Documentary Films and Programs

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Cannes Film Festival: ‘Val,’ ‘The Velvet Underground’ and Famous Jerks

      by

      Two documentaries take different approaches to their star subjects. One, about the actor Val Kilmer, prefers to be hands-off. The other, about Lou Reed, welcomes complications.CANNES, France — As the documentary “Val” begins, a young, bare-chested Val Kilmer lounges on the set of “Top Gun” and claims that he’s nearly been fired from every movie he’s made. Then Kilmer’s lips twist in a smirk. He’s not playing for sympathy. He’s bragging.At the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, two documentaries debuted about famously prickly pop-cultural figures, but despite that promising first scene, “Val” would rather recontextualize the actor as a misunderstood softy. Perhaps you remember the stories about Kilmer, a major 1990s movie star whose career fizzled amid rumors that he was difficult to work with. Well, “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, lets the 61-year-old actor retell those tales more sympathetically, in his own voice.Or, to be more precise, the voice of his son Jack, who delivers the documentary’s first-person narration. Throat cancer has ravaged Val Kilmer’s signature purr, and Jack Kilmer, an actor, is an acceptable voice substitute who nevertheless sounds far more easygoing than his father ever did. Kilmer has been recording himself since childhood, and over decades of home movies, he and his son paint the picture of an undervalued artist who always wanted to give his all, even when Hollywood wasn’t interested.Jack’s narration is so good-natured that it may take you a little while to realize that Kilmer dislikes nearly every film on his résumé that a fan might want to hear about. “Top Secret,” his first film, was “fluff” that Kilmer says he was embarrassed to appear in, and he practically had to be strong-armed into making the jingoistic Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.” On “Batman Forever,” Kilmer claims the studio machine thwarted his attempts to deliver an actual performance, so he instead patterned his Bruce Wayne on soap-opera actors.All the while, Kilmer was recording elaborate audition tapes for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, efforts that “Val” devotes nearly as much screen time to as the roles he actually booked. Here’s the funny thing, though: Kilmer was a much better actor in the movies he hated! In the clips of “Top Gun,” you see Kilmer at his most loose and playful because he isn’t taking anything about the movie seriously, but when we watch his “Full Metal Jacket” audition — or when he practices lines from “Hamlet,” a dream role he never got to play — Kilmer’s charisma calcifies, and he becomes far too preening and pretentious.Much of the footage in “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, was shot by Kilmer over the years.Amazon StudiosSo was he as big a jerk as had been rumored? “Val” sidesteps the story about his stubbing his cigarette out on a cameraman or the “Batman Forever” director Joel Schumacher’s claim that the actor was “psychotic”; here, Kilmer simply says he quit playing Batman because the suit was too arduous. In a segment about the notorious 1996 flop “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Kilmer portrays himself as the troubled production’s serene moral compass; you’d never know that a fed-up Brando threw Kilmer’s cellphone in the bushes and reportedly said, “Young man, don’t confuse your ego with the size of your salary.”Much is made, too, of Kilmer’s romance and marriage to the actress Joanne Whalley, though we hardly hear her speak in all of Kilmer’s home-video footage. After they divorce and he fights for more time with their children, the film lets his noble, aggrieved phone calls to Whalley play out nearly in full. I’d expect that unchallenged point-of-view from a celebrity memoir. I’m not sure I buy it in a documentary.By contrast, the new Todd Haynes documentary “The Velvet Underground,” which also debuted at Cannes on Wednesday, is all too happy to confirm every story you’ve ever heard about the singer-songwriter Lou Reed being a self-obsessed jerk. Like Kilmer, Reed claimed that anyone who beefed with him was simply interfering with his artistic process, but unlike “Val,” this film isn’t afraid to show how badly Reed wanted to be famous, and how much he resented collaborators who could wrest the spotlight from him.Todd Haynes’s documentary examines Lou Reed (center, with a reclining Andy Warhol in sunglasses), and his band, the Velvet Underground. Apple TV+Reed died in 2013, and other important figures in the film like Andy Warhol (credited with steering the early career of Reed’s band, the Velvet Underground) and the singer Nico have long since passed. Haynes isn’t interested in incorporating a lot of archival clips to bring those lost voices to life; instead, this artsy documentary lets the living members of the band, like the instrumentalist John Cale and drummer Moe Tucker, do more of the heavy lifting.“The Velvet Underground” is no conventional music documentary: For one, it uses hardly any performance footage, though some of the band’s most iconic songs, like “Candy Says” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” play often in the background. Haynes is more invested in conjuring a vibe, placing the viewer smack in the middle of the mid-60s milieu that produced seminal figures like Reed and Warhol.And though Haynes is clearly a fan of his subject, he isn’t afraid to complicate that vibe, either. One of the film’s most welcome talking heads is the critic Amy Taubin, who recalls what was so beguiling about Warhol and Reed’s artistic scene, then adds a spiky observation: If you weren’t pretty enough, Taubin claims, all those men eventually lost interest in you.Let’s face it, famous people are narcissists: If you’re going to will yourself into fame and then stay there, it’s practically required. Haynes explores that concept in a way “Val” can’t quite bring itself to do. Even if “The Velvet Underground” is less of a comprehensive documentary and more of a perfume that lingers for a while, evoking a time and place, at least it’s not afraid to add a few sour notes in pursuit of a more full-bodied scent. More

    • 88 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Her Socialist Smile’ Review: Helen Keller, Radical

      by

      This new documentary is a fascinating and challenging exploration of Keller’s political thought.Helen Keller is one of the closest things the United States has to a secular saint. Born in 1880, she lost her hearing and her sight before she was 2 years old. With the help of her equally legendary teacher, Anne Sullivan, she learned to read, to write, to sign and to speak. Her writing was beautiful, opening to readers a window into her world.She lived a long life, dying in 1968 at the age of 87. And she spent much of that life espousing socialism. The new documentary “Her Socialist Smile,” written, directed and shot by John Gianvito, is a fascinating and challenging exploration of Keller’s political thought.Gianvito’s formal approach is a species of leftist avant-gardism. He begins the movie with a beautiful color view of a tree, its branches covered in snow. The image switches to black and white; the narrator, Carolyn Forché, fiddles with a music stand upon which she places the texts she’s going to read. Long passages of Keller’s writings appear onscreen, which the viewer reads in silence. When Forché narrates, the onscreen image is related to the natural world that so enchanted Keller. We learn of Keller’s high regard for “The Communist Manifesto” while watching a slug crawl on a mossy rock.The approach, which one supposes can be called “dialectical,” is not without wit; one piece of archival footage, detailing the American Legion’s destruction of leftist literature, is from an early iteration of “Fox News.” (The newsreel one.)Despite the movie’s sometimes haughty, preaching-to-the-choir approach, lay viewers should not be too deterred. Much of Keller’s thought is today echoed in progressive circles that are now more than peripheral to the mainstream, and it’s fascinating to consider.Her Socialist SmileNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Witches of the Orient’ Review: Symphony of a Sports Team

      by

      This experimental documentary shows the anime-worthy triumphs of the 1964 Japanese Olympic volleyball team.In the experimental documentary “The Witches of the Orient,” the women of the 1964 Japanese Olympic volleyball team recall their whirlwind rise to gold-medal glory. The former champions wryly and modestly narrate their own story in new interviews, while the movie uses chic archival footage to set up a mythic reconsideration of their triumphs.The team members met when they were workers at a textile factory in Kaizuka, Japan, where they were known as Nichibo Kaizuka, after the name of the company and the name of the town. To their European competitors, they were known by the racist moniker Oriental Witches. Some onlookers joked that their skills resulted from magic, but the film shows that their ability of course came from meticulous practices. Players somersaulted, dove and leapt for the ball, and their efforts were filmed by the Japanese Olympic Committee in 1964. That footage has now been recycled into this documentary.In these remarkable archival recordings, the team’s youthful faces glow against bright green, red or white uniforms, and they are shown to be as precise on the court as they are in the factory. When the director Julien Faraut begins to splice the sequences of the team’s practices with shots from a 1984 animated series that they inspired, the cuts from real events to illustrations appear seamless.Faraut filmed the members of the Nichibo Kaizuka in the present day, but he wisely centers the archival footage and the animation in his movie, building a collage from fragments of the past and present. Montages are set to a hip electronic score, complete with Portishead needle drops. If the team was derided by their prejudiced (and defeated) foes in the moment of their success, this documentary elegantly restores the glow of legend, saving the champions the trouble of having to explain their heroism in words.The Witches of the OrientNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52’ Review: Sea Hunt

      by

      The documentary filmmaker Joshua Zeman assembles a team to look for a solitary whale who calls out at a particular frequency.The name of the boat is Truth, which is only one of the piquant details in Joshua Zeman’s seafaring documentary, “The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52.” Another is a coda that audiences will appreciate sticking around for.The cetacean in question — known as 52 because his call broadcasts at 52 hertz, a frequency believed unique among whales — was first recorded in 1989 by the Navy and was suspected of being a Russian submarine. Identified as a whale by the marine scientist Dr. William A. Watkins, who tracked the solitary signal for a dozen years until his death in 2004, 52 has since remained as unfollowed as a suspended Twitter account.Was he even still alive? Zeman, a man who loves a mystery, determines to find out. As he assembles his low-budget, high-hopes expedition and recruits a team of experts, the film’s nerdery is unexpectedly endearing. Excited scientists strive to affix trackers to bucking sea creatures, and acoustic devices slide beneath the waves, opening like magic into the shape of inverted satellite dishes.Neither slick nor propulsive, “The Loneliest Whale” gently combines aquatic adventure and bobbing meditation on our own species’s environmental arrogance. While the boat noodles along the Southern California coastline, Zeman ponders the bloody history of whaling and the “acoustic smog” that plagues oceans teeming with clattering container ships. Not until we heard the 1970 album “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” he notes — the best-selling nature recording in history, and not just because it pairs perfectly with weed — did we care to save the whales. He hardly needs to add, if only the Earth could sing.The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Price of Freedom’ Review: Guns Across America

      by

      Judd Ehrlich’s documentary charts the increasing radicalization of the National Rifle Association’s rhetoric.The title “The Price of Freedom” refers to the death toll that the gun lobby would dismiss as simply the cost of Second Amendment rights. Bill Clinton, among other interviewees in this documentary, disputes that idea. If the deaths of innocents are necessary for people to exercise their freedom, the former president says, the logical conclusion is “that we don’t really have mutual responsibilities to each other. It’s a very high price.”The movie, directed by Judd Ehrlich, takes viewers through the history of the National Rifle Association, explaining competing factions in the 1970s and charting the increasing radicalization of the organization’s rhetoric. Ehrlich interweaves images of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and commentary from Mary Anne Franks, a law professor, who says there’s now a version of Second Amendment thinking that encourages people to believe they can “stop democracy itself” and are “honoring the Constitution by doing so.”Muckraking documentaries often conclude with declined-to-comment disclaimers, but David Keene, a former N.R.A. president, is here. Toward the end, he chillingly cautions anyone who thinks the N.R.A. might disappear.Parents like Nicole Hockley and Fred Guttenberg, whose children were killed in school shootings, offer powerful testimony. So does Representative Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose son’s shooter, ultimately convicted, claimed self-defense in a case that put further scrutiny on Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. But Ehrlich also provides a note of optimism from the hunting enthusiast Wes Siler and the gun-owning academic Cassandra Crifasi, who suggest that a warped political dialogue has obscured gun owners’ widespread support for safety measures.The Price of FreedomNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The One and Only Dick Gregory’ Review: A Peek at a Comic Legend

      by

      The documentary examines the many lives of the stand-up and activist who inspired a generation of performers.In a remarkable article from October 1960, Ebony magazine asked why there were no Black stars in comedy, blaming racist double standards held by audiences and television bookers as well as a new sensitivity (the term “politically correct” had not been coined) that wouldn’t tolerate performers trafficking in stereotypes from the minstrel era. Three months later, Dick Gregory, mentioned briefly as a “newcomer,” made the question irrelevant in one night.When the manager at the Playboy Club in Chicago discovered the crowd was made up of white Southern businessmen in town for a convention, he suggested that Gregory postpone. The comedian refused, went onstage and killed. He did so well, his contract there was extended, and led to national press and an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” Gregory became a crossover star, a pioneering comedic social critic who inspired a generation of stand-ups.“The One and Only Dick Gregory,” an aptly titled new documentary, does justice to this fabled performance, setting the scene and the stakes. But what stands out most about this revolutionary moment in comedy is what a small role it plays in the overall portrait here. Gregory, who died in 2017, lived so many lives that he presents a challenge for anyone trying to document them. The director Andre Gaines tries to capture as many as possible, to a fault. By covering so much ground, it doesn’t have room to dig too deep. But along with some very funny footage of a master of his craft, it offers a convincing argument that while Gregory became famous for his comedy, what made him such a riveting cultural figure is what he did after he left it behind.Gaines recruits a talent-rich cast of comics (Wanda Sykes, Dave Chappelle) to describe the performer. Chris Rock is particularly insightful and blunt, comparing Gregory’s relaxed, patient, cigarette-wielding delivery with that of Chappelle. Gregory was ahead of his time in his material on police brutality and racism, but just as he became a star, his activism heated up. A demonstration for voting rights in Mississippi was a turning point, and the movie covers his work and relationships with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the N.A.A.C.P. leader Medgar Evers. By the 1980s, Gregory had stopped playing clubs and became an early health and wellness guru while still waging a broad array of political fights, going on fasts and long runs to earn attention for causes like fighting hunger and obesity.There’s clearly a price to pay for living as active a life as Dick Gregory did. He was rarely home to see his family (his kids are astute talking heads), and toward the end of his life, legal troubles led to financial collapse and the loss of his home. The last half-hour is jarringly downbeat if slightly underexamined, with Gregory returning to clubs and appearing in a Rob Schneider movie, “The Hot Chick,” that allows him to get much-needed health care coverage.The legend of Dick Gregory gives way to a peek of him as a more complex man, albeit one much funnier than most everyone else. On the reboot of his talk show, Arsenio Hall asked him what drove him. Gregory retorted: “My bills.”The One and Only Dick GregoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Showtime platforms. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Phantom’ Review: The Death Penalty for a Doppelgänger

      by

      This documentary examines the circumstances of a 1983 killing in Texas, for which it contends the wrong man was convicted and executed.“The Phantom,” a documentary from Patrick Forbes, examines a case that in recent years has been cited as an example of a likely wrongful conviction that ended in the death penalty. Carlos DeLuna was executed in Texas in 1989 for the murder of a Corpus Christi gas station convenience store clerk. At his trial, he implicated another man, Carlos Hernandez. The prosecution dismissed Hernandez as a phantom.But the movie, based on an account by a Columbia law school professor, James Liebman, and his researchers, amasses evidence that Hernandez, who died in 1999, was no apparition. It indicates that he had a history of violence and that the investigation was hasty. The film’s most damning suggestion is that the conviction didn’t simply involve mistaken identity — two men named Carlos, who knew and resembled each other and were both in the area of the crime, getting mixed up — but, in the film’s argument, required an almost willful insistence on turning a blind eye to what was known.Adapting research that is, by now, hardly breaking news, Forbes has some solid strategies for making the material cinematic. Shooting in glossy wide-screen, he uses an effective blend of reconstructions and interviewees to take viewers through the night of the killing. Earlier in the film, he has people involved in the original trial, like a witness, Kevan Baker, and a prosecutor, Steve Schiwetz, discuss details of the case in a courtroom, and even playact versions of their words from the proceedings (the dialogue isn’t verbatim, judging from the trial transcript). A bow-tied, suspendered, haunted-looking medical examiner contributes to the ghostly ambience.The PhantomNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More