Movie Review: You Can See Everything

If the story of Elizabeth Holmes and the company Theranos, which started when Holmes was only 19 years old in 2003, were introduced to the world as a work of fiction, no literary agency or production company would have bought it. The reason is that this entire 15-year story of one young woman with a revolutionary medical breakthrough that never worked, who then became the youngest female self-made billionaire, is so insane that it's too bizarre to make a movie or publish a novel.

Holmes and some scientists she hired into her company believed they could create a machine that could perform any number of complex blood tests using only one drop of blood, no longer needing to wait days for the results. If this was possible, then the two largest blood testing companies in the world, LabCorp (14 billion annual revenue) and Quest Diagnostics (11.4 billion annual revenue), would cease to exist, and medical science would advance by decades. Unfortunately, Holmes and her top employees lied to all of their investors, many of them very wealthy and famous people, tricking them into investing in a machine that never worked as they said it would. The most insane part of this crazy story is why these intelligent, wealthy people did not insist on seeing this machine work throughout the entire process of testing the drop of blood, verifying the results using the latest medical science, and then validating the results with the aid of the federal government.

At its peak, in 2015, Theranos was worth 9 billion dollars, and Elizabeth Holmes was worth 4.5 billion dollars, all based on lies that were maintained for years and cheated investors out of billions of dollars. One year later, the value of Theranos was worthless. Six years later, Holmes was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The new documentary, "You Can See Everything", is a film of an interview with director Nathan Fielder during the 34 days that Elizabeth Holmes spent in a small rented San Diego house with her boyfriend, Billy Evans, and her two children, prior to her going to prison for 11 years for her crimes as CEO of Theranos. Unbelievably, Holmes still believes that she did nothing wrong when she was questioned by Fielder about her many crimes. Holmes eyes are large and penetrating, and she seemed close to crying as she pleaded with Nathan Fielder to believe she was innocent. There was an insight into how Holmes mind works when she was shown the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First", and she had no understanding of why this famous routine was funny.

Holmes's fiancé, Billy Evans, also seemed about as insane as Elizabeth while talking with Fielder, with both Fielder and Holmes both still believing in Theranos and actually planning a second release of the company.

When Holmes was in prison, the actress who played her in the Hulu series "The Dropout", Amanda Seyfried, reprised her Emmy-winning 2022 role, playing Holmes in scenes of Fielder interviewing her in prison. In other scenes, Seyfried was interviewed as herself by Fielder, discussing the accusations about the accuracy of the Hulu series " The Dropout" and the many difficulties Seyfried had playing that part. This entire documentary had a very dark, slow, and unusual pace, and for that reason is very unique as a documentary. I also thought there was no reason why this movie needed to run almost 3 hours.

The reviews for this documentary are 99-100%, with some critics writing that this movie could win the Oscar for Best Picture. Due to some of the slow and boring parts and the too-long running time, I give this movie a 90% rating and a very strong recommendation.

Netflix Movie Review: Animals

In August of 2025, Spike Lee released "Highest 2 Lowest", his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington. The movie is about a wealthy music executive, played by Denzel Washington, who has his son kidnapped, only to find out later that the kidnappers took the son of his best friend by mistake. The moral question follows: will Danzel's character still give the kidnappers millions of dollars even though the son they kidnapped is not his child?

Surprisingly, the new Ben Affleck Netflix film, "Animals", has just about the exact same premise as Highest 2 Lowest. So similar that Ben Affleck delayed the production of his film to avoid the obvious comparisons between the two. It is hard to understand why Affleck, one of the three screenwriters, did not make a major rewrite to avoid what could become a copyright infringement lawsuit, given how alarmingly similar these movies are.

The two main characters, Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) and David King (Denzel Washington), are both wealthy and having money problems due to debt at the time of the kidnapping. Mark Kimball is running for mayor of Los Angeles, and David King is a well-known music mogul. One main difference is that Kimball hires an expensive kidnapping expert, Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who charges 20% of the ransom to try to solve the kidnapping, with options that include even killing the kidnappers. Kerry Washington plays Kimball's wife, Abigail Kimball, and has acting scenes with Affleck that were highly emotional and well performed throughout. There are other well-played scenes with Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson, with large contrasts between a distraught Affleck and an always very calm Anderson.

The ending was well done with original ideas, and a final conclusion that many will question based on several lies that were told to the police to avoid political damage to Kimball's mayoral campaign.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36% is too low, as this is not a bad movie, aside from the possible plagiarism issues. I rank this movie as a passable 70%, mainly due to the acting of Affleck, Anderson, and Washington.

Movie Review: The Social Reckoning

The Social Network" (2010) was one of Aaron Sorkin's best screenplays. Along with other Sorkin screenplays that include a much larger volume of dialogue than an average screenplay, "A Few Good Men" (1992) and "Molly's Game" (2017), The Social Network was about the unlikely rise of Mark Zuckerberg from a Harvard student to creating the largest Social Network in the world with Facebook. Facebook is now known as Meta and has one of the largest market caps (currently 1.83 trillion). Throughout most of this film, Zuckerberg was never depicted in a very positive light, which is now even truer with his new movie "The Social Reckoning", which Sorkin wrote and directed.

We all know going into any Sorkin movie that he is more of a "tell rather than show" screenwriter. Almost all of Sorkin's screenplays are much longer than standard, with A Few Good Men at 140 pages, Molly's Game at 160 pages, and The Social Network at 178 pages. This is also true with his latest screenplay, which is a sequel to The Social Network and bears no resemblance to the original movie. This film contains a large series of unexpected ideas that I thought mostly did not work.

Throughout this entire movie, Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) is in an interview room where he is asked a myriad of practice questions for an upcoming Congressional hearing by Facebook's crisis-management adviser, Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku), with some intense scenes with Charlie Galligan (Bill Burr), a former Facebook advisor. I would rather have seen Zuckerberg working in his offices at Facebook, handling the many problems of the day, and facing the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who is in contact with a Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).

The main message of this film is about greed or "money over humanity". In order to increase Facebook posts and social interaction in the News Feed rankings, priority was given to posts that generate conversations and interactions between people, rather than simply prioritizing content people might like.

• Engagement: Posts that triggered interactions could reach more people.
• Comments: Posts likely to spark discussion received more prominence.
• Shares: Content people redistributed could receive greater weight.
• Reactions: Emotional responses, including anger and surprise, could influence distribution.

This was called MSI — Meaningful Social Interactions. It was discovered that the new algorithm rewarded outrage in comments more than any other type of post, resulting in the higher ranking for hate groups, suggesting that even the January 6th Insurrection might have been caused by MSI. This spotlighted Facebook's disregard for the safety of people in favor of profits. This has in the last ten years, resulted in Facebook changing its name to Meta and many lawsuits and fines by the FTC, totalling many billions of dollars.

The acting in this movie is very good throughout, starting with Mikey Madison, who won the Best Actress Oscar for last year's Anora, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and Bill Burr, who is a stand-up comic but was also very good in his role.

This movie demonstrates once again how very difficult it is to write a great screenplay that receives high marks from most of the critics, even with a great screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin. Rotten Tomatoes ranks this movie at only 57%. Some of the worst reviews: Nina Starner The verdict: The film is an unnecessary sequel that fails as both a drama about Facebook and a successor to The Social Network. Chris Evangelista. The verdict: A compelling real-world story becomes a dull, lifeless movie.

For me, the real problem is that the original Social Network movie was so great that it was impossible to follow it with anything close to as good. My rating for this movie is 70%, and a very mild recommendation only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.