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      ‘City of Ali’ Review: A Final Round for a Champ

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      This documentary makes for an extremely minor addition to the Muhammad Ali cinematic universe.Muhammad Ali is probably already the most dramatized and documentarized athlete in film history, and “City of Ali” makes for an extremely lightweight addition to the former heavyweight champion’s cinematic universe. This documentary, directed by Graham Shelby, focuses on Ali’s relationship with his hometown, Louisville, Ky., and how the city gave him a grand send-off after his death in 2016.Made with the participation of Ali’s family — some of his children are among the interviewees, as is his wife, Lonnie Ali (who is also shown giving a September 2020 speech about racial and social justice during the closing credits) — “City of Ali” presents an extremely basic overview of his career. It emphasizes Louisville-centered stories (of how the city police officer Joe Martin encouraged Ali, then Cassius Clay, to pursue boxing, for example) and shows residents and friends reminiscing about local sightings.The film movingly pays tribute to Ali’s generosity and lack of airs. Kelly Jones of the Louisville Metro Police recalls the time Ali entertained Jones’s 18-month-old daughter at an airport. The Louisville news media personality John Ramsey is shown delivering a eulogy in which he remembers how Ali raised the spirits of a losing boxer at the 2000 Olympics.But the nuances of Ali’s relationship with Louisville — where Ali faced discrimination as a Black American and controversy for his refusal to be drafted — tend to get lost in the celebration of civic pride. And much of “City of Ali” is simply arcana. The security arrangements for Ali’s funeral procession and the plan to spread rose petals near his resting place aren’t exactly movie-worthy subjects.City of AliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘Changing the Game’ Review: Fighting for the Right to Play

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      Three transgender high schoolers confront the fraught world of student athletics in this documentary that takes a controlled approach.In 2017, Mack Beggs, then 17, won a state girls’ wrestling championship. Mack, a transgender boy from Dallas, had wanted to wrestle in the boys’ division. But in Texas, state policy mandates that students compete according to their sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity. So his options were to wrestle girls or to not wrestle at all.Mack is one of three young athletes profiled in the documentary “Changing the Game,” which offers an earnest look at the way transgender teens around the country are fighting for self-actualization in the fraught world of student athletics.The documentary (streaming on Hulu) illustrates how rules differ from state to state: The skier Sarah Rose Huckman, who lives in New Hampshire, describes a policy that hinges on gender confirmation surgery; whereas at a high school in Connecticut, the runner Andraya Yearwood is able to compete on the team she wants.Outcry over transgender kids in sports manifests as a conservative talking point and in waves of discriminatory bills from Republican lawmakers. But rather than deconstruct the politics, history or parameters of this furor, “Changing the Game” hews closely to Mack, Sarah and Andraya. We see the ways in which bullying and outsized media attention gnaw at these teens, who face the public eye with astounding courage.As it follows its subjects, the documentary takes a conventional and controlled approach. The director Michael Barnett intercuts interviews with competition footage, training montages and slow-motion action shots. Throughout, a synth-heavy score insists on a motivational mood.A frequent right-wing argument is that transgender athletes make sports unfair. The documentary’s best and most challenging through-line shows where this claim falls short — particularly how, for young athletes, building confidence is more important than wins and losses. “Changing the Game” could have gone further, analyzing how fairness in sports is a myth to begin with. But the movie isn’t interested in rewriting the rules; it would rather introduce us to the brave young people who are.Changing the GameNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      Was 1971 the Year ‘Music Changed Everything’?

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      How would 1974 feel about that? Or 1965? A new eight-part documentary on Apple TV+ is the latest salvo in the record geek’s eternal debate.Everything changed with the music of 1971. No, wait. It was 1973. Check that — 1974 was the year, except it was music, film and television, but only in Los Angeles. More

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      ‘Apocalypse ’45’ Review: Graphic Images of Wartime

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      Candid testimonies from World War II veterans accompanies vivid archival footage in this immersive documentary that showcases the myths we tell ourselves about war.At one point in “Apocalypse ’45,” the camera gazes over Tokyo from an American military bomber as the plane ejects a cluster of cylinders. For several beats, the bombs disappear into the air. Then we see the explosions: tiny bursts of orange far below.Startling images appear throughout “Apocalypse ’45,” a transfixing documentary that depicts the final months of World War II in rare detail. The film (streaming on Discovery+) combines vivid archival footage from war reporters with the accounts of an array of veterans. Its project is to immerse us in the horrors of warfare, and to convey the ways its witnesses cope with war’s psychic toll.The images, taken from digitally-restored film reels that sat in the National Archives for decades, are disturbingly graphic. A Japanese woman steps off a cliff in the Mariana Islands to avoid being taken hostage. Soldiers on Iwo Jima shoot flamethrowers into caves. Planes piloted by kamikaze plunge into ships near Okinawa. The director Erik Nelson adds realistic wartime sound effects to the silent footage, achieving an unsettling verisimilitude.But the veterans, whose candid testimonies are interwoven in voice over, are the movie’s shrewdest addition. Notably, Nelson declines to distinguish among the men, and instead patchworks their deep, breathy voices into sonic wallpaper. Without faces or names, their remarks cannot be individually condemned or celebrated. Rather, they blend into a collective, showcasing how people seek out myths — about war’s inevitability, Japanese conformity, or American might — to find reason where there may be none.When it comes to representing non-American experiences, the documentary is less equipped. Nelson calls on only one Japanese interviewee, a survivor of Hiroshima. His voice opens the documentary, and reappears later on to describe the atom bomb attack. The survivor’s perspective is vital, but offered alone, its inclusion feels perfunctory. “Apocalypse ’45” knows that war is hell for everyone. But it’s difficult to escape the sense that, in this film’s view of history, America is top of mind.Apocalypse ’45Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue’ Review: China Through Writers’ Eyes

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      Jia Zhangke’s documentary illuminates a vast and complicated history in a series of intimate conversations.The films of Jia Zhangke, documentary and fictional, zoom in on the granular details of individual lives. At the same time, they are chapters in the single, unimaginably complicated story of China’s transformation in the decades since the 1949 revolution. Jia, who was born in 1970, tends to dwell in the recent past, and to circle back to Shanxi, the part of northern China where he grew up, but he’s also attentive to the continuities of history and geography, the connections between generations and places.His latest documentary, “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” is intimate and specific, consisting mainly of interviews with three writers — Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong — associated with Shanxi. They reminisce about their families and careers, and also about their sometimes wrenching, sometimes exhilarating experiences during the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s and ’70s, and later periods of urbanization and capitalist expansion. Colleagues, neighbors and family members, listed as “witnesses” in the end credits, contribute their own anecdotes and insights. The movie is an affecting group portrait and also a complex and subtle piece of literary criticism.Watching it, I wished I was more familiar with the work of its subjects. Some of it has been translated into English, notably Jia Pingwa’s “Ruined City” and Yu’s “To Live,” which was the basis for Zhang Yimou’s acclaimed 1994 film. But Jia Zhangke’s patient listening and the elegant clarity of the movie’s structure — it advances in roughly chronological order, divided into short sections that explain where it’s going — make it accessible to the curious as well as illuminating to the already knowledgeable.More than that, “Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue” demystifies historical episodes that are often presented, at least in the West, as abstractions, and personalizes large-scale events. Politics hovers over the writers’ lives, but their sense of national and regional history is filtered through work, family and landscape. Jia Pingwa recalls the hardship that his father, a teacher, suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Yu talks about his career transition from dentist to novelist. Liang delves into painful recollections of her mother’s illness and her sister’s marriage. Between the lines of their conversations with the unseen director you can intuit the elusive larger story — about the evolution of a poor, rural corner of an emerging global superpower — that is both his subject and theirs.Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns BlueNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Moby Doc’ Review: He Understands How He’s an Unlikely Pop Star

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      The movie is directed by Robert Gordon Bralver, but it’s a late-life self-realization project for the musician.In “Moby Doc,” animation, staged dream sequences, skits and archival footage form a portrait of the title artist, the musician Moby. While the credited director is Robert Gordon Bralver, the movie is clearly a late-life self-realization project for Moby himself.Small of frame and short of hair, Moby understands the ways in which he’s an unlikely pop star. Boy, does he ever. His presentation is a textbook example of the art of self-aggrandizement through affected self-effacement.He narrates the film, sometimes onscreen, speaking into a phone as if he’s having a conversation. The text (written by Moby with the director) could have used an editor. Here’s a passage: “My father worked in the chemistry department at Columbia University and he brought home some test rats. They were in their twenties, they were in New York and they hung out in the Village and they talked about poetry and politics.” Wait — the rats?What Moby leaves out of his account is as revealing as the tales of homelessness and addiction he puts in. Sampling is a hallmark of electronic dance music, and many songs on his blockbuster album “Play” were constructed around bits lifted from the work of African American musicians. You’d be hard pressed to learn much about that from this documentary.Indeed, other musicians come up only to convey Moby’s sense of cool, as in when he sports an Agnostic Front T-shirt, or spends a few minutes remembering his friendship with David Bowie. He also speaks of “dating” movie stars, but prudently does not say the name of the one movie star who publicly stated that no, she didn’t date him, after he mentioned her in his print memoir.“Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited,” Orson Welles once said of Woody Allen. Ditto with this guy.Moby DocNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 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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      ‘Five Years North’ Review: Opposite Sides of Immigration

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      This frustratingly sentimental documentary looks at the parallel lives of an undocumented teenager and an ICE agent in New York.“Five Years North” follows two New Yorkers whose paths you hope will never cross. Luis is an undocumented 16-year-old from Guatemala, who at the film’s outset has just been released from detention and awaits a court date. Judy is a middle-age Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer overseeing Luis’s neighborhood. Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple’s documentary isn’t a cat-and-mouse thriller, but watching Luis try to scrape together money to send home while Judy’s team prowls for immigrants — at one point arresting a man as he takes his daughter to school — is often an exercise in edge-of-the-seat anxiety.The filmmakers have known Luis’s family for a decade, which explains the remarkable access they acquire to his life. Mixing interviews and observational scenes, they trace the boy’s compressed coming-of-age. He precariously juggles school, an exhausting job delivering food and homesick FaceTime calls with his parents, who face crushing debts and poverty.Judy also lets the filmmakers into her office and home, revealing details that might surprise some. Her father is from Puerto Rico, and her mother, who is Cuban, used to resettle refugees. Judy concedes that immigration policy is flawed, though her main gripe is that it lumps together “criminals and non-criminals.” She’s simply — as goes the bureaucratic refrain — “doing her job.”There’s much to unpack here, from the preponderance of Latino agents in ICE to the mental health effects of immigration, evident in Luis’s panic attacks. But the film, frustratingly, stays on the surface, settling for easy emotional moments: crosscuts between Judy and Luis talking about family; the two of them gazing up at Fourth of July fireworks. Systemic injustices remain in the blurry background of these sentimental, humanist portraits.Five Years NorthNot rated. In English, Spanish and Kaqchikel, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In New York at Film Forum. More

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      ‘Ahead of the Curve’ Review: The Business of Lesbian Identity

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      A 30-year-old lesbian magazine faces an existential crisis in this documentary.In the curiously commercial documentary “Ahead of the Curve,” the lesbian magazine formerly known as Deneuve receives a second shot at the cultural spotlight.Known now by the publication name Curve, the magazine was founded by a lesbian named Franco Stevens in 1990, in the midst of the culture wars. The magazine grew alongside public acknowledgment of lesbian life, and its covers featured newly out stars like the singer Melissa Etheridge or the comedian Margaret Cho. The documentary begins in the present day, as both the glossy and its founder are facing existential crisis.In vérité footage, Stevens is told by Curve’s new owner that the publication might not last another year. The film’s director, Jen Rainin, who is also married to Stevens, uses archival footage of her wife in the ’90s to reflect on Stevens’s history with the magazine and what Curve meant to its larger lesbian readership. In the movie’s contemporary footage, Stevens embarks on a tour of conference halls and community centers, asking young people what lesbian visibility has meant to their lives.There is a tension in the film between the lesbian experience and lesbianism as a consumer product. Stevens connects with young advocates and business leaders over the hopes, fears and traumas that resonate across generations. From a perspective of a business in the process of rebranding, Stevens’s foray into this world of lesbian and queer-centered spaces has focus-tested value. But it is hindered as a documentary by the spotlight on marketing, which boxes conversations about lesbian identity into sterile conference rooms where participants in name tags and lanyards share heartfelt stories for the purpose of a product. The film’s subjects are overwhelmingly earnest, but the movie suffers for its substitution of enterprise over entertainment.Ahead of the CurveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More