154 Best Releases From the Genre Documentary (Page 8)

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. The greatest concert film of all time begins with Talking Heads’ lead singer, David Byrne, sauntering onto an empty stage and putting down a boombox before mumbling, “Hi. I got a tape I want to play you.” It may be the most chill line to ever start a movie, but for Byrne, it’s his way of letting us know we’re about to go on an epic journey. It also lays the foundation for one of the most staggering on-screen performances of the 1980s. Stop Making Sense was filmed and edited together from four different concerts at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, but, unless you study it closely, it just looks like one glorious night.   Byrne was in his early 30s, and his bandmates were already legends of the NYC art-rock scene following a string of Brian Eno-produced albums. The Stop Making Sense tour was a victory lap after achieving commercial success with their two-time platinum 1983 album, Speaking In Tongues. They were only seven years away from disbanding, but this was their moment. Continue Reading →

For the month of romance, we celebrate the birthday of the late great filmmaker, whose output was as eclectic as it was empathetic. Jonathan Demme would be 76 this month, had he not died in April 2017 of cancer in his Manhattan home. With his passing, we also said goodbye to an auteur known for his bone-deep empathy for his characters, his deeply probing insights into the human condition, and his uncanny ability to popularize (or even create from whole cloth) entire film genres that we still enjoy today. For this reason, we're dedicating February -- the month of Valentine's Day -- to one of cinema's most generous, loving partners. No subject was too out of bounds for Demme: Toni Morrison adaptations, serial-killer thrillers, heartbreaking AIDS dramas, groundbreaking concert films, all were worth consideration and interpretation through his humanistic lens. Perhaps that's the product of his origins: he began his career as a movie publicist before working with Roger Corman on a number of B-movies, before graduating to directing Preston Sturges-like slices of quirky Americana. Take 1977's Handle With Care, for instance, which honed in on the eccentricities of the '70s CB radio craze, or Something Wild, a loving, sweet road-trip romance between the impossibly quirky Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels' transformed everyman. These films seemed to eke out an abiding affection for the American underdog, which underlines Demme's frequent use of cinema as advocacy. Jonathan Demme is the American cinema’s king of amusing artifacts: blinding bric-a-brac, the junkiest of jewelry, costumes so frightening they take your breath away. Mr. Demme may joke, but he’s also capable of suggesting that the very fabric of American life may be woven of such things, and that it takes a merry and adventurous spirit to make the most of them. Continue Reading →

Jeff Orlowski's documentary about the effects and ethics of social media lacks enough emotional depth or practical solutions to work. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) Did you know that the Internet is scary? Don’t worry, you're about to hear it again. Did you know that companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google store your information in order to sell it to advertisers? Of course, but maybe it'll really sink in if you hear it one more time. And—just bear with me—were you aware that these companies are so fine-tuned that they can track how long you stay on one given page, post, or picture? Of course you did, but The Social Dilemma doesn't care about that. There are a handful of working parts to Jeff Orlowski’s latest documentary, but rather than make use of its potential to say something new, it simply sticks to the most basic information and fleshes it out with some good old fashioned fear-mongering. It's part regular doc, part dramatic reconstruction, and mostly an insipid polemic, which, when paired with its potential to comment on the ethics of privacy and social manipulation, comes off as a regurgitation of what's been said before. Continue Reading →

Anabel Rodríguez Ríos's documentary about tension in the small village of Congo Mirador is both singular and specific. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) As the night sky shines a modicum of light over the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador, the heat lighting begins. It’s a regular phenomenon too: a constant cycle of near darkness blinded by strobing curlicues that weave in and out of the clouds. Thus comes our first decent sight of the location. Mirador, located in the country’s northwest Zulian Region, bleeds from Colombia on its west to the Caribbean Sea on its northeast. The community, however, stands above Lake Maracaibo, which, ranks as one of the planet's oldest lakes at anywhere from 20 to 36 million years. It’s just recently that citizens have made it work economically and environmentally, but the once-thriving locale has begun to sink. At least, not according to Mrs. Tamara, whose allegiance to the Venezuelan government precludes any real worry about the area’s wellbeing. She sports posters Hugo Chávez on her wall; she collects dolls of the former president and displays them with pride. Continue Reading →

Lance Oppenheim's documentary about the largest retirement village in America blends droll humor with small, salient touches. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) Couples dance. People drive around in golf carts. One man, firmly within poverty, lives inside his van while another—be it due to his old age, drug use or both—becomes surer and surer that he’s invincible. His wife looks on, appreciating the enlightenment he’s found but disapproving of how he’s reached it. Nonetheless, she sets old wedding anniversary cards around the house to get him ready for their 47th. It’s not so much to remind him of the upcoming one, she admits; it’s more to remind him of the ones they’ve already had in this utopia. Welcome to The Villages, a Florida community referred to as “Disney World for retirees.” Why? It’s the size of a suburb; it also has a population of over 130,000, having grown exponentially since its inception over 40 years ago. According to founder Harold Schwartz, its initial aim was to recreate the neighborhoods its boomer residents grew up with. “What’s its story?” the designers asked him upon its creation. His response? “This is where people find the Fountain of Youth.” Continue Reading →

Matt Yoka's documentary snaps a picture of a city -- and a family -- in transition. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) (Editor's note: as one of the film's major subjects, Zoey Tur, is a transgender woman whom we see both before and after her transition, we will defer to Zoey's stated preference in the film to refer to pre-transition Zoey as "Bob" (he/him).) The '80s and '90s were a tough time for LA -- Rodney King, the LA riots, wildfires, the OJ Simpson trial. Southern California seemed at once the beating cultural heart of the country and a walled-in prison slowly crumbling on itself. But of course, it was catnip for a news media that increasingly favored "if it bleeds, it leads" content and the increasingly blurred lines between journalism and paparazzo. LA was also the home of helicopter news dispatches; since the city was so spread out, reporters relied on choppers to get to a fire, shooting, or crash quickly and grab heart-stopping footage they could sell to outlets. Continue Reading →

A few years ago, Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova had two paintings on display in Oslo. It was something of a break for the artist, whose lifelong curiosity of death and nature didn’t quite fit the descriptor of “gothic.” It was a little too clean for that, but it was hers and it made her a few dollars. Then it was stolen. The question of who didn’t last long as Karl-Bertil Nordland was caught on the security footage, and while the drug-addled robber couldn’t remember much of the robbery, it didn’t really matter to the painter. Continue Reading →