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      ‘The Art of Political Murder’ Review: Behind a Bishop’s Assassination

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Art of Political Murder’ Review: Behind a Bishop’s AssassinationThis documentary from Paul Taylor explores the killing of Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera in Guatemala in 1998.Protesters marching after the killing of Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera.Credit…HBODec. 16, 2020The Art of Political MurderDirected by Paul W. TaylorDocumentary, Crime1h 29mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The murder in “The Art of the Political Murder,” a documentary based on the book of the same title by Francisco Goldman, is the killing of Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera in Guatemala in 1998. Suspiciously, his death came two days after he had presented a report on human rights abuses during the country’s decades-long civil war, which had ended in 1996.A possible political motive for Gerardi’s assassination was obvious; a high-profile death might frighten victims who would otherwise come forward for atrocities trials. But for a time, a prosecutor pursued a theory that Gerardi had been killed by a German shepherd. Arturo Aguilar, who was part of an independent investigation run by the human rights office that Gerardi had directed, emphasizes the importance of following evidence and disregarding conjecture.[embedded content]Others featured at length include Ronalth Ochaeta, who had worked with Gerardi on the human rights report and pursued the killers until he felt that his family was under threat; the journalist Claudia Méndez Arriaza, whom Goldman, in the movie, describes as the only reporter he knew tenacious enough to stick around through the most tedious stretches of the trial; and Goldman himself, who explains how the case became a test of Guatemala’s justice system.The director, Paul Taylor, who uses re-enactments to visualize the night of the crime, clearly faced certain limitations of material, and the film has dry stretches as the interviewees relate a complicated history better-suited to a book. But the movie succeeds at weaving a web in which justice appears impossibly elusive — which gives the ending all the more punch.The Art of Political MurderNot rated. In Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on HBO Max.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Break It All’ Celebrates the Oppositional Energy of Latin Rock

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Break It All’ Celebrates the Oppositional Energy of Latin RockA new six-part Netflix series explores half a century of music under pressure.Soda Stereo onstage in 1984. The band is one of many featured in “Break It All,” a six-part documentary series on Netflix.Credit…NetflixDec. 16, 2020, 4:33 p.m. ETLatin America has taken rock seriously. Seriously enough for governments to suppress it. Seriously enough for bands to sing about political issues, societal troubles and the spirit of rebellion. Seriously enough for fans to risk arrests and beatings to see a concert. While Latin rock can be thoroughly entertaining — catchy, playful, rambunctious, over the top — it rarely settles for being mere entertainment. There’s often far more going on behind the melody, rhythm and noise.“Break It All,” a six-part documentary series named after a song by Los Shakers that arrives Wednesday on Netflix, hurtles through the history of rock in Latin America, from the 1950s — when Ritchie Valens, a Mexican-American born in California, turned the traditional Mexican song “La Bamba” into an American rock ’n’ roll cornerstone — to the 21st century.“Rock ’n’ roll is a form of communication,” Àlex Lora, of the blunt and boisterous Mexican hard-rock band El Tri, says in the documentary. “And it would be illogical, since there are millions of people who speak the language of Cervantes, if we didn’t have our own rock ’n’ roll.”[embedded content]The documentary is narrated by the artists themselves, speaking about both their music and the times they lived through. There are glimpses, and often considerably more, of nearly every major Latin rock figure of the last half-century. The names of bands and performers rush by, many of them probably unfamiliar to listeners in the United States. For those who want a second listen, the documentary makers compiled a companion playlist on Spotify under its Spanish title, “Rompan Todo.”A prime mover and executive producer for “Break It All,” as well as one of its onscreen musician-historians, is Gustavo Santaolalla, who has won two Academy Awards for his film scores and has produced albums for rockers across Latin America, winning a dozen Latin Grammy Awards. His own group, Bajofondo — which mixes tango, rock, orchestral arrangements, electronics and even a bit of disco — is nominated for a Grammy this year in the Latin rock or alternative album category.“I believe the future of rock resides in women and in the third world,” said Gustavo Santaolalla.Credit…NetflixAs “Break It All” moves through the decades, it juxtaposes exuberant songs and concerts with contemporaneous images of dictatorships, coups, uprisings and crises. Musician after musician defines rock as “freedom.”“I had this idea forever,” Santaolalla said in a video interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I wanted to tell this story against the background of the sociopolitical ambience of the time. Even musicians that are part of the story don’t make this connection easily. But when you start to dig in and look at the big picture, you realize how similar the situations were, how the same things happened in many countries.”During his younger days as a longhaired rock musician, Santaolalla himself was arrested and jailed multiple times in Buenos Aires — though never, he recalled, for more than three days. “Rock is not associated with any political party,” he said. “It doesn’t hold a political flag. But nevertheless we were enemies of the state.”Latin rock, also known as rock en español or Latin alternative, evolved with eyes and ears on English-language rock. There’s Latin blues-rock, Latin psychedelia, Latin metal, Latin new wave; throughout the series, Latin rockers cite their American and British counterparts. So in some ways “Break It All” shows a Spanish-speaking parallel universe to the history of rock in the United States and England, particularly in its early years.“We wanted to have self-expression — music that was crafted by us, that talked about our daily life,” said Rubén Albarrán, the lead singer of Café Tacvba.Credit…NetflixIn the 1950s, bands like Los Locos del Ritmo and Los Teen Tops translated American rock ’n’ roll songs into Mexican slang; in the 1960s, bands like Los Shakers vied to sound like the Beatles.“In our early, early, early years, when we were little kids, we were trying to be like the Beatles and sing in English,” Santaolalla said. “And then we realized, no, we have to sing in our language. And we have to play in our own language.”The best Latin rockers have infused imported sounds with local legacies, moving beyond imitation to innovation — bands like Soda Stereo from Argentina, Aterciopelados from Colombia and Café Tacvba from Mexico. Along with all they learned from rock, those bands and others draw on tango, ranchera, cumbia and numerous other homegrown styles, creating hybrids that resonate with and ricochet off cultural memories.“We wanted to have self-expression — music that was crafted by us, that talked about our daily life,” Rubén Albarrán, the lead singer of Café Tacvba, said via video interview from his home in Mexico City. “We put the energy of rock music behind the concept of being inquieto,” which translates as restless, worried or uneasy. “To be moving all the time, and to break away from the rules of our society.”“Break It All” hops from country to country, more or less chronologically, but concentrates on Mexico and Argentina. “There’s great music in all the region, but I like to think of those countries as a battery,” Santaolalla said. “One pole is Mexico and the other is Argentina, the north and the south. Mexico is closer to the U.S., and Argentina is closer to Britain in terms of sound and perspective.”Maldita Vecindad onstage in 1987.Credit…NetflixThe documentary traces cycles of expansion, suppression and rebound, of growing ambitions and widening connections. Under dictatorships, rock was at times forced underground. In Argentina, after the singer Billy Bond incited an arena crowd to “break it all” and the audience smashed seats, rock disappeared from television and radio; recording projects had to be submitted to government committees. In Mexico, the country’s rockers were vilified for more than a decade — and shut out of mainstream performing spaces — after a 1971 festival modeled on Woodstock, Avándaro, where the band Peace and Love declaimed songs like “Marihuana” and “We Got the Power” and used obscenities during a live radio broadcast that was immediately cut off.But musicians persisted, and audiences supported them. Mexican rock started to resurface when radio stations were playing Spanish-language rock from other countries and Mexican labels wanted their own share of the market. Argentine rock got an unlikely boost when, after Britain won the Falklands War in 1982, rock in English was banned from Argentina’s airwaves.The arrival of MTV Latin America in 1993 brought a new, border-crossing solidarity to Latin rock. Musicians became more aware of kindred spirits abroad; they realized that they weren’t struggling alone. Individual or national missions began to feel like a movement. And they had plenty of targets: authoritarian governments, economic turmoil. The music continued to cross-pollinate — with electronics and hip-hop — and it began, though belatedly, to recognize women’s ideas and voices.Latin rock never broke the language barrier to reach English-speaking audience in the United States; that current commercial breakthrough belongs to reggaeton and the vaguer Latin genre called urbano, both drawing primarily on hip-hop and reggae.“In my 50 years in this, I’ve heard the phrase ‘rock is dead,’ ‘rock is finished,’ so many times,” Santaolalla said. “When we started the series three years ago, I said rock is in hibernation. But now I say rock is in quarantine. I believe the future of rock resides in women and in the third world — they are going to be the pillars of rock. They are going to bring the vaccine.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A New Breed of Animal Documentary

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA New Breed of Animal Documentary“Gunda” and “My Octopus Teacher” present creatures as distinct beings with qualities that have nothing to do with humans.Victor Kossakovsky’s “Gunda,” one of a number of films that avoids presenting animals as objects of wonder or scientific curiosity.Credit…NeonDec. 15, 2020, 1:19 p.m. ETThere’s a moment in “Gunda,” an artful documentary about barnyard animals, that could take its place in a list of the year’s best scenes. The star, a sow with a bustling litter of piglets, has just experienced an unmistakable trauma. Pacing around the farm, she conveys a palpable agitation and emotion, before turning to look at the camera, pointedly.This isn’t the sort of thing we’re accustomed to seeing in nature films. It feels as if we’re getting a glimpse into Gunda’s inner life, and there’s no narrator telling us what the animal might be thinking. It’s emotionally engaging and feels distinctive to Gunda, instead of an illustration of the species or the planet as a whole.More frequently, a voice-over and a crystal-clear story guide our attention and define our understanding of what we’re seeing in a nature documentary. There’s no shortage of drama, to be sure, but usually it’s spectacular: tales of survival or mass migration. Even when we’re not looking at a panorama on the scale of “Planet Earth,” the greater context seems to overshadow the individual animal.But there are signs of new directions in how animals are portrayed in nature films. “Gunda,” which opened Friday via virtual cinema, feels like part of this movement, along with a different but also unusual film, “My Octopus Teacher” on Netflix. Both present animals as beings apart from us, not just objects of wonder or scientific study, and with qualities that are all their own, not shadows of human emotions.“Let’s film animals the same way we film humans,” Victor Kossakovsky, the director of “Gunda,” said he told his cameraman. “If you feel like they need space, let them be. If you feel they are comfortable, you come closer.”You’ve probably already had “My Octopus Teacher” recommended to you by friends or family: Over the course of a year, a South African naturalist, Craig Foster, becomes fascinated by and (let’s just say it) emotionally involved with a small octopus. We observe the vicissitudes of her life and moments of contact with Foster, who explains his experience in interview segments that have the candor of a therapy session.What makes the film stand out is that this is most definitely not a god’s-eye account of an octopus’s life. Foster’s ardent curiosity reflects a different approach to animals than that of the traditionally authoritative conservationist or guide.“They’re more or less letting the animals live, and they’re trusting the viewers more to make their own conclusions,” said Dennis Aig, a film professor at Montana State University, where he runs a program on nature filmmaking. “Even in larger blue-chip movies, this kind of sensitivity is starting to emerge.”Craig Foster and the cephalopod he’s drawn to in “My Octopus Teacher.”Credit…Netflix, via Associated PressBlue-chip documentaries like the dazzling “Planet Earth” series loom large in the minds of many viewers. But nature films have had an evolving lineage. Early 20th-century accounts of safaris and exploration gave way to Disney’s anthropomorphic appreciations of the animal kingdom. Eventually, a conservationist ethos and sense of scientific discovery took hold, with a perceived desire for spectacular shots (no doubt given a boost by the arrival of HD television and ever larger screens in the 2000s).Popular interest in these films has only grown — especially against the urgent backdrop of climate change — with viewership increasing and more nature shows than ever before. But a particular strand of filmmaking has persisted among the explorations and explications of nature’s mysteries, and its likely origins arose decades ago.“I think Jane Goodall started this work with her first early work on chimps,” Pippa Ehrlich, one of the two directors of “My Octopus Teacher,” said. “I think it’s been a slow change over time.”The nature programs that followed Goodall’s immersive research shared her perceptive evaluation of the chimpanzees’ personalities, emotional states and interpersonal relationships. It’s scientific in approach, but her open-minded point of view and profound insights into emotional intelligence inform the filmmaking. That paved the way for forms of engagement that do not mean solely to elicit sympathy but rather open up a new kind of space for the animals and their individuality, as in “My Octopus Teacher” and “Gunda.”“Hopefully the lesson is that, actually, everywhere you turn there are complex personalities in nature that just haven’t been documented yet,” James Reed, Ehrlich’s co-director, said.Films like “Gunda” and “My Octopus Teacher” join predecessors like “My Life as a Turkey,” a 2011 TV documentary in which a man raises a group of turkeys and susses out their traits and habits. “Kedi” (2017) might also be a recent influence, partly for its popularity, but also for its detailed accounts of Istanbul’s street cats. On the more conventional side “The Elephant Queen” (2019) seeks out an emotional intimacy that feels fresh and similar in spirit.In “Gunda,” we can learn about the particular cautious intelligence of a chicken picking its way into the grass, or spot personality traits among piglets in Gunda’s brood. “My Octopus Teacher” surprises many with the strangeness of its subject: a mollusk with barely distinguishable eyes, that demonstrates a kind of light-footed moxie and reserves of iron will.The filmmakers avoided giving the octopus a name (though they do refer to the animal as a female), specifically to sidestep the impulse to humanize her behavior — long a point of tension in nature documentary.“There’s no question that drawing comparisons with people has been a great convenience and sometimes very educational storytelling strategy,” Aig said. “But it is limited in many ways, because as our knowledge of science increases, we also realize that there are differences in why certain species do what they do.”The tendency toward portraying animals with nuanced, individual depth is driven by this growing knowledge and interest in animal intelligence, often across disciplines. New understandings of the planet recognize the coexistence of all animals, and, Aig said, younger audiences seem driven by an urge to relate to nature rather than exert a kind of mastery through knowledge.The moment opens up the possibility of seeking out and identifying thought processes particular to animals. Reed emphasized the importance of the feature-length focus on a single animal (or two, counting Foster) in “My Octopus Teacher,” and the camerawork that allowed them to show “how she felt the world, how she perceived it.”It’s a close encounter of a sort that’s becoming more apparent in nature documentaries — both physical and emotional.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Last Blockbuster’ Review: All the Nostalgia, With No Late Fees

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Last Blockbuster’ Review: All the Nostalgia, With No Late FeesThrough celebrity interviews, this documentary looks back at the history of the home video retail industry.The Blockbuster Video store in Bend, Ore. featured in the documentary “The Last Blockbuster.”Credit…1091 PicturesDec. 15, 2020, 11:16 a.m. ETThe Last BlockbusterDirected by Taylor MordenDocumentaryNot Rated1h 24mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.You ever hear the one about the guy who asked for “Of Human Bondage” at the video store and was told to look in the “adult” section? I saw it happen. In the ’80s. A fair amount of “The Last Blockbuster,” a documentary on video stores — and on one store in particular, as the title implies — spends time with Gen X folks kicking around not dissimilar reminiscences.Directed by Taylor Morden and narrated with engaging energy by the actor Lauren Lapkus (“Orange Is the New Black,” “The Big Bang Theory”), the nostalgia appeal of the movie extends a bit beyond its subject. Its talking heads — including the director Kevin Smith; the actors Jamie Kennedy and Ione Skye; the comedians Brian Posehn and Doug Benson; and members of the music groups Savage Garden and Smashmouth — make the documentary feel like a supersized episode of the old VH1 show “Best Week Ever.” Coincidentally, VH1 and Blockbuster Video once had the same corporate parent, Viacom.[embedded content]The movie does a good job of explaining the fundamentals of the video store as a business, and how corporate machinations relative to debt and capital led to the Blockbuster chain’s doom. Was it, as conventional wisdom holds, Netflix that killed Blockbuster? The answer is both “no” and “sort of.”As this pleasant but ultimately inconsequential movie’s narrative thins out, it emphasizes again and again that there is, as of now, only one operating Blockbuster store in the world. Luckily its proprietor is the warm and ingratiating Sandi Harding, who reckons that by now she has given a job to almost every teenager in the town of Bend, Ore., where the store operates. She refers to herself as a “Blockbuster Mom.”The Last BlockbusterNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How the Bee Gees Stayed Alive

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookHow the Bee Gees Stayed AliveThe HBO documentary “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” traces the decades-long arc of a band that mastered a rare pop skill: adaptation.Maurice, Barry and Robin Gibb in “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” a documentary that explores the group’s long and winding career.Credit…HBO MaxDec. 14, 2020, 1:16 p.m. ETDiscovered, embraced, disbanded, reunited, ignored, reinvented, hailed, scorned, disguised, recognized — the Bee Gees’ long career was filled with improbable ups and downs. Most bands are lucky to get one Top 10 hitmaking streak. The Bee Gees — the brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb — had at least two, singing heartache ballads in the late 1960s and re-emerging in the mid-1970s as the multiplatinum pop face of disco.“The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” an HBO documentary directed by Frank Marshall, moves sympathetically and efficiently through the group’s decades of making music. It traces the ways artistic instincts, family dynamics, business considerations, cultural shifts and sheer coincidence can shape memorable songs.In the documentary, abundant archival footage — a cavalcade of flashy fashions from 1960s frills to 1980s cool — coalesces around 2019 interviews with the last surviving member of the Bee Gees, Barry Gibb, who is grizzled and thoughtful but by no means retired. The documentary shows him performing as a headliner at the 2017 Glastonbury Festival, and he has an album due in 2021, “Greenfields,” that revisits the Bee Gees catalog with country musicians. The documentary also features the Bee Gees’ studio collaborators and, cannily, members of other bands of siblings: Oasis and the Jonas Brothers.The Bee Gees were prolific and often masterly songwriters, and they sang three-part harmony as only siblings can. Many of their songs are credited to all three brothers. “The only way I can describe how we work at it is to become one mind,” Maurice Gibb says in a clip from a 1999 interview.They started performing together before they were teenagers, in the late 1950s, looking to R&B vocal groups like the Mills Brothers and then, like countless others, to the Beatles. And like the Beatles, they soaked up all sorts of music: rock, country, gospel, vintage pop.But nearly from the beginning of their recording career, the Bee Gees clearly had something of their own. Barry and Robin Gibb, who traded off lead vocals, each brought a tremulous drama to their melodies, a striking mixture of eagerness and hesitancy. In an era of brash frontmen, they could sound like they were painfully shy yet simply unable to hold back.From 1967 to 1970, the Bee Gees released a string of hit ballads including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” With melancholy lyrics, delicately blended voices and careful, often Baroque-tinged productions, their songs offered yearning and solace in psychedelically turbulent times. Around the hits, their albums — notably “Odessa” — floated larger musical and poetic concepts and more eccentric productions.In 1969, egos boiled over. Robin quit the Bee Gees to try a solo career, and he and Barry sniped at each other via interviews for over a year as Maurice played go-between. They regrouped — in part to support their manager, Robert Stigwood, as he started his own company — and came up with more hits: “Lonely Days” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”But by 1974, the Bee Gees’ fortunes had waned. They had drinking and drug problems; their scattershot albums weren’t selling. Their label was “about to drop us,” Barry Gibb recalls in the documentary. “We had to adopt a new sound. We had to adopt a new attitude.”The Bee Gees were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — but not until 1997.Credit…Ed Caraeff/HBO, via Getty ImagesLuckily Stigwood also managed Eric Clapton, who suggested that they record where he had, at Criteria Studios in Miami. There, in 1975, some alchemical combination of sunny skies, close collaboration with their backing band, the stirrings of disco culture and a producer close to American R&B — Arif Mardin — led to the Bee Gees picking up their tempo and finding a brisk, guitar-scrubbing groove they would use in a new song, “Jive Talkin’.” In the documentary, Gibb connects it to the clicking rhythm he heard driving across a bridge to the studio each day.Because the Bee Gees had fallen so far out of fashion, their label sent “Jive Talkin’” to radio stations without identifying the group. With a blank label, the song became a radio hit; the Bee Gees were back.There was another breakthrough at the Criteria sessions. Barry Gibb was ad-libbing some backup vocals at the end of “Nights on Broadway” when he happened upon a sound he hadn’t fully realized he could make: a bright, piercing falsetto, androgynous and insistent, linking the Bee Gees to a longtime falsetto tradition in Black American music. It was a voice — a whole new sonic persona for Gibb, not shy at all — that would leap out of club and radio speakers in “You Should Be Dancing” and in songs the Bee Gees wrote for “Saturday Night Fever.”When they wrote those songs, the Bee Gees were at the Château d’Hérouville, a dumpy old French estate where Elton John had recorded the album “Honky Chateau.” During the sessions there, the band’s drummer, Dennis Bryon, was called away for a family emergency; to keep working, Albhy Galuten, a co-producer, made a tape loop from two bars of “Night Fever,” slowed it down and ran it as the Gibbs brothers wrote “Stayin’ Alive.” The mechanical feel of the loop gave the song something mysterious and tenacious; it stayed in the finished song, and has spawned innumerable looped drumbeats ever since.The 1977 “Saturday Night Fever” album, a two-LP anthology of disco hits and Bee Gees songs, became a record-setting blockbuster. Although disco had emerged from Black music and Black and gay clubs — as the documentary takes pains to point out — the Bee Gees, smiling in their silvery suits, became disco’s pop figureheads. In the late 1970s, the Gibb brothers’ music was everywhere: their own hits; songs for their younger brother, Andy; songs written for others. In 1979 they toured stadiums. They didn’t realize an anti-disco backlash was building.For a directorial flourish, Miller intercuts a euphoric July 1979 Bee Gees concert in Oakland with an event that happened two days later: “Disco Demolition Night,” promoted by Steve Dahl, a rock disc jockey who had popularized the obnoxious slogan “Disco Sucks.” Between games of a Chicago White Sox doubleheader at Comiskey Park, Dahl exploded a pile of disco records, which set off a hugely destructive crowd rampage. In the documentary, Vince Lawrence, who worked as an usher at Comiskey Park that night and later became a house-music producer, describes the event in hindsight as “a racist, homophobic book-burning.”The Bee Gees finished their tour amid bomb threats; radio stations pivoted away from dance music and shunned the Bee Gees. “We’re just a pop group, we’re not a political force,” a defensive Barry Gibb says in television footage from the time. “We’re just making music, and I don’t think there’s any reason to chalk us off because we existed in the ’70s and we would like to exist in the ’80s.”Avoiding the spotlight, the Gibb brothers persisted as songwriters and producers. The longtime Bee Gees sound — tuneful midtempo ballads, vocal high harmonies, distinctive chord progressions — comes through unmistakably in songs they wrote for others, including Barbra Streisand’s “Woman in Love,” Dionne Warwick’s “Heartbreaker” and the Kenny Rogers-Dolly Parton duet “Islands in the Stream.” Even in post-disco purgatory, the Bee Gees were still hitmakers. And as disco and the backlash receded (and dance music never went away), the Bee Gees returned more modestly, making albums every few years and garnering the respect they deserved. Yes, they got into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — but not until 1997.Maurice Gibb died in 2003, Robin Gibb in 2012; that vocal blend is extinct. In the documentary, Barry Gibb understands exactly what his brothers and his band accomplished. “We never really had a category. We just had periods and we managed to fit into different eras,” he reflects. “We didn’t always connect. But we stayed around.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Giving Voice’ Review: August Wilson Is Uplifting a New Generation

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Giving Voice’ Review: August Wilson Is Uplifting a New GenerationNetflix’s inspirational documentary follows talented theater kids who are devoting themselves to Wilson’s writing.Cody Merridith performs an August Wilson monologue in the documentary “Giving Voice.”Credit…NetflixDec. 11, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETGiving VoiceNYT Critic’s PickDirected by James D. Stern, Fernando VillenaDocumentaryPG-131h 27mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The everyday hopes and heartbreaks of African-Americans were dramatized in August Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle. And every year, since Wilson’s death in 2005, thousands of students from 12 different cities vie for the chance to perform a monologue from one of his plays for the competition’s final round on Broadway. James D. Stern and Fernando Villena’s uplifting documentary “Giving Voice” (streaming on Netflix) further explores this competition and explains how the playwright’s legacy is inspiring a new generation.Interviews with the actors Viola Davis, who is one of the film’s executive producers, Denzel Washington and Stephen McKinley Henderson (all from the film adaptation of Wilson’s “Fences”) are interspersed between segments that follow teenagers advancing through the 2018 iteration of the competition.[embedded content]This is a film that worships the ways acting can instill determination in young people. Gerardo Navarro, from South Central Los Angeles, says he was unaware a space for Latinx actors existed in theater, but feels seen by Wilson’s work. Callie Holley, hailing from Houston, sees her mother, who weathered cancer and the 2008 financial crisis, in the character of Berniece from “The Piano Lesson.” And the Chicago high schooler Cody Merridith, who performs from “King Hedley II,” innately feels the hurt present in Wilson’s work. Not only does Cody come from the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, where poverty is a daily struggle for many of its residents, but also his school is without an arts program of any kind.In addition to hearing themselves in the voices of these characters, the kids hear their aunts, uncles, grandparents and neighbors, too. They hear the timeless struggle of Black America reaching across the generations. They heave the emotional weight of Ma Rainey, Cutler and Hedley with a maturity far beyond their years and come out empowered. And in capturing these moments, “Giving Voice” becomes as inspirational as Wilson’s words, as fulfilling as each teen’s declaration of self-worth.Giving VoiceRated PG-13 for the power of theater. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Bee Gees’ Review: Night Fever, for Decades

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Bee Gees’ Review: Night Fever, for DecadesThe documentary “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” from Frank Marshall, strives to paint a wider picture of the band often associated with its disco hits.From left, Maurice, Barry and Robin Gibb, the subjects of the documentary “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”Credit…HBO/ShutterstockDec. 11, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETThe Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken HeartDirected by Frank MarshallDocumentary1h 51mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” pays tribute to the Gibb brothers with a tour of their pop music reign. Grooving through the decades, this entertaining documentary aspires to prove that the Bee Gees were more than a hitmaker for disco nightclubs. Rather, Barry, Maurice and Robin were master songwriters and chameleons, continually reinventing themselves to harmonize with the times.Working largely off archival footage intercut with interviews — both original and vintage — of the brothers and their collaborators, the director Frank Marshall graphs the band’s ups and downs onto a chronology of ’60s, ’70s and ’80s popular music. At first the Bee Gees, forming at a young age, echoed early Beatles albums. As their warbling harmonies evolved, the brothers’ star rose.[embedded content]In addition to laying out the personality of each member, the film offers a satisfying look at the process of making and marketing music. Barry recalls that he found his trademark falsetto, later flaunted on disco hits like “Stayin’ Alive,” after a producer urged him to let loose while recording “Nights on Broadway.” Barry also confesses that the song was originally “Lights on Broadway”; an executive suggested they change the lyric to make the band seem more adult.Once it reaches the disco era, the documentary hits a bump. Interviews with the DJ Nicky Siano and the dance music producer Vince Lawrence detail how disco was born in Black and gay spaces before the music was commercialized and eventually axed in a backlash inflamed by racism and homophobia. The movie implies that the Bee Gees, evermore linked to the genre after “Saturday Night Fever,” got swept up in the chaos. Crucially, Marshall fails to probe where the Bee Gees fit into a history of whitewashing and profiting from Black music. For several pesky beats, the film slips into hagiography — like an awkward bridge in a song that, otherwise, makes you want to hit the dance floor.The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken HeartNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on HBO Max beginning Dec. 12.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Gunda’ Review: A Remarkable Pig’s-Eye View of the World

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Gunda’ Review: A Remarkable Pig’s-Eye View of the WorldThis astonishing documentary offers an intimate look at the lives of a sow, her rambunctious piglets, a one-legged chicken and a herd of cows.Gunda with one of her piglets in Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary.Credit…NeonDec. 10, 2020GundaNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Viktor KosakovskiyDocumentaryG1h 33mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.What do filmmakers see when they look at animals? Not much, apparently: For the most part, animals in movies are atmospheric background — a solitary cat in a window, a horse in a field glimpsed from a car. Occasionally they are symbols, like the many sacrificed bunnies of cinema (“The Rules of the Game” et al.). At other times, animals are cast as favorite companions, and plenty of dogs have played good boy onscreen. Yet even in films as distinct as “Old Yeller” and “Best in Show,” animals are usually in service to the human story, to our feelings and tears.The astonishing documentary “Gunda” offers another way of looking at animals. Sublimely beautiful and profoundly moving, it offers you the opportunity to look — at animals, yes, but also at qualities that are often subordinated in narratively driven movies, at textures, shapes and light. It’s outwardly simple: For most of its 93 minutes, the movie focuses on a sow and her piglets. In a short section we roam with chickens, including an impressively agile one-legged bird. In another, cows gallop into a misty field to graze, an interlude of pastoral dreaminess that invokes other representations — in novels and landscape paintings — yet is itself visually transfixing.“Gunda” is a passion project of the Russian director Victor Kossakovsky (“Aquarela”), who wanted to make it for years. (Funding movies is always difficult; doing so for documentaries like this is heroic.) His approach was straightforward yet ingenious. Shooting in black-and-white digital, with no music, voice-over or onscreen text or people, he opens an intimate window onto the lives of animals. His star, as it were, is Gunda, a prodigious sow of uncertain age who, when the movie opens, has just given birth to a litter of a dozen or so piglets. Although there’s a tag fixed to her ear, the roomy enclosure suggests that they’re not being factory farmed — a relief.Kossakovsky found Gunda on a Norwegian farm not far from Oslo, on what he has called the first day of casting. Once she was in place, he and his team constructed a replica of her enclosure that allowed them to shoot inside while remaining outside. As you soon discover, this setup gave them an intimate vantage point without, presumably, bothering the inhabitants too much. (Kossakovsky has said that he used a stationary disco ball — never seen, alas — to light the interior.) The filmmakers also laid down dolly tracks outside the pen so they could follow Gunda and her litter as they rooted, played, wandered and sunned outdoors.The film was shot in black-and-white digital, with no music, voice-over or onscreen text or people.Credit…NeonThe results are spellbinding. The movie opens with Gunda lounging (a preferred pastime) on a bed of hay, her body inside the enclosure and her head framed in the doorway. It’s pig heaven. Kossakovsky — who shared cinematography duties with Egil Haskjold Larsen — holds on the still shot long enough for you to admire its lapidary detail and compositional symmetry. And then: Action! As the camera pushes in, a piglet about the size of one of Gunda’s ears scrambles over her head with piping squeals and slides onto the hay outside. And then, as big mama rhythmically grunts, another piglet and then another scales her epic head and tumbles into the world.Not much seems to happen beyond squeals and adorableness. Yet the scene’s spareness is deceptive, which is true of the entire movie. Newborns of any species tend to be delightful, and the piglets — in their tininess and charming ungainliness — prove natural-born scene stealers. Their size helps draw you toward them and even causes you to fret. They’re so small and their mother is so very, very big. Kossakovsky may not be telling an obvious story but he is communicating oceans of meaning cinematically, using images to create cascading associations, starting with the shot of the piglets emerging from the dark door, a visual echo of birth itself.You stay with Gunda and her piglets for a while, during moments of quiet drama, blissful play and nail-biting tension. Kossakovsky shot the movie over a number of months, so the piglets grow by spurts, though never — meaningfully, as you discover — very large. Throughout the scenes of the pigs, and also those of the free-ranging chickens, Kossakovsky mostly keeps the camera at their height, rather than staring down. As Gunda plows her snout in the earth, you see how different the world, the dirt itself, looks from the Lilliputian angle of these beings. These images testify that to see, really see, through the eyes of others, four-legged or otherwise, is to be fully human.Kossakovsky isn’t waving any flags, but “Gunda” is a reminder that the resistance to showing animals in most movies reflects how we no longer look at them, to borrow a thought from the critic John Berger. It also speaks to our unwillingness to acknowledge our abuse of other creatures and, by extension, the natural world. It is, for instance, awfully easy to eat meat; in the developed world, it requires little thought, effort or money. It’s more difficult and certainly more inconvenient to think about the violence inherent in its production, including the environmental devastation. And so, cut off from the natural world, we largely classify animals as pets or meat.In his moving, prophetic 1977 essay “Why Look at Animals?,” Berger considered the tragic costs of humanity’s putative march toward progress and away from the natural world. “To suppose that animals first entered the human imagination as meat or leather or horn is to project a 19th-century attitude backwards across the millennia,” Berger writes. “Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises.”Animals were companions in our caves. We looked them in the eye and they looked back. Over time, we put animals — nature itself — at a greater remove. We stopped looking. Yet as Kossakovsky reminds us, even as he spares us the ghastliness of the slaughterhouse, we need to look at animals to honestly see what we have done.GundaRated G for gentle scenes and one very ominous truck. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More