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      ‘Copa 71’ Documentary Shows Hidden History of Women’s World Cup

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      This new documentary unearths footage from a World Cup event that even veteran players didn’t know about. It’s both exhilarating and infuriating.“Copa 71” begins with Brandi Chastain, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and legendary U.S. women’s soccer player, gawking at a screen. “This is unbelievable,” she says, looking at what the filmmaker has just handed her: footage of a stadium filled with people cheering at an old tournament. At first, she thinks it’s a men’s event. Then, as the players file out, she realizes the athletes are women. “Why didn’t I know about this?” Chastain asks in consternation. “It makes me very happy, and quite infuriated.”That’s a neat encapsulation of the effects of watching “Copa 71” (in theaters and on demand), directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine. The film tells the story of the all-but-forgotten 1971 Women’s World Cup, held in Mexico City and Guadalajara, which was recorded beautifully on film that went unseen for half a century.The tournament was actually the second such event organized by the Federation of Independent European Female Football; the first was held a year earlier, in Italy. But those details matter less than the context. At the time, soccer (or football, as most of the film’s participants of course call it) was still considered a sport for men, and women who played it were subject to a rich variety of snide and suspicious comments. Aside from the cultural pressures, FIFA, the governing body for what was only men’s soccer at the time, was on a mission to block women from taking part in international football in any organized fashion. In the film’s view, FIFA’s move was as much about retaining power as about the sport itself.All of this is laid out in “Copa 71,” with the help of a few historians and a number of athletes who played in the international tournaments. Their recollections, juxtaposed with images of a huge arena filled with cheering fans of all ages and genders, make this feel like a sports documentary from an alternate universe — especially because it would take 20 more years for FIFA to finally authorize women’s soccer for international play.The 1970s tournaments took place in a time of increasing worldwide activism for women’s rights. While the tournaments were obviously part of that movement, the players didn’t see themselves necessarily as activists. They just wanted to play. And this confounded observers, often men, who couldn’t conceive of women just wanting to do something regardless of men’s involvement or opinions.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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      ‘Federer: Twelve Final Days’ Review: Roger, Over and Out

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      A new documentary follows the Swiss tennis star from his 2022 retirement announcement to his final match.Roger Federer retired from tennis at 41 having achieved everything there was to conquer: 20 Grand Slam titles and a reputation so sterling that his home country of Switzerland minted his face on a coin. (He was even once voted the second most admired person in the world after Nelson Mandela.) “Federer: Twelve Final Days,” a polite documentary by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia, follows the living legend throughout September 2022, from his goodbye announcement to his last professional match. The camera stays at a respectful distance as Federer exits private planes and cars and navigates news conferences where, as every sports fan knows, candid feelings are as rare as talent like his.Federer’s gravity-flouting litheness has always made a striking contrast against his grounded disposition. In his farewell match, playing doubles alongside longtime rival Rafael Nadal, his expressed hope is simply to “to produce something that’s good enough.” Federer describes himself as an emotional guy, but with the international press and his management team nearly always on the sidelines, there’s little privacy to get personal. One of the more vulnerable moments the film manages to capture comes when Federer wears the wrong dress shirt to a photo call.To deliver sentiment, the film instead relies on a score that sniffles as though a racehorse is being taken out to get shot. Yet, athletes do witness their own wakes. Flickers of spliced-in footage from Federer’s youth eulogize the grace that will forever outshine his four brutal knee surgeries. When he flubs a shot at his last match, the spectators look funereal — and the colleagues in attendance, from Björn Borg to Novak Djokovic, appear to recognize that this tragedy, this mass bereavement for an aging superhuman, has happened to them. Or it will.Federer: Twelve Final DaysRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘Hummingbirds’ Review: Two Friends’ Summer Along the Border

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      The young directors Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía (Beba) Contreras stargaze, watch fireworks and discuss their lives in this documentary filmed in Laredo, Texas.Filmed in the summer of 2019, the lyrical documentary “Hummingbirds” is a portrait of two friends, Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía (Beba) Contreras, and their lives in Laredo, Texas, across the border from Mexico. When they hang out near the Rio Grande, Beba says, “I’ve never been this close to the river except when I crossed.” She jokes that they’re breathing air from another country.But “Hummingbirds” isn’t a social-issue documentary, at least not directly. First and foremost, it is interested in simply capturing Silvia and Beba’s summer vibe, as they stargaze, watch fireworks, sing together (Beba is a songwriter) and shop at the dollar store. The emphasis on chilling out might not sound surprising, given that the two of them are the movie’s directors as well as its subjects. (Silvia was 18 and Beba 21 when shooting began.) Wouldn’t they be prone to finding their every activity fascinating?
      Except that “Hummingbirds” is pretty tight filmmaking at less than 80 minutes, and the laid-back presentation makes the political commentary register strongly from the periphery. The friends’ conversations allude to struggles with poverty, deportation risk (Beba is awaiting news on a visa) and unplanned pregnancies, in addition to their complicated family lives. The closest thing to a major incident involves their defacing of a yard sign, which they edit to change “Pray to end abortion” to “Pray 4 legal abortion.” Yet in a way, the movie is all incident. The closing credits list four co-directors, which explains how Silvia and Beba could film themselves so fluidly.HummingbirdsNot rated. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Black Barbie: A Documentary’ Review: Becoming the Main Character

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      A new Netflix documentary explores what led to the release of Black Barbie in 1980, both celebrating her existence and recognizing her limitations.For more than four decades, Lagueria Davis’s aunt, Beulah Mae Mitchell, worked at Mattel. Davis, the director of the new Netflix documentary “Black Barbie,” was not a fan of dolls, but was drawn to the subject by her aunt, who is a devoted collector.On the surface, the documentary is about what led to the 1980 release of Black Barbie, but the issues it explores run much deeper: the harm of lacking a “social mirror,” the slow pace of progress and the tensions around darkening a white fictional character.There were already Black dolls in the Barbie universe before Black Barbie, but all were ancillary — friends of Barbie’s. The Black version of Barbie, created by the company’s first Black designer, Kitty Black Perkins, was meant to be a main character.What is most interesting about the documentary is the question of whether Black Barbie ever managed to escape her predecessors’ marginalization, as white Barbie remains the standard. Does society need Black versions of white cultural products or new products in which Blackness is centered?Featuring a wide range of Mattel employees, academics, cultural commentators and women who have had Barbies made in their image, such as the Shondaland founder Shonda Rhimes, the ballerina Misty Copeland and the fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, Davis complicates our understanding of Black Barbie, both celebrating her existence and recognizing her limitations.“Black Barbie” looks at a Black toy company that produced multiracial dolls and a line within Mattel that was focused on stand-alone Black characters, created by Stacey McBride-Irby, a protégée of Perkins. Staying with these scenes a little longer, exploring what worked and did not, would have expanded the conversations taking place in the film and the dissonance inherent in trying to make a white doll Black.Black Barbie: A DocumentaryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      The Gay Comedians Who Showed the Way Even if They Weren’t Exactly Out

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      Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor get a cursory mention in a new documentary about queer stand-up, but they were groundbreaking.In 1987, David Letterman was taping his late-night show in Las Vegas before rowdy audiences of mostly young men in preppy pullovers and muscle shirts — prototypical bros raised on “Porky’s.”On one episode, Letterman introduces a “very funny and strange, peculiar man who first played Las Vegas way back in 1963.” The sea of seemingly straight guys parts, and to a cartoonishly accelerated rendition of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” the comedian Rip Taylor speed-walks through, ferociously hurling heaps of confetti, his signature entrance shtick.I’ve had this clip on repeat since watching “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution,” a new Netflix documentary about the history of queer stand-up comedy. Not because Taylor plays a big role in the film, but because he and two other groundbreaking gay comics — Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly — do not.“Outstanding” does briefly single out the three men as renowned comedy elders, even though they weren’t primarily known for stand-up. The documentary also does right by underappreciated comedians like Robin Tyler and Bob Smith and household names like Rosie O’Donnell and Margaret Cho.But why just the cursory mention of Lynde, Reilly and Taylor? It’s as if we couldn’t possibly glean anything meaningful from old-school comedians who were apolitical and effeminate, steppingstones for contemporary comedians, like Hannah Gadsby and Jerrod Carmichael, who are willing to wait for a room to quiet down so they can talk about difficult childhoods.Lynde, Reilly and Taylor didn’t sit in their trauma. They kept it light and never talked about their biography in a serious way, because doing so would have led to questions they weren’t prepared to engage with. Maybe that’s why the documentary made me race to YouTube to see these Stonewall-generation funnymen with dippy but dark-edged sensibilities that were shaped by decades of self-hatred and fear the likes of which a 20-year-old today cannot fathom.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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      ‘Dancing for the Devil’: A Cult Docuseries That Takes Its Time

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      This three-part Netflix documentary examines the supposed scheme to exploit TikTok dancers — and proves why cult narratives shouldn’t be rushed.There’s a train wreck quality to most documentaries about cults, an invitation to crane your neck at weird rituals, bizarre leaders and peculiar anecdotes. By nature, cults are insular, inscrutable and strange to outsiders. But for those on the inside, every teaching and action seems to follow a logic, to make sense. That’s sort of the point.I’ve watched a lot of cult documentaries in the past years, and so have a lot of Americans — they’re adjacent to true crime, which makes them perfect streaming fodder. Like many people, I settled in to watch Derek Doneen’s three-part documentary series “Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult” (streaming on Netflix) because I realized I’d seen some of the dancers on my own social media feeds, and was baffled to discover that lighthearted dancing to popular oldies could be cultish behavior.To my surprise, the series made its case by digging behind headlines, exposing how the supposedly controlling and manipulative pastor Robert Shinn found ways to dominate his church members for decades, long before the advent of TikTok. Parishioners tell stories that are disturbing, especially for anyone who’s had sustained contact with high-control religious groups — tales of abuse, extortion, grooming and worse. The series claims that Shinn most recently started a talent management company (called 7M) and attracted beautiful, aspirational young people, and then filched their earnings and kept them under his thumb. (Shinn did not participate in the documentary and denies wrongdoing.) Former 7M dancers as well as former church members describe the tactics they say he used to exploit them. They are chilling.I happen to know a lot of people who’ve been in cults, some of whom managed to leave, so I’m extra sensitive to a common flaw of cult documentaries: Sometimes they focus more on the train wreck than on those the train wrecked. This is particularly an issue in feature-length documentaries — it’s tough, in two hours, to explain the entire story and center the survivors, rather than the perpetrator.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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      ‘Brats’: What to Know About the Brat Pack Documentary

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      A new documentary revisits the group of young actors that helped define the decade. Here are some of its most interesting moments.In the documentary “Brats,” Andrew McCarthy attempts to come to terms with being part of the Brat Pack, the group of young actors who were ascendant in ’80s movies. Turns out, many of them didn’t like the nickname, or the association. “I lost control of the narrative of my career overnight,” McCarthy said of the period after the writer David Blum coined the immediately catchy term, in a 1985 New York Magazine profile of Emilio Estevez.He and other actors, like Estevez and Rob Lowe, who had been frequently cast together in ensemble coming-of-age dramedies (“St. Elmo’s Fire”), scattered, fearful that appearing together would be a career liability. In the documentary, streaming on Hulu, McCarthy, an actor, director and travel writer, checks in, after many years of absence, to see how they processed this pop culture twist.Some — like Demi Moore, a “St. Elmo’s” co-star — handled it all a lot better than others.In a phone interview from his Manhattan home, McCarthy, 61, said his impulse was not nostalgia — though he knows that’s what might draw an audience — but an excavation of how time and memory collide with youthful expectations. It was a leap: He walked around New York and cold-called Brat Packers he hadn’t seen in decades, with a camera crew trailing. “I thought, if anyone calls me back, I have a movie,” he said.Prompted by McCarthy’s low-key, conversational style, Moore, Lowe, Estevez and others turned up; Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald did not. In kitchen table and couch-side interviews that also serve as a kind of celebrity home tour — Ally Sheedy’s Upper West Side apartment ranks as the most relatable — the movie cracks the time capsule of the Brat Pack’s appeal. Here, some takeaways.McCarthy, right, with Emilio Estevez, who was the main subject of the original article that gave the Brat Pack its name. ABC News StudiosWe 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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      ‘Brats’ Review: Feeding St. Elmo’s Ire

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      In this documentary, Andrew McCarthy examines fame and disappointment as a member of the so-called Brat Pack of the 1980s.A thread of vulnerability weaves through “Brats,” the actor-director Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary. In it, McCarthy, the star of ’80s hits like “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink,” tries to make peace with having been branded a member of the “Brat Pack” by the press.In 1985, New York Magazine christened a collection of young actors with that sticky sobriquet — itself a wink to the midcentury Rat Pack. The quasi-gonzo cover story by David Blum (who makes an appearance in the film) ran right before “St. Elmo’s Fire” opened and a few months after “The Breakfast Club” hit multiplexes. Hollywood’s youth quake was on. But not everyone reaped the benefits.Early in the film, McCarthy says that the article “affected my life massively.” Over the next four decades, his filmography wasn’t what he’d hoped for. Testing a theory that his fellow Brat Pack actors may have felt similarly pigeonholed, he phones Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe and others, whom he hasn’t spoken to in decades.McCarthy interviews them in person, sitting (or in the case of Estevez, standing) in what starts to resemble a therapy session. Often, McCarthy appears to be the only one who is still working through the trauma of instant, if fragile, icon status.The film’s through-line of woundedness is by turns touching, irritating and occasionally illuminating: A visit to the writer Malcolm Gladwell is insightful; watching Dick Cavett and Phil Donahue fawn offers a cringey lesson in how easy it is to rev the star-stoking machinery.And about that 1985 article: It doesn’t actually mention McCarthy much. Though one of his co-stars had this to say about him: “He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.” If McCarthy’s ire with the Brat Pack moniker begins to feel psychologically displaced, might this be the reason?BratsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More