Tag Archives: documentaries

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Watch and Learn

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Good documentaries transcend art and commerce by helping us understand who we are, where we came from and where (hopefully) we may be going. These five films prove the necessity and urgency of the #blacklivesmatter movement and help to contextualize our current situation and the need for dramatic change.

Whose Streets? 

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay, Vudu, Hulu.

Moving like a living, breathing monument to revolution, Whose Streets? captures a flashpoint in history with gripping vibrancy, as it bursts with an outrage both righteous and palpable. Activists Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis share directing duties on their film debut, bringing precise, insightful storytelling instincts to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, they provide a new and sharp focus to the events surrounding the 2014 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson.

Cincinnati Goddamn

Available to stream for free from wexarts.org.

Wexner Center’s Paul Hill and filmmaker April Martin’s documentary exposes the similarities between 2014 events in Ferguson, MO surrounding the murder of Michael Brown and events in Cincinnati beginning in 1995 and culminating in riots following the suspicious, police-involved deaths of Roger Owensby in November, 2000 and Timothy Thomas in April, 2001.

The final product delivers an incisive look at the roots and ramifications of systemic racism. The filmmakers speak candidly with bereaved family members and witnesses, weave in crime scene footage and the news coverage of the day, and speak to historians, activists, police and political leaders to paint a picture that becomes jarringly prescient.

13th

Available on Netflix.

Director Ava DuVernay followed her triumphant Selma with an urgent dissection of mass incarceration in the United States. Packed with testimony from those who know, propelled by the force and vision of a director who knows how to tell a story, this is as gripping and necessary a film as you will find. Informative, stirring, and heartbreaking, 13th delivers a lesson that is essential to understanding both the ugly roots of America, and how shamefully deep they remain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45jBRPjImuw

The Seven Five

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay.

If current events haven’t satisfied your appetite for stories of cops behaving badly, take a trip back to the 1980s with The Seven Five. It’s a sobering look at Mike Dowd, the man dubbed “the dirtiest cop in history,” as well as the law enforcement code of silence that still appears shockingly prevalent.

Director Tiller Russell uses footage from Dowd’s 1993 hearing testimony as an effective bookend to current interviews with Dowd and several of his cohorts. The chill that comes from a younger Dowd testifying that a good cop means “being 100 percent behind anything another cop does” only intensifies when you hear one of his old partners recalling the prevailing attitude of their criminal heyday.

Peace Officer

Available on Tubi, Sling TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu.

How, and why, did we get the point where tactics and weapons of the military are standard issue for police forces across the country?

This film’s strength lies in its nuance, and in its refusal to provide snap judgements. Rather than looking to vilify police officers, the goal here is to understand how the system itself has become untenable, all but guaranteeing continued tragedies.

It’s not a fun conversation, but it’s one that’s long overdue. Peace Officer may speak softly, but it’s hard to imagine an American film that is more urgent.

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Hindsight 2020

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Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by George Wolf

You want to understand the economic mess we’re in? Simple. It all comes down to horses and board games.

Wut?

Watch Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and more than just vague analogies will come into startling focus.

New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton has assembled an array of scholars and historians (including Thomas Piketty, author of the source book) for a 103-minute presentation that is so informative, measured and concise it should earn you college credits.

There are graphs, illustrations and pop culture snippets from film and television that Pemberton weaves throughout the lecture material to attract the eye and boost the film’s overall entertainment value. But make no mistake, his mission is about breaking down the 400 years of history that explain the social and economic precipice we’re teetering on right now.

The breakdown is an accomplishment in itself, but Pemberton and his scholars never condescend or confuse, bringing an immeasurable value to the medium delivering this invaluable message.

And while some of the lessons are not new (i.e. we need a strong middle class) the context here is so vivid and relevant many observations may land with an echo of “eureka!” inside your head.

The history of nations carrying staggering wealth inequality and stagnant social mobility is not pleasant, but the ironic timing of Pemberton’s film helps fuel the hope that total socio-economic collapse may still be avoided.

The key lies in totally re-shaping the way a population thinks, which historically has only been achieved through seismic cultural shifts such as a war or a depression.

Or a pandemic?

We’ll see, but by the time Capital in the Twenty-First Century is done telling you about the horses and the board games, there will be little doubt why the “job creators” are so anxious to give us the business.

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Spacing In

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Spaceship Earth

by George Wolf

Man, it was a crazy time. A group of hippies got famous for putting on jumpsuits and quarantining themselves in Arizona for two years. Then they tweaked their own rules and bickered until Steve Bannon showed up to “kick ass” and name names.

If you were thinking “70s commune” until the Steve Bannon reference threw you, you’ve forgotten about the great Biosphere 2 experiment from 1991. As much as it made news then, if B2 is remembered at all these days, it usually lands just a notch above “new Coke” on the scale of pop culture face plants.

Almost 30 years later, is that a fair assessment, or did Biosphere 2 teach us something valuable?

Director Matt Wolf looks for answers with Spaceship Earth, an intriguing look back on a moment when the reach of idealism seemed equal to its grasp.

Wolf, as he did with Teenage and Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, leans on a wealth of archival footage to view a historical movement through a modern lens. For Spaceship Earth, that begins with a reminder that B2 was not some grand government project, but the culmination of hippie aspirations.

Led by the charismatic John Allen, a group of California dreamers traveled the world performing theater and preaching ecology, gradually increasing their goals until eight of them were moving into a completely closed system boasting a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller.

The aim was to understand biosphere 1 (Earth) enough to be able to replicate it in space. The result was complicated.

The film’s backstory of the “synergists” and their accomplishments provides a sturdy anchor, as well as a resonant narrative contrast once the B2 project is beset with scientific short-sightedness, group infighting, and the opportunist douch-baggery of Bannon.

Wolf’s respect for the group is clear, and while that respect isn’t unearned, it makes the skirting of some legitimate issues – like Allen’s label as a “cult leader” – appear more flagrant.

But what Wolf does best is give a whole new taste test to a benchmark in both science and pop culture. Biosphere 2 deserves a better legacy, and by showing us life inside the dome, and then re-framing the entire project through the lessons of the last three decades, Spaceship Earth rests on a compelling case.

And, just sayin’, new Coke was pretty good, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=DO1OuPCLPmI&feature=emb_logo

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She Said She Said

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What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

by George Wolf

Even with the fragmented and ubiquitous nature of film criticism in the social media age, Pauline Kael’s summation may still be the best.

Kael believed it was her job to “alert or interest people,” and without critics, “it’s all advertising.”

Falling into a movie reviewing gig almost by accident in the 1950s, Kael rode her obvious passion and expressive prose to a seat of tremendous power in the film industry. Many credit her positive review of Bonnie and Clyde with saving the film from ruin, while her negative reaction to Lawrence of Arabia made director David Lean question his future.

For What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, writer/director Rob Garver gathers interviews with Kael, her daughter and various film industry faces, weaving in passages from Kael’s writings amid snippets – with occasionally cheesy placement – from hundreds of movies.

It’s a spirited, engaging celebration of not only Kael, but of film itself as a source of entertainment, inspiration and discussion.

Garver supplies pertinent biographical info, showcasing Kael’s unlikely rise through sexist attitudes and editors uneasy with a critic unafraid to buck popular sentiment. And though it never quite feels as if we get to know Kael well, Garver makes sure we are aware of her complexities and contradictions.

She was grateful to be “paid for thinking,” not caring much about dissenting opinions or any hurt feelings on the other end of her sharpest barbs. She championed American New Wave cinema, but openly dismissed arthouse elitism for a populist lean, favoring sentences with the “sound of a human voice.”

It is that voice that speaks loudest in What She Said, with clear illustrations of how her self-assurance (and yes, self-promotion) elicited hatred, praise, and even the respect of those whose work fell below her standards.

And though Kael died in 2001, the film’s parting shot shows her approach as one both original and prescient. Putting some of Kael’s memorable thoughts inside imagined tweets, Garver leaves little doubt her following today would be impressively large.

That’s what she said.

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Born in a Small Town

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Pahokee

by George Wolf

If you’re the parent of a current high school senior, you’ll find some extra poignancy in Pahokee, an observational doc that follows four small town Florida teens through their last year at the predominantly African-American Pahokee High School.

B.J. is the football star on a team dreaming of a D1 State Championship. Jacobed is the Salutatorian who helps out at her parents taco stand. Junior already has a child at home. Na’kerria is running for “Miss PHS” and weighing community college vs. the full university experience.

For their first documentary feature, directors Patrick Benson and Ivete Lucas take a hands off, leisurely approach that gives the events plenty of room to breath – sometimes a little too much room. Some obvious questions (where’s the mother of Junior’s child?) are ignored in favor of following strands that could have been trimmed in a tighter edit.

But the film still finds its resonance in moments both large and small. From the face of the older white Harvard rep at the college fair, to Jacobed’s emotional description of her parents’ sacrifice, to the prom dress adorned with pictures of Trayvon Martin and other victims of excessive force, Pahokee serves plenty of subtle, evocative sequences that will make you care about these kids.

The further you are away from high school, the easier it is to dismiss what the class of 2020 has lost this year. Pahokee‘s class of 2017 serves a tender and truthful reminder of a crossroads unlike any other.

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Other Side of the Pillow

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Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

by George Wolf

Miles Davis, the original cool? Well, at the very least, he’s in the team picture.

And part of that iconic allure, along with groundbreaking talent, was his elusiveness. Until that unexpected 1980s stretch of pop collaborations, art exhibitions and Miami Vice appearances, Davis was the prickly genius you could not pin down.

Enough talk, his every glance seemed to sneer (behind the coolest of sunglasses, of course). Just stand back and let me play.

With Birth of the Cool, director Stanley Nelson weaves archival footage, first-person interviews and Davis’s own words (read by actor Carl Lumbly) into a captivating career retrospective buoyed by important historical context.

Longtime aficionados will relish the dive into early stints with Dizzy, Bird and Coltrane as much as the later mentorships of Shorter and Hancock. The amount of respect and adoration here is healthy, indeed, but the darker layers of Davis’s drug use and abusive relationships are treated as part of his human complexity rather than mere whispers on a scandal sheet.

Birth of the Cool is an obvious must for any Davis fans wanting to feel as close to the legend as they’ve ever been. And for anyone using the film as intro to Miles 101, it’s a fine primer on road to Bitches Brew and beyond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34r017yYNa0

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Tunnel Vision

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The Cave

by George Wolf

A mother wails in agony over her dead son. A child, sick from a chemical attack, cries for his mother.

The bombs of the Syrian Civil War keep coming, bringing more dead and injured civilians, and inside a makeshift underground hospital known as The Cave, the attending physician wonders aloud if God is really watching over them.

Director Feras Fayyad returns to the Syrian battlegrounds for a film that is perhaps even more unsettling than his Oscar-nominated Last Men in Aleppo. And while it is not enjoyable to watch, its grip is only strengthened by the heartbreaking relief you feel when it ends and you’re free to return to your life.

Fayyad’s camera moves with frantic precision through the underground tunnels where Syrians have fled since 2013, when “the streets became battlefields.”

With an unflinching, verite-style eye, Fayyad follows Dr. Amani Ballour much as he followed the “White Helmet” volunteers in Aleppo. But here, Dr. Amani’s fight to save lives and foster change also encompasses the systemic sexism she’s been fighting all her life.

Dr. Armani saw pediatrics as “a righteous outlet for her anger,” and her experiences provide several juxtapositions Fayyad wields to great effect. Inside a world unfit for children and a religious doctrine used as a “tool for men,” a subtle humanity is revealed, one that refuses to waver amid constant waves of inhumanity.

Oscar-nominated this year for Best Documentary Feature, The Cave is among the most rewarding kicks in the gut you’re likely to experience.

Outtakes

Pretty McFly (For a White Guy)

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Fastest Delorean Part II

by George Wolf

When we last saw Adam Kontras and his record-setting Delorean, one of them was on the side of an L.A. freeway engulfed in flames.

Fastest DeLorean in the World ended with that fiery cliffhanger, and now Kontras is back to finish the story with his second documentary feature, Fastest Delorean Part II.

Kontras, a Columbus native who bought the Delorean and turned it into a stunning replica of Marty McFly’s Back to the Future time machine, has for years been making his living in L.A. by renting out the vehicle for a variety of gigs.

That led to a desire for setting the Delorean speed record, which Kontras chronicled to stirring effect in Part I. But aside from all the cool car stuff, what really drove the first film is the human drama that developed between Adam and his gearhead brother Kenny.

The status of their relationship was as much an unanswered question as the car fire, and Kontras readily admits his sequel won’t mean much to anyone who hasn’t seen the first film.

“It’s the rightful conclusion to everything,” Kontras said.

Plus, from the Universal Studios backlot to Paris and beyond, we get first person accounts of the often amazing places the car has taken Kontras and his good friend Don Fullilove, who played Mayor Goldie Wilson in the Back to the Future films.

“Just like the first one, I’m very happy as a storyteller to have somehow pieced it all together,” Kontras said. “The scope of everything is pretty intense…but holy fuck, I wish I wasn’t in it.”

“I am so done with the drama, I did everything humanly possible to make Fastest DeLorean a nice redemption story.”

“There will not be a part III.”

There will be more documentaries, though. Kontras is set to announce his next project in January, one he describes as “a love fest that has nothing to do with family.”

Okay, but what about time travel?

Fastest DeLorean Part II is streaming now on Amazon.

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Read All About It

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Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer

by George Wolf

About 94 minutes into Scandalous, Mark Landsman’s completely engrossing documentary about tabloid journalism, you realize he’s buried the lede.

“How did a tabloid subject get to be President of the United States?”

In telling the tale of the birth, rise and fall of the National Enquirer, Landsman is also drawing a fairly persuasive roadmap to America’s current standing as a place where, in the view of no less than Carl Bernstein, no fact-based debate is even possible.

Born to original owner Generoso “Gene” Pope from a no-interest mafia loan, the Enquirer had a simple goal: sell the most papers, period. Taking inspiration from roadside gawkers at a grisly accident, Pope printed the crime scene photos others didn’t.

But when the rise of suburbia meant less lines at the newsstand, Pope made a genius move to the supermarket checkout line. And since blood and guts don’t mix too well with the bread and milk, the Enquirer went all in on celebrity gossip.

Using press badges for nifty introductions, Landsman rolls out a succession of former Enquirer reporters and editors, none of whom can hide their fondness for the memories. It was an intoxicating working environment of bottomless expense accounts, cutthroat competition and a ruthless dedication to getting the story.

It wasn’t about facts, it was about eyeballs. Start with some sliver of truth, and then cater to the core (“Missy Smith in Kansas City” the staff called her) with unapologetic sensationalism.

Let the public decide, right? They have a right to know. Except when they don’t, because “catch and kill” protection deals started decades before Donald Trump. Landsman scores with those details, but curiously omits any mention of successful legal pushback from celebrities such as Carol Burnett.

The paper’s backstory is informative and intriguing, but the red meat of Scandalous comes fittingly from scandals. The coverage of both Gary Hart and O.J. Simpson not only brought new journalistic respect to the Enquirer, but ushered in a new approach to journalism itself that is still being debated.

“That’s not my problem,” says a former editor. “It sold papers.”

It did that. But Landsman argues it also blurred lines that became ripe for exploitation by a new owner with a political agenda, something – according to all former staffers interviewed – the Enquirer had always avoided. After that, greasing the political rails of longtime Enquirer darling Trump became almost inevitable.

But above all, Scandalous resets the folly in underestimating the Enquirer’s legacy. When we listen to a reporter’s recording of a much younger Trump calling to plant favorable stories by posing as a “Trump insider,” it feels like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past.

So how did the checkout aisles evolve from promising dirt on the latest celebrity divorce to serving up blatant political propaganda? In the words of one former reporter, the Enquirer simply got “out-Enquired.”

Scandalous, indeed.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

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Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

by George Wolf

Okay, reel talk: I’m a sound nerd, so I probably geeked out over Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound a bit more seriously than your average bear.

But if you’re even a little bit at home in the foam-padded clubhouse with us audiophiles, rejoice! Director Midge Costin has given us our overdue salute to the history and pioneers of big screen sound design.

Costin, a veteran sound editor making her directorial debut, does seem mindful of avoiding an approach only digestible by techies. Her straightforward timeline of sound design history may lack style points, but it’s layered with plenty of movie clips and director interviews to rein in the average movie buff.

The sincerity of Steven Speilberg’s statement that “the ears lead the eyes to where the story lands” is echoed by other film greats who seem genuinely pleased to discuss a side of the craft they’re rarely asked about.

And we see that – like so many aspects of cinema – modern sound design took root in the 1970s, as mavericks such as Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, Lynch, Streisand and Scorsese began to re-shape Hollywood.

It’s through these legends that that we’re introduced to sound design legends Ben Burtt, Walter Murch and Gary Rydstrom. Their names may not be as familiar, but Costin wants to make sure you understand that their contributions are just as monumental.

Showcasing a wealth of information with an engaging pace, Costin finds an easily enjoyed sweet spot between the tech geek and casual movie fan. Ultimately it’s a film that can satisfy as both an intro to further research or a complete quick-study course, making Making Waves sound like a winner.