[I review the Academy Award winning "All The Empty Rooms" as well as the true crime documentary "Murder in Monaco" and "Naked Ambition," the story of pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager]
All the Empty Rooms (2025)
News essayist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp memorialize the untouched bedrooms of children lost to school shootings.
Steve Hartman is an American broadcast journalist best known for his coverage of human interest stories for CBS News. He is often called in for a "feel good" moment to end the broadcast, especially after bad events so that viewers can feel positive about the world again.
However, with the ever increasing number of school shootings and usually sensationalized news about the shooter, Hartman felt we were becoming numb to it all. Hartman decided his feel good optimism was no longer enough. He came up with the idea to highlight the dead children instead of the shooter, so he and photographer Lou Bopp embarked upon a trip across the country memorializing the bedrooms of children lost to school shootings. He has been doing this for seven years and this film, directed and produced by Joshua Seftel, highlights the last four children and their bedrooms on this journey of his, and the film won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short at this year's Academy Awards.
The children featured in the film are:
- Gracie Anne Muehlberger, 15, also a victim at Saugus High School
The parents of these children had left the rooms exactly as they were when the children last left for school feeling that as long as the room exists, so do they in a way. There is a tube of toothpaste with the cap left off; hair ties on the knob of the bedroom door; dirty clothes in a basket. Gracie Anne Muehlberger's parents shared that she put on shows for them in her room. Her dad read a letter she wrote to her future self when she started high school. He could barely get through it. I couldn't either. Videos and recordings of the children are shared as they lived their lives without a care in the world.
Hartman and Bopp are also featured with their own children. Bopp photographs his daughter every year at the beginning of a new school year and the film ends with Hartman's daughter painting his nails.
I became teary almost immediately upon starting to watch this 34 minute film that attempts to capture the devastation of these childrens' parents. And it is devastating to see those untouched rooms just as those children left them before leaving for school the very last time, but it is important to see this film, to honor these children and their brief lives, so that we don't accept these shootings as a regular part of our lives. There is not preaching here. Not much needs to be said. The pictures tell it all.
The film ends with the names of every child killed in school shootings since Columbine. Too many names.
Rosy the Reviewer says...a reminder to hug and say "I love you" to your children, because "these could be your children." (Netflix).
Naked Ambition (2023)
Bunny Yeager might just be the most-famous photographer you have never heard of! This documentary biopic attempts to change that.
Bunny Yeager had a stellar career - first as a model, then a photographer of models but not just any models - we are talking pin-ups, cheesecake, nudity. Yeager shot the very first "Playboy" centerfold (January 1955) as well as that famous photo of Ursula Andress in her bikini for the James Bond movie, "Dr. No." She single-handedly popularized the bikini and was an early adopter of "selfies (she was a model herself after all)." Yeager also went on to discover Bettie Page as well as publishing 20 books.
So why is it that someone so prolific and famous in the photographic industry is unheard of today?
Well, I guess it's not a shock that a woman in a male dominated industry would be ignored. And Yeager was ambitious, something that was taboo for a woman back in the day. But writer/director Dennis Scholl and fellow director, Kareem Tabsch, want to right that wrong with this documentary and make sure everyone remembers Bunny Yeager.
Bunny Yeager began her career as a model, but as she became a wife and mother, she decided to step away from modeling and pursue photography instead as a way to earn money with a more flexible schedule. She was dubbed "The World's Most Beautiful Photographer." She was noted for her high standards, her interesting choices of location and she could work fast. She was able to highlight the personalities of her subjects, probably because she was working woman to woman. She had a successful career as a photographer, but it was her collaboration with Bettie Page and "Playboy" that brought both her and Page success and changed both of their lives. Page had just been considered a fetish model until Yeager elevated her. But then along came porn and feminism and pin-ups fell out of fashion and things went downhill for Yeager, forcing her to regroup.
At only 73 minutes, the film does a good job of covering Yeager's career and showcasing her work (hundreds of photos are displayed as well as home videos), but I wish the film had gone deeper into her motivations and what she had to go through as a woman photographer specializing in pinups and nudes, having to deal with the obscenity laws of the time, the ensuing popularity of porn and the negative view feminism had for pin-up photography.
But the conversations with Yeager's daughters, Lisa Irwin and Cherilu Duval, did yield some insight into Yeager's personal life. Daughter Cherilu was particularly embarrassed by her mother's photographic choices while Lisa felt her mother empowered other women. One can't help but wonder how her daughters' differing opinions of her affected her relationships with them.
"Talking heads," which included Dita Von Teese, Hugh Hefner, photographer Bruce Weber and Larry King and others weigh in, as well as Bettie Page herself via a recording, whose voice strangely did not match her photos, but probably that was the voice of a very old Bettie Page.
The film does a good job of highlighting Yeager's achievements as a pin-up girl photographer and as the first woman photographer for "Playboy." She captured the times. I just wish it had gone deeper into what it must have been like for her to do this work in a "man's world" in the rather prudish time of the 1950's.
Rosy the Reviewer says...Yeager was ambitious and portrayed the power of female sexuality in her photographs, and this is a fitting tribute to a woman who was an ironic feminist. It was an amazing life that I am surprised has not been made into a dramatic biopic. Maybe now it will. (Netflix)
Murder in Monaco (2025)
An examination of the mysterious murder of billionaire Edmond Safra in Monaco in 1999.
Billionaire Edmond Safra died along with one of his nurses in 1999 in a fire in his Monaco penthouse. Authorities were initially led to believe by his other nurse, Ted Maher, that the 67-year-old billionaire was the victim of a bungled burglary, but as this documentary plays out, the circumstances surrounding Safra's death and the aftermath just got "stranger and stranger."
Edmond Safra, one of the richest men in the world, was a Lebanese-Brazilian banker living in a 10,000 square foot penthouse in Monaco with panic buttons, bullet-proof windows and a safe room. He had Parkinson's Disease and was on medications that made him paranoid. He had full-time nursing care and was surrounded by bodyguards. His death caused a media storm giving way to various conspiracy theories about who was responsible. Safra was found dead of affixiation in his safe room along with his nurse, Vivian Torrente. His other nurse, Ted Maher, escaped with stab wounds and said the assassins got in and attacked them. But how did intruders get into an apartment that appeared inpenatrable?
The suspicious circumstances surrounding Safra's death created an international media storm giving way to various conspiracy theories about who was really responsible. Was it Russian mobsters? Safra conducted business with Russian oligarchs until he informed the FBI that they were trying to launder money through American banks. Or was it his wife, Lily, a woman with some rich dead husbands in her past who yearned to be a famous socialite and who stood to inherit billions? Or was it Maher himself, the nurse who was accused of starting the fire to set the stage to rescue Safra and become a hero? And did Safra die because the authorities took too long to put out the fire and was there a cover-up, using Maher as a scapegoat? Monaco relies on its reputation as a safe and secure haven for the very rich, so when someone is murdered there, not good. So many questions in this crazy murder mystery.
And then things get really crazy.
Written by Sam Hobkinson and directed by Hodges Usry, this true-crime documentary explores the various conspiracies surrounding Safra's death. It's a murder mystery with a trial and a prison escape and some judicial corruption and much more. The film features interviews with reporters, Safra's banking associates, lawyers, cell mates and exclusive interviews with Maher, whose life was a whole crazy story on its own. He eventually went on trial for Safra's death and it was the O.J. Trial of Europe. But the story doesn't end there.
The moral of this story? Sometimes it's not that much fun being a billionaire.
Rosy the Reviewer says...if you like true crime about the rich and famous with all kinds of real life twists and turns, this is for you. (Netflix)
See You Next Time!
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