Movie Review: The Painter and the Thief

The Painter and the Thief *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Benjamin Ree

 

What an odd, beguiling documentary The Painter and the Thief turns out to be. I don’t necessarily think it’s entirely successful – and the structure of the film serves to make the film more contrived than it needed to be – but it’s ultimately a documentary about the subject that most documentaries avoid – the power imbalance between the artist and their subject. And the film adds in another layer to this as well – as it is about a painter and a thief, and their power imbalance, but then complicates that imbalance as it moves along – eventually even questioning the relationship to the movie itself, with both of its subjects. It’s the type of thing that will be studied by documentary students for years, even if the film doesn’t quite live up to its lofty ambitions.

 

The film begins with a robbery – two junkies break into a Norwegian art gallery, and steal two paintings by Barbora Kysilkova, a Czech painter, living with her Norwegian boyfriend. That she is talented is clear – but she hasn’t exactly become a star of the art world – and even if her paintings were valued only at 20,000 Euros total, you wonder if she could sell them even for that. Still, the paintings are good – and immensely personal for Kysilkova. The thieves are quickly apprehended, but the paintings are gone – one of the thieves won’t say anything about the whereabouts of the painting her ended up with, the other says he doesn’t know. It’s the latter of these two that is the thief of the title – Karil-Bertil Nordland. Kysilkova boldly approaches him at his trial, not angry, but inquiring if she could paint him. The first act of the film culminates with Kysilkova showing Nordland her portrait of him – and him breaking down in tears. It’s the type of reaction that you know Benjamin Ree wanted – to have Nordland feel seen for the first time, and get that reaction on camera. Had the film ended there, it may have been a fascinating little short.

 

But Ree continues, and continues to complicate matters. If the first act is locked into Kysilkova’s perspective, the second makes the choice to lock in on Nordland’s. Like it said in the extraordinary Portrait of a Lady on Fire, yes, the artist sees their subject – their model. But while they are posing for you, they are also observing you. Nordland may well feel seen by Kysilkova – but he also sees her. The movie becomes about their complicated, co-dependent relationship that develops between the pair of them. The different roles the play, the personas they adopt, etc. The movie doesn’t want to fall into the trap that one can argue the painting does – which is to reduce people to easily digestible stereotypes, to make it easier for the audience.

 

It is a lofty goal, and an admirable one, and had Ree been able to really pull it off, then The Painter and the Thief may well have been a masterwork. But I have a feeling Ree knows he didn’t quite pull it off, which is why he fiddles unnecessarily with the structure of the film – he’ll often show us an event, than circle back to show us what lead to it – and then continue the thread from there. So for Nordland, there is a horrific car accident, that leaves him in need of physical therapy – and a stint in Norwegian jail (which looks like a nice summer camp). For Kysilkova, the film delves into some issues she has with her boyfriend – who isn’t sure he likes this relationship for her, and her own economic circumstances (a lot of time is spent on rent – which ultimately ends up going nowhere).

 

The film is able to bring it altogether for one last, devastating shot -the type of shot that you will remember long after you’ve forgotten the details of the movie. Ree has a gift there – his film really does feel like it could be a work of fiction – a style that recalls perhaps the Dardenne brothers. The film looks great. And the high moments of the film are exceptional. I just cannot shake the feeling that perhaps Ree is playing with things a little too much – playing with the audience too much – to make a completely satisfying movie. There is so much here to admire – I just wish the entire package came together better.

Movie Review: Rewind

Rewind **** / *****

Directed by: Sasha Joseph Neulinger.

 

It can be very hard to make a good autobiographical documentary – your very closeness to the subject, which provides you with unprecedented access, is also the thing that can cloud your judgment – and make it impossible to see things clearly. Occasionally though, one breaks through – and that is the case with Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind – a film in which he went through hundreds of hours of his old home movies – shot either by his father, Henry, or sometimes himself, to tell the story of cyclical child abuse that the family suffered through. This is a hard sit to be sure – but Neulinger amazingly has some clarity in which to view these events. He knows the little boy in those videos – who often acted over the top, or lashed out, is in so much pain.

 

The movie takes its time revealing the abuse that will be at the center of the film – probably about 30 of the 90 minutes is spent with the audience in the dark of just what is going to happen – although it’s clear from the start that something bad has. Eventually, it will snap into focus, and become the focal point of the film.

 

That is because when he was a child, Sasha was sexually abused by three different family members – his two uncles, Howard and Larry, and Larry’s oldest son Stewart, who was in his 20s at the time. Sasha held his secrets close to him as a child – until he figured out that at some of what was happening to him, was also happening to his younger sister, Bekah, and he revealed enough for his parents to figure it out. And then, the whole can of worms is spilled. Henry isn’t shocked by the revelations – because Larry and Howard had done the same thing to him as a child. He just assumed it was a one off, and he never talked about it to anyone. Not all the abuse is the same – Larry and his son, it is figured, do it out of so misguided attempt to find and express love. Howard is more violent – and is about the need for dominance. It is all abuse, all traumatic and scarring – but it’s different.

 

Making matters worse is that while Larry and Stewart get their legal cases resolved quickly – varying degrees of jail time is assessed; Howard fights it for years. He is a cantor at a major synagogue in Manhattan – and has powerful, rich friends, so can afford to fight it for years, through motion after motion. And poor Sasha has to relive it again and again, as he keeps having to explain to different people what happened.

 

Neulinger’s film does a lot of things. Yes, it tells this harrowing story, from a first-person perspective – including in depth interviews with both of his parents, who reveal their own pain at going through what they did – that among other things ended their marriage. But it’s also a close-up study of the home videos themselves – and how you need to look past the surface, to see the truth underneath. As Henry says, you don’t bring out the camera for sad occasions – but happy ones. So there is footage of Sasha, and his abusers that you sit and watch, and try to parse out any hidden meanings that may be buried there.

 

I do think that ending isn’t quite as strong as the beginning and middle. By the end, the film has settled into a more standard “issue” documentary, making pleas from changes to laws, etc. and advocating a specific position – which while certainly important, it isn’t very different from what we’ve seen in many other child abuse documentaries. What’s special here really is seeing through the eyes of the abused what happened – and then being able to see the aftereffects, right there in old home movies, which were supposed to be of happy times – but ending up capturing the exact opposite.

Movie Review: Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth **** / *****

Directed by: Matt Wolf.

 

One of things documentary film is best at, is delving into the details of stories that were only superficially covered by the media when they happened. The story of Biosphere 2 is one such story. It was a relatively big deal in the early 1990s – about a group of 8 scientists, who would lock themselves into what was supposed to be a self-contained biosphere from two years, living off of what they could produce, breathing the air it produced, etc. The biosphere was made up of different pods – each a different type of environment, from the rain forest to the ocean to the desert, etc. Questions about the scientific validity of it all dogged the project throughout – and not without reason. It was bankrolled by a billionaire, who thought eventually, he could make money off of the findings. The group behind it got its start as one of those New Wage commune (some say cults) from the 1970s. They weren’t always up front with everyone about what was going on – they didn’t reveal the presence of a CO2 scrubber for example, or cop to it when one of the members had to leave for surgery, and returned with some outside materials not originally part of the experiment. So, soon after the experiment was over, it was forgotten about – and now most people don’t even remember it happened in the first place.

 

Directed by Matt Wolf, Spaceship Earth has access to a treasure trove of archival material, and contains interviews with most of the surviving players in the drama. It is perhaps too sympathetic to the overall project – you miss the presence of some outside scientists, who perhaps could offer a differing perspective than those involved, who try to downplay and minimize the shortcuts taken. But it offers a more complete view of exactly what happened, and why – and why perhaps it should not have been forgotten.

 

The project was funded by billionaire Ed Bass, and was the brainchild of John Allen – the charismatic leader of that commune, who was always restless, wanting to move onto the next thing. Some have called Allen a cult leader, and its easy to see why that is – but if he was, it wasn’t the kind of cult leader that leads to darkness – no money is being bilked from anyone other than Bass, who willingly gave it up, there are no mass marriages, or cutting people off from their families, etc. People willingly followed Allen wherever he wanted to go – because where he wanted to go was someplace interesting. The people still around still have mainly warm feelings for Allen – who is here as well in interviews. While they all admit mistakes were made, they are still proud of what they did.

 

And it is an interesting story to be sure. Even if there were a few cheats, the people inside did live off of what they could grow themselves – they got sick of beats, which they could grow a lot of, and birthday cakes were always made from bananas. They may have had a CO2 scrubber, but it clearly didn’t make things effortless – there were times when the CO2 spiked dangerously high, and people got exhausted quickly. They all lost weight. There were personality conflicts, and arguments, as you may expect amongst any 8 people trapped in an enclosed space for two years – especially when you consider the kind of personalities who would willingly sign up for this kind of project.

 

Overall, the film is a fascinating look at this experiment – and that precisely what it was, an imperfect, experiment, looking to see just exactly what would happen putting people in these kind of conditions – and what would happen to the different ecosystems, etc. It’s a fascinating story – and one that most modern audiences either don’t know at all, or kind of half remember from when it happened.  As a film, it’s pretty standard – an archival footage, talking heads – style doc. But it’s a fascinating story, well-told. And one that remains relevant today for a host of reasons.

Movie Review: Crip Camp

Crip Camp **** / *****

Directed by: James Lebrecht & Nicole Newnham.

 

When you hear the basic premise of Crip Camp, you probably have an idea in your head of just what the film is going to be. Here is a film about a camp for disabled teenagers – focusing on a group that attended in the early 1970s – and who had several attendees go onto become key figures in the disability rights movement – a movement that shamefully took a very long time to achieve their goals. So right off the bat, you have a merging of several kinds of docs that we’ve seen countless examples of in the past – the inspirational documentary about people struggling with disabilities, but who do not let it define their lives, an issue based documentary looking at a very important social issue, and a documentary about the 1960s counter culture. When you find out that one of the directors – James Lebrecht – was among those who attended the camp, you get another sinking suspicion that the film is going to be hagiography as well. It feels, based on all of that, like the type of doc that inspires respectful, but not enthusiastic reviews – you don’t want to appear insensitive to the issues it raises, or dismissive, but at the same time, it’s all just sort of bland – been there, seen that. So it makes the fact that Crip Camp mainly avoids those pitfalls all the more remarkable.

 

The title is designed to immediately shock you – no one would refer to disabled people as crips anymore and not immediately get cancelled. But it’s a necessary title, as it takes you back to that time, when these disabled teens really were treated like that – as invalids to pity, but then pushed aside to not make people uncomfortable. The camp is Camp Jened – which ran in the Catskills from the early 1950s until the late 1970s – and as becomes clear in the film, it was a freeing experience for those who attended. For once, they weren’t the “only” one like them in the room, getting pitying glances. They weren’t treated differently from everyone else. They were allowed to be themselves, to find themselves, to express themselves. It was an empowering time.

 

Most of the documentary actually takes place after the subjects have left the camp – and went on to become key members of the disability rights movement – culminating in the 504 sit-in of 1977 – when dozens of people refused to leave the department of Health, Education and Welfare until their demands were met. A documentary solely focusing on that – and the surrounding issues – would be interesting in its own right. What makes Crip Camp more though is those early scenes at the camp – which puts what comes later into a wider context, and shows just how important those earlier, formative experiences were. It gave those who attended the confidence to do what they had to later on.

 

The film doesn’t entirely avoid the pitfalls and clichés of its genre – truly, they couldn’t have picked a more obvious soundtrack for the film, featuring one song after another, that have become clichés for movies set in this period. And the film undeniably still has the goal to inspire and uplift. But it never lays it on too thick, never goes for the obvious moments to try and make you cry, to try and make your heart swell. You do those things anyway, because of the way the film has been assembled – from excellent period footage, and new interviews with the people that shows you everything you need to know. All of this combines to make Crip Camp the rare documentary of its kind that earns that sense of importance – and becomes a must-see for more reasons than because it’s “important”.

Movie Review: Caniba (2017)

Caniba (2017)

Directed by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel.

Featuring: Renée Hartevelt, Issei Sagawa, Jun Sagawa.

 

Even as far as documentaries about cannibals go, Caniba is strange. The film created a stir on the festival circuit when it came out there in 2017 – but pretty much disappeared after that – distributors guessing (rightly) that most audiences wouldn’t want to endure the films 90-minute runtime. The fil doesn’t give anyone what they would expect in a documentary like this – it gives them something entirely different, more immersive, more disturbing, but also perhaps more exploitative. Watching it all, I got the impression that it was precisely the film that filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel wanted to make – but was at a loss to figure out why they felt the need to make it at all.

 

The subject of the documentary is Issei Sagawa – who became famous when, as a student studying at the Sorbonne, he murdered fellow student Renée Hartevelt, raped her corpse, and then at parts of her body. But Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial – and sent back to Japan, where he has eked out a living based on his infamy – writing a manga about what he did, starring in specialized pornography, even being a food critic for a period of time. He also has never been shy about sitting for interviews with documentary filmmakers – and this is hardly the first film about him to be made.

 

That perhaps explain why directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor  & Verena Paravel from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab don’t feel the need to dwell on the details of his crime all that much – we get them in onscreen text at the beginning of the film, before the film dives into a current day portrait of Sagawa – now in his 60s, and suffering from diabetes and the after effects of a stroke – he is now dependent on his older brother, Jun, to care for him. What ends up emerging in the film is a warped study of their brothers themselves – Issei admitting he still wants to eat people – and be eaten himself – and Jun still confessing that he doesn’t understand his brothers desires – before showing us his own rather extreme sadomasochistic desires as well.

 

I feel safe in saying that almost everyone reading this will not want to see Caniba, even those with a perverse fascination with the subject matter itself. The directors aren’t as interested in the details of his crime as clearly other filmmakers have been – and don’t really push Issei to explain what he did, or why. For his part, he seems tired of talking about it as well. While he admits that he is a monster, he also doesn’t really show anything resembling remorse either – and the filmmakers don’t push him to. The filmmaking is odd as well – with its relentless closeups of Issei and Jun, sometimes jostling for the frame. It’s off-putting in the extreme – and that’s even before we get to an extended clip of one of the porn films Issei starred in, or a reading, complete with pictures, of his disturbing manga – or the long sequence of Jun self-abusing. Caniba ends up being exhausting.

 

I have to admit watching the film, I often wondered what the point of it was. Why was Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel – clearly talented filmmakers that anyone who has seen their previous film, Leviathan can attest, making this film? In its own weird, fucked up way, the film I suppose humanizes both Issei and Jun – and invites you to think about your own desires – which are likely more mainstream then their own. Yet the film is also an endurance test – even at just 90 minutes – to see how much you can take, and is perhaps so off-putting that few will get what the filmmakers are going for – or want to. For them – and I think that’s most people – Caniba will be little more than a geek show.

Movie Review: Minding the Gap

Minding the Gap (2018) **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Bing Liu.

 

It’s rare for any movie – maybe particularly a documentary – to sneak up on you and end up having a devastating impact on you. When Minding the Gap came out in 2018, I missed it – it played for a week in a theater near me, but I missed it then, and because it is a Hulu doc, it didn’t come to iTunes or other streaming platforms in Canada for a very long time (and it aired the same night as the Oscars on PBS Buffalo – and I missed it there as well). I certainly heard that this was the best documentary of the year – and yet, because I try to read as little as possible before seeing a film, I didn’t really know why. To me, it looked to be yet another skateboarding movie. Those can be good, surely, but how many GoPro shots of people skateboarding can you really watch before they become tiresome, boring and monotonous. When the film finally came to iTunes Canada last week, I jumped at the chance to see it because of that praise, but still, I don’t think I was prepared for what came next.

 

The documentary takes place in Rockford, Illinois – one of those stereotypical, sad American towns where the manufacturing jobs left – and then everything else did to. The people who stayed don’t have much money, don’t have good jobs, and don’t have very many prospects. The film concentrates on three different kids – Zack Mulligan, a white kid in his early 20s, Keire Johnson, an African American teenager a few years younger, and Bing Liu, who directed the film as well, an Asian American probably closer to Zack’s age. The film follows all three over the span of a year or two – and the changes they go through, and really dives into who each of the three of them were.

 

On the surface, these three – and the rest of the kids in the movie – don’t have all that much in common – with the exception of skateboarding. Al three of them don’t just like skateboarding – they love it. They love spending hours either in the skate park, or on the streets, working on their tricks – and when they aren’t doing that, they are hanging out at someone’s house, drinking beer, smoking pot, and acting like the young idiots they are. Is only gradually that you start to sense that all three of them are harboring some dark emotions – buried under all that young male bravado, are three young men who are hurting. The movie never comes out and states it, but it becomes clear that perhaps the reason all of them love skateboarding so much is because it allows them an escape – they need to get out of the house, and concentrate on something that isn’t their home life.

 

What emerges is a portrait of American life for the lower middle class, and the struggle of these young men to become adults, to define who they are in the world – a task made more difficult by strained relationships with parents, and a society who teaches young men to be tough – to bottle up their feelings, which only ever results in them exploding into anger and violence.

 

These changes come gradually. The maturation process is thrust upon Zack when he gets his girlfriend, Nina, pregnant – and they decide to have and raise the baby. Zack is all smiles, all charm and hope for the future with the camera in his face, but once the baby comes, he isn’t really able to complete that process. For her part, Nina is pretty much not given a choice – women never are – and must grow up and be a parent, even with a tough relationship with her own parents, although a supportive Aunt and Uncle show what a family can be. Zack likes to play the victim – which becomes harder to do when we start to find out from Nina some of the disturbing things going on when the cameras aren’t present. By the end of the film, Zack at least seems to grasp his mistakes, but you’re unsure if he can really correct them. Keire also had a hard relationship with his father – a carpenter who wanted to teach his son his trade, but Keire rebelled against that. What may seem like a typical story of teenage rebellion is harder because Keire’s father died before they could really patch things up – something that haunts him. For Bing, he only gradually reveals his own pain – an abusive stepfather, and a mother who feels a lot of regret for what happened. She is clearly uncomfortable being interviewed – but perhaps feels she owes it to her son to do it anyway. Keire’s mother isn’t much more comfortable at that either.

 

One of the producers of the film is Steve James – the director of many great documentaries, including Hoop Dreams, his masterpiece, and one of the best docs of all time. Minding the Gap is that rare documentary that really earns comparisons to Hoop Dreams. That film was about basketball, but not really. This film is about skateboarding – but not really. It’s about so much more than that – and is easily, one of the very best documentaries in recent years.

Movie Review: Tread

Tread *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Paul Solet.

Written by: Paul Solet.

 

Marvin Heemeyer believed his adopted hometown of Granby, Colorado screwed him over big time – a grand conspiracy by the town’s wealthy people, the town council and the media just to get to him, so in 2004, he decided to get his revenge on the town itself. He spent months inside a small garage, retrofitting a bulldozer he had purchased, to make it virtually impossible to stop. He then proceeded to methodically get his revenge on the people he was convinced had screwed him, by destroying their businesses, their home and everything else in his path. Miraculously, the only person who ended up dead that day was Marv himself – but not until he had accomplished much of what he set out to do.

 

Paul Solet’s documentary Tread tells this story – and is basically divided into three acts. Act one is built around the many hours of tapes that Marv left behind before going on his rampage – where he lays out how Granby tried to royally screw him over. It all started, according to Marv, when he purchased a plot of land at auction to build his muffler shop. Another man was interested in that land to build a concrete plant – and left angry. That man would eventually buy a piece of property adjacent to Marv’s – and went about getting the permits to build there. This angered Marv – as did the requirement the city that he had to connect with the town’s sewer’s system. It gets kind of bureaucratic – but essentially, Marv thinks that everyone was out just to screw him over personally – and that everyone was against him. We hear as much from him on the tapes – and from some of his friends, who remain sympathetic to Marv.

 

To hear the people who “screwed” Marv over however, nothing could be further from the truth. And while you know that they are telling their version of the story, the one that will make them look blameless, and Marv isn’t around anymore to counteract that – it’s hard to argue with them. Marv was able to build a business on that plot of land that he purchased for $45,000. It made him good money for a decade. He could have sold that land at a hefty profit a number of times – and did indeed sell it the year before his rampage for $400,000 (the new owner then promptly connected to the town’s sewer without complaint). The town council did take his complaints about the concrete plant seriously – seriously enough that restrictions were put on it to try and appease Marv, and others who weren’t happy about it. But to Marv, it all amounts to a conspiracy to screw him over.

 

The final 30 minutes is dedicated to the rampage itself. We have some footage of what happened that day – and most of the people who were there are interviewed about what precisely Marv did. It was a systematic destruction of everything he could in that town. His bulldozer what outfitted with metal sheeting – there was nowhere to shoot that would get him. He had a gun – a 50 caliber – that he could shoot out though, keeping people back. It really is like something out of a horror movie – an unstoppable machine of destruction.

 

Director Paul Solet has mainly made horror movies before tackling this documentary. He builds slowly, laying the groundwork in the first hour, so you understand what you’re going to see in that last 30 minutes. He doesn’t strain for political points – because he doesn’t have to – it’s all right there. What drove Marv is the same type of anti-government hatred that drove incidents like Ruby Ridge, or what drives people like the Bundy’s – who occupy a piece of government land because they feel it’s their god given right, that they are the true American patriots, and that America has become, essentially, a fascist state. It’s an incredibly sad story – mainly because Marv couldn’t see past his own anger, his own rage to see, really, how good he had it. You can’t fight City Hall – but Marv couldn’t even see he didn’t need to fight it at all.

Movie Review: The Cave

The Cave **** / *****

Directed by: Feras Fayyad

Written by: Alisar Hasan, Feras Fayyad.

 

The Cave is one of those rare movies that can both inspire you and devastate you about your fellow humans. It is a film about selfless heroes, working in an underground hospital in Syria, tending to the wounded who are able to make it there – through a series of underground tunnels – even though the odds they face are staggering. Lots of people are dragged there, and it’s already too late for them – many others don’t have much hope. Most of the doctors in the area have already fled – but some have stayed, a few students, quite of few of them women, and they do their best to save lives, comfort children, and just try and get their people through another day. It is inspiring to see their selflessness. The film can also leave you feeling hopeless and depressed – for all of their work, things still do not end well.

 

The film was directed by Feras Fayyad, who also directed Last Men in Aleppo (2017) – which, like The Cave, was an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary. That film was about volunteer with the White Helmets – the team who went around in Aleppo after bombings, and tried to dig survivors out of the rubble to save their lives – and another of those films that can leave you inspired and crushed at the same time. This time, the film takes place in Eastern Ghouta – but the situation is basically the same. The Syrian regime, and their Russian backers, are bombing the civilian population to get at the rebels, causing a massive humanitarian crisis, which the rest of the world thinks is really very sad, but hasn’t really done anything about.

 

The central figure in The Cave is Dr. Amani Ballour, a pediatrician, who is one of the young, female doctors who have stayed behind to staff this hospital. She has a lot of patience in her – doesn’t even get mad at the male patients who get mad at her, wishing there was a male doctor managing the hospital, and telling her that her place should be at home raising children (you would think they would be grateful for the assistance – but you’d be wrong). She is kind and patient – does her best to save as many lives as possible, to comfort the children who come in screaming and crying and covered in dust and blood. You cannot say that she is upbeat or optimistic – but she certainly doesn’t give up.

 

As with any movie about Syria, there are moments and shots that you cannot forget, that engrave themselves into your brain, and won’t let go – the other wailing over her dead son, angry at him for dying for instance. The film also covers the panic and devastation that resulted when the government gasses their own people – how the hospital had to deal with the people effected and protect those who were not.

 

The film was released the same year as another wonderful documentary about Syria – For Sama – which is also about the selfless actions of doctors trying to save lives, and specifically how it is women who are doing a lot of the front-line work. Both films are wonderful – and should be seen – even if both basically end the same way – with the only thing left to do is leave if you can. The Syrian humanitarian crisis has been well-documented for years now – I’ve lost count of how many documentaries on it I have seen by this point. In the future, we marvel, and feel ashamed, of just how little we did.

Classic Movie Review: Lenny Cooke (2013)

Lenny Cooke (2013)

Directed by: Joshua & Benny Safdie.

 

I have been meaning to see the two first Safdie brother’s films – Lenny Cooke and Daddy Longlegs – since I loved their third film, Heaven Knows What, and particularly since I was head over heels for Good Time back in 2017. But I’m glad I waited a little bit to catch up with them. Lenny Cooke – their only feature documentary – makes sense in the wake of Uncut Gems. Part of it is the basketball connection – Uncut Gems features Kevin Garnett (who is mentioned, but not seen here) – so it is clear the brothers have a love of basketball, but also see it clear eyed – they don’t romanticize the game, and see it clearly as a moneymaking venture, for the players, and everyone else around it. But it’s also clear that the Safdie have a love for these types of characters – the characters who charge straight through something, even when all signs are telling them to hold up.

 

Lenny Cooke was once the top rated high school basketball player in America – ahead of future stars like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. And yet, Cooke never made it to the NBA at all, let alone become a star. He wasn’t even drafted. Lenny Cooke, the documentary, is made up of two parts. The first half of the movie is footage that the Safdie have accumulated from other sources – from interviews with Cooke when we were on top of the world, a guaranteed star. The second half of the film is shot years later – when his basketball career has fizzled out, he is now turning 30, he has gained some weight, and while he puts on a happy face, he is clearly a man with regrets. He was a year older than LeBron – who of course went 1^st overall in the draft, and has become one of the best players the game has ever seen. Cooke made the same decision as LeBron – to bypass college, and go straight into the draft. And then – for a variety of reasons (perhaps because he aged out of high school basketball, and hadn’t player organized ball in 18 months) isn’t drafted. There is a moment, a little earlier, where a scout says of Cooke that he’s at a crossroads – one way, he is a star player in the NBA, the other he becomes a New York playground legend, and nothing more.

 

I doubt the Safdies would have much interest in Cooke had he gone down the first path – and become a star. The New York brothers probably really did know of Cooke, and decide to look into what happened to the legend. They find him in Virginia with his family – the place we saw him in his previous life saying he’d never return to – now living his life. He is outwardly happy – he still has the big personality we saw in the past. But he has been humbled, he has been hurt. And there are times when that comes out – like a scene late in the film when he visits his old New York friends, and complains that they have basically abandoned him.

 

When you watch Lenny Cooke, you know where this is going – you know he’s not going to become a star, since we don’t know his name. Watching those early scenes then have an air of sadness to them. We see Cooke, who has the big personality and confidence, and yet we also see how all that makes him make one mistake after another after another. It’s one thing to have talent – but after only doing showcases for a while, what did he really expect? And yet, it’s also a sad story, because we see all these people pumping his tires, convincing him of things that are unrealistic. And when you’re a kid – 18 years old, from a poor neighborhood, you want to believe what they say.

 

All of the Safdie brother’s films are about self-destructive people in a way – ones who cannot help themselves, and keep following their path down to its end point, even once it becomes clear they need to pull back. Cooke is perhaps the saddest of these characters – in part, of course, because he’s real. But part because he’s perhaps the one who we shouldn’t have suspected to know better – he’s a stupid kid, who does stupid things – and cannot see the end coming. Lenny Cooke is a very good, very sad documentary. Any star athlete in their teens should see it – as a warning of things to come. Most of them will end up like Cooke, not LeBron.

Oscar Nominated Shorts Reviews

I quite enjoy going through the Oscar nominated shorts every year – when I can at least, it’s not always possible. This year, I haven’t been able to see all of them, but a combination of Vimeo, Youtube, Netflix and other sites meant I could see most of them. Below are reviews, by category, of the twelve out of fifteen shorts I have been able to see so far. For each category, I start with my least favorite, and work my way up.

 

Animation

Sister *** / *****

Directed by: Siqi Song.

Written by: Siqi Song.

 

Sister, by Chinese director Siqi Song, is an interesting looking short. It’s a stop motion animated film, using figures that are essentially like sock puppets. In narration, we hear a man talk about his little sister – how she annoyed him as a baby, and how she continued to annoy him as he grew up. There are little vignettes – places in times – where the two characters’ poke and prod at each other the way siblings do. The short is only about 8 minutes long, but honestly, for about 6 of those minutes – even as the film looks quite good – you do wonder where the story is going, or why Song felt the need to tell it. The reason does come out – and its kind of gut punch – but I’m not sure it really works as it feels like a cheat. Still, the film looks very good, and the message is good – but there were other, better ways to tell this story.

 

Kitbull *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Rosana Sullivan.

Written by: Rosana Sullivan.

 

Kitbull is an amusing little short about the unlikely friendship between an adorable kitten with huge eyes, who lives in an alley, and a pit bull, whose owner chains him out back, and (it is implied anyway) uses him for dog fighting. The kitten is fearful of anything – including the pit bull – but the pit bull is a big softy at heart, and soon the two of them are playing with a bottle cap together – and slowly bond. The film is nothing more than that – it’s a very amusing 8 minutes, with a heartfelt ending designed to elicit tears, and a cartoon-y animation style that brings to mind classic short cartoons. It lacks ambition, surely, but it’s so good at what it does – looks so good – and is so much fun, you won’t care.

 

Memorable **** / *****

Directed by: Bruno Collet.

Written by: Bruno Collet.

 

I have seen a few animated shorts that get nominated over the years about an older person slowly losing their memories – it’s a surefire way to build emotional stakes, while at the same time the short runtime doesn’t lend itself to repeating itself. But Bruno Collet’s Memorable is one of the best of the sort I have seen. The best thing about it is the animation itself – the man whose memory is fading is a painter, who uses his hands when painting, and Memorable takes that as its cue for the visual look – the characters and backgrounds look like thick coats of painted, sloppily, yet beautifully constructed. There are only two characters – the man and his wife, and it’s a beautiful and heartfelt film – as his mind goes, and doesn’t remember who she is, he is still stunned by her beauty. In terms of its story, Memorable isn’t all that new – but in terms of how it looks, it is one of the best in its field.

 

Hair Love **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Matthew A. Cherry & Everett Downing Jr. & Bruce W. Smith.

Written by: Matthew A. Cherry.

 

The most widely seen of any of the nominated shorts this year (it played in front of The Angry Birds 2 movie, and quite frankly was the only reason to see that awful film) is Hair Love. Directed by Matthew A. Cherry, Everett Downing Jr. and Bruce W. Smith, Hair Love is the heartwarming story a little African American girl, with an unruly head of hair, who wants it styled just like mom used to – but with mom away, dad struggles to do things right. The film is an absolute charmer from start to finish – fun and funny, wonderfully animated, and ending on a note of pure heartwarming goodness. This is an example of what great animated shorts can do – in 7-minutes, the filmmakers deliver a very specific cultural story, in an extremely entertaining, funny, heartfelt and brilliantly animated package. The highlight of the shorts this year to be sure.

 

Live Action

Nefta Football Club ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Yves Piat.

Written by: Yves Piat.

Featuring: Eltayef Dhaoui, Mohamed Ali Ayari, Lyes Salem, Hichem Mesbah.

 

Nefta Football Club is a very slight short – running just 17-minutes – set in the middle of nowhere in Tunisia. Two young brothers find a donkey wandering around out there in the desert, with headphones playing music on, and bags of white powder strapped to its back, and decide to take it to their village – the older one knowing what going on, but lying to his brother about it. Meanwhile, two bumbling men are looking for that same donkey, and cannot figure out where it is. This is all supposed to be comic, with misunderstandings with both pairs at its core, but I don’t really think director Yves Piat’s film really goes anywhere. You see the ending – and the final shot – coming from the beginning, and when you get that far ahead of a short right from the start, you’re in trouble. Mildly amusing, but not something I suspect you’ll remember.

 

The Neighbor’s Window **** / *****

Directed by: Marshall Curry.

Written by:  Marshall Curry.

Featuring: Maria Dizzia, Greg Keller, Juliana Canfield.

 

Marshall Curry, who directed the wonderful documentary short A Night at the Garden, nominated last year, moves into fiction territory with The Neighbor’s Window – a 20-minute film about how we should be grateful for what we have, and never really know what is going on with others. The film stars the wonderful Maria Dizzia as a New York mother – with two kids, and a third on the way (who we will see nursing as the film progresses). Along with her husband, Greg Keller, they are struggling with what many couples with kids struggle with – the pains of raising kids, of growing older, of settling into a routine, etc. Then a younger couple move into the building across the way – and leave their blinds open all the time, so the older couple see them having sex, throwing parties, and generally being young and having no responsibilities – until, of course, something happens. The film doesn’t go in any of the sordid directions you may think – it’s actually quietly profound in the way it makes you re-evaluate everything in the end. Everyone always wants something else – and we often don’t see it, because we are trapped in our own perspectives.

 

Brotherhood **** / *****

Directed by: Meryam Joobeur.

Written by: Meryam Joobeur.

Featuring: Kais Ayari, Mohamed Grayaa, Mouldi Kriden, Jasmin Lazid, Walid Loued, Alaeddine Mandhouj.

 

A lot of acclaimed shorts end up as features at some point – and often, the features don’t work as well, as they feel like what they are – a story that should be told in 30 minutes, ballooned up to take 90. Brotherhood is different – this 25 minute short would be well-served with a feature length treatment, as there is so much here worthy of explored, that the very talented writer/director Meryam Joobeur, a Tunisian-Canadian film director, only touches upon. Brotherhood is a film about Mohamed, a father raising his sons with his wife, who is shaken when his oldest son returns from Syria – where he went to fight – with a new wife, a young teenager who stays quiet and completely covered. It makes him question everything – and he grows angry at the son he feels he no longer knows. But, of course, it isn’t that simple. A longer version could add more complexity to the story, and the characters who aren’t Mohamed – and make that strong ending, even stronger. Still, this is a great short film – and one that makes me curious for what Joobeur will do next.

 

A Sister

Directed by: Delphine Girard

Written by: Delphine Girard

Featuring: Selma Alaoui, Veerle Baetens, Guillaume Duhesme.

 

In many ways, the simplest of the nominees – and one that will likely remind some people of the 2018 feature The Guilty – all about one long 911 phone call, where we never leave the operator. This one though does flash back and forth between a woman calling 911 after she has been taken by an acquaintance, but is not free to talk as he can hear what she is saying (she pretends she is talking to her sister, about her son) – and the 911 operator who has to figure out what to do. The film is tense, building the tension up throughout its 16-minute runtime. It’s no more complex than that – but it’s just expertly handled throughout its runtime – and I’d be curious to see what Girard does next if she moves into feature thrillers. Unlike some of the other films here, that are shorts that seem to want to be features, this one is perfect as is.

 

Documentary

 

Walk, Run, Cha-Cha *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Laura Nix.

 

Walk, Run, Cha-Cha is a lovely, calm little doc – it runs just 20 minutes, and tells a small, intimate story. It is the story of Paul and Millie Cao – both originally from Vietnam. They met back in their home country, and dated for six months – before Paul and his parents had to flee for America to get away from the communists. He and Millie never lost touch – but they didn’t see each other for 6 years – and were nervous that they wouldn’t still be right for each other after that time apart. But now, they’ve been together ever since. Now, in their twilight years, their daughter is grown, living her own life, they have successful careers – and they spend practically every night dancing the cha-cha. They take lessons, they go to the club. They just love it – and each other. In many ways, this is a gentle film – a small, not very ambitious film. Which makes it perfect for a 20-minute doc (longer would not work). But it’s also quietly profound – and quite lovely, building to a great final sequence that may just bring a tear to your eye. Yes, it’s minor – but it’s so lovely, who can complain?

 

Life Overtakes Me**** / *****

Directed by: John Haptas & Kristine Samuelson.

 

Life Overtakes is a timely and powerful documentary about refugee children, living in Sweden, who suffer from something called “Regression Syndrome” - where essentially they fall into a coma like state for months or years at a time. There is nothing medically wrong with them – but they have suffered so much in the past, and the stress of their new existence in Sweden – mainly the stress of not knowing if they’ll be able to stay there, or be sent back to a place where they may be killed, makes them fall into this state. Life Overtakes Me is a documentary that in many ways uses the syndrome as its guiding force – this is a calm documentary, at times a very beautiful one, that takes it time in telling its story. No doubt about it, some of the stories of the families who came are heartbreaking and horrific and the film doesn’t shy away from that – but it is a very quiet film just the same. The film tells these stories, and speculates on why it seems to happen in Sweden – and not elsewhere (although an end title card says that similar cases are now happening in Australia). Whatever the reason, this is a serious issue – and a further reminder of the harm we are doing to children, who just want a better life when they flee with their families.

 

In the Absence **** / *****

Directed by: Seung-jun Yi.

 

Seung-jun Yi’s In the Absence is in many ways a very simple film – and yet it is in its simplicity that it finds it powers. The film is about the Sewol ferry disaster back in 2013 in Korea – where a ferry tiled, and eventually sank, killing hundreds of people, most of them students on a field trip. The first third of the film – which is the best part of the movie – documents what happened as the ship slowly sank – where the government seemed more concerned about getting a camera on the ship than rescuing everyone. People did get out – including the Captain – but the response was shockingly slow and inept. From there, the film documents what happened next – the divers who spent months going back in to pull out the bodies, the protests against the President, whose action didn’t help anything that day, and may have hurt (she has other problems to) – to the point where they finally salvage the ship, years later. It is in many ways, simple – but it is a powerful overview of a massive tragedy, that perhaps didn’t get the attention outside of Korea it deserved.

 

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) **** / *****

Directed by: Carol Dysinger.

 

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl) is the perfect subject for a short documentary. It is about a group of female teachers in Afghanistan who recruit young girls to come to school – they teach them to read and write and do math – skills that their mothers never learned, because under the Taliban they weren’t allowed, and many families still don’t want them educated. They also teach them to skateboard. Director Carol Dysinger gets great footage of these young Afghan girls – wearing their safety equipment, skateboarding – inside, of course – and slowly getting better and better. It is an inspiration film – watching these girls learn and come out of their shell. It’s also a film tinged with sadness – one girl talking about how her older sisters are not allowed to come here – the Skatistan as it’s called – because when they get older women cannot go outside, and then realizing that one of her older sisters is just 13 – one year older than the girl talking. The film is a reminder about this country – that has been a war for decades, and the struggle that is still going on there – wrapped in a feel good package that offers hope, but not blind optimism.

Movie Review: Honeyland

Honeyland **** / *****

Directed by: Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov.

 

Honeyland opens with one of the most breathtaking and beautiful sequences of the year. Hatidze, who lives in rural Macedonia, climbs a large, rocky mountain slowly, going down narrow paths and steep passages, and then stops in front of some rocks, chips away at them, and finds what she is looking for – a thriving hive of wild bees. She takes the bees, and transports them back to her home – where she’ll seal them in a very similar setup they had in the wild. She is a wild beekeeper – the last of her kind – and she is able to keep up this delicate balance because she is the only one around, and because she follows a simple rule – she takes half the honey, and leaves the other half for the bees who made it. She gets the money from selling their honey, and they get to stay happy and fed. And then, the neighbors move in.

 

Honeyland is a documentary that simply sits back and observes Hatidze, and eventually the neighbors, as their conflict slowly grows. Hatidze has been here for years, all by herself except for her mother – now in her mid-80s, and stuck in bed for years. She seems relatively happy in her isolated life – either going about her busy, or taking the hours long walk into the city to sell her honey, and buy what they need to survive. She views the neighbors suspiciously when they arrive – but ultimately does want to be friends with them. She bonds with the kids, and at first the parents. But then the father starts his own honey business – with honey from breeders. Hatidze tells him to stick by her rule – take half the honey, and leave the other half. This isn’t just good for him, but vital for her – if his bees lose all of their honey, they will attack her bees to take theirs. He, of course, doesn’t listen.

 

This is a beautiful film – that opening sequence is breathtaking, but the entire film looks gorgeous – directors Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov and their cinematographers seem to have taken some lessons from Terrence Malick about the best time of day to shoot and much of the film has a beautiful, golden hue to it. They also smartly start their film with these very quiet sequences – so when the large, boisterous family eventually does come, it sounds deafening to those of us in the audience.

 

Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov don’t interfere with anything – we don’t even hear them ask any questions of Hatidze, although they get some answers out of her that show some regrets – like when she talks about not having a son to one of the neighbor’s kids, or complains to her mother that she didn’t agree to marry her off when she had matchmakers around all those years ago. They also don’t interfere in other instances – ones that may make you squirm – as the bees get riled up and sting – not just the adults in the film, but also the children, who we see swollen at points.

 

But ultimately, Honeyland is a movie about the changing times – the conflict inherent in capitalism, and the way people use and abuse finite resources until no one has anything left. It’s also a portrait of a dying way of life – a way you may not even be aware existed in the first place. And it’s all wrapped up in a beautiful and stunning package. This is one of the year’s best documentaries.

2019 Year End Report: Best Documentaries

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.