15 Best Releases From HBO Documentary Films Studio
The Inventor
SimilarBen-Hur (1959), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Metropolis (1927), Princess Mononoke (1997), Schindler's List (1993), Titanic (1997), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022),
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
The Inventor is an odd little film. It is a mess throughout, and there are many instances where I got the sense that writer/co-director Jim Capbianco did not know what kind of story he was trying to tell or who his audience was. And yet it possesses an undeniable charm, one that sticks with you. Continue Reading →
Shaq
SimilarPope John Paul II,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
“The Big Aristotle.” “The Diesel.” “Shaq Daddy.” Shaquille O’Neal goes by many names, but above all these, he’s simply “Shaq.” Making Shaq a household name wasn’t a given at first. Of course, being 7’1” helps. That alone doesn’t make becoming a giant among the biggest names in basketball an easy task though. Shaq covers the career of the mammoth basketball legend in a four-part documentary, complete with in-depth coverage of the man’s personal and professional life, while handled with an up-close, in-your-face approach. That’s the Shaquille O’Neal way. Continue Reading →
The Anarchists
SimilarPope John Paul II,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
In 2015, documentarian Todd Schramke began following a group of anarchists led by Jeff Berwick, who soon became an online personality pushing non-traditional, to say the least, ideas. Berwick, an entrepreneur-turned-libertarian-turned-cryptoinvestor, fell in love with this idea of anarchy, the decentralization of banking, the unschooling movement, and most essentially, with Acapulco, Mexico. Schramke followed Berwick and his growing crowd of supporters for the following six years, and HBO’s The Anarchists resulted from that half-decade of time spent. With endless footage and dozens of big personalities, Schramke armed himself to weave a great story, only to end up telling one that feels oddly--and awfully--ordinary. Continue Reading →
George Carlin's American Dream
SimilarPope John Paul II,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
This review is also a story about my father. Please indulge me for a moment. Continue Reading →
Icahn: The Restless Billionaire
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
One marker of a great documentary is a tangible and infectious passion for its central subject matter—an underlying commitment to a topic or idea that drives the very existence of the project. It’s hard to figure out what’s motivating Icahn: The Restless Billionaire, beyond a not-so-faint sense of people wanting to defend why they like an ultra-wealthy capitalist. Though the word restless creeps into the title, the lack of vibrancy in this documentary’s filmmaking indicates that lifeless should’ve been used instead. Continue Reading →
Jagged
SimilarCléo from 5 to 7 (1962),
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
Alison Klayman's chronicle of the Canadian singer's rise to fame centers around her seminal 1995 album, and the trail it blazed for female artists.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival finally got a hint of scandal—albeit of the most well-mannered variety imaginable—when it was announced that rock star Alanis Morissette, the focus of the new documentary Jagged, would not be attending the film’s gala world premiere, reportedly due to what the Washington Post dubbed “unspecified issues with the finished product.” Continue Reading →
Listening to Kenny G
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
Penny Lane's profile on the smooth jazz superstar can't quite muster up enough energy to make its explorations of his notoriety (good and bad) sing.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
If you learn nothing else from watching the documentary Listening to Kenny G, you will at least come away from it with the knowledge that the saxophone player who essentially serves as the living embodiment of “smooth jazz” is the best-selling instrumentalist of all time. You will know this because it is a fact that is invoked repeatedly throughout the film by his fans and supporters, generally when pressed as to what it is that they like about him. Continue Reading →
Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes
StudioHBO Documentary Films, World of Wonder,
HBO’s six-part docuseries Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes doesn’t have any shocking new revelations or unheard evidence. Some might ask what was the point of rehashing a story that broke in The New Yorker, which then became a book, which then became a podcast. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s take on Ronan Farrow’s already well-trod ground is clearly just for those folks who prefer visual media over books and podcasts (hey, no judgments) or for those obsessed with the investigation into Hollywood monster Harvey Weinstein. Continue Reading →
I'll Be Gone in the Dark
SimilarLuther, Murder Most Horrid,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
Nearly a year after the series aired on HBO, there is a new episode of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, a docuseries based on Michelle McNamara’s book of same name. This time around, the epilogue serves as a coda, bringing the story of The Golden State Killer (and the root McNamara’s obsession) full circle. Continue Reading →
The Crime of the Century
SimilarNightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, The Gangster Chronicles,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
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 →
Our Towns
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
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 →
Exterminate All the Brutes
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
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 →
TINA
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022),
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
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 →
Fake Famous
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
Young millennials and xennials appear in slow motion, one after another, in front of a bright pink wall—tossing their heads back in faux laughter, leaping into the air, resting hands on their hips—all to capture the perfect pic for the ‘gram. Narration lets us know that all these people snapping all these pics in front of the perfect Pepto-Bismol pink wall have made it one of the single most popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles. That’s right. A wall. Not a wall like the Great Wall of China or the Berlin Wall, but the wall of a Paul Smith, a boutique that sells $700 blazers and $150 T-shirts. Continue Reading →
Latin Kings: A Street Gang Story
StudioHBO HBO Documentary Films,
Marilyn Agrelo’s documentary soaks you in the warm bath of nostalgia for Jim Henson's long-running Muppet masterpiece.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
For most people—yours truly included—it will be impossible to look at Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street in a completely objective manner. From the moment it debuted in 1969, it has changed and influenced the ways in which children learn—largely for the better—and continues to do so more than a half-century later. Who among the show’s generations of fans wouldn’t want to see a film charting how the show came to be and featuring a generous helping of beloved clips and behind-the-scenes footage to boot? Marilyn Agrelo’s documentary provides all that and more. While the end result may not revolutionize the documentary form in the way that the show shattered notions of what could be accomplished in children’s television, viewers will presumably be too content to soak in the warm nostalgia bath in front of them. Continue Reading →