This week, a little October beauty and the beast, and the darkness in between. A terrific new music doc gets a limited theatrical release. A wicked new series lands on Netflix, and a misguided tobacco company is forced to pay a 3 billion dollar settlement.
We’ll start there with…
Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul
BIG VAPE tells the high-drama, rags-to-riches story of the controversial electronic cigarette company Juul which transformed from a scrappy Silicon Valley tech start-up run by two idealistic Stanford graduate students intent on making the world a better place into a multi-billion-dollar tobacco company that sparked an epidemic of youth addiction and lung disease.
You can see Big Vape on Netflix
Joan Baez I Am A Noise
In this biography that opens with her farewell tour, Joan Baez takes stock in an unsparing fashion, confronting often painful memories and opening up about her history with mental illness, her family, drugs, aging and questions of guilt and forgiveness. For the first time on record, she speaks to her relationship with Bob Dylan, how she used her fame to launch his career, and the pain of their later estrangement. The film interweaves diary entries and Baez’s own illustrations with extensive conversations and backstage moments from the tour.
See Joan Baez I Am A Noise in theaters.
And finally, with Halloween around the corner, we turn to a darker entry with The Fall of the House of Usher, a series serving up contempt for the wealthy, and playful disgust for their self-absorption
The Fall of the House of Usher
She's coming for them all. In this wicked series from Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) and based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.
You can see The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix.
And that’s a wrap for the Cause Cinema Spotlight. Have a great weekend.
Vaping, Singing & Haunting