After reminiscing on the nostalgic era of Napster in his last documentary Downloaded, Alex Winter is back with another tech doc, this time on the online drug marketplace Silk Road. Narrated by Winter’s old Bill & Ted co-star Keanu Reeves, Deep Web briefly examines a range of topics involving the un-indexed areas of the internet called the deep web, where Silk Road lived and thrived from 2011 to 2013. The title is a bit misleading though since most of the documentary details the prosecution of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and pleads for his defense, barely discussing other topics on the deep web.

Deep Web spends the first five minutes brining non-techie viewers up to speed on the dark net, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and the anonymous web browsing tool Tor. While this crash course is actually quite informational (even for the more tech savvy), it’s an onslaught of information as the documentary presents facts on-screen in rapid-fire succession. But for those who couldn’t take down notes fast enough, the important details are that Silk Road was an underground marketplace that make it easy for users to buy illegal drugs. The concept is kind of like eBay, only that it mainly involved drugs and handled transactions anonymously to remain untraceable. In a little over two years, the site amassed nearly 960,000 users with an estimated $1.2 billion in sales.

Naturally, the moment the government caught wind of this hidden empire it became extremely interested. Gawker was credited as one of the first mainstream outlets to expose the site to the general public. Soon, everyone wanted to know who was behind the operation, some mysterious figure under the username Dread Pirate Roberts (referencing The Princess Bride). This included Wired Magazine journalist Andy Greenberg, who joined Silk Road early on and managed to land an interview with the notoriously elusive DPR. While he didn’t uncover the true identity of the mastermind, Greenberg discovered that DPR was a strong-minded libertarian who believed in free-commerce, idealistic principles, and promoting safe drug use. Which was something he respected on some level, even if he didn’t agree with everything the man allegedly did. Greenberg remained a prominent figure in the documentary, providing valuable insights from his research and adding intelligent perspective on the case.

Eventually the authorities pin everything on Ross Ulbricht, a man who they believe created and ran the online drug trafficking site. Along with that is the accusation that Ulbricht attempted several murder-for-hires to off those who may have leaked information on the site. Of course, his family and close friends proclaim his innocence. Once Ulbricht was apprehended, the documentary shifts into conspiracy mode, putting the legality of the FBI tactics in tracking him into question, and whether he was the only administrator using that moniker.

The problem with Deep Web isn’t that it becomes overly subjective (which it does), it’s the ineffective way the film gets it’s point across. The best example is the attempt to downplay some of the negative media attention on Silk Road. Showing a brief clip from a local news story about a six-year-old kid addicted to drugs purchased from Silk Road—a legitimate concern—is followed by an interview with a high-profile seller on the site who prides himself on refusing to sell heroin to customers who “aren’t mature enough.” Not only is this a weak argument for Silk Road’s stance on promoting safe practices, but it’s an unfair assumption that all sellers are that responsible, because clearly they are not. But the documentary downplays the harm that could come from such easy access to drugs, hardly even posing the question.

This leads to the biggest downfall of Winter’s documentaries. He doesn’t ask the hard ethical questions about his controversial subjects. It would’ve been interesting to learn Greenberg’s thoughts on the concept of selling drugs online, if the good outweighs the bad? Or better yet, if Ulbricht’s family would still support him if he was in fact the founder of the site. Also, there were a lot of angles explored, perhaps too many. Is the film about the legitimacy of Silk Road, the nature of the deep web, the war on drugs, for-profit incarceration, online privacy, constitutional rights, or Ross Ulbricht? Winter touches on all of these topics, but never forms a unified narrative out of them.

Deep Web delivers a one-sided expostulation for the war on drugs, the importance of encrypting data from an ever-intruding government, and the fall of the largest online platform for selling illegal drugs. But the documentary lacks direction as Winter attempts to juggle too much at once. It doesn’t stack up to other recent tech docs such as The Internet’s Own Boy and Citizenfour, which were successful at humanizing their anti-heroes while demonstrating their significance to protecting our digital rights. Unfortunately for Winter, he started this documentary before Ulbricht’s trial where he admitted to being the founder of Silk Road. Maybe Ulbricht didn’t end up being the protagonist he hoped? One of the many questions left unanswered.

Deep Web premiered on EPIX.

It was 24 years ago that Kathryn Bigelow‘s Point Break helped cement the rise of the future Oscar-winning director (for The Hurt Locker). The film starred a young Keanu Reeves playing it straight and tough after hamming it up for a few years as the time traveling goof Ted Logan and a long-haired Patrick Swayze as the surfer he was born to inhabit. All in all it’s a good crime flick—though today certain things ring a bit ridiculously: Reeves’ character being named Johnny Utah, the whole “we steal so we can surf” motivation–but it wasn’t ever a mega hit. Of course, to Warner Bros. none of that seems to matter. What matters is name recognition. So, later this year the world will get a glossy and very expensive new Point Break.

The remake has at least been updated a bit—hopefully enough to justify the remake. Point Break 2015 finds Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) infiltrating a team of extreme sports athletes who he suspects of being behind a string of fancy corporate heists (the big changes here being the international setting and that they are no longer just bank robbers).

The film is directed by Ericson Core (Invincible), who also acts as his own cinematographer. Bracey—a mostly untested newcomer, his biggest credit so far being G.I. Joe: Retaliation—is joined by Edgar Ramirez (The Counselor, Deliver Us From Evil) as Bodhi the baddie. Support is given by Teresa Palmer, Ray Winstone, Delroy Lindo.

The big question here is whether anyone cares. It’s been a while since anyone has taken Point Break seriously, and this one looks to be pretty self-serious and unaware. Either way, we’ll try to stay optimistic—it’s always nice to be surprised. Point Break surfs into theaters Christmas day. Check out the first trailer below.

Nicolas Winding Refn has found a trio of talented actresses in Christina Hendricks, Jena Malone and Bella Heathcoat to join his new film The Neon Demon, based on a script by Refn and Mary Laws. They join Elle Fanning and Abbey Lee, whose involvement was announced earlier. Also signed on is Keanu Reeves who is usually at his best when working with visually arresting filmmakers such as Refn.

The Neon Demon, described as a female-centric “horror film about vicious beauty,” will hopefully be yet another interesting entry in Refn’s filmography. Shooting begins at the end of March in Los Angeles, delightful news for anyone anxious to see the filmmaker return to the setting he captured so well with 2011’s Drive.

One probably expects a film starring Keanu Reeves would be filled with action, but aside from one scene (two if you count watching him eat an entire cupcake), Generation Um is a slower character-driven film that plays off Reeve’s cool, calm, and collected demeanor. Mark Mann’s feature debut is a day-in-the-life snapshot of three flawed friends in New York City, but because the characters themselves are uninspiring and uninteresting, the film is as well.

The film begins on the morning after a night of partying as an escort-service driver named John (Keanu Reeves) drops off two of his chatty escorts, Violet (Bojana Novakovic) and Mia (Adelaide Clemens), at their Lower East Side apartment. While the two females are looking to sleep off the wild night, John takes a long stroll around the city. He aimlessly wanders from a neighborhood bakery where he enjoys a cupcake to a pawn shop with cameras in the front window and then back home to his rundown apartment. John carries himself has a rather gloomy fellow, but he seems to be in deep thought as if he is at a crossroad in his life.

Everything suddenly changes when John seizes an opportunity to steal a video camera from some people at a park when they are not looking. Now that he is equipped with a video camera his gloomy demeanor fades and it sparks a sense of purpose inside him that previously did not exist. John is completely infatuated with the camera and immediately uses it to capture his walk through the city park. Before long he turns the camera towards his two escort friends to document their lives.

The transition from being just a film to being more of a documentary-within-a-film is undeniably more interesting, despite the fact it feels mostly contrived. John instantly becomes a documentary filmmaker and the girls allow him to film their private life without any hesitation. However, this does allow for a completely different view of the characters because we discover intimate details about themselves and their past. The problem is that their lives are really not all that interesting and there is no real reason why the audience should start caring about them at that point.

Even though it was a welcoming change to see Keanu Reeves in such a small indie film, I cannot help but wonder what he saw in the film to begin with. The logical answer is that he saw something in the script that the film simply was not able to achieve. On paper Generation Um probably sounds more ambitious than it plays out to be. But regardless of the film turned out, his performance was effortless despite playing a frustratingly impenetrable character. Reeves does a good job at not stealing any scenes. In fact, he does the opposite by preferring to be behind his camera rather than speak in most scenes.

There are a lot of things that go wrong in Mann’s film, but what stands out the most is how incomplete it feels. Far too much time is spent watching John eat meals and not enough time explaining why he lives with his younger cousin or why the $75 birthday check from his mother has “medication” in the memo line. Generation Um presents itself in a way that is open for interpretation, but there is no real motivation for a viewer to construe anything.

The saddest part about Generation Um is that the most authentic part of the film does not appear in the actual film itself, but rather in the footage during the ending credits. That is because we finally see John open up just a little bit by cracking a smile and joking around with his friends, a small breakthrough that never actually happens in the film. Generation Um brings little to the table; very little emotions, nothing very meaningful or even particularly interesting to say, and it fails to explore the portrait of any generation as the title might suggest. The only part of the title that is relevant is ‘Um’.