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      ‘North by Current’ Review: The Mornings After a Family Nightmare

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      In this documentary, the filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax reckons with the loss of his niece, his vibrant sister’s rocky recoveries and being transgender in a traditional, Mormon environment.“How did you become who you became?” asks Angelo Madsen Minax in the opening voice-over to “North by Current.” It’s one of many searching questions in Minax’s restless personal essay film about his family, himself and the ways in which we understand each other. Interlacing his visits to his folks in a Michigan lumber town with his reflections, the filmmaker reckons with the unfathomable loss of his niece, his vibrant sister’s rocky recoveries and being transgender in a traditional, Mormon environment.Any one of these subjects would be enough for a single film, but part of Minax’s point and method is how these experiences can illuminate one other. About ten years ago, his sister’s toddler daughter, Kalla, was found dead, a tragedy compounded by allegations of child abuse. But instead of a whodunit unraveling some fixed truth, Minax confronts the grief and guilt felt by all involved, even as he works through his own hurt over his parents’ evolving treatment of his identity.There’s an alchemy to what he accomplishes here, threading everyday scenes of parenting with fugues of home video and classic rock, and a bold double voice-over: his own, and a wise child persona that offers a cosmic perspective. This kind of personal film has often been attempted (even before “Tarnation” made waves), but rarely with this insight. Minax succeeds, even as he includes a deeply conflicting revelation about himself that he could do more to address. Out of the fractured family documentary, what emerges finally is a drama of self-realization.North by CurrentNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on PBS platforms. More

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      ‘Simple as Water’ Review: Family Ties That Span the Globe

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      Filmed in five separate countries, this documentary follows, with ambitious scope and devastating intimacy, Syrian families displaced by war.Megan Mylan’s latest documentary feature takes a humble idea — telling intimate and humanizing stories of Syrian families affected by their home country’s civil war — and achieves it on a nakedly ambitious scale. Filmed over five years in five separate countries, “Simple as Water” is anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun.The film is book ended by vignettes featuring Yasmin, a mother of four living in a refugee camp near the dockyards of Athens, who is fighting to reunite her children with their father in Germany. Her story provides an optimistic through line for Mylan’s other subjects, who offer a much more devastating and uncertain look at the struggles of trying to build a new life in an unfamiliar place. In Turkey, a single mother with no time to care for her children attempts to take them to an orphanage, but her eldest son — a 12-year-old who has assumed the role of caretaker while she’s at work — steadfastly refuses to go.In Pennsylvania, a delivery man named Omar applies for asylum for himself and his teenage brother. Through gradual reveals, we learn that Omar’s brother is not only an amputee, but that he appeared on CNN as a child after his leg was blown off in a Syrian rocket strike.These stories avoid triteness by lingering on the daily, unassuming routines of their characters: after-school basketball games, a sunset walk through an orchard, the fashioning of a makeshift toy out of some string and a milk crate.The level of access that Mylan and her team receive is remarkable on a personal front as well as a political one — a segment that takes place in Syria was shot with the help of two women from Damascus who are credited under pseudonyms. It’s one of the more contemplative moments in “Simple as Water,” bridging together Mylan’s ruminations on parenthood with the uncertainty of a nation’s future.Simple as WaterNot rated. In Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      At Wrexham and Elsewhere, the Soccer Is Just a Story Line

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      In a steady stream of documentary series, more and more clubs are turning themselves into content. But where does spectacle end and sport begin?LONDON — The cameras were rolling even before the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney could be sure there would be anything to film.Last November, Reynolds and McElhenney were waiting anxiously to discover if their bid to buy Wrexham, a Welsh club marooned in the fifth tier of English soccer, would survive a vote from the Supporters’ Trust, the fans’ group that had rescued the team from bankruptcy and run it on a threadbare budget for years.The actors had reason to be confident: When they had presented their ideas to the Trust in a video call, the reaction had been positive. Still, as they waited for the call that would inform them of the result of the vote, they did not know if it would be good or bad news, and that put them in something of a bind.McElhenney had concocted the idea of buying a soccer team after inhaling both seasons of “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” the successful Netflix series that detailed the fleeting ups and frequent downs of another faded club rooted in postindustrial Britain. “He told me: ‘We should do this. We should buy a club and make a documentary,’” said Humphrey Ker, one of McElhenney’s writers and the person who had recommended the Sunderland series to him.If the Wrexham trust rejected the actors’ ownership bid, their plan would be up in smoke; after all, with no club, there would be no documentary. But for the documentary to work, it had to follow their adventure in soccer from the very start. So as they waited for the phone to ring, McElhenney and Reynolds had to decide, effectively, which came first: the content or the club?Wrexham is not the only place wrestling with that question. Soccer has long provided fertile ground for film and television, but the rise of streaming platforms — with their insatiable appetites and generous wallets and breakthrough series involving entirely fictional teams — has triggered a deluge of productions.Some, like Amazon’s “All or Nothing” documentary series, have tried to draw on the inbuilt appeal of some of the world’s biggest clubs, embedding multiple camera crews over the course of a season with teams like Manchester City, Tottenham and Juventus.Amazon’s “All or Nothing” series has followed several top clubs, with their permission.Amazon PrimeManchester City, Tottenham and Juventus have opened their doors to the series already.Amazon PrimeOthers have eschewed the editorial control — and considerable fees — the game’s superpowers demand in favor of a more authentic aesthetic embodied by “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” in which the club is less the subject of the documentary and more a backdrop against which a human story plays out.But there is one crucial difference between many of those projects and their forerunner. In Sunderland, the producers were mere observers of the club. At Wrexham, and elsewhere, they are something more: They are actors in the drama.“Soccer clubs are the best content investments in the world,” said Matt Rizzetta, the chairman of the creative agency North Six Group and, since 2020, the principal owner of Campobasso, a team in Italy’s third tier. “They stand for a set of values, and they automatically connect with people in a way that almost nothing else can match.”Rizzetta said his decision to invest in soccer was driven by his heart — it was a “lifelong dream” to own a team, he said, particularly one based close to the part of Italy where his grandparents had grown up — but his thinking behind buying Campobasso, in particular, was governed by his head.“We looked at around 20 teams, all in that area,” he said. Campobasso stood out. It had once reached the second division, but had found far more snakes than ladders in recent years. It is based in Molise, a region that often complains it is overlooked by the rest of the country: Molise Non Esiste, as the self-deprecating local slogan puts it: Molise doesn’t exist.That suited Rizzetta perfectly. His strategy was centered on “content, storytelling, marketing and media,” he said. “Being a club owner now is different to the 1980s and 1990s. Provincial teams, in particular, need new revenue streams to reinvest in the product, and content is one of the most underutilized channels.”To remedy that, Rizzetta’s North Six Group signed a deal with Italian Football TV, a YouTube channel, for a documentary series that would follow Campobasso on its (eventually successful) attempt at winning its first promotion in decades.“It was a story that needed to be told, this team from a part of the country that has been forgotten,” Rizzetta said. That obscurity, to some extent, helped make the project viable. “It was a small, sleepy club,” he said. “It had the feel of a start-up. We kind of had a blank slate. There was nothing we could do that would be wrong.”Not every group of supporters, though, welcomes that kind of approach. This summer, it was announced that Peter Crouch, the former England striker, would be joining the board of Dulwich Hamlet, a team based in a well-heeled enclave in south London where he made a handful of appearances in the early stages of his career.The move was not motivated purely by altruism: Crouch’s experiences, it emerged a few days later, would form the basis of a documentary bankrolled by Discovery+. According to several people involved with the project, the network had explicitly conceived the idea as a chance to create its own version of “Sunderland ’Til I Die.”“Sunderland ’Til I Die” has served as a model for a host of documentary producers.NetflixThe idea has “received a mixed response,” said Alex Crane, a former chairman of the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters’ Trust. “Some fans are genuinely excited,” Crane wrote in a WhatsApp message. “Others are very skeptical, and are querying what the club gets out of it.”Certainly, the apparent theme of the documentary — that Dulwich faces a “bleak future” and Crouch has parachuted in to save it — has not been universally accepted. The Brixton Buzz, a community news outlet, suggested, with some profanity, that the “TV narrative” had been concocted purely for the sake of the series.That trap — contorting themselves to become a more marketable pitch — is one Rizzetta is adamant clubs must avoid. In September, North Six Group added Ascoli — in Italy’s second division — to its stable of teams. It appealed to the club’s former owner, Rizzetta said, as a “strategic operator” that could reproduce its Campobasso success on a larger scale. Among the first things the new owners did was sign an exclusive deal with Italian Football TV.“Content is still a big part of our strategy,” Rizzetta said. “But it will have to be done in a different way. Ascoli has a different message, brand and story. It is sacred to its community.”Reynolds and McElhenney have been equally explicit about their plans. “The documentary is a huge part” of the project, McElhenney said on the actors’ first visit to Wrexham in October. “We feel that is the best way to really do a deep dive into the community. You can televise the games, but if you’re not following the story of the players and the story of the community, ultimately nobody is really going to care.”Wrexham is already feeling the benefits of its sprinkling of Hollywood stardust. A raft of impressive signings arrived over the summer to strengthen the team. There has been investment, too, in the club’s infrastructure.“The stadium is being remodeled,” said Spencer Harris, a club director before the takeover. “The first team’s training facility is much better. The club are building for long-term success. It feels sustainable.”Some of that new money has come from ticket sales — crowds are up this season — and some from a spike in the sale of replica jerseys. By October, Wrexham had sold more than 8,000 — almost as many as it would ordinarily ship in a good year — with the Christmas rush still to come.But perhaps most significantly — and lucratively — the jerseys themselves are a little different. The away shirt is green and gray, McElhenney’s tribute to his hometown Philadelphia Eagles. Ifor Williams Trailers, formerly the club’s principal sponsor, has been replaced by the more recognizable insignia of TikTok. Expedia’s logo stretches across the shoulders.Though the team’s first game of the season was televised nationally in Britain, it is not the audiences that tune in to BT Sport to watch the National League that coaxed brands of that stature to invest in Wrexham. Far more appealing was the prospect of being front and center on prime-time television.In May, Reynolds and McElhenney announced — in the wry style that has characterized their ownership so far — that they had sold two seasons of their documentary, “Welcome to Wrexham,” to FX. It will include the moment they received the call to confirm that their bid to buy the club had been approved by the fans. It was all captured on film. The content, it turned out, was inseparable from the club. More

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      Talking About ‘Attica,’ the Newest Documentary on the Prison Uprising

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      Fifty years after the fact, the filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry reflect on the bloody standoff and what it accomplished.On Sept. 9, 1971, hundreds of inmates took over the Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo to demand better conditions. “Attica,” a new documentary directed by Stanley Nelson and co-directed by Traci A. Curry, recounts the occupation and the massacre that followed on Sept. 13 when armed law enforcement officers stormed the prison and 39 inmates and hostages were killed under sustained police gunfire and tear-gassing.Holding more than 40 prison staff members hostage, the inmates set up tents and latrines and allowed journalists to enter as crowds massed outside the walls. The prisoners’ grievances ranged from violence and overcrowding to political rights abuses and insufficient toilet paper (one roll a month, according to a report in The New York Times). In negotiations with the prisoners, Russell Oswald, the state’s commissioner of corrections, had reportedly agreed to nearly all their demands, but after the death of a hostage, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in consultation with President Richard M. Nixon, ordered state troopers to take over the prison. For the anniversary, Nelson and Curry dug deep, speaking to former prisoners and figures who had been on the scene, such as the TV journalist John Johnson and the negotiation intermediary Herman Schwartz, a law professor. (Former guards had initially agreed to participate, Curry said, but later declined.) Curry, Nelson and I spoke by phone about recapturing the lived reality of Attica and its enduring importance. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.What does your documentary show us about Attica?STANLEY NELSON Attica is the largest prison rebellion in the history of the United States. The big thing is that the prisoners held over 30 guards as hostages, and invited in TV cameras and reporters. And if you let camera-people loose, they just film! There’s a fantastic moment where the prisoners say that they’ve been watching [Russell] Oswald, the commissioner of prisons, say something different to reporters outside the gates from what they negotiated inside.In addition, the New York State Police were videotaping on very early video cameras, Portapaks. They were up on the prison towers shooting through the cross hairs of a rifle scope, using it as a Telephoto lens. They left the mic open, so you can hear them talking about the prisoners and what’s going on.What shocked you most about the events?NELSON The whole thing was shocking but it’s the overt racism that is so evident, from the guards and law enforcement yelling “White power!” to the state police, who are talking about the “ugliest, blackest Negro gentleman” they’ve ever seen, to Richard Nixon on the phone with Rockefeller, and his first question is “Is it the Blacks?”And one thing that’s never talked about is why the prisoners rebelled. It’s almost like we as nonprisoners feel, well, of course they’re mad — they’re in jail. But the prisoners had specific reasons. They went from small mistreatments to complete brutalization and beatings. The prisoners had 30 demands, and the prison system had agreed to 28 of them. They were close!TRACI A. CURRY I think the most shocking was what happened on the day of the retaking: the wanton violence and the brutality, and the fact that it continued long after the prison was secured and there was no legitimate reason to think that these people were a threat anymore.What was it like talking to former prisoners and family members of guards?NELSON Traci Curry did the interviews. The ex-prisoners were so vivid and their memories were so intact. And we always knew that we wanted to talk to the family members of guards, because so many of the families were also devastated by what happened. Their loved ones were killed or in some cases emotionally destroyed.CURRY Even 50 years later, the memories and the emotions were just beneath the surface, whether it was rage, sadness, or disbelief. I saw my job as creating the safest space possible for them to tell their story in their words. There’s no voice of God “Morgan Freeman” that comes in to fill in the blanks.How does the movie resonate with today’s issues of racial justice?NELSON It’s law and order carried to its extreme, and I think it’s the start of a whole different turn in American history. You can’t see the film without thinking about where we are today. There’s over 2 million people incarcerated. The headline in The New York Times today is about Rikers Island. And part of the unspoken truth in the film is that we want to put people in jail and forget about them.CURRY I’m sitting in my apartment where I made most of this film, and there were days where there were George Floyd protests moving outside my window and I saw police officers descend upon protesters. I think we all saw the way that people in prisons were treated at the peak of the pandemic. We all saw the former president attack protesters outside of the White House and then use that attack as a political opportunity. Those parallels were so resonant for me, and it crystallized for me that this is a story about what happens when people challenge the state’s abuse of its power.What was it like filming at Attica?CURRY There’s a lot of emotions around how people there want to frame this narrative. I spent weeks getting all of the necessary permissions from the Corrections Department of New York State to film. But once we got up there, it was a very different thing. We had a couple of encounters with law enforcement. We were stopped and told that we were reported as a suspicious vehicle. I had an angry resident screaming at me in my face calling me a liar. It was a very intense period. More

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      ‘How They Got Over’ Review: How Gospel Begat Rock

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      In the director Robert Clem’s documentary about gospel quartets and their undeniable influence on rock ’n’ roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe has competition.Sister Rosetta Tharpe nearly steals the show in “How They Got Over,” the director Robert Clem’s documentary about the gospel quartets of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s and their undeniable influence on rock ’n’ roll. But she has competition.Among those who championed the quartets, Tharpe, the first gospel artist to sign with a major label, was instrumental in introducing her audience to groups like the Dixie Hummingbirds. The longtime lead of that group, Ira Tucker, bookends the documentary with reminiscences that gently touch on faith, economics and craft.The singer Dennis Edwards explains the shifts in the genre. But it’s a clip featuring Joe Ligon of the Mighty Clouds of Joy stylishly spinning and sliding that draws a smile-inducing connection from the spiritual to the secular, from the quartet Edwards performed in to the group he became a frontman for: The Temptations.Other interviewees include Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama, Isaac Freeman of the Fairfield Four, and JoJo Wallace of the Sensational Nightingales.
      “How They Got Over” traces the music from its exquisite jubilee-style harmonies to tugging “smooth gospel.” (The singer Sam Cooke was among the smooth gospel singers who crossed over to mainstream success.)Joyce Jackson, a historian, and the roots music chronicler Jerry Zolten offer insights into a devotional art form that often responded to the energy of churchgoers. With a trove of archival performance footage, much of it from the television show TV Gospel Time, and the wisdom to let those images breathe, the film leans into the maxim about showing not telling. Among the highlights: the Blind Boys of Mississippi joined by the Barrett Sisters in a hand-clapping rendition of “I’ll Be Singing Up There” and Inez Andrews pressing hard on the pedal of her wail and prophesying the rock to come.How They Got OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘Speer Goes to Hollywood’ Review: Expert Rebranding

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      A high-ranking Nazi leader attempts to whitewash his legacy in this disturbing, if single-note, documentary by Vanessa Lapa.Albert Speer — one of Hitler’s closest advisers and his minister of Armaments and War Production — doesn’t actually go to Hollywood, but he does get bafflingly close. After serving 20 years in prison (he was the highest-ranking Nazi to avoid a death sentence at the Nuremberg Trials) Speer wrote “Inside the Third Reich,” a best-selling memoir that perked up the ears of the movie industry. In 1971, Paramount Pictures nearly took the bait and hired the screenwriter Andrew Birkin to hash out a script.Based on audio recordings of conversations between Speer and Birkin, rendered in voice-over narration by Anno Köhler and Jeremy Portnoi, “Speer Goes to Hollywood,” directed by Vanessa Lapa, relies on this chilling disparity: the grisly reality of the war and the guiltless, even cavalier attitude of one of its central architects.Speer repeatedly denies knowing that concentration camps existed, blaming his involvement with the Nazi party on his careerist objectives and his devotion to his work. His words stand in disturbing contrast to the onslaught of the visuals — a parade of striking (if haphazard) World War II archival images, material drawn from the Nuremberg Trials and footage from Speer’s European publicity tours for his book.Despite the power of this setup, the film is pockmarked with unanswered questions: Why did Birkin sign on to the project? How exactly did the production fall through? “Speer” is an intriguing document, highlighting the ease with which the most reprehensible figures are able to whitewash their legacies. But once you settle into its wavelength, the documentary begins to feel simplistic, like a one-track excuse to roll out rare film clips and testimony.Speer Goes to HollywoodNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Joy Ride’ Review: Still Standing

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      Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould share the stand-up stage in “Joy Ride,” trading war stories, family nightmares and twisted anecdotes.You can think of “Joy Ride” as similar to “The Trip” but with stand-up comedy where the food would be. The recipe is part meat-and-potatoes joke-telling — the comics Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould doing joint sets at clubs — and part driving around trading war stories and family nightmares.The jumping-off point for the documentary is a car crash that landed this pair of friends in the hospital but didn’t halt their touring. The accident and their dazed persistence lead well into their routines, which are a mix of gallows humor and twisted, twisty anecdotes. Some of the material feels fairly standard, as they share misfit upbringings and showbiz gossip, but each veteran comedian lends an unpredictable element through self-deprecating candor.Gould recalls the longtime trauma of growing up with a father he describes as terrifying, in between hit-or-miss political satire. Goldthwait dwells on the slings and arrows of fame for his yowling stage persona in the 1980s and ’90s, when he could resemble the Tasmanian devil at a dinner party. Both comics display the deliciously mischievous timing of old-school club veterans, reeling out outlandish yarns before yanking you back for the kicker.Goldthwait adds this modest documentary to his overlooked career as a director of comedy specials and wickedly taboo-tweaking films like “World’s Greatest Dad,” starring Robin Williams (remembered here as a misunderstood pal with a penchant for video games). But he and Gould feel more invested in life’s macabre absurdity than shock value, essentially delivering one from the heart.Joy RideNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 10 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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      ‘Bulletproof’ Review: Americans and Their Guns

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      This documentary shows a nightmarish vision of the consumer industry that has sprung up around school shootings.The documentary “Bulletproof” begins as the sound of gunfire echoes through the halls of Woodside Middle School, in Missouri. The live shots are so startling to hear, it takes a moment to make visual sense of the stationary, impeccably lit and composed frames. Teachers barricade doors with tables and desks, but their classrooms hold no students. Volunteers in yellow vests roam the halls. Gradually, it becomes clear that the shots were fired as part of an elaborate drill staged by adults. They are attempting to rehearse their response to a school shooter.Some participants play dead on the door, felled by imaginary bullets. Tourniquets are applied to imaginary wounds. But when the demonstrator role-playing as a shooter knocks at a door, his gun is real.It’s a dreamlike opening sequence, one that uses vérité observation to present an alarmed and alarming vision of safety. The accomplishment of the director Todd Chandler is that he continues to find settings that demonstrate this same eerie divide between the desire for security, and the extreme measures being taken by schools to achieve impregnability.He follows teachers into shooting ranges, where educators are trained to kill. School administrators justify the expenditures they have made for high security camera systems and show off their military grade weaponry. These subjects speak of the need for protection in schools, but what this admirably hands-off film shows is how the feelings of anxiety that have surrounded school shootings have been monetized and translated into demand for consumer products. It is a nightmarish vision — the military industrial complex deployed in the halls where children ought to roam.BulletproofNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More