“The Wolfpack”: This Is Just Nuts!
Any documentary earning comparisons to “Grey Gardens” and “Capturing the Freedmans” grabs my attention. I’m talking about “The Wolfpack,” set for release next week. It involves the six brothers of the Angulo family. Raised in a housing development on New York’s Lower East Side, by a rural Midwestern mother and a South American-born father who converted to Hare Krishna, they were kept away from others kids and even the neighborhood streets around them. Cinema was their lone connection to the outside world. The Angulos’ father, Oscar Angulo, an enigmatic but domineering sort, forbade his home-schooled sons from leaving the apartment for all but the most basic necessities and took care of essentials, such as food shopping. The boys’ exposure to the wider world came by way of the film classics Oscar would encourage them to watch — older ones such as “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane,” and the modern likes of “Pulp Fiction,” “The Dark Knight” and “GoodFellas.” I also hear that they were allowed “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” And you wonder why I want to see this?
