Would make a great double feature with The Stanford Prison Experiment movie. As I explained in my review for that film as background, I had a semester internship at the Center for the History of American Psychology, an archives/museum on the University of Akron campus, when I was getting my library degree. They had one of the "shock boxes" on display there and I found myself most interested in the social psychology field. Writer/director Almereyda has put some unique touches on this film. There are several well known actors in minor rolls. Peter Sarsgaard is professor Milgram and Winona Ryder is his faithful wife Sasha. Milgram's most famous "obedience experiments" took place in 1961, ten years before the Stanford Prison Experiments. This movie explores those experiments from all sides, but goes beyond them to reveal more about the rest of Stanley Milgram's life. Professor Milgram often breaks the fourth wall to explain the outcome of some situation directly to the audience so that the next scene can move forward more quickly. We are introduced to a few other experiments that Milgram initiated and to Sasha and Stanley's long relationship as equals. There is also a segment where professor Milgram and Sasha visit another professor who had been an inspiration to Stanley in his younger days. The filmmakers use green screens and black-and-white photos of the interior and exterior of this other professor's home to set the scenes. Historians or archivists may find this effect especially fascinating. I have not seen any other filmmaker mix live action and archival materials quite like this before. If you watch this movie, you will be entertained, perhaps disturbed, but you will definitely learn something.

THIS IS NOT A TEST - My Review of EXPERIMENTER (3 1/2 Stars) In the mid 80's, I had the chance to work on writer/director Michael Almereyda's first feature, TWISTER, and no, not the big disaster movie, but a quiet, cerebral, somewhat pretentious family psychodrama with a crazily disparate cast of actors including Dylan McDermott, Crispin Glover, Harry Dean Stanton, Suzy Amis and Tim Robbins. It established Almereyda as a quirky, experimental stylist, which time and time again he has brought to the table throughout his career with such films as HAMLET, NADJA and CYMBELINE. With EXPERIMENTER, he raises the stakes considerably with his beautiful, Brechtian, and wryly funny take on the famous Milgram Experiments of 1961. The film stars Peter Saarsgard as Stanley Milgram, who asked his study subjects to administer electric shocks to other participants if they answered questions incorrectly. What the subjects didn't know is that the shocks were fake and their counterpart was an employee of the study. From these data, Milgram learned how far people will go to obey authority. This topic was explored in COMPLIANCE (2012), which echoed Milgram's experiment, but here we return to the source. Along with THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, another terrific film this year exploring the ethics of clinical trials, EXPERIMENTER is an apt title. Not content to tell a straightforward story, Almereyda has Saarsgard and other cast members frequently break the fourth wall. He utilizes green screen sets, smooth camera movement, and surreal flourishes to underline the artifice inherent in Milgram's life's work. It's a gamble that could have gone terribly wrong, but Almereyda, for perhaps the first time in his career, uses a light touch and good humor to make EXPERIMENTER an entertainingly original experience. It's also a pleasure to see Winona Ryder, as Milgram's smart, curious wife, back on screen. No longer a precocious teen, Ryder has blossomed into a secure, self-possessed actor whose haunted looks match perfectly with Saarsgard's wistfulness to underscore the film's themes of clinical observation and sadness over humanity's lemming-like attributes. Milgram dedicated his life to observing human behavior, and it's refreshing to see so many examples of it in the film. Jim Gaffigan, as the poor guy who pretends to be shocked, deftly fills the role of comic relief, delivering an understated performance reminiscent of a more controlled Chris Farley. Cinematographer Ryan Samul provides apt MAD MEN-style framing and simplicity while luring us in with the staged artifice of it all. This is quiet, cerebral filmmaking and may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it made me respect Milgram more after years of looking at him as a scientific joke, and in this day and age, that's kind of shocking.