As with every year, some of the best films were docs. Sometimes, they’re
easy to see – and sometimes not – meaning, as always, I missed (or didn’t get a
chance to see) some of the year’s best docs. These include: Advocate, The Cave, Diego Maradona, The
Hottest August, The Kingmaker, Midnight Family, Sea of Shadows, 63 Up and Varda by Agnes (and I waited an extra
week to post this so I could see Honeyland).
Some of these came and went from Toronto pretty quickly or never opened
there at all, and either haven’t shown up for home viewing, or I haven’t gotten
to them yet. Considering that many of the most acclaimed docs are on that list,
perhaps you’ll want to take my list with a grain of salt. As always, I start
with ones I didn’t like, and gradually move on up, until we get to the top 10.
As for the ones I didn’t like, there was Aquarela (Victor Kossakovsky) which I fully admit may have played
way better on the big screen – but on a small screen, while it looked great, it
was also quite dull. The Biggest Little
Farm (John Chester) which just struck me as rather phony. Fyre Fraud (Jenner Furst & Julia
Willoughby Nason) was the glib version of the fascinating story – better
told elsewhere (see the top 10)
Better than those were: Ask Dr.
Ruth (Ryan White) is an entertaining, but surface level, doc about why Dr.
Ruth was important – and how odd that fact is. Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator (Eva Orner) may have played better had
I not heard the excellent ESPN podcast on the same subject that went way deeper
– but it’s a good overview of the case. The
Great Hack (Karim Amer &Jehane Noujam) which was about the Cambridge
Analytica scandal – which oddly seems to want to a complex issue too simple. Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog & Andre Singer) took a fascinating, complex figure – profiled by a great
filmmaker – and is all far too simple. Wrinkles
the Clown (Michael Beach Nichols) is a very odd film about the clown that
started the creepy clown fever that gripped America a few years ago – which
makes some, let’s say, interesting choices.
Even better than those were the following, very solid docs: The Apollo (Roger Ross Williams) probably
should have been a miniseries – the footage is amazing, but it goes through the
historic theater way too quickly. Black
Mother (Khalik Allah) is a verite portrait of Jamaica that I admired more
than I actually liked. The Brink (Alison
Klayman) the second best (of two) of films about Steve Bannon this year –
but still a good film in its own right. The
Edge of Democracy (Petra Costa) is a mixture of the personal and the
political in retelling the recent history of Brazil – with no attempt at
balance. Hail Satan (Penny Lane) is
a story about the Church of Satan, and their goal to get religion out of
American public life is very good – just not quite as insane as you think it
should be. Knock Down the House (Rachel
Lears) became known as the AOC doc – but it’s not just about the popular
Freshman congresswoman, but the larger movement she represents – and is an
inspiring (if rather simplistic) look at American politics. Marianne &Leonard: Words of Love (Nick
Broomfield) is the gentlest film that Broomfield has ever made – a rather
sweet (when it isn’t creepy) look at the love between Leonard Cohen and his
longtime girlfriend Marianne Ihlen – and how difficult it can be to love a
genius asshole. Where’s My Roy Cohn?
(Matt Tyrnauer) is a very informative, but kind of dry, recounting of the
life of Roy Cohn – and how he connects everything from Joseph McCarthy to
Donald Trump.
Then there are the films that easily could have made it – but there just
wasn’t room: The Gospel of Eureka
(Michael Palmieri & Donal Mosher) is an interesting look at a small
town in Arkansas – which has both a massive Passion Play and a drag bar, and
how they basically co-exist in peace. Memory:
The Origins of Alien (Alexandre O. Phillipe) is a better than average
documentary about an influential film – more than a making of, but not enough
more to be a truly great one. Roll Red
Roll (Nancy Schwartzman) is another film about rape culture and football
culture, and how they may be one and the same – no matter how many of these I
see, they never stop shocking, angering and saddening me. Tell Me Who I Am (Ed Perkins) tells the type of unbelievable story
that would only work in documentary – but is perhaps too much style over
substance to be truly great. Wrestle
(Suzannah Herbert) is a less ambitious Hoop Dreams, about a high school
wrestling team – and the individual triumphs and failures over the course of
one season.
And before we get to the top 10, there are a few
documentary series that I think deserve a shout out – even at their extreme
length, had they been one film, they’d like be in my top 10 docs of the year
list: I had some issues with The Case
Against Adnan Syed (Amy Berg) but it was very well made, and is a great
summary of just why Syed’s conviction is so suspect. It was probably a little
too long but The Confession Killer
(Robert Kenner & Taki Oldham) is a fascinating look at Henry Lee Lucas
– the most prolific confesser to murders America has ever seen. The Devil Next Door (Yossi Bloch and Dan
Sivan) is perhaps a little too drawn out, but is still a fascinating look
at an accused Nazi war criminal, who insists it’s a case of mistaken identity. Don’t F**k with Cats (Mark Lewis) is a
fascinating look at the Luka Magnotta case – and even if I didn’t buy the
attempt to implicate the audience, the story is undeniably fascinating (and
it’s the one Netflix series that could have been longer). I Love You Now Die (Erin Carr) is the type of true crime doc I love
– it takes a well-known case, and makes you see it in a completely different
light, challenging the popular narrative. Leaving
Neverland (Dan Reed) is a relatively simple, straight forward recounting of
the accusations of two men against Michael Jackson – but will make it
impossible for you to see ever see the King of Pop the same way again. Lorena (Joshua Rofe) is a necessary
corrective, taking the infamous case, and making it very clear it wasn’t a joke
– and it wasn’t funny, and still isn’t. The
Ted Bundy Tapes (Joe Berlinger) recounts the life and crimes of Ted Bundy,
using the copious amounts of tapes about the famed serial killer in disturbing
fashion.
Top 15
15. Maiden (Alex
Holmes)
Maiden is the inspiring true life story of Tracy Edwards – who loved
boating, and wanted to be on a real racing crew, and was tired of being the
cook on these ships. And so, she gets an all-female crew together, finds a
sponsor, finds a boat – and enters the upper crust Whitbread Round the World
Race in 1989. The film is made up of archival footage from that time – and
interviews with the key players today. What’s striking is how much attitudes
have changed in the past three decades – and, sadly, some of the ways they have
not changed. It is also just a tense, sports movie – full of highs and lows –
so even if, like me, you know nothing about boat racing – you will be caught up
in the emotions of it all.
14. The Inventor: Out
for Blood in Silicon Valley (Alex Gibney)
A financial scandal documentary for our times, Alex Gibney’s best film
in a number of years was the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos – a young
entrepreneur with a truly great idea on how to revolutionize the health care
industry, but absolutely no idea how to actually pull it off. Holes tried the
classic Silicon Valley strategy of “fake it until you make it” – but with
people’s health on the line, that’s not a good strategy, especially when she
starts rolling out actual blood testing equipment that she knows darn well does
not work. It probably isn’t quite as deep as The Dropout – the longer podcast
which detailed the same thing – but it’s a great primer of a documentary, and
allows Gibney to cheekily poke fun at fellow documentary filmmaker Errol Morris
– who allowed himself to be used by Holmes and Theranos, and now doesn’t want
to talk about it. As these types of docs go, this is about as good as they get.
13. David Crosby:
Remember My Name (A.J. Eaton)
It seems like every aging musician gets this kind of career
retrospective documentary near the end – and they are almost all the same –
dull and predictable. By David Crosby: Remember My Name is different because,
of course, David Crosby is different. He’s always been difficult – and while
many age out of that, he hasn’t. He’s blown up Crosby, Stills and Nash and
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young almost singlehandedly – both in just the last
few years. This documentary has Crosby very honest about his life, his work,
his many mistakes. He is honest, and harder on himself than he is on everyone
else. It’s that rare musician documentary from the golden years that is really,
truly worth watching and considering.
12. Apollo 11 (Todd
Douglas Miller)
Director Todd Douglas Miller got his hands on hours and hours of previously
unreleased and unseen footage of the massive effort to get Apollo 11 to the
moon and back again, and crafted it into this engrossing documentary. The film
is all archival footage – there is no talking heads in the films, no look
backs, but is really just a portrait of the massive scale of the effort – the
number of people, and the science, involved in getting this mission to work. It
is an example of how you can do history in a documentary in a very specific way
– to make it seem timely and new, and a reminder of a time when America came
together, in a time when they couldn’t be further apart.
11. Amazing Grace
(Sydney Pollock & Alan Elliott)
In 1972, director Sydney Pollack was hired to film the great Aretha
Franklin singing for two nights in the New Bethel Baptist Church in Watts, Los
Angeles as she would record her best-selling gospel record. He did that – but
because of some rookie mistakes by Pollock and his crew, the footage was deemed
unusable for years – the sound and picture didn’t align. Finally, after years,
and a lot of painstaking work, we are able to see the result of what Pollock
film – and it is this amazing film, which is basically Franklin belting out one
amazing song after another, proving once and for all that she was the best singer
in history. The film is a great historical document – and is a fitting tribute
to the late, great Franklin.
10. Cold Case
Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger)
The strangest doc of the year may just be Mads Brügger’s Cold Case
Hammarskjöld – a film that starts out trying to investigate what really
happened to the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who died in a mysterious
plane crash, just as he was threatening to modernize the international
organization. Where it goes from there is into some wild conspiracy theories
about secret militias and organizations, and attempts to infect Africans with
AIDS, and all sorts of other wild places. Brügger knows how insane this all
sounds – and how strange it is for two very white Scandinavians to be digging
into this conspiracy mainly centered on Africa – and finds clever ways to
undermine that, poke fun at himself, and question the fake news aspect of it
all. I’m not sure he ever really finds any real answers – but that is not
really what the doc is about. It is a strange documentary for our strange
times.
9. For Sama (Waab
al-Kateab & Edward Watts)
We’ve been hearing about Syria for years now – but by now in many ways it’s
easy to somehow tune out when you hear about the ongoing tragedy – especially
since its been largely met with apathy by the worldwide community, with little
being done. For that reason alone, more people should see For Sama, a film shot
by Waab al-Kateab, a young woman and revolutionary in Syria, who falls in love
and gets married, and has a daughter – Sama – during all of the chaos. She and
her husband – a doctor – are committed to staying as Aleppo falls, and the
footage she gets in amazing and tragic, and emotionally overwhelming. The
impact of the film is immediate and powerful – a remarkable feat of documentary
filmmaking, especially since they were able to form it into a cohesive whole.
8. Fyre (Chris Smith)
Of the dueling Fyre festival docs this year – Chris Smith’s Netflix doc
was clearly superior (both have some ethical issues – this one taking money
from Fuck Jerry Media to make it, the other for paying Billy McFarland for an
interview). This documentary was less glib, and more focused on the people who
were really hurt by McFarland’s fraud – the locals who were owed money, and
never got it – as well as the massive hubris of McFarland et al to try and pull
it all off. The film goes deeper than an episode of say American Greed, and
finds the folly in all of this – both the comedy and the tragedy of it all. We
seemingly got lost comparing the two docs when they came out in January – not
real
7. Homecoming: A Film
by Beyoncé (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter)
Over the years, countless concert films have been made – but only a few
of them are the type of film you would recommend to someone to watch even if
they aren’t a massive fan of the artist involved. There’s Scorsese’s The Last
Waltz, Demme’s Stop Making Sense, the Maysles’ Gimme Shelter, etc. And now,
there is Homecoming – which if all the proof one could ever need at the massive
talent of Beyoncé – on many different fronts. The film documents her two
already legendary performances at 2018’s Coachella – and shows just what into
making them for Beyoncé and her collaborators, and then celebrates the music
itself – which shows Beyoncé at the peak of her powers. She also directed the
film – and its mesmerizing to watch – the first time the costumes switch on an
edit, and you realize that this is two different shows, executed with such
precision you can cut between them, it’s pretty astounding. I hope that Beyoncé
takes her skills and directs a feature one day – with this added to Lemonade,
it’s clear she’s far better than most directors working today anyway.
6. Mike Wallace is Here
(Avi Belkin)
Avi Belkin’s documentary about the legendary 60 Minutes journalist Mike
Wallace is all archival footage – footage of Wallace’s early career, interviews
he did with others when he was the subject, interviews he did with others as
the interviewer, and all sorts of other great footage. The documentary is
edited with razor precision – yes, at times your kind of wish they would just
let the interview go on, but Belkin’s film wants to present the complexity of
Wallace – the way he entered journalism, through the entertainment side of TV,
not the journalism side, yet how he became known for his hard hitting questions
– sometimes his own, sometimes other peoples. The film reminded me of Best of
Enemies from a few years – about Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley – and kind
of the unintended consequences of elevating that sort of television. The film
is largely nice to Wallace – but it’s not without complexity. This one kind of
got overlooked this year – but it is worth seeking out.
5. One Child Nation
(Nanfu Wang & Zhang Jia-Ling)
Nanu Wang and Zhang Jia-Ling’s One Child Nation is a devastating
documentary about the lasting impact of China’s one child policy – a policy
well-known in the West, but is probably something you haven’t actually though
very much about. The film documents the horrific things that women who got
pregnant with a second child had to endure – what happened to all those
unwanted babies – mostly girls – who were the second child (or the first child
to families who wanted a boy) and the impact the policy had on the officials
and doctors whose jobs were to enforce it. The result is a powerful, sad,
devastating film – that looks beyond the surface level with which we’ve always
thought about the policy, to the tragedy underneath.
4. American Dharma
(Errol Morris)
Errol Morris sits down with Steve Bannon, and basically allows Bannon
enough rope to hang himself – and just for good measure, visually undermines
him throughout the film as well. Basically, Morris lets Bannon lay his populist
message, why he loved Trump so much, and his love of movies. Morris sits back a
little – we hear his voice occasionally pushing Bannon for more – but as is
often the case with Morris, he likes to be an invisible presence. Where we see
Morris, throughout the film, is visually. Near the end of the film, as Bannon
tries to defend himself, Morris shows you the truth visually – with footage and
headlines, etc. For those who think that Bannon should be interviewed at all,
so be it – I don’t agree, but you don’t have to watch it. For others though, I
find it odd that some think Bannon got the best of Morris here. It’s impossible
to watch this film, and come away liking Bannon. This is not in the very top
echelon of Morris’ films – but it’s excellent, and a timely document about the
age of Trump.
3. Honeyland (Tamara
Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov)
There was no more visually stunning or beautiful documentary this year –
hell, it would be on a very short list of most beautiful film of the year
period. The film focuses on Hatidze Muratova, living in a remote village on
North Macedonia – really only her aged, sick mother is around, and she never
gets out of bed. She is a bee-hunter – does some crazy things to find these
bees, and sticks to the very strict rule of leaving half the honey for the bees
– that way, everyone wins. It is about what happens when a large, boisterous
family moves in close by – starts raising bees from breeders – and don’t stick
to those same rules. Honeyland is a fascinating look at this woman, this dying
way of life, and this conflict between these two very different ways of
collecting honey. It’s also stunning to look at – the first 10 minutes in
particular are amazing.
2. Rolling Thunder
Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese)
Martin Scorsese’s film is part concert documentary – featuring some
truly amazing footage from Bob Dylan’s legendary 1975 comeback tour, featuring
all sorts of guests, and music. It contains real reflections on that tour and
what it meant then – and what it means know. And, yeah, it also includes fake
stuff – made up characters and memories, because of course Bob Dylan is pretty
much incapable of giving you a straight answer on anything having to do with
himself – and Scorsese uses this well-known tendency to pull off a major trick
of his own in plain sight (if you get to the end and haven’t figured out part
of it is fake, I don’t know what to tell you). Part of me wanted this to be a
more-straight forward doc – hell, it may have been better as a straighter
forward film, as Scorsese’s last Dylan doc – No Direction Home – is. But then
it wouldn’t be as much Dylan as this film is – where you get the truth through
lies. I have a feeling this one is going to be debated for years to come.
1. American Factory
(Steve Bognar & Julia Reichert)
In order to make a great documentary, you need great access – and I
don’t think any doc had better access than American Factory did this year. This
film, about a former car factory in Ohio, which had been shut down throwing the
area into recession, which was bought by a Chinese glass company and reopened,
is amazing in that they basically get in everywhere. What they come up with is
a culture clash documentary, and while the sympathy for the American workers,
it isn’t completely one sided. In a world that is increasingly interconnected –
no matter what Trump tries – there are going to more of these stories. American
Factory shows how this sort of thing should work, looking at the complex issues
that cannot be unraveled.
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