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      ‘Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage’ Review: How a Festival Went Wrong

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      An HBO documentary examines a music festival that went so far off the rails that it defined an era.It is mildly surprising that it took so long for a documentary about the 1999 edition of the Woodstock music festival to be made. After all, this was an epic, epoch-defining debacle that deserves more scrutiny than, say, the Fyre Festival, a preposterous fiasco from 2017 that crashed before actually happening yet has already prompted two films about it.Garret Price’s HBO doc “Woodstock 99” neatly captures a cultural moment, albeit a destructive one. The first in a documentary series created by Bill Simmons, the film may be subtitled “Peace, Love and Rage,” but the first two ingredients were in short supply on those scorching July days 22 years ago. The event quickly devolved into a hellscape of overflowing porta-potties, hungry and thirsty festivalgoers, horrific sexual assaults, arson and even deaths. Much of the footage is hair-raising, especially the women being groped and the mobs of young white men whipping themselves into a frenzy of aggressive stupidity, aimless anger and turbo-boosted misogyny. This is these dudes’ coming-of-age as an aggrieved demographic, and it’s frightening.Price attempts to put the festival in context, framing it against a period of economic growth tempered by malaise: Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the Columbine High School shootings happened earlier that year, for example, and Y2K angst was growing. Add testimonies from attendees and journalists, and (too short) excerpts from the live performances, and the proceedings often feel rushed. The film could easily have been longer.As with most post-mortems, “Woodstock 99” tries to figure out how it all went wrong, and comes up with a deadly combination of factors: a merciless environment, thoughtless programming (three female acts did not counterbalance seas of aggro headliners like Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn and Metallica) and botched logistics. The issue of water bottles costing $4 comes up a lot. This was “somewhat on the high side,” says John Scher, one of the promoters, before coolly adding, “If you’re going to go to a festival, you bring money with you — this was not a poor man’s festival.”Later on, Scher, who emerges as the embodiment of cynical corporate villainy, argues that the women facing a barrage of verbal and physical abuse were “at least partially to blame for that” because they “were running around naked,” and accuses the media, notably MTV News, of making Woodstock 99 look bad. Even now, he just can’t give up on his delusion of the festival being a success.Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and RageNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      ‘Playing With Sharks’ Review: Intrepid Journeys Undersea

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      This documentary plunges into the life of the diver and marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, but her compassion for sharks is muddied by the film’s insistence on a tense mood.The chipper documentary “Playing with Sharks” celebrates the life of the diver Valerie Taylor, who dedicated her career to marine photography and conservation. The film (on Disney+) plunges into Valerie’s work with sharks, which she and her husband Ron Taylor captured in a trove of close-range undersea footage.As a young woman, Valerie was a champion spearfisher in Australia. But she soon renounced the sport in favor of less disruptive underwater activities. Alongside Ron, Valerie began capturing remarkable ocean images: whack-a-mole eels, rippling squid, a shiver of sharks noshing on a whale carcass. The Taylors were the first to film great whites from the open water without the shelter of a cage, and the couple’s trust in the intimidating creatures (or maybe just their audacity) made them master ocean reef videographers.The documentary, directed by Sally Aitken, draws heavily from the underwater footage taken by Ron and others. Aitken intercuts these sequences with archival clips of Valerie’s chipper efforts as a shark advocate. Horrified by what she saw as a collective misunderstanding of a majestic animal, Valerie made it her mission to show that sharks — while requiring caution — have personalities and respond ably to training, like dogs.But while Valerie’s compassion for sharks is contagious, Aitken insists on a tense mood, with a suspenseful score and unnerving editing straight out of a man-versus-beast blockbuster. “Playing With Sharks” would like to position Valerie as both intrepid diver and valiant activist, but with its focus on thrills and gills, the film goes light on the context needed to reconcile these two identities. Are we meant to recoil from sharks or care for them? Likely some of both, but the documentary comes out looking unsure.Playing with SharksNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘All the Streets Are Silent’ Review: Hip-Hop and Skateboarding Collide

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      This documentary is a portrait of downtown New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s that revels in nostalgia.In the late 1980s and early ’90s, long before hypebeasts spent hours waiting for coveted drops outside the Supreme store in SoHo, skaters assembled at a smaller shop on Lafayette Street. There, they would smoke and watch skate videos, listen to music and crack jokes with friends.“All the Streets Are Silent,” a documentary from the director, Jeremy Elkin, is a portrait of that time, capturing the transformative moment when hip-hop and skateboarding culture converged in New York. It draws on archival footage of influential figures like Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter, among dozens of others, and incorporates new interviews with major players like Fab 5 Freddy and Darryl McDaniels, of Run-DMC. Throughout, Elkin explores how racial associations with both subcultures crumbled as their worlds collided.The film revels in fuzzy, intimate home videos from the period, courtesy of the narrator, Eli Gesner, who spent much of his youth filming the scene on his camcorder. There are shots of skaters dodging traffic at Astor Place or partying at the now defunct hip-hop nexus Club Mars. At one point, a young Jay-Z appears, rapping at lightning speed over a breakbeat. The film immerses us in this world, rendering a loving, tender homage to the city’s street culture before it went global.Ultimately, “All the Streets Are Silent” has little more to give than nostalgia. An ending that considers the mainstream explosion of these subcultures is ambiguous and offers surface-level analysis. The film excels when it harnesses the wistful thrill of a bygone era, reminding us of a rich, creative past that deserves ample recognition.All the Streets Are SilentNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ailey’ Review: A Poetic Look at the Man Behind the Dances

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      Jamila Wignot explores the life of Alvin Ailey in a new documentary that brings a choreographer to life through movement and words.Too often, the idea of Alvin Ailey is reduced to a single dance: “Revelations.” His 1960 exploration of the Black experience remains a masterpiece, but it also overshadows the person who made it. How can an artist grow after such early success? Who was Alvin Ailey the man?In “Ailey,” the director Jamila Wignot layers images, video and — most important — voice-overs from Ailey to create a portrait that feels as poetic and nuanced as choreography itself. Black-and-white footage of crowds filing into church, children playing, dance parties, and the dusty landscape of Texas (his birthplace) builds an atmosphere. Like Ailey’s dances, the documentary leaves you swimming in sensation.Ailey’s story is told alongside the creation of “Lazarus,” a new dance by the contemporary choreographer Rennie Harris, whose homage to Ailey proposes an intriguing juxtaposition of past and present. In his search to reveal the man behind the legacy, Harris lands on the theme of resurrection. Ailey died in 1989, but his spirit lives on in his dancers.But his early days weren’t easy. Born in 1931, Ailey never knew his father and recalls “being glued to my mother’s hip. Sloshing through the terrain. Branches slashing against a child’s body. Going from one place to another. Looking for a place to be. My mother off working in the fields. I used to pick cotton.”He was only 4. Ailey spoke about how his dances were full of “dark deep things, beautiful things inside me that I’d always been trying to get out.”All the while, Ailey, who was gay, remained intensely private. Here, we grasp his anguish, especially after the sudden death of his friend, the choreographer and dancer Joyce Trisler. In her honor, he choreographed “Memoria” (1979), a dance of loneliness and celebration. “I couldn’t cry until I saw this piece,” he says.Ailey’s mental health was fragile toward the end of his life; Wignot shows crowds converging on sidewalks, but instead of having them walk normally, she reverses their steps. He was suffering from AIDS. Before his death, he passed on his company to Judith Jamison, who sums up his magnetic, enduring presence: “Alvin breathed in and never breathed out.”Again, it’s that idea of resurrection. “We are his breath out,” she continues. “So that’s what we’re floating on, that’s what we’re living on.”AileyRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour and 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Val Kilmer Documentary Review: The Iceman Cometh

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      A documentary about Val Kilmer offers a self-portrait of the artist that’s personal but not quite intimate.The actor Val Kilmer is not only the subject of “Val,” a documentary directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott. He also receives a cinematography credit, having shot many of the home movies and video diary entries that give the film its visual texture. More a self-portrait than a profile, “Val” tells the story of a Hollywood career with a candor that stops short of revelation. The tone is personal but not quite intimate, producing in the viewer a warm, slightly wary feeling of companionship.Hanging out with Kilmer, now in his early 60s, is an interesting, bittersweet experience. In on-camera interviews, he still radiates movie-star charisma, even though his voice isn’t what it used to be. Since being treated for throat cancer in 2014, he speaks through a tracheostomy tube, and his words are spelled out in subtitles.What he says in his own raspy, electronically distorted voice is supplemented by narration — read by his son, Jack — that reflects on the ups and downs of a career that was never quite what he wanted it to be. Kilmer muses on the way acting crosses and blurs the boundary between reality and illusion, concluding that he’s spent most of his life “inside the illusion.”A Juilliard graduate with a passionate sense of craft, he ascended to Hollywood in the less-than-golden age of the 1980s. His best-known roles are probably still Iceman, the jaunty, square-jawed heavy in “Top Gun,” and Batman, whose suit he wore, not very comfortably, in between Michael Keaton and George Clooney. When Kilmer visits Comic-Con, the autograph seekers want him to sign memorabilia from those movies. But to appreciate the full range of his talent, you are better off cuing up “The Doors,” “Tombstone” and of course “Heat,” in which he credibly holds his own alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.In outline, “Val” is a standard biographical documentary, tracing an arc from childhood through struggle, triumph and more struggle. We see Kilmer with his parents and brothers, hear about his marriage to the British actress Joanne Whalley and witness on-set and backstage shenanigans with the likes of Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and Marlon Brando.Conflicts with directors and castmates, and Kilmer’s tabloid-fueled reputation for “difficulty,” are mentioned in passing, but “Val” is neither a first-person confessional nor a journalistic investigation. It seems to arise, above all, from the desire of a sometimes reluctant celebrity and frequently underestimated artist to be understood. With a combination of wit, sincerity, self-awareness, and the narcissism that is both a requirement and a pitfall of his profession, Kilmer succeeds in explaining himself, or at least convincing us that we never really knew him before.ValRated R. Rough language. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Night of the Kings,’ ‘Lucky’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Find something off the beaten path to fill those summer nights at home.It’s not just summer blockbuster season at the reopened multiplexes; the streamers are going big as well, with mega-productions like “The Tomorrow War” and “Fear Street” dominating ad space and home pages. But if those aren’t your cup of tea, no worries — we’ve got a handful of American indies, foreign flicks and thoughtful documentaries to fill your summer nights.‘Big Bad Wolves’ (2014)Stream it on Amazon.The Netflix movie “Gunpowder Milkshake” isn’t solely of interest because of its all-star cast; it’s also the first feature film in seven years from the director Navot Papushado, whose previous picture was this gruesomely effective thriller, co-written and co-directed with Aharon Keshales. When a child is kidnapped and murdered in horrifying fashion, the victim’s father and a renegade cop separately conspire to kidnap the lead suspect and torture him for information; all three men end up in an isolated cabin, where Papushado and Keshales ingeniously use, and twist, our preconceived notions of good, bad and evil. Wildly unpredictable and darkly funny, though not for the weak of stomach.‘Life of Crime’ (2014)Stream it on Netflix.With every passing year, it seems more certain that “Jackie Brown” is the finest film of Quentin Tarantino’s career — yet with all of that residual and mounting good will, audiences still haven’t discovered this breezy crime comedy, which amounts to a “Jackie” prequel. Adapted from Elmore Leonard’s 1978 novel “The Switch,” “Life of Crime” introduces the characters of Ordell Robbie, Louis Gara and Melanie Ralston (here played by Yasiin Bey, John Hawkes and Isla Fisher) as they get themselves mixed up in a plot to kidnap a rich socialite (Jennifer Aniston). Daniel Schechter directs with a deft, light touch, and his screenplay nicely captures the offhand humor and sprung storytelling rhythms of Leonard’s novels.‘Night of the Kings’ (2020)Stream it on Hulu.“This is your first time here?” Blackbeard asks the new inmate Roman, who nods; “here” is the notorious La Maca prison of the Ivory Coast, and the early scenes of Philippe Lacôte’s electrifying drama offer up plenty of disturbing details of life inside. But realism soon gives way to ritual, as Blackbeard — the Dangôro, or inmate king — anoints young Roman to tell stories to the prison’s population during that night’s red moon. Roman (played with an appropriate mixture of fear and intensity by Koné Bakary) is terrified by this makeshift state and its tough crowd, but he works through that fear, and as he gains his confidence, his voice becomes more forceful, and his stories come to vivid, often majestic life.‘Sword of Trust’ (2019)Stream it on Netflix.The director Lynn Shelton’s final feature film was this shambling, loose-limbed, slightly melancholy and thoroughly enjoyable ensemble comedy, which is about as charming as any film about a Confederate sword can be. That sword has just been left to Cynthia (Jillian Bell) by her grandfather, who insisted it was proof that the Confederacy won the war; Marc Maron co-stars as a pawnshop owner who discovers that, nonsensical back story or not, the sword is worth quite a bit of money, and a rather nervous road trip to a potential seller ensues. As was her custom, Shelton fills the film with telling and poignant character moments, and Maron does his finest acting to date.‘Frances Ferguson’ (2019)Stream it on Amazon.The Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington has, over the last decade, honed a specific and unmistakable style — his films are short, funny, self-aware, unapologetically peculiar and unfailingly wry. His latest is the story of a small-town schoolteacher (Kaley Wheless) who becomes embroiled in a sex scandal, less motivated by lust than boredom and marital unhappiness (the loathing with which she and her husband regard each other is one of the film’s best running jokes). Wheless, who also co-wrote the story, is a real find, her arid-dry line readings a good match for Byington’s sardonic wit. And the narrator, Nick Offerman, just about steals the picture with searching voice-overs like, “Every story has a miscreant. A rapscallion. A … scallywag? I may need a thesaurus to go on.”‘They Came Together’ (2014)Stream it on Hulu and Amazon.It’s been 21 years since the runaway success of “Scary Movie” both brought back the spoof film — which had floundered since the glory days of Mel Brooks and the “Airplane” team Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker — and hastened its conclusion, as the film’s various sequels, spinoffs and alumni projects all but buried the form in witless, laughless exercises in pop culture shout-outs. The sole oasis in the desert of dumb is David Wain’s uproariously funny sendup of twinkly romantic comedies, featuring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd in a “You’ve Got Mail” riff as competing candy merchants in New York City, which feels (all together now) “like another character” in their story.‘Lucky’ (2017)Stream it on HBO Max.Few film actors have enjoyed a send-off as affectionate as Harry Dean Stanton, the inimitable and prolific character actor (with over 200 credits to his name) whose penultimate film role was also one of his few leads. He plays the title character, a 90-year-old firecracker and curmudgeon who knows his end is near, but isn’t going out quietly. The director John Carroll Lynch is a distinguished character actor himself — he played Frances McDormand’s husband in “Fargo” and the lead suspect in “Zodiac” — and he handles his leading man with affection and respect, surrounding him with a handful of friends and previous collaborators, including David Lynch, Tom Skerritt and Ed Begley Jr.‘Let the Sunshine In’ (2018)Stream it on Hulu.Though the director Claire Denis and the actor Juliette Binoche are two of the most fascinating forces in French cinema, they had never worked together before this character-driven drama. It’s an ideal collaboration, however, spotlighting their unique gifts and take-no-prisoners attitudes in their work. Binoche is in top form as a Parisian artist seeking happiness, but not via the usual cinematic solution of a male partner — though there are partners, many of them, and the various ways in which they fail her provide both rich comic situations and wise emotional resonance.‘Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’ (2011)Stream it on Amazon.The actor Michael Rapaport — best known for his fast-talking turns in films like “True Romance” and “Bamboozled” — proved himself an accomplished documentarian with this loving yet candid tribute to the groundbreaking ’90s rap group A Tribe Called Quest. Much of the picture is an evocative music history, of the trends and sounds of their original era, which the filmmaker affectionately captures. But it gets into trickier waters in documenting their reunion for the “Rock the Bells” tours, capturing long-simmering resentments and ugly conflicts, becoming something of a “Let It Be” for hip-hop heads.‘Becoming Mike Nichols’ (2016)Stream it on HBO Max.According to Mark Harris’s recent (and excellent) biography “Mike Nichols: A Life,” the venerated stage and screen director would, in his later years, spend a fair amount of rehearsal time telling stories of the good old days. One gets a taste of that in this documentary, which features his final interviews (conducted in the summer of 2014) on the stage of the John Golden Theater, where he and Elaine May performed their Broadway show. Focusing on his early years — it ends with his Oscar win for “The Graduate” — the film offers a brief yet informative snapshot of his directorial approach and philosophies. But it’s most valuable as a personality portrait; he’s sharp as a tack and endlessly funny, his comic timing and personal anecdotes honed and refined over years of storytelling. More

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      ‘The New Bauhaus’ Review: Rethinking an Approach to Art

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      This documentary on the interdisciplinary artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy makes the case that he should be a household name.The documentary “The New Bauhaus” celebrates the legacy of the versatile interdisciplinary artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, perhaps best-known for his photography and photograms, and the legacy of the school he started in Chicago. The film, directed by Alysa Nahmias, makes the case that although Moholy-Nagy’s body of work might seem diffuse because it spanned mediums, he deserves to be remembered as one of the great artists of the 20th century — as important as Picasso or Magritte, says Elizabeth Siegel, the photography curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.The film argues that Moholy-Nagy was more concerned with approach than product; he had his students learn biology, for instance, seeking to give them new ways of looking at the world. He didn’t separate artistic pursuits from commercial interests or economic realities. The movie explains how he turned the rationing of metal during World War II into an opportunity to rethink products. As told here, his influence, and the work of his students, can be seen in advertising, the credits of James Bond films and in the shape of a Dove soap bar.The film features informative commentary from academics and particularly from Moholy-Nagy’s daughter Hattula. One former student, Beatrice Takeuchi, says she found an exhibition on Moholy-Nagy too formalized — that he was at his best messing around. In a sense, she might be referring to this movie, which shares the artist’s biography in a conventional way. But it is a good primer, well illustrated.The New BauhausNot Rated. Running Time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Bourdain Documentary’s Use of A.I. to Mimic Voice Draws Questions

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      The documentary “Roadrunner” by Morgan Neville uses 45 seconds of a voice that sounds like Bourdain, generated with artificial intelligence. Is it ethical?The new documentary about Anthony Bourdain’s life, “Roadrunner,” is one hour and 58 minutes long — much of which is filled with footage of the star throughout the decades of his career as a celebrity chef, journalist and television personality.But on the film’s opening weekend, 45 seconds of it is drawing much of the public’s attention.The focus is on a few sentences of what an unknowing audience member would believe to be recorded audio of Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018. In reality, the voice is generated by artificial intelligence: Bourdain’s own words, turned into speech by a software company who had been given several hours of audio that could teach a machine how to mimic his tone, cadence and inflection.One of the machine-generated quotes is from an email Bourdain wrote to a friend, David Choe.“You are successful, and I am successful,” Bourdain’s voice says, “and I’m wondering: Are you happy?”The film’s director, Morgan Neville, explained the technique in an interview with The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner, who asked how the filmmakers could possibly have obtained a recording of Bourdain reading an email he sent to a friend. Neville said the technology is so convincing that audience members likely won’t recognize which of the other quotes are artificial, adding, “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”The time for such a panel appears to be now. Social media has erupted with opinions on the issue — some find it creepy and distasteful, others are unbothered.And documentary experts who frequently consider ethical questions in nonfiction films are sharply divided. Some filmmakers and academics see the use of the audio without disclosing it to the audience as a violation of trust and as a slippery slope when it comes to the use of so-called deepfake videos, which include digitally manipulated material that appears to be authentic footage.The director Morgan Neville said in a statement on Friday about the use of A.I. that “it was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I thought it was important to make Tony’s words come alive.”Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival“It wasn’t necessary,” said Thelma Vickroy, chair of the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College Chicago. “How does the audience benefit? They’re inferring that this is something he said when he was alive.”Others don’t see it as problematic, considering that the audio pulls from Bourdain’s words, as well as an inevitable use of evolving technology to give voice to someone who is no longer around.“Of all the ethical concerns one can have about a documentary, this seems rather trivial,” said Gordon Quinn, a longtime documentarian known for executive producing titles like “Hoop Dreams” and “Minding the Gap.” “It’s 2021, and these technologies are out there.”Using archival footage and interviews with Bourdain’s closest friends and colleagues, Neville looks at how Bourdain became a worldwide figure and explores his devastating death at the age of 61. The film, “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” has received positive reviews: A film critic for The New York Times wrote, “With immense perceptiveness, Neville shows us both the empath and the narcissist” in Bourdain.In a statement about the use of A.I., Neville said on Friday that the filmmaking team received permission from Bourdain’s estate and literary agent.“There were a few sentences that Tony wrote that he never spoke aloud,” Neville said in the statement. “It was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I thought it was important to make Tony’s words come alive.”Ottavia Busia, the chef’s second wife, with whom he shared a daughter, appeared to criticize the decision in a Twitter post, writing that she would not have given the filmmakers permission to use the A.I. version of his voice.A spokeswoman for the film did not immediately respond to a request for comment on who gave the filmmakers permission.Experts point to historical re-enactments and voice-over actors reading documents as examples of documentary filmmaking techniques that are widely used to provide a more emotional experience for audience members.For example, the documentarian Ken Burns hires actors to voice long-dead historical figures. And the 1988 documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” by Errol Morris, generated controversy among film critics when it re-enacted the events surrounding the murder of a Texas police officer; the film received numerous awards but was left out of Oscar nominations.But in those cases, it was clear to the audience that what they were seeing and hearing was not authentic. Some experts said they thought Neville would be ethically in the clear if he had somehow disclosed the use of artificial intelligence in the film.“If viewers begin doubting the veracity of what they’ve heard, then they’ll question everything about the film they’re viewing,” said Mark Jonathan Harris, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker.Quinn compared the technique to one that the director Steve James used in a 2014 documentary about the Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, who, when the film was made, could not speak after losing part of his jaw in cancer surgery. In some cases, the filmmakers used an actor to communicate Ebert’s own words from his memoir, or they relied on a computer that spoke for him when he typed his thoughts into it. But unlike in “Roadrunner,” it was clear in the context of the film that it was not Ebert’s real voice.To some, part of the discomfort about the use of artificial intelligence is the fear that deepfake videos may become increasingly pervasive. Right now, viewers tend to automatically believe in the veracity of audio and video, but if audiences begin to have good reason to question that, it could give people plausible deniability to disavow authentic footage, said Hilke Schellmann, a filmmaker and assistant professor of journalism at New York University who is writing a book on A.I.Three years after Bourdain’s death, the film seeks to help viewers understand both his virtues and vulnerabilities, and, as Neville puts it, “reconcile these two sides of Tony.”To Andrea Swift, chair of the filmmaking department at the New York Film Academy, the use of A.I. in these few snippets of footage has overtaken a deeper appreciation of the film and Bourdain’s life.“I wish it hadn’t been done,” she said, “because then we could focus on Bourdain.”Christina Morales contributed reporting. More