Chris Smith Movies

Randy looks for work in this dryly satirical pseudo-documentary look at mindless minimum wage jobs. Randy is as bland and soulless as the Midwestern town he lives in. As he tries one job after another, no insight into his background, thoughts or feelings is offered. There is only the numbing repetitiveness of the jobs. First he gets a job monitoring a machine at a plastics factory. He does nothing all day but watch it work. Unable to take the boredom, he next begins working as a clean-up person at a fast-food restaurant. That doesn't work and so he continues on with other jobs including taking inventory, cleaning motels, and becoming a telephone solicitor. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Director Chris Smith made this documentary about independent filmmaking which had its world premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. American Movie centers on a low-budget horror-film buff named Mark Borchardt, who grew up on such horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead. Now in his late twenties, he has decided to make the ultimate horror opus in the form of an indie feature entitled Northwestern, the scariest film ever made in his Wisconsin town. Filled with determination and passion (and very little else), this documentary follows Mark for a year and a half in the making of Northwestern. The audience sees Mark fending off creditors, including the IRS, and avoiding child support payments so he can make this direct-to-video flick. His efforts to round up cast and crew are disastrous, as there is nobody in his town who shares his knowledge and passion for moviemaking. Eventually he decides to star in his film and wears a dozen crew members' hats as writer, producer, director, cameraman, editor, and soundman. American Movie follows this man with a dream to his dying uncle's trailer park, where he raises three thousand dollars. Unable to make an entire feature for that price, he scraps the idea in exchange for completing one of his many abandoned short films, Coven, which also premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. The end is a world premiere as satisfying as getting accepted into Sundance. ~ Arthur Borman, Rovi

The old saying has it that a person's home is their castle, and this documentary takes a witty look at five unusual homes that have been designed to match the ideas and eccentricities of the people who own them. Ben Skora is a self-styled inventor who has tricked out his Illinois home with a variety of unusual gadgets, among them a nine-foot-tall robot. Linda Beach, an American actress who enjoyed a successful career in Japanese television, lives in a tree house in Hawaii that draws its power from a nearby waterfall. Bill Tragle's home is also close to the water, as the Louisiana alligator rancher shows off his luxurious houseboat. Ed Pedan and his wife Diana Pedan have made a home out of an abandoned underground complex in Kansas, built and then abandoned by the American military. And Bob Walker and Francis Mooney designed their home not with their own needs in mind, but those of their 11 pet cats. Directed by Chris Smith, who previously made the acclaimed documentaries American Job and American Movie, Home Movie had its premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Filmmakers Chris Smith and Sarah Price (the production team behind American Movie) direct the bizarre documentary The Yes Men. The film follows Andy and Mike, two regular guys who pretended to be corporate bigwigs in order to expose powerful corporate evil doing and have a bit of fun in the process. In 1999, they created a parody of the World Trade Organization website that mocked the harshest ideas about globalization. However humorous its intent, the website earned them invitations to important business trade meetings around the world. Companies and organizations actually thought they were the real WTO. Andy and Mike played along, impersonating despicable executives in order to publicly humiliate them. The guys refer to their pranks as "identity correction." The Yes Men premiered at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and was shown as part of a special screening at the2004 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Curious viewers are invited behind the scenes of the first-ever "World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant" in this documentary from filmmaker Jeremy Stanford. As the contestants compete to determine who will be the star of a lavish new Las Vegas Revue, intimate interviews reveal their compelling and sometimes heartbreaking experiences on the long road to embracing their unique sexual identities. Travel back to the hometowns of the various contestants as they recall both the joys and the hardships they have experienced on the long hard road to becoming true Las Vegas divas. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Michael Ruppert is an independent journalist who has made a minor career out of telling people news that most folks do not want to know. Ruppert, a former police officer, predicted the Wall Street debacle of 2008 several years before the fact, at a time when most analysts were still imagining infinite growth for the stock market and major investment banks. Since then, his vision of the world's future has grown only darker. As Ruppert sees it, civilization and the global economy has yet to wean itself off fossil fuels, and when the world's supply of oil finally runs out, it will lead to a global financial catastrophe that will leave no one unscathed. But while most of what Ruppert has to say bears the ring of truth, there's a small audience for his dire message -- the primary medium for his work is a self-published newsletter, and his most recent book has done so poorly in the marketplace that he faces eviction from his home. Is Ruppert right? And if he is, why doesn't anyone care? Filmmaker Chris Smith profiles Michael Ruppert and gives him a chance to explain his apocalyptic vision of the future at length in the documentary Collapse, which was an official selection at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Explore the life story of the Milwaukee serial killer whose ghoulish crimes shocked the entire world as filmmaker James Thompson takes viewers into the twisted world of Jeffrey Dahmer. In July of 1991, Dahmer was arrested after one of his intended victims made a daring escape. In the days and months that followed, newspapers around the world offered shocking accounts of necrophilia and cannibalism committed by a madman who had slowly succumbed to his darkest desires. When Dahmer's two-week trial came to an end, the court found him sane, and guilty on 15 counts of murder. In a state without capital punishment, his sentence was as stiff as many had expected: 15 life terms for a total of 957 years in prison. In this film, Thompson paints a vivid portrait of a monster in human skin as he contrasts depictions of Dahmer's everyday life against interviews with everyone from his former neighbor Pamela Bass to Police Detective Patrick Kennedy and Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen. He result is a documentary with the power to get under the skin of even the most jaded true crime fanatic. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi