Documentary Films and Programs

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      39 Movies to See This Fall: ‘Joker’ Sequel, Bob Dylan Biopic and More

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      From the “Joker” sequel and Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan biopic to a handful of festival darlings, it’s a jam-packed season. Plan accordingly.From an outsize Francis Ford Coppola passion project to a “Joker” follow-up that multiplies the madness by two, the fall movie calendar is going big. Reducing it to a select list of noteworthy titles was a daunting task. Alongside major releases, including sequels to “Gladiator” and “Moana,” we’ve included a large number of films that earned acclaim at this year’s festivals. Many other titles haven’t yet settled on release dates. (All dates and platforms are subject to change.)September‘A DIFFERENT MAN’ Sebastian Stan won best lead performance at the Berlin Film Festival for his turn as an actor with a facial disfigurement. As he pines for a new neighbor (Renate Reinsve), a playwright, he undergoes an experimental treatment. Aaron Schimberg directed this offbeat comedy, featuring Adam Pearson as the Stan character’s rival. (Sept. 20; in theaters)‘THE SUBSTANCE’ In what would make an excellent Sept. 20 double feature with “A Different Man,” Demi Moore plays an aging actress reduced to fitness guru-dom who undergoes an experimental treatment of her own. A mysterious injection will divide her into, essentially, two people. Margaret Qualley plays her counterpart. Coralie Fargeat, who wrote and directed, won the screenplay prize at Cannes. (Sept. 20; in theaters)‘WOLFS’ George Clooney and Brad Pitt mastered the art of smooth teamwork over three “Ocean’s” movies, but in this action comedy, their characters — two fixers who wind up on the same job — are initially at loggerheads. Amy Ryan also stars. Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”) wrote and directed. (Sept. 20 in theaters, Sept. 27 on Apple TV+)‘LEE’ The celebrated photojournalist Lee Miller got a shoutout in “Civil War” earlier this year. Now she gets a biopic, with Kate Winslet in the role. Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough and Andy Samberg co-star. Ellen Kuras, best known for her work as a cinematographer, directed. (Sept. 27; in theaters)‘MEGALOPOLIS’ Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature since 2011 is a project he’s been talking up for more than 40 years. In an amalgam of contemporary New York and ancient Rome, Adam Driver plays an urban-planning visionary who at various points evokes Robert Moses, Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark and Coppola himself. (Sept. 27; in theaters)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can a Film Say Something New About the U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis?

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      “Borderland: The Line Within” takes a surprisingly multidisciplinary approach fueled by both personal history and government data.Some of the devastating information presented in the new film “Borderland: The Line Within” (in theaters) is familiar from recent documentaries. Filmmakers concerned with the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border understand how the camera can draw attention to what news reports and punditry miss: the human cost of government policies and law enforcement practices. Putting faces on abstract numbers activates empathy in a way no speech ever really can.“Borderland: The Line Within” examines this terrain a little differently. The director Pamela Yates does focus on individuals — two in particular. The first is Kaxh Mura’l, a Mayan man whom Yates knew from a previous documentary set in Guatemala. As the film opens, Mura’l is receiving death threats for his environmental activism there. If he can make it to the United States, he will qualify for legal asylum. But as the film shows, he struggles to be permitted due to obstructive border enforcement practices. His is a Kafka-esque tale with urgent and crucial stakes.The other subject is Gabriela Castañeda, an undocumented immigrant and mother whose status as a Dreamer under the DACA program was suddenly revoked. Castañeda is certain that the move is related to her activism on behalf of the Border Network for Human Rights. If she were detained, it would mean leaving her children alone.Seeing Mura’l and Castañeda’s stories unfold is powerful and often infuriating. But what really bolsters the film’s argument are the other figures in the documentary. In one sequence, hidden cameras capture immigration enforcement agents destroying gallons of water left in the desert by humanitarian groups like No More Deaths. Videos can’t show us everything, but the image of smiling agents kicking jugs and pouring out water certainly adds new dimensions.Yet what I found most fascinating in “Borderland” was, oddly enough, the more scientific part. Three participants in the film — Manan Ahmed, Alex Gil and Roopika Risam — are digital humanists at Columbia University, meaning they use data to inform their scholarly work in the humanities. All three have personal histories that intersect with U.S. immigration. Together, they use government data to spot patterns in public spending that tell a story about where, and how, taxpayer money is spent at the border. Their models also trace the flow of money toward politicians on all sides of the issue and directly connect to how immigration policy is made.Woven into the personal narratives, the data visualizations — and the scholars’ explanation of why they matter — make the message land even harder. If video footage provides a damning perspective, this data offers an expansive one, allowing “Borderland” to explore the crisis as both individual and systemic. The issue is bigger than any one person. “Borderland” comes at it from more than one direction, and is more effective for it. More

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      Fashion True Crime Documentaries to Stream

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      Four picks across television, film and podcasting that examine dark stories about some of the most trendy clothing brands.In recent years, several popular apparel brands have made news for troubling reasons. Most often, they have been accused of corporate greed, having predatory practices that exploit young women, and propagating abusive systems at all levels of production, promotion and distribution. These headlines have, in turn, inspired a string of documentaries, docuseries and podcasts.Here are four picks that explore the stories of such companies, all of which have been marred by corrupt leadership or sudden tragedy.Documentary“Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion”Having barely heard of the Brandy Melville brand, I wasn’t particularly eager to watch this documentary that was released in April on Max. But as it turns out, that is kind of the point. This film from director Eva Orner not only is a searing examination of the toxic culture at this Gen Z-targeted, social media-fueled label, but it also manages to expose the many unethical systems endemic to the global fast-fashion industry. Footage from Ghana, where mountains of clothing waste from the United States blanket towns and shorelines, chilled me to the bone.As for Brandy Melville itself — maybe most famous for selling only tiny clothing with disingenuous “one size fits most” labels — the film highlights many of the takeaways from the journalist Kate Taylor’s Business Insider investigation, including scores of allegations of racism and of widespread predatory practices by the brand’s shadowy leaders, Silvio and Stephan Marsan. It all becomes that much more grim with a rape allegation against a manager by an employee.Documentary Series“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why You May Never See the Documentary on Prince by Ezra Edelman

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      Dig, if you will, a small slice of Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour documentary about Prince — a cursed masterpiece that the public may never be allowed to see.Listen to this article, read by Janina EdwardsIt’s 1984, and Prince is about to release “Purple Rain,” the album that will make him a superstar and push pop music into distant realms we had no idea we were ready for. The sound engineer Peggy McCreary, one of many female engineers he worked with, describes witnessing a flash of genius during the creation of his song “When Doves Cry.” Over a two-day marathon recording session, she and Prince filled the studio with sound — wailing guitars, thrumming keyboards, an overdubbed choir of harmonizing Princes. It was the sort of maximalist stew possible only when someone is (as Prince was) a master of just about every musical instrument ever invented. But something wasn’t right. So at 5 or 6 in the morning, Prince found the solution: He started subtracting. He took out the guitar solo; he took out the keyboard. And then his boldest, most heterodox move: He took out the bass. McCreary remembers him saying, with satisfaction, “Ain’t nobody gonna believe I did that.” He knew what he had. The song became an anthem, a platinum megahit.The next sequence starts to probe the origins of Prince’s genius, how it grew alongside a gnawing desire for recognition. His sister, Tyka Nelson, a woman with owlish eyes and pink and purple streaks in her hair, appears onscreen. She describes the violence in their household growing up. How their musician father’s face changed when he hit their mother. The ire he directed at his son, on whom he bestowed his former stage name, Prince — a gift, but also a burden, a reminder that the demands of supporting his children had caused him to abandon his own musical career. Prince would risk lashings by sneaking over to the piano and plinking away at it — the son already embarked on his life’s work of besting his father, the father giving and withdrawing love, the son doing the same.Cut to Jill Jones, one in a long line of girlfriend-muses whom Prince anointed, styled, encouraged and criticized. Hers is one of the most anguished testimonies in the film, revealing a side of Prince many of his fans would rather not see. Late one night in 1984, she and a friend visited Prince at a hotel. He started kissing the friend, and in a fit of jealousy, Jones slapped him. She says he then looked at her and said, “Bitch, this ain’t no [expletive] movie.” They tussled, and he began to punch her in the face over and over. She wanted to press charges, but his manager told her it would ruin his career. So she backed off. Yet for a time, she still loved him and wanted to be with him, and stayed in his orbit for many more years. Recounting the incident three decades later, she is still furious, still processing the stress of being involved with him.In the next sequence, it’s the evening of the premiere of “Purple Rain,” the movie, which will go on to win the Academy Award for best original song score in 1985. Prince’s tour manager, Alan Leeds, was with him in the back of a limo on the way to the ceremony. He remembers one of Prince’s bodyguards turning to Prince and saying: “This is going to be the biggest day of your life! They say every star in town is there!” And Prince clutched Leeds’s hand, trembling in fear. But then, as Leeds tells it, some switch flipped, and “he caught himself.” Prince’s eyes turned hard. He was back in control. “That was it,” Leeds says. “But for maybe 10 seconds, he completely lost it. And I loved it. Because it showed he was human!” In the next shot, we see Prince emerging from the limo and walking down the red carpet in an iridescent purple trench coat over a creamy ruffled collar, his black curls piled high. He swaggers, twirling a flower, unbothered: a creature of regal remove.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Change Can Be Beautiful. Just Ask Will Ferrell and Harper Steele.

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      How well do we know our friends? Our neighbors? Ourselves? In the new documentary “Will & Harper,” which opens in select theaters on Sept. 13 and will stream on Netflix starting Sept. 27, the superstar comedian Will Ferrell and his best friend and frequent collaborator, Harper Steele, take a New York-to-California road trip together to try to answer those questions.Listen to the Conversation with Will Ferrell and Harper SteeleThe superstar comedian and his best friend and collaborator discuss the journey that deepened their friendship.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppHitting the highway on a quest for meaning is a classic American story, but it hasn’t been told in exactly this fashion before: Steele is a trans woman who came out to her friends, including Ferrell, two years ago. That was after years as a comedy writer, many of them at “Saturday Night Live,” where they both worked and where Steele eventually became a head writer. The two friends explained to me that the show wasn’t always the easiest environment, though they have different reasons for saying so. They also experienced some ups and downs on their cross-country drive, which gave them a chance to talk through what Steele’s transition means for their friendship and to get a clearer sense of how their fellow Americans feel about transgender identity.As you might expect, the film’s soul-searching often comes wrapped in laughs. But given the politicization of trans rights, even situations the duo set up for silly comedy can turn tense. There’s a key scene in the documentary in which Steele and Ferrell stop for what they hope is a goofy eating challenge at a rowdy Texas steakhouse. It does not wind up being goofy.That scene, and this emotionally wide-ranging film, evoked feelings in me that work by Will Ferrell hasn’t before. (And I say that as someone who will happily argue for the deeper resonance of his gloriously idiotic “Step Brothers.”) But as “Will & Harper” the movie and Will and Harper the people attest, change can very often be a good and necessary thing — a funny one too.The hard-hitting first question: How did you become friends? Ferrell: We became friends at “Saturday Night Live.” We were hired in the summer or fall of 1995, and we were all this brand-new group. No one knew each other, and one day Harper and I went to lunch. A very pivotal lunch for me. More

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      A Film That Makes the Stationary Lives of Oysters Into a Wondrous Tale

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      “Holding Back the Tide” weaves facts and dreamy moments into an unconventional take on the nature documentary that very much affects humans.To say that “Holding Back the Tide” is about oysters is technically true. But that description might give the impression of a more conventional nature documentary, the kind with stunning footage narrated in the sonorous voice of a British man. I mean no slight to those films, which are often incredible. But “Holding Back the Tide” (at the Firehouse theater in New York) is something entirely different, and it’s wonderful.The director, Emily Packer, faced an inherent challenge in making a film about oysters, which is that you can’t really observe them doing anything, the way you might with lions or whales. They’re stationary. They don’t have facial expressions. They don’t make noise. But oysters are also incredibly important to our environment, especially in regions like New York City, where eroding shorelines pose a real threat not just to the natural world but to the city’s human inhabitants, too. Oysters also help improve water quality. And, at least to some of us, they’re pretty delicious.All of these facts come up in “Holding Back the Tide.” In interviews and a number of observational scenes, we meet the people and organizations who work to restore the oyster population in the New York region, including the Billion Oyster Project, which among other things partners with top restaurants on shell collection and education. We learn that without oysters, the city might not have existed, at least not the way we imagine it. We find out about historical figures and fascinating biological details. But the factual documentation scenes are just one mode that the film operates in.That’s because Packer sees more in an oyster than just a beach defender or a tasty snack. It’s both a literal creature and a rich symbol for thinking about civilization. Oysters are ancient. They’ve seen a lot. Their history is tied up with the history of race and labor; their disappearance from some areas tells a story about pollution and environmental decay. And oysters can change gender during their lives, with most starting out as male and transitioning to female after the first year of life, which gives them the capacity to fertilize their own eggs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Look Into My Eyes’ Review: Emotional Rescue

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      This fascinating documentary that profiles seven New York City psychics is both profoundly sad and surprisingly hopeful.Before seeing “Look Into My Eyes,” Lana Wilson’s fascinating portrait of seven New York City psychics, I had vague expectations of a humorous overview of human gullibility. Or maybe a useful primer on how to identify the grifters from the gifted. What I did not expect was to emerge with not only a deeper understanding of this strange calling, but far greater empathy for those who seek out its practitioners.Because, make no mistake, this is a profoundly sad movie, one soaked in loss and the longing for human connection. Yet it is also surprisingly hopeful, as Wilson gently frames the psychic-client relationship as one of mutual benefit. In cramped apartments and spare rental spaces, her subjects listen as intently as any therapist to the troubles of strangers. But later, when we visit the psychics outside the sessions (most provide the service for free and have other jobs), we learn that the healing, when it occurs, goes both ways.Their candor, as they divulge why they chose to become mediums, is both touching and revelatory. Whether bruised by a devastating loss or a lack of community, they find solace in the metaphysical. One woman, a Christian, explains that attending her first seance “felt like church.” Another channels the resourcefulness learned during a horrific childhood with a drug-addicted parent. Notably, all are involved in some way with the visual and performing arts. This may be simply a consequence of the movie’s location, but Wilson, who knows her way around performers (she has made documentaries about Taylor Swift and Brooke Shields), seizes the moment.“Is it at all like improv?” she asks brightly, encouraging us to view the readings through a different lens. Throughout, the film’s gaze is tender and its tone respectful as Wilson — who experienced her first psychic reading the morning after Donald Trump became president — interjects rarely and never during a session. Like Orna Guralnik’s troubled clients in Showtime’s “Couples Therapy,” these brave supplicants willingly expose the demons they struggle to exorcise.Their stories are often poignant and sometimes traumatic, like the E.R. nurse who’s haunted by the memory of a child’s violent death. Yet whether it’s the Chinese adoptee wondering if her birth parents ever think of her, or the young man voicing a similar concern about his re-homed bearded dragon, most appear comforted by their psychic’s responses, be they intuitive or occult. Though it can’t be much fun to learn that your grandmother is still complaining about your husband from beyond the grave.I was especially moved by the woman who expressed deep distress over her Boston terrier’s refusal to walk on a leash.“She loves me, right?” she asks her psychic, wistfully. Maybe that’s the only thing any of us needs to know.Look Into My EyesRated R for heartbreaking stories and heartwarming connections. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lover of Men’ Review: The Heart of President Lincoln

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      Subtitled “The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln,” the film gathers an array of historians to argue that Lincoln had romantic relationships with men.About a century ago, the poet and biographer Carl Sandburg remarked upon the “streaks of lavender” in Abraham Lincoln and a Southern gentleman named Joshua Speed. Aspiring beyond suggestion, Shaun Peterson’s “Lover of Men” mobilizes an impressive array of historians to argue that Lincoln had romantic relationships with men that affected his life deeply.Four men are at the heart of Peterson’s playfully titled film, most prominently Speed, who bunked with Lincoln for four years in Springfield, Ill., and mentored the lawyer and budding politician. Lincoln’s sleeping arrangements recur as evidence in the film, like how he shared the presidential bed with his bodyguard, David Derickson, when his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was away. (Lincoln also bonded with Billy Greene, whom he met at a general store early in his career, and Elmer E. Ellsworth, who clerked in his law office and later died a Union war hero.)Suggestive phrases in letters to, from and about Lincoln reflect the ardor and closeness in these relationships, and his grief upon their dissolution. Peterson also floods the film with re-enactments to illustrate Lincoln’s time with Speed and others. There is value in imagining this etched-in-granite statesman in emotionally vulnerable private moments, but the scenes, sometimes in slow-motion, are distractingly hokey and undermine the movie.The documentary tends to linger on some assertions about sexuality in Lincoln’s era while papering over others. But the general effort of bringing to light (and potentially to history books) an underrepresented part of American experience remains vital beyond defining Lincoln’s identity.Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham LincolnNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More