Inglorious Baguettes

Food: While in Rockaway Beach, Queens this weekend, I went with a group of friends to Bungalow Bar for post-beach seafood. My friend and I each got clam chowder and then split the Lobster Boil. The table also shared a large order of the East Coast oysters – which honestly might have been some of the best oysters I have ever had. The place overlooks the New York City skyline and it’s the perfect place to enjoy the sunset.

Film: Everyone is talking about the new documentary that was released on Netflix about aliens, specifically about Bob Lazar, a man who worked in a sector near the infamous Area 51 called S4 – where he claims to have been exposed to technology that we have not created yet, which belonged to aliens. He strongly believes – and has for the majority of his life – that the government is suppressing knowledge of this alien technology and has been trying to quiet him ever since he began exposing these findings in the 1980’s.

Bob Lazar is an eccentric, seemingly genuine physicist with a compelling story. Unfortunately, this is quite simply the most poorly made documentary I have ever seen in my life. The director takes a “needs more me” approach to film-making, and includes a large amount of footage of him sitting by himself in his apartment talking on the phone, for no real reason and it comes across amateur and narcissistic. Further, the entire film is spliced with bizarre interludes of Mickey Rourke speaking in prose accompanied by what can only be described as very cheesy “alien” footage that looks like it is out of a 90’s video game. Not only is it is cringe-worthy and embarrassing, but it makes it incredibly difficult to follow the story line that is supposed to lie at the center of this film – that being Bob Lazar’s life story.

It is unclear whether or not the filmmaker had an angle with making this project – whether he was trying to emphasize Lazar’s credibility or “cross him off the list” and label him as full of shit. The bottom line is that this film is absolutely all over the place. If you want to watch Jeremy Corbell’s documentary, just to be able to talk about it in the water cooler conversations at work, or follow the explosion of meme’s that came out following it’s Netflix release, do it. But if you want to actually understand Bob Lazar’s story in a clear, chronological way, watch the interview he does on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast – because that is much better.