154 Best Releases From the Genre Documentary (Page 6)

KinoKultur is a thematic exploration of the queer, camp, weird, and radical releases Kino Lorber has to offer on physical media and video on demand. Watched in conversation with one another, Derek Jarman’s final films, especially The Garden, Wittgenstein, and Blue offer a fascinating and deeply personal exploration of queerness, cinema, and legacy. Though he would die of AIDS at the age of 52, a mere 5 months after Blue premiered, these three film present this vibrantly queer artist at his most experimental. Currently all available to rent via KinoNow, they are a testament to Jarman’s boundless imagination and the perseverance of the creative spirit. The Garden (1990), like the vision of life Jarman presents within it, is a journey with no telos, “no sweet conclusion.” It’s an anarchic montage of images, sounds, and dialogue that presents Jarman’s final indictment of organized religion. Loosely following a gay couple as the navigate a netherworld of prejudice, Jarman recurringly uses religious imagery, particularly that of The Madonna (played by his muse Tilda Swinton), to highlight the ways queer people have been emotionally, symbollically, and culturally oppressed and the havoc this has wrought upon the earth. Continue Reading →

Despite it being mid-May, the first signs of summer are already upon us. No, I’m not talking about rising temperatures or the release of tentpole blockbusters, I’m talking about my local PetSmart setting up its pride section. In recent years, gay pride month has gone from niche celebration to a new sort of corporate holiday, with major brands such as Target, McDonald’s, and the aforementioned PetSmart creating advertisements and apolitical merchandise designed to invoke a sort of fun that’s a far cry from the anger that sparked the Stonewall riots. (And let’s not forget how many corporations spend money on both pride floats and homophobic politicians.) Continue Reading →

A running joke in early episodes of The Simpsons was McBain, an action hero parody. In one scene, a group of rich people celebrate their new product SWANK (a product 10 times more addictive than marijuana), and end with a toast: “To human misery!” After watching Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, The Crime of the Century, it’s hard to not think this scene was based on Purdue Pharmaceutical’s owners, the Sackler family, toasting the creation of OxyContin. Continue Reading →

In 1945, the release of Italian neorealist classic Rome, Open City pulled Roberto Rossellini and his family out of poverty and catapulted them into the international limelight. The Rossellinis, a new documentary from one of his five grandchildren, Alessandro, grapples with living in the famed filmmaker’s shadow.   Continue Reading →

Bobbi Jo Hart's energetic documentary shines a light on one of the greatest, most forgotten all-female rock bands in music history. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Hot Docs Festival.) “He was hard as a rock / But I was ready to roll / What a shock to find out / I was in control,” sang Fanny on their 1974 single, “Butter Boy”. The innuendo-laden and not overly flattering song, which peaked at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100, had been written by guitarist Jean Millington about her ex, David Bowie. Continue Reading →

While it occupies an almost fetishistic place in the American mythos as the country’s heart and soul, the small town seems to be another casualty in a globalized world. Plenty of books have been written about the rural and cultural decline of the places that exist between the coasts and major metropolitan areas.  Continue Reading →

There isn’t a lot of revelation to be found in Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s extensive 3-part documentary on Ernest Hemingway. Those dads and grandpas tuning in will already be well-versed in his adventurous life, his tumultuous relationships, his legacy of violence, and self-aggrandizement. But Burns & Novick manage to put together a narrative that suits the author’s legendary machismo. If there’s one person who’d love Hemingway, it’s Hemingway.  Continue Reading →

Following on from his work on I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck takes a holistic look at imperialism, the construction of whiteness, and how we form narratives about the violence of the past in HBO's four-part documentary series Exterminate All The Brutes. In doing so, Peck covers a lot of ground, moving from genocides to scientific racism to colonization and more, explicating the links between them all. He does a lot of brilliant work here, but the series doesn’t quite have the precision or focus to make it great.  Continue Reading →

After eight years of itchy, bland Catholic School uniforms, I was ready for a change. When I entered high school, I switched to one of the only public schools in the state of Louisiana that didn’t require a uniform. Now that I could dress how I wanted, I needed to make a splash. I wanted to show everyone exactly who I was and what I brought to the table. My 13 year old brain decided the best way to do that was wearing this t-shirt featuring the logo of Mr. Sparkle, the Japanese laundry detergent that uses Homer’s head as inspiration in the Season 8 episode of The Simpsons, “In Marge We Trust." Continue Reading →

The remaining trio of true stories at this year's festival focus on politics and its impact on both individuals and society at large. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) The final three films featured in the SXSW 2021 Documentary Competition deal with the government at a local, state, national, and even global level. They look at how politicians deal with the issues facing their constituents, how regular people decide to get involved, and how to react when your citizens return home after terrifying times.  Continue Reading →

Chris McKim's documentary about the fiery artist turned AIDS activist is a stirring tribute to voices that were silenced too soon. New York City in the 1980s was shaken to social rubble as the “epicenter” of the AIDS epidemic. Multimedia artist David Wojnarowicz was one such voice among the quaking moans of societal collapse. Director Chris McKim’s new documentary, Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker, offers an in-depth look at the raging flame that made the artist such a potent critic of his times. Using a dazzling display of archival materials, significantly from Wojnarowicz's huge collection of “tape journals,” McKim and fellow World of Wonder producers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey piece together the artist’s journey largely in his own words. We hear his storries about a traumatic childhood, being a sex worker, the discovery of himself as an artist, his AIDS diagnosis, and problems with fame all in his characteristically keen and morose drone.  Continue Reading →

From depictions of Black beauty to the ethics of whistleblowing, two female-focused docs out of SXSW struggle to hammer home a central message.  (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) Subjects of Desire, from director Jennifer Holmes, looks at the way Black beauty has changed over the last century. Holmes examines the boxes that Black women have been forced into through the lens of the Miss Black America beauty pageant. Interviewing a range of contestants, coupled with small group sessions of Black women of varying ages, Holmes’ film forces you to reckon with the sexualization of this unrespected and often disregarded group of people.  Continue Reading →

The immigrant experience, ad-man hagiographies, and scrappy homespun productions of Alien mark SXSW's documentary spotlight. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) The final day of SXSW’s Documentary Spotlight section showcases movies about collaboration, creativity, and a hope and dream for achieving new heights. This slate featured a movie about a Latinx teenager working on a strawberry farm hoping to one day go to college and buy a house, a group of scientists pushing human achievements in space towards a new frontier, an ambitious and heralded graphic designer who believes his projects and field can help save the world, and a group of ragtag Englishmen who are inspired to put on a stage production of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Continue Reading →

Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler assemble a freewheeling look at the artistic process from soup to nuts. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) A good number of the films on display at this year’s SXSW festival are works that are inextricably tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, either by using at as a part of the plot or because of the limitations to the production process instilled by quarantine procedures. Alone Together, which had its world premiere at the festival, takes those approaches one step further by serving as a documentary watching an artist—in this case, avant-pop queen Charli XCX—as she goes about her work under the new restrictions brought on by the current reality.  Continue Reading →

A look back at a '90s star, the opioid crisis, and the weird world of domino art mark SXSW's docs in competition. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) The subjects of the eight films included in the 2021 SXSW Documentary Competition slate vary greatly in intensity and relevancy. The three major films in the festival are documentaries as well, highlighting musicians Demi Lovato, Tom Petty, and Charli XCX. With several first-time filmmakers, the slate has potential with stirring topics, but can easily flame out, due to a lack of experience, immediacy, and understood closeness to the current status of a world that has recently felt like its ripping at the seams.  Continue Reading →

Mary Wharton's assemblage of lost footage from the artist's Wildflowers recording sessions celebrates his life and works, but the lack of conflict makes it hard to latch onto. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) Released in 1994, Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, the second solo project that he recorded away from his longtime band The Heartbreakers, has gone on to assume a place of prominence in the discography of the late rocker with many—Petty among them—regarding it as the finest work of his career. And yet, for as laid back and relaxed as the final product sounded, it was recorded during an especially tumultuous period in his personal and professional lives, one that included the dissolution of his first marriage, his parting of the ways with original Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch and his departure from longtime label MCA in order to sign with Warner Brothers. Continue Reading →

Curious tales of lost children, doomed startups, and the pressures of being a female stand-up stud Day 1 of SXSW's documentary offerings. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) The first batch of documentaries premiering at SXSW Film Festival’s Documentary Spotlight section were high profile stories with a cultural relevance to America today that forces audiences to rethink truth and tradition. It’s a readily packaged set of docs to start out, all of them already picked up for distribution and with nationally engaging stories. While they each have their little quirks and flaws, they manage to get at a significant shift in thinking and outlook on our lives as Americans, for better and for worse.  Continue Reading →

The first feature-length documentary dedicated to Tina Turner leaves out too much to be truly engaging. “This film, and the musical, are a kind of closure” says executive producer Erwin Bach, who's also partner to Tina Turner for over three decades. The music icon has, in many ways, been asked to tell the same story over and over again. Even when Turner attempted to silence the nagging questions by “journalists” about the abuse in her past by writing a biography (the now infamous I, Tina), the story of her life remained outside of her control.  Directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J Martin attempt to bring an end to the unceasing cycle of questions with their new documentary, Tina. Featuring new private interviews with Turner and those closest to her, along with a stunning array of archival footage, this is the definitive documentary on the pop and soul legend. Most of her, anyway. Continue Reading →

If you’re like me, you may be surprised to find that one of Netflix’s most enduring original franchises is Last Chance U, a documentary series chronicling football players as they juggle sports and academics. Though the show ended after a four-season run last year, Netflix isn’t one to let a recognizable brand name rest. Last Chance U has returned in the form of Last Chance U: Basketball, which shifts the focus from the Friday night lights of football to the indoor basketball fields of East Los Angeles Community College. Continue Reading →

When Billie Eilish met with director R.J. Cutler to discuss her documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, she had an odd request: “I want it to be like The Office.” Eilish, known to be a stan of the NBC comedy (she sampled dialogue from the show in her song “my strange addiction”), wanted to drop the audience into the world of her and her family as she rises from a 13-year-old viral video sensation to a 18-year-old Grammy winner. Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is an epic journey of the on and offstage life of the musical prodigy. Continue Reading →

Pelé is the kind of sports figure it feels like you’re just sort of born having some knowledge of. I couldn’t tell you why I know who Pelé is, particularly as an American with a serious aversion to sports, but I knew he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, soccer players of all time. I seemed to have absorbed the information out of the ether. But the new Netflix documentary Pelé (not to be confused with the 2016 biopic) corrected that. Continue Reading →