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      ‘Last Exit: Space’ Review: Not-So-Final Frontiers

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      The director Rudolph Herzog, with his father, Werner Herzog, narrating, explores the feasibility of off-world colonization.In the documentary “Last Exit: Space,” the director Rudolph Herzog grabs a baton from his father, Werner Herzog, and continues his dad’s explorations of oddball aspiring visionaries. The topic is space colonization: who might do it and how, and, ultimately, what reaching for the stars says about living on Earth.The initial interviewees, including a father and daughter preparing for D.I.Y. spaceflight in Denmark and a scientist using the Ramon Crater in Israel to mimic the surface of Mars, offer pitches that are a bit utilitarian for the Herzog house style. The movie grows weirder when it looks further out, to the possibility of space travel across 5,000 years. A “leading space sexologist” considers the problem of cross-generational inbreeding. A geneticist describes his lab’s 500-year plan to build humans more physically resistant to the ravages of space.It’s not all wonderment. Werner, who delivers his peerless voice-over, explains that life on Mars might be less exciting than it sounds: “A crew of hardy astronauts would hunker down in radiation-proof bunkers enjoying drinks of recycled urine.” The anthropologist Taylor Genovese warns that corporate colonies on Mars would be a means of creating a feudal system, with a work force trapped on another planet.“Last Exit: Space” is variably engaging depending on who’s talking, and a late but typical shift toward mysticism (a group in Brazil believes it was descended from aliens) is a letdown from what came before. The movie gives a stimulating but standard-by-Herzog-standards treatment to a stellar subject.Last Exit: SpaceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Calendar Girl’ Review: A Portrait of an Angel of Fashion

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      This documentary follows Ruth Finley to shows and tributes as she reluctantly brings her decades-long career to a close.Fashion is a cosmos unto itself, as so many books, articles and films insist on reminding us. And so it has its own angels and demons — as you know, the Devil wears Prada. In this firmament, Ruth Finley, who died in 2018 at the age of 98, was unquestionably one of the angels.Finley is introduced to us as a nice lady in her 90s who sits patiently with folded hands as she’s made up before heading onstage to receive another award for her work. Her dress is understatedly elegant; she speaks of her old friend Bill Blass as one of her favorite designers.Finley, in this opening scene and subsequent ones, is celebrated for creating a publication which you may have never heard of, but which has been vital for keeping the fashion industry on schedule: “Fashion Calendar.” It is perfectly described by its title.A subscription publication that took no ads, the calendar was simplicity itself: a grid describing who was showing what, and, most important, when they were showing it. It never ran illustrations or outgrew its use of typewriter font. And Finley was slow to take it into the online world, where it resides today.“Calendar Girl,” directed by Christian D. Bruun, follows Finley to shows and tributes as she reluctantly brings her decades-long career to a close.Finley’s story is also the story of how New York became a fashion powerhouse: Her own discernment, and her kindness to up-and-coming designers, is recounted in sometimes nostalgic detail.This affectionate portrait is also well grounded. Finley is remembered as a hard worker among other hard workers. Despite the extremes often associated with the fashion industry, in Finley’s narrative, there’s very little haughty self-regard or hyperbole on display.Calendar GirlNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      With ‘Lucy and Desi,’ Amy Poehler Gets to the Heart of a Marriage

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      The performer and director wanted to deliver a down-to-earth portrayal of a couple whose union was far from perfect, even if viewers wouldn’t accept that.Near the beginning of the new Amy Poehler-directed documentary, “Lucy and Desi,” an audio recording plays. In it, Lucille Ball thanks her husband, Desi Arnaz, for her two beautiful, healthy children. That’s not exactly a shocking statement coming from a woman in 1950s America. What’s surprising is that Ball finishes by thanking her husband for her “freedom.” It’s one of many moments in the film that might cause those who think they know the story of these stars, and this couple, to lean in a little closer.For Poehler, also an actor and comedian whose professional and personal lives are subjected to the occasional tabloid treatment, Ball’s striking admission was one of many revelations that inspired her to look deeper into the relationship of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable couples. Partly because of the enduring popularity of “I Love Lucy,” Ball and Arnaz, who played the married Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, came to represent a particular brand of loving, married couple for generations of audiences. Like many marriages, though, their partnership was far from perfect.When Poehler was approached by the production companies Imagine Entertainment and White Horse Pictures about making a documentary about Ball and Arnaz, she knew she didn’t want to make a film where “funny people talk about how funny everyone is” but instead to speak to people who actually knew one or both of them — like their children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr., or Carol Burnett or Bette Midler. Poehler didn’t want to portray Ball as a genius, but as a very real woman whose 20-year marriage was at once complex, loving, painful and tender.During a recent phone call while she was walking through New York, Poehler discussed the ways Ball and Arnaz broke barriers, shaped culture and proved that a marriage doesn’t have to be last forever to be successful. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.When Lucy thanks her husband for her children and her “freedom,” it’s striking. What was your reaction when you heard that?What to Know About ‘Being the Ricardos’The Aaron Sorkin-directed dramedy looks at one very bad week for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem.Review: The not-so-funny side of the “I Love Lucy” stars is the focus of Sorkin’s lively, chatty, somewhat odd and insistently depoliticized biopic.‘Funny’s Hard’: Nicole Kidman said that comedies do not come easily to her. Here’s how she learned to love playing Lucille Ball.Remembering Lucille: How does Nicole Kidman’s Lucy compare to the real Lucille Ball? A writer recalls his first disorienting meeting with the comedian.Best-Picture Race: ​​Our columnist thinks “Being the Ricardos” is among six contenders with the strongest chances to win the Oscar.I didn’t expect that word. I don’t know exactly what she meant, but I like to think she meant she was able to have financial freedom. A woman over 40 and a Cuban American immigrant and refugee were not often the people in the room when the deals happened, and so for her, financial freedom was huge. She grew up with scarcity, and Desi had a privileged life in Cuba and went through a traumatic experience of losing everything and having to escape his own country. So they both cared about work and providing for their family. I think that freedom came from a kind of security. I also think they loved each other for who they were.Did you have any reservations about taking on the project?I was trying to figure out, as a filmmaker, what would be my way in and my point of view. I do find that with people this famous and accomplished, you hear words like “pioneer” or “genius” a lot and it’s like … OK. There have been so many tributes already. I was excited when I talked to White Horse and Imagine, and I basically said there are a couple of things I want to try to avoid. One was to spend the whole movie having funny people talk about how funny everyone is. I wanted to try to bring them back down to earth. Then I figured out that the love story is really the thing that, hopefully, keeps people watching.Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz at their studio, as seen in the new documentary. Leonard Mccombe/The LIFE Picture Collection, Shutterstock, via Amazon StudiosThe footage and tapes you had access to were so intimate, and many had never been seen or heard by the public. How much archival audio did you have access to?It was hours and hours of stuff. One of our producers was at [Ball’s daughter] Lucie’s house, and she pointed to a box, like, “What’s in that one?” It was very much a genie-in-the-bottle moment, finding all these audiotapes. When you’re doing a documentary, you realize that you and your editor [Robert Martinez, whose credits include “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”] are like two people on a life raft. There was so much material, and that was by far the most overwhelming thing. Once we made the decision to hear Lucy and Desi tell us their story [via the recordings], everything changed, because not only did it make them feel alive and human, but we were able to age them as the film went on. Even though I strongly believe that most people are unreliable narrators, I think you learn a lot from what people don’t say, and it’s just as important as what they do say. I was always very moved by how they spoke about each other.The film gives you the sense that on one hand, they’re upholding this very 1950s version of happily ever after, but that off camera, at least later in the marriage, they struggled. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile that with the Lucy and Ricky we see on television.Television is an intimate medium that you often watch with your family, and they were the early inventors of the idea of rupture and repair, which is, maybe Lucy baked too much bread or Ricky forgot her birthday or whatever it is, and you think there’s no way they’re going to fix it, and they fix it at the end and everything’s fine. There’s a deep longing, especially in postwar America at the time, of thinking: “Can things be fixed? Are we going to be OK? Is the family going to stay together?” And what was really exciting to me is they were experiencing very human, complicated things that most people feel with success and marriage. You know, all the things that happen in a human life.Did you have discussions with the producers or your editor about their marriage or about why their relationship might resonate with modern audiences?Yeah, we really tried to deconstruct the idea of a partnership and ask questions about what makes a successful marriage. What Lucy and Desi do in their lives is they work very hard on themselves and their craft. They create this beautiful music together. And they go on to continue to create separately, respecting each other and finding ways to work together. So there’s always that question of, what is a successful partnership? Their marriage ends, but they co-parent and find new love. I loved talking to Laura LaPlaca [director of the Carl Reiner Department of Archives and Preservation at the National Comedy Center] because she said that America just didn’t accept their divorce. America was just like, nope. But they showed what it was like to get divorced and show respect for each other. They were blazing a trail. You know, if I had had the privilege to speak to either one of them, they probably would have just been living their human, complicated lives. They weren’t trying to do any of that.Desi passed away in 1986. Their daughter Lucie tells a moving story about bringing them together to watch old episodes of “I Love Lucy,” which, in a way, is a little bit of a happily ever after, but very bittersweet. What did that story mean for you, and what do you think it says about their marriage and that notion of happily ever after?Lucy said that after they divorced, they became a lot kinder to each other. As a culture, we’re obsessed with “till death do you part.” But don’t you want the goal to be that on your death bed, you can tell people you love them? Is the goal to have an unhappy, decades-long marriage, or is the goal to come together in partnership to create interesting stuff together and to stay full of love and respect for each other? Lucy and Desi worked really hard, and when given the opportunity, they held hands and they jumped. It just feels like they were astronauts. More

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      ‘Dear Mr. Brody’ Review: Spreading the Wealth Doesn’t Go Smoothly

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      The scion of a margarine empire says to ask him for money. And many, many people asked.In January 1970, Michael Brody Jr. announced he’d share his $25 million inheritance. All people had to do was ask — and ask they did. Archival news footage in “Dear Mr. Brody,” a documentary directed by Keith Maitland, shows a line of hopefuls outside and inside 1650 Broadway where Brody, 21, the groovy scion of the Jelke margarine empire, opened an office.Journalists were drawn to his peace-love-and-understanding worldview. Filmmakers, too, among them the movie producer Ed Pressman, who had hoped to make a fiction film. People also wrote letters: tens of thousands of them.“Dear Mr. Brody” invites timely thoughts about the wealthy and income disparity. While Brody leverages his stunningly brief moment in the limelight — appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” securing a record deal, finding quite the platform for his messages — a scene of him tossing cash out a window to a crowd below hints at an underlying ugliness. “Food. Shelter. Love,” he snappishly tells a reporter later. “They don’t need money.”“Dear Mr. Brody” nods to and teases the era’s psychedelic tendencies. (“Brody Says Drugs Inspired Giveaway,” reads a New York Times headline.) Interviewees who had been on the journey — among them, wife, Renee Brody, and friend Michael Aronin — share some of its vexing details. Brody died in 1973. But the film’s exquisite pathos comes as Melissa Robyn Glassman, a producer, discovers a cache of unopened letters in Pressman’s storage unit. Her sleuthing leads to letter writers — or their children — and those interviews are quietly stunning. It might be hard to upstage Brody, yet they do.Dear Mr. BrodyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Rock Bottom Riser’ Review: A Cosmic View of Hawaii

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      This experimental documentary takes viewers on a psychedelic tour of Hawaii, exploring the tension between scientific inquiry and Indigenous preservation.Fern Silva’s debut feature “Rock Bottom Riser,” an experimental documentary that explores humans’ relationship to nature in Hawaii, brings awareness to how the planned construction of a 30-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, the archipelago’s most sacred mountain, could have damaging effects on Indigenous communities.The film is a psychedelic tour of the islands, jumping from image to image and interweaving voice-overs or scenes with lectures on the cosmology, astronomy, history and science of Hawaii. Through some of its images and narration, it urges viewers to consider the ways in which science can be a colonizing force, further marginalizing native Hawaiians and their traditional modes of inquiry while helping to criminalize their dissent. In one scene, an unidentified narrator says that attempts by Indigenous people to guard the mountain have been reported as “threatening violent acts” by astronomers, leading to police intervention.Silva presents a Hawaii likely unfamiliar to tourists, relying not on beach landscapes but on volcanic lava, mountainscapes and dense forests. Viewers can hear a car rev offscreen while palm trees swing at sunset. Elsewhere, two men fill a smoke shop with oversized Os created with the smoke from their vapes. Silva jumps from the cosmos, to a surfer catching a wave, to historical documents and equations. These visuals, which sometimes clash, show humans’ tenuous relationship with nature.The film is sometimes hard to follow, because the connection between the images and the voice-overs is not always clear. But taken as a whole, “Rock Bottom Riser” leaves viewers with a strong sense of how native Hawaiians view themselves and their future, and encourages inquiry into how their land might be preserved.Rock Bottom RiserNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lucy and Desi’ Review: Love in the Time of Television

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      This documentary, directed by Amy Poehler and about the dynamic duo behind “I Love Lucy,” favors the good times over the difficult ones.The filmmakers of the lightweight documentary “Lucy and Desi” benefited from an embarrassment of riches. Over many years, in hundreds of hours of footage, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz enacted a simulacrum of their domestic life in “I Love Lucy.” In her chronicle of the duo’s romance and work, the director, Amy Poehler, draws liberally from this trove.These television clips are the most evocative and transporting elements of the documentary, which in spite of its material offers limited insight into its central couple. Talking-head interviews with historians and children of the pair’s collaborators usher us through the decades at a clipped pace that, along with the distance of elapsed time, gives the story an impersonal feel. Joyful periods take heavy precedence over misfortunes, and some difficult topics, such as Arnaz’s womanizing, come up only obliquely.But the movie’s most frustrating choices concern Ball’s registration with the Communist Party, a scandal that takes center stage in the biopic “Being the Ricardos.” Poehler merely touches on the episode’s most familiar details before using it as a jumping off point to describe Arnaz’s escape from Cuba. We learn that Arnaz’s father, a wealthy mayor under the Gerardo Machado administration, was arrested during the revolution. Rather than demystify these politics or investigate where Ball’s views differed from Arnaz’s, the movie takes pains to underline Arnaz’s disdain for Communism and appreciation for the United States.Here is a documentary that invites us to delight in the unexpected pairing of a famed funny lady and a hunky musician — but without analysis or nuance. Better to flip on a few “I Love Lucy” reruns instead.Lucy and DesiRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘The Jump’ Review: A Seaman’s Story of a Daring Escape

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      This documentary looks back at a Cold War defection drama that took place off the coast of Massachusetts.In its first half-hour, the documentary “The Jump” brings a bracing immediacy to a 50-year-old Cold War incident. In 1970, a Lithuanian sailor, Simas Kudirka, jumped from a Soviet trawler onto a U.S. Coast Guard vessel off Martha’s Vineyard in an effort to defect from the Soviet Union. (The boats were moored alongside each other for talks on fishing rights.)The Soviet crewmen were allowed to forcibly remove Kudirka from the Coast Guard ship and take him home, where he would presumably meet a chilling fate. The episode led to protests in the United States.To lay out these events, the early scenes principally crosscut among three people. Kudirka revisits the Coast Guard vessel he had jumped to a half-century earlier and energetically points out what happened and where.The director, Giedre Zickyte, interweaves Kudirka’s recollections with testimony from the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Ralph W. Eustis, and Lt. Cmdr. Paul E. Pakos, its executive officer, to create a fluid account that shows how the day unfolded from multiple perspectives.When the story shifts to the Soviet Union, Zickyte introduces a K.G.B. interrogator who recalls questioning Kudirka. The sailor received a 10-year sentence but was freed in 1974. In the film, Kudirka revisits a prison where he was held.“The Jump” grows less exciting after that, partly because Kudirka, its most engaging storyteller, was necessarily in the background of efforts to secure his freedom, and partly because his eventual release owed more to incredible luck than to a political breakthrough. In the film, Henry Kissinger recalls that President Gerald R. Ford directly intervened on Kudirka’s behalf. “No professional diplomat would ever have done that,” he says.The JumpNot rated. In Lithuanian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More