Review: In 'Remake,' a filmmaker obsesses over his lost son, guilty he may have made him a casualty

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Set us as preferred “Remake” has a tragic tale to tell and director Ross McElwee wastes no time revealing its grieving heart.Near the start of this funereal documentary, the filmmaker addresses his subject directly: “It’s been seven years since you died,” he says to his late son Adrian through voice-over, “and I still miss you every day.”Across McElwee’s 50-year career, he has worked intimately without a crew to make sense of his own life by diligently recording it.

In the process, he turned his friends and loved ones into the unlikely stars of his acclaimed independent documentaries.With “Remake,” he looks back at that footage, concentrating on the images he shot of Adrian since his birth in 1989.Adrian died on Christmas Eve 2016 of a drug overdose and McElwee clearly remains shattered.

For a documentarian who specializes in personal movies, “Remake” feels especially revealing — both in terms of the glimpses we get of this father-son relationship and of unsolved mysteries that linger just outside the frame.Movies We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.

The film’s title ostensibly refers to a surprising phone call McElwee received about 20 years ago, when he was approached by Steve Carr, the director of broad comedies like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” who was eager to adapt McElwee’s 1986 documentary “Sherman’s March” into a movie.That landmark picture features McElwee, then in his mid-30s, as he tries to chronicle the exploits of Union Gen.

William Tecumseh Sherman, who laid siege to the South during the Civil War.Except, in the midst of that project, McElwee’s focus shifts, delightfully, to his disastrous love life and the fascinating women he meets in his travels, becoming a deeply humane examination of modern courtship.Carr doesn’t seem like an obviou...