This is initially a pretty perplexing follow-up to Zweig’s ‘narcissism’ trilogy, of which I have only seen the first, Vinyl. As a filmmaker whose career seemed to be completely fixated on his own troubles, A Hard Name is refreshingly selfless, following 6 or 7 subjects who had recently been released from prison, and have spent a very large fraction of their lives in prison. The film is comprised almost entirely of interviews and talking heads, but my memory of it has so many variances to that structure, where much of the film, in retrospect, feels as if it takes place in either a prison or on the streets. Doing exactly what I love to see in interview documentaries, Zweig makes sure to keep his questions in the film, which helped to expand the film’s conversation to the viewer. And Zweig asks great questions, too. He is less confrontational and more respectful thank Michael Moore, and actually appears to be interested in his subjects aside from the meat they provide for his film; Zweig has all of Moore’s good qualities and then some. Zweig asks these ex-prisoners what we want to ask them ourselves, and these subjects trust him enough to open up completely. Words cannot aptly describe how potent this film is; it does full justice to big ideas like self-destruction, forgiveness, and environmental corruption.