19 Best Documentary Releases on Hulu

Doctor Philip Zimbardo is something of the Stan Lee of modern psychology. And like the famed Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief turned mascot, that vibe has met mixed reviews. The two share an undeniable charisma and enthusiasm that tends to butt up against a frequently characterized slippery grasp of historical truths. As a former Marvel.com freelancer and therapist on hiatus, both have loomed large in my professional career. I made my piece and staked out my position on Lee some time ago. Zimbardo has proven a more complicated case. It is a struggle The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth seems to share. One that it largely fails to resolve. Before going further, it’s crucial to acknowledge Zimbardo’s death less than a month ago at 91 years old. Near as I can tell, The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking the Truth had been scheduled to air this week for some time. There was no move made to capitalize on the doctor’s demise. Additionally, Zimbardo does appear in the documentary to speak on his own behalf and appears hale and hearty. There’s no sign of mental decline in the doctor's words or body language. There isn't a hint of an attempt by director Juliette Eisner or the Muck Media team led by Alex Braverman to make a hit piece about Zimbardo. The timing is unfortunate, perhaps, but it does not seem the product of ill intent. Participants in the experiment pose with performers hired to act in a recreation. (National Geographic) As a work of structure and pacing, Unlocking the Truth is an impressive work. Divided into three segments, each ends on a sort of academic cliffhanger, compelling viewers into the next episode. Roughly speaking, part 1 is the history as most know it. This installment is skippable for those who attended grad school for anything related to psychology. Honestly, that goes for anyone who took more than two psych courses in undergrad, too. However, for the only vaguely familiar or truly unfamiliar, the episode lays out details quickly and compellingly. It’s easy to see why the Stanford Prison Experiment has become such a sticky part of psychology’s legacy. It’s fascinating and disconcerting, presenting its case in a way that flatters that “of course, I knew it!” backward reasoning. Continue Reading →

It should be no surprise that the people promoting Welcome to Wrexham Season 3 are canny. Nonetheless, it is still worth calling out. One can see it in both the sequence of the season’s first three episodes and the decision to provide all three to critics simultaneously. Without the third, it is possible to conclude that success may have thrown a spanner in the works for the series. With the third, it becomes clear that the show remains committed to what makes the first two seasons so watchable. More importantly, it confirms the series’ score of producers—including the team’s two famous owners, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, and their right-hand man, writer and comedian Humphrey Ker—haven’t lost the ability to tell the stories. The problem that immediately faces Welcome to Wrexham Season 3 is the team’s success. It is easy to catch up with what happened with the Red Dragons’ after achieving promotion at the end of last (both TV and football) season. However, if you are making a documentary series about how the team is doing, you have a responsibility to tell that story. This places the show in a place to chronicle the team’s celebratory trip to the United States and a lot of soccer games rapid fire. When forced to be “just” a sports documentary, focused on the wins and losses and the on-pitch activities, Welcome to Wrexham is solid. As it has “taught” the audience football (soccer around these parts), it has grown looser and more comfortable, letting the on-screen action speak for itself. The break-ins by Reynolds or McElhenney to explain a term or mug about some “strange” rule happen far less, giving the audience a less mediated experience.  Continue Reading →

The acclaimed documentarian joins The Spool to discuss Brooke Shields, her work, her life, and her relationship to "Brooke Shields" the image. In 1981, Roger Ebert wrote a profile on Brooke Shields in which he—quoting a press agent—said, “She will be with us for the rest of our lives.” That turned out to be remarkably prescient, but neither the agent nor Ebert could have anticipated the myriad number of ways Shields has been with us in that time. Yes, she is extraordinarily beautiful. But many equally attractive people have come and gone, while Shields remains a consistent part of pop culture’s firmament. From her early appearances in films like Pretty Baby (1978), The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Endless Love (1981) and her controversial TV ads for Calvin Klein jeans, all of which focused on her sexuality while she was literally a child, to her shift in the later Eighties to become America’s Virgin to her reinvention as a comedic actress in the Nineties to becoming an advocate for those suffering from postpartum depression (and suffering the slings and arrows of Tom Cruise in full asshole mode as a result), Shields has been a persistently relevant figure in the American popular consciousness.  While Shields has lived much of her life in the public eye, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, a fascinating two-part documentary from Lana Wilson now streaming on Hulu, proves that she still has a great deal to say. Given access to nearly a half-century’s worth of archival material, which she presents alongside contemporary interviews with Shields, Wilson paints a fascinating, eye-opening portrait that demands a new consideration of Shields and her career. Much of her story is harrowing, be it specific to her life—her wrenching descriptions of sexual assault and her tumultuous relationship with her mother—or experiences too many young women in the spotlight share. (If you think having someone inquire about the state of your virginity sounds awful, imagine having talk show hosts do so on live television.) And yet, not only has Shields survived, she is thriving. She has found peace with herself and is able to look back on her life with a sense of control over it.  Continue Reading →

The past couple of years have seen the arrival of a large number of documentaries dealing in some way with the COVID pandemic, as well as no small amount of films chronicling the Trump presidency and the increased prevalence of the MAGA mindset. David Siev’s debut film, Bad Axe (the winner of the Documentary Feature Audience Award at this year’s SXSW Film Festival), combines the two approaches. While that combination alone might keep some people from watching it due to an inevitable sense of burnout regarding both topics, it should be known that those who are willing to pass on it on those grounds alone will be missing out on one of the best, most engaging documentaries to emerge this year.  Continue Reading →

What would you do if you discovered your spouse was sexually abusing your child? Most people would divorce their partner and take them to court so they can answer for their crimes. If you have evidence, it seems like a clear-cut choice from the judge to give you full custody of your child and ensure that the abusive parent is no longer in their life. Continue Reading →

If you were ever the same kind of pretentious twerp as I was, you likely went through a phrase sometime in your teens or early 20s when you daydreamed about visiting New York City’s Hotel Chelsea, a bohemian Emerald City that housed everyone from Dylan Thomas to members of the Beat Generation to Andy Warhol to Joni Mitchell to Leonard Cohen. It wasn’t just that many of the most fascinating, iconic artists of the 20th century stayed at the Chelsea, but that they did some of their best work there, as if there was some sort of inspirational magic in the walls. Continue Reading →

v Katia Conrad and Maurice Krafft grew up in Alsace, France and fell in love at nearly the exact same time, twice over. First, they fell in love with volcanoes, and then they fell in love with each other. Sara Dosa’s new documentary about the power couple volcanologists, Fire of Love uses Dosa’s exquisite prose, the Kraffts' own footage, and Miranda July’s narration to bring their love to life on screen.  Continue Reading →

Annette Leos Carax and art-rock sibling duo Ron and Russell Mael (of Sparks) join forces for this sometimes lovely sometimes harrowing sometimes both musical. Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver are a creative couple (an opera singer and a scathing comedian) who love each other so much. Carax and Sparks trace what happens when that love curdles—when a person's idea of themselves eats their real self and anyone they care about. And those who don't get eaten? They're still left with scars, none more than the primarily-a-puppet title character. Carax's screen craft is daring, whether biting, sweeping, or gleefully absurd. Cotillard and Driver's dives into how love turns sour and wrath makes beasts of people are splendid both individually and as a duet. And the tunes rule, from Driver and Cotillard’s swooning to Simon Helberg laying out his duties as an accompanist. The earworms. They abound. [Justin Harrison] Continue Reading →

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Jeremy Elkin's documentary is a love letter to the skater culture of the '90s, and the punks and rebels that filled it. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca film festival.) It took me towards the middle of Jeremy Elkin's documentary All the Streets Are Silent to realize that Eli Gesner, the videographer behind much of the New York skateboard culture in the 90s, was the prototype for the character Fourth Grade in Jonah Hill’s mid90s. Fourth Grade was the kid I identified with the most, being the shy and silent observer to the antics and adventures of a tight-knit crew of talented skaters and artists. All throughout that film, he captured it all with his trusty palmcorder, only to eventually debut the footage in a video mixtape at the end. Such an expression that I also didn’t realize until All the Streets Are Silent was inspired by Gesner’s work as a kid with a camera. 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 →

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 →

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 most profound thing that’s shared in Rodney Ascher’s latest mind-expanding documentary comes at the beginning. One of the film’s “eyewitnesses”, Paul Gude, gives a brief history lesson on how humans understand themselves based on the highest form of technology at the time.  Continue Reading →

Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival is insightful and loving. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) The word “Woodstock” enters consciousness at a young age. It has become synonymous with classic rock, with music festivals, and with a decade of counterculture. With an estimated 400,000, Woodstock cemented itself as a part of popular culture, an ironic shift in its original meaning and its now-reformed image. Continue Reading →

Debbie Lum’s engrossing documentary about scary-smart teens and the arduous college application process will make you both nostalgic for and glad to be done with high school. Back when I was in high school, during the Pleistocene Era, applying for college meant filling out a piece of paper, meeting once or twice with your indifferent guidance counselor, and then waiting for an envelope to come in the mail. It was a solitary experience, where often you didn’t know what schools your classmates wanted to get into until they got into them (or didn’t). Now, however, it’s a far more elaborate process, sometimes starting as early as junior year, and involving essays, interviews, and hours and hours of preparation, at the service of a gradually decreasing acceptance rate. Debbie Lum’s documentary Try Harder! focuses on a year in one high school, as its students muddle through an exhausting, often dispiriting college application experience. It’s surprisingly fascinating, and endlessly charming. San Francisco’s Lowell High School is one of the most highly ranked public high schools in the country, with a student body made up entirely of the future in science and technology. These kids are way smarter than me, and probably you, and probably most adults, with enviable confidence to go with it. They have the poise of people who have spent much of their lives always knowing the answer to the next problem, and never questioning that they have bright and successful futures in front of them. That confidence and poise wavers a bit once they discover just how competitive and disappointing applying for college can be. With college acceptance rates dropping by 50% over the past 15 years, the numbers seem to be stacked against them from the beginning, and that’s even with astonishing SAT scores and endless extracurricular activities on their resumes. Continue Reading →

Since its premiere at this year’s Berlinale film festival, much of the press around Viktor Kossakovsky’s involving, subtly radical Gunda has fixated on the intimacy of its form. Presented without any narration, subtitles, or extraneous context and shot in stark but crucially un-distracting black and white photography (Kossakovsky has been forthright about not wanting to draw attention to beauty), this is pastoral portraiture that’s keenly aware of reflecting — but not exerting its purpose. Continue Reading →