SLOG

If Three Identical Strangers were a book, it would be the kind of page-turner that you devour in a single weekend. Unlike most paperback potboilers, though, Three Identical Strangers’ bizarre, emotional rollercoaster lingers with you—and not merely because it all actually happened. Tim Wardle’s documentary ends up taking viewers to a very dark place, and, even as it remains a compulsively watchable and digestible experience, it refuses to offer the kind of clear-cut resolution we demand from mysteries.

All of this makes Three Identical Strangers an easy film to recommend but a difficult one to summarize. Its twists and turns, from euphoric highs to shattering lows, are best experienced knowing as little as possible, so I should be careful. Or maybe I’m making too big a deal out of it: Many of the events in the movie are public knowledge—some were big news in their day—and there’s even another documentary, Lori Shinseki’s The Twinning Reaction, that covers much of the same ground (a chunk of it aired in March on 20/20).

The thinly fictionalized plot finds Seattle native Monihan reuniting with his old skateboard buddy Robert Boerleider, a Dutch-Surinamese wiseass from Amsterdam with a fierce yearning to see the real America. After borrowing an old Subaru in San Francisco, they embark on a not-that-well-planned-at-all odyssey to New York. The amiable shit-talking quickly piles high, along with discussions involving the toxic nature of hotel room comforters, the potentially world-uniting power of Old Navy, and the nutritional value of alien meat. (There’s also some goofy stuff.)

Please go see this movie so we can discuss the part we can't really discuss until everyone sees it.

In 10 years, we're liable to look back on Amazon Prime Day with a particle of nostalgia, if only because we'll have dim memories of a time before it was a mandatory working holiday—because Amazon will have replaced the federal government, and shopping will have replaced voting.

In the meantime, I heartily recommend that before you buy anything else, buy a ticket to Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You, a wholly unconventional, ingenious, absurdist, hilarious, disturbing, so-far-out-it-comes-all-the-way-back-around film about race and labor conditions in the USA of 2018.