story with sensitivity and respect. 'In this age of social media, people just want a sad story to watch so they can get over whatever they're dealing with – I didn't want to be part of that,' he said. But what you don't get to see in the film is as critical as what you do see. Off camera, Mundhra spent weeks and months earning Castro's confidence through umpteen phone calls. 'We had hours and hours and hours of conversations before we ever got to the filming, before she ever paid me a visit,' Castro said. 'She showed me an authentic level of care, and that's the reason I chose to open up to her.' Mundhra concurred. 'It was only in the last days leading up to the execution, after many months of trust building between Aaron and me, that he agreed to participate.' Until the night before Ramirez's execution, Castro hung tight to his decades-long faith in closure. His father's killer was going to die, and then he could move on. But then, doubt crept into his mind. It was a Monday night, 3 October 2022. The execution was now less than 24 hours away. Amid the wait, a relative asked Castro how he would feel when Ramirez were finally gone. He'd answered that for himself already: he would feel happy that there was finally closure. But this time, something made Castro stop and reflect more intensely. How would he really – really – feel? How would someone else dying, another life lost, actually help him? The following evening, as the 6pm scheduled execution approached, Castro prepared himself at his kitchen table. He sat listening to a radio show that was being broadcast from outside the death chamber in Texas's Huntsville Unit. While some of his relatives did attend the execution as witnesses, Castro chose not to go. 'I decided that I didn't need to see it. There was no more need to be there.' Mundhra had set up a film camera in the kitchen directly in front of him. But the director had carefully constructed the room to be as unobtrusive as possible. 'As we got close to the six o'clock hour, I decided to hide from his line of sight,' she recalled. 'I crouched down low so he couldn't see me. I wanted him to have some semblance of privacy, and not feel he had to speak or rationalize anything for my sake.' Finally, the news came over the radio: 'If you are listening now, John Ramirez is dead in Huntsville.' It would be invidious to try to describe what happened next. As Blakinger noted, this was an occasion when words are utterly outgunned by the moving image. 'Everything that I've ever covered about the death penalty has been filtered through the lens of my words,' she said. 'And here we have the raw images of Aaron's physical reaction as he processes the execution, which as a reporter working with words I could never do.' What the camera captures needs to be seen. Suffice to say here, Castro sits wrapped in silence for what feels like an aeon, then he starts to cry. 'A life was lost today, taken too soon just as it was when I was 14,' he says. 'I'm not going to celebrate. This isn't a moment to celebrate.' It's been almost three years since the execution. Castro said that in that time, he has reflected on why he had such a dramatic change of heart at the moment of Ramirez's execution. It was partly the jolt of realizing the lethal injections had gone ahead, after so many judicial stops and starts. 'The shock that it actually happened was just mind-blowing,' he said. More than that, it was the visceral understanding that killing Ramirez would not, after all, heal him. 'The dark cloud didn't clear, it was still there. I didn't magically feel better.' Castro still has his ups and downs. There are days when he hates Ramirez just as passionately as he did that first night for what he did to his family. But from the second when the execution was announced, he has been clear that he wants to end what he calls the cycle of hate and anger embodied in the death penalty. 'It stops right here,' he said. And there's one other thing he's clear about: taking a life has not given him closure. His desire for his father's killer to be killed – that died along with Ramirez. 'No human being should be in charge of taking the life of another,' he said. 'That applies to both sides – the murderer, and the executioner. I don't know who it helps. I can just say, it didn't help me.' I Am Ready, Warden can be watched on Paramount+
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I Am Ready, Warden' Subject on 'Strange Feeling' of Celebrating an Oscar Nom for a Film About a Tragedy (Guest Column)
On Jan. 23rd, I woke up early in the morning, after just two hours of sleep following a night shift, to some life-changing news: I Am Ready, Warden, a documentary about my experience processing my father's murder and ultimately deciding to forgive his killer, was nominated for an Academy Award. Before long, my phone started ringing off the hook with calls from reporters wanting to know how I felt about going to the Oscars. The truth is, it's a strange feeling to celebrate something that was created out of your own personal tragedy. But everything about my experience participating in the documentary has been unexpected. More from The Hollywood Reporter Diane Warren Performs Medley of Her 16 Oscar-Nominated Songs, Including This Year's "The Journey" from 'The Six Triple Eight' (Video) 'A Complete Unknown' Costume Designer Arianne Phillips Created 8,000-Plus Looks for the Freewheelin' Style of Bob Dylan A $10M Budget Didn't Stop 'The Brutalist' Production Designer Judy Becker From Leaning Into the Film's Titular Architectural Style It started with a direct message on social media, where director Smriti Mundhra reached out to me to inform me that she was working on a film about John Henry Ramirez, the man who stabbed my father, Pablo Castro, 29 times in a Corpus Christi convenience store parking lot in 2004. I've received many messages like this before from journalists and filmmakers, and I usually ignore them. I wasn't interested in another propagandistic anti-death penalty project that would sanctify my father's killer while making me look like a bloodthirsty villain for wanting justice. But something compelled me to talk with Smriti, who would, in a few short months, become one of the most pivotal people in my initially declining Smriti's request to participate in her documentary, months later I ultimately agreed because she took the time to get to know me as a person before delving into my experience of living through my father's murder and its aftermath. I allowed cameras into the most emotionally vulnerable time of my life, as I anticipated the promise of justice through the execution of my father's killer, but ultimately had a change of heart that even I didn't see filming completed in late 2022, Smriti and I stayed in touch, but I didn't see the finished film until 18 months later. Smriti was with me as I watched, and stayed with me as I processed my feelings about the film in what must have felt like an eternity of silence. I was astonished by what the film captured: deep emotions on my face that I didn't even realize I was experiencing, and moments of silence that spoke volumes. The traumatic events of my life were handled with respect, and years of emotional damage repaired, through the unexpected power of documentary, such as allowing me to hear an apology from my father's did she achieve this without manipulating through editing, music or effects? She listened and allowed the process to unfold authentically, even within the documentary's short runtime. Smriti accomplished something I'm still processing: She organized my timeline of events, emotions, pain and thoughts in a way that made them clear and understandable, even to me. When trauma crowds your mind, it becomes impossible to analyze or explain how you feel, especially when asked how an event changed your life. She helped me see that I could be proud of my journey, and that all the years of speaking about my father's murder led me to someone who truly cared and shared our story with respect. Now when the phone rings and reporters ask how I feel about being part of a film that's nominated for an Oscar, I say with pride that whether you're a film director or a movie star, a convenience store manager like my father was, or a regular person just trying to process their feelings like me, being a part of telling stories that change the world is an honor and a gift. And when you know how fragile time is, and how tomorrow is never guaranteed, you never hesitate to celebrate today. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
Los Angeles Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Documentary shorts nominees home in on gun violence, celebrate female musicians
The five films nominated for the documentary short subject Oscar, in the words of the poet, hit you hard and soft. They delve into crimes and their aftermaths, celebrate a trailblazer and delicately touch on the hopes of one young schoolgirl. Though its central event is the sentencing of the Parkland school shooter, 'Death by Numbers' is really about how such stories don't end when the news coverage does. The film follows Parkland survivor Samantha Fuentes. Director Kim Snyder says that when Fuentes addressed the convicted killer, who had expressed white-supremacist sentiments, in open court before his sentencing, she spoke powerfully about the youth trauma that resulted from his violent attack. 'Her having the courage to face this guy and say what she needed went beyond guns. It's resonating for people because it's really about standing up to hate in all its forms.' A former Marine commits a brutal murder during a robbery. Years later, he's captured, convicted and sentenced to death. 'I Am Ready, Warden,' based on reporting by L.A. Times writer Keri Blakinger, chronicles the period leading up to the 2022 execution of John Henry Ramirez in Texas, as well as the impact of the crime on the victim's now-grown son, Aaron Castro. Director Smriti Mundhra was with Castro when the news broke that Ramirez, who had become a devout Christian while on death row, had been executed. 'It was one of the most emotionally charged things I've ever filmed,' says Mundhra. 'I think he was unprepared to hear those words. It was like a punch in the gut for me [as well] to hear those words. 'We really believed John had changed. And we really believed Aaron needed and deserved closure for all the years of trauma he had to carry. We had to hold those two truths in our heads and hearts at the same time.' In 2018, a Chicago barber was stopped by police who'd noticed he had a gun. He showed them his concealed-carry permit, but after a sudden altercation, he attempted to flee and was shot to death. Filmmaker Bill Morrison assembled a multiperspective view of the fatal 'Incident' through available video footage, including from police body cams. 'I think the power of the film is that it keeps delivering shocking revelations,' he says. For instance, though the victim's gun was never drawn, footage shows two officers discussing how 'he had the gun and pointed it right at' the officer who fired. The footage also shows the lack of attempts to revive the suspect lying motionless in the street. 'I thought that it was a stronger choice to use what was available to the public, rather than interview people or introduce other sources,' says Morrison. Ema Ryan Yamazaki's film doesn't tackle big sociopolitical issues, but it's just as compelling as documentaries that do. 'Instruments of a Beating Heart' delicately observes the ups and downs of a Japanese first-grader working to participate in a school performance of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.' Yamazaki spent a year at a school with a thousand kids. Her eventual subject, Ayame, 'was so special, and I was waiting, praying, hoping for something to unfold. She was always not quite with the program. Always a little bit late but also had a strength, guts. So, when she epically failed her first audition, then came back the next day to go for another instrument, I knew ….' Of a scene in which a teacher comforts Ayame when she's upset after being strictly corrected by the band director, Yamazaki recalls, 'She says, 'Don't worry; I'll be scolded with you.' Both my camera guy and myself, we just lost it.' ' Orin O'Brien was the first woman to be a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic, hired in 1966 by Leonard Bernstein himself. The accompanying ballyhoo struck a dissonant chord. The child of movie stars, she shunned the limelight, picking an instrument — the double bass — that blends within the ensemble. She resisted her documentarian niece's attempts to tell her story for years. 'It wasn't until she was thinking of retiring, during the pandemic in 2021, that she finally said yes,' says filmmaker Molly O'Brien. Her aunt agreed to participate only after 'I finally got her to trust I was going to make a film that was uplifting about the double bass — which is misunderstood; the underdog of the orchestra — uplifting classical music and uplifting women in the orchestra.'
Los Angeles Times
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LA Times Today: Oscar-nominated short documentary explores Texas death penalty case
A new short documentary explores the life of death-row prisoner John Henry Ramirez before he was executed in 2022. 'I Am Ready, Warden' is based on reporting from L.A. Times investigative reporter Keri Blakinger who followed Ramirez after he was sentenced for the murder of a convenience store clerk in Texas in on death row, Ramirez became a devout Christian seeking redemption and reconciliation for his crime. Keri Blakinger is also a producer on the film, which is nominated for an Academy Award.
