Documentary Films and Programs

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      At Telluride, Experimental, Topical and Sometimes Crazy Movies

      by

      A documentary made with Legos and a biopic starring a CGI monkey showed alongside films about abortion restrictions and other subjects in the news.As the 51st edition of the Telluride Film Festival came to a close on Monday, the films seemed to sort themselves into two categories: experimental or topical. The documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville and the musical director Michael Gracey each took big, ambitious swings to tell the stories of Pharrell Williams and the British pop star Robbie Williams (no relation). One used Legos. The other a CGI monkey. Other filmmakers turned the lens on issues in the news like transgender-care laws, abortion restrictions and further matters facing voters in the November election.And as always, conversations swirled around what will and will not go the distance to the Oscars in March.The director of Telluride, Julie Huntsinger, told the media at the start of the festival on Friday to prepare themselves for some crazy movies (though she used a more colorful term). It was less a warning than a promise, and it was followed by Neville’s film “Piece by Piece,” which was filmed entirely with Legos, depicting pop and rap superstars like Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams.“What if nothing is new?” Williams says in the glossy depiction of his life, due in theaters Oct. 11. “What if life is like a Lego set and you’re just borrowing from everyone else?”Later that evening Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”) relied on the magicians at Weta FX to depict Robbie Williams as a monkey, an approach that allowed the audience to “see Robbie as he sees himself,” the director told the crowd. Robbie Williams compared the experience of debuting his story to being “like an 11-year-old who’s having the best day possible.”“Piece by Piece” uses Legos to tell the story of Pharrell Williams.Focus FeaturesWe 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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Merchant Ivory’ Remembers the Duo Who Resuscitated Costume Dramas

      by

      In this conventional documentary, the filmmaking pair get their due as forward-thinkers within lush, period settings.“Merchant Ivory” (in theaters; directed by Stephen Soucy), is fairly conventional, as documentaries about filmmakers go.There are contemporary and archival comments from actors and crew members who worked with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, the celebrated director and producer who formed the production banner that lends the documentary its name. Among other accomplishments, the pair revitalized the costume drama with their lush, complex literary adaptations. In the documentary, clips from their films illustrate and illuminate the stories told by a vibrant array of interviewees. Photographs from sets and from history appear onscreen, the camera softly zooming and panning across them to add movement. Occasional voice-over from Soucy fills in some details. You’ve seen this kind of workmanlike movie before.It also feels a bit flat next to this year’s “Made in England,” a more personal film about another filmmaking duo, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But the accomplishments of Ivory and Merchant, along with the stories about them, still make this one worth watching. Among those speaking on camera are the costume designers John Bright and Jenny Beavan, whose work on “A Room With a View” won them their first Oscar, in 1987, and the actors Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. Ivory, 96, also talks candidly throughout about his own work and his relationship with Merchant (who died in 2005).“Merchant Ivory” proceeds more or less in chronological order. There’s plenty of rumination on their biggest hits — which includes “A Room With a View,” “The Remains of the Day” and “Howards End” — as well as lesser-known films and the social circle around the pair. Yet within the timeline, it branches out, exploring topics that demonstrate just how forward-thinking Merchant and Ivory were, and how remarkable it is that they managed to make their meticulous, sumptuous movies. There’s a lengthy discussion of Merchant’s almost magical ability to produce films on extremely tight budgets. (Ivory wryly remarks that “you have to be a con man to be a successful film producer.”)More important and radically, the film explores groundbreaking depictions of the inner lives of gay men in several Merchant Ivory films. Similarly, the filmmakers were interested in pulling costume dramas out of fusty, shallow stasis and into rich, emotionally resonant territory.All of this left me with both a renewed appreciation for the innovation of Merchant, Ivory and their collaborators, and a familiar feeling often provoked by biographical films. Like many documentaries of this sort, “Merchant Ivory” opts to be a survey without a thesis — informative, even engaging, but lacking an argument that might drive the documentary itself forward. It’s a choice, to be sure; the aim here is to cram in as much information as possible. But I did find myself wishing that “Merchant Ivory” was made with some of the same outside-the-box craft that its subjects had employed. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Review: A Search for a Black Luminary

      by

      Two digital sleuths set out to find the woman who lent her image to computer software in this scattered documentary.Upon the release of the 2017 podcast “Missing Richard Simmons,” the host Dan Taberski said that he didn’t want to tell the story in a first-person documentary, because that sort of nonfiction film — the kind that stars the storyteller — is hard to pull off without it seeming self-indulgent.In “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” another personal investigation into an erstwhile public figure, the director Jazmin Jones doesn’t even try to avoid the self-indulgence pitfall. She decks it out with candles and uses it as headquarters.Scattered but amiable, the film centers on Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross as they set out to uncover the mysteries of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, a ’90s software program that featured a beaming Black woman on its packaging. Operating out of an atmospheric office lined with trinkets, the duo follow a loose, makeshift plan: analyze Mavis Beacon’s legacy as a Black digital assistant, and interview the woman who portrayed her, named Renée L’Espérance.The former of these ambitions soon proves a more revealing and productive use of time. L’Espérance is elusive, and the duo’s quixotic efforts to locate her lapse into seances and tarot readings. (LexisNexis is a better bet.)“Seeking Mavis Beacon” still goes down smoothly, at least until its conclusion; while other films tie up too neatly, this one could use a bow at all. It helps that Jones and Ross are clever and likable guides — come to think of it, they would have made excellent podcast hosts.Seeking Mavis BeaconNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Ofra Bikel, Filmmaker With a Focus on Criminal Justice, Dies at 94

      by

      Her award-winning documentaries for PBS’s “Frontline” series shed light on serious flaws in several cases and helped lead to the release of 13 prisoners.Ofra Bikel, a crusading filmmaker for PBS’s “Frontline” investigative series whose documentaries about the criminal justice system in the United States exposed deep flaws in the convictions of 13 people, died on Aug. 11 at her home in Tel Aviv. She was 94.Her niece Tamar Ichilov confirmed the death. She left no immediate survivors.After making an eclectic mix of “Frontline” documentaries, including ones about the war in El Salvador, people over 75 who were beset with spiraling medical costs and the Solidarity movement in Poland, Ms. Bikel’s focus shifted mainly to criminal justice cases.“I hate injustice,” Ms. Bikel told The New York Times in 2005. “It just bugs me.”One case, in particular, consumed her for seven years.In 1990, she started looking into a case in Edenton, N.C., where seven people, including Bob and Betsy Kelly, a married couple who owned the Little Rascals Day Care Center, were charged with sexually abusing 29 children.Mr. Kelly was convicted and received 12 consecutive life sentences, but his conviction was overturned. His wife pleaded no contest after 30 months in jail. The other five defendants, including three of the Kellys’ employees, also spent long periods in prison before their releases.The case, which lacked physical and conclusive medical evidence, relied on testimony from many children who defense lawyers said had been manipulated by therapists.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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Serena Williams Reflects on Her Life and Legacy in a New Docuseries

      by

      “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary on ESPN+, revisits the highs and lows of the star’s career and considers her impact on tennis and beyond.In March 2001, Serena Williams, then just 19, was booed mercilessly by the crowd during the tournament final of the Indian Wells Open in California. The jeering included racist slurs, and it was arguably the most terrifying and scarring thing that ever happened to Williams during her spectacular career.In “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary streaming on ESPN+ — the final episode premieres on Wednesday — the retired star looks back on how she was shaped by the experience.“Having to go through those scathing, nasty, awful things just because of the color of my skin opened a lot of doors for other people,” she said. “I have been able to provide a platform for Black girls and Black women to be proud of who they are.”I welcomed Williams’s newfound ease in talking so explicitly about race and her continued impact on women’s sports. One of the most visible athletes of all time, she has been the subject of countless interviews and biographies during her career, but she did not often seem eager to reveal much about her private life. This has changed in the past few years with projects like the HBO documentary “Being Serena” (2018), about her pregnancy and struggle to return to tennis, and her active posting on Instagram. She was also an executive producer of “King Richard,” the 2021, Oscar-winning biopic of her father, Richard Williams.But “In the Arena” reveals still more layers of its subject. Directed by Gotham Chopra, it features candid interviews with Williams and her relatives, friends and tennis contemporaries, including her sisters, Venus Williams and Isha Price; her fellow legend Roger Federer; and the former tennis star and current television commentator Mary Joe Fernández. Serena is also an executive producer.The series is a follow-up to “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” (2021), which was also directed by Chopra and was produced by Brady’s 199 Productions. But tennis is far more solitary than a team sport like football. Spectators’ eyes are laser-focused on the players and their bodies, a reality that was originally made more fraught because of Williams’s race and class status in the predominately white world of tennis.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

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      ‘Chimp Crazy,’ ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ and the Fault Lines of Family Life

      by

      The charged cultural conversation about pets and children — see “Chimp Crazy,” “childless cat ladies” and more — reveals the hidden contradictions of family life.“Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child,” Tonia Haddix, an exotic animal broker, says at the beginning of “Chimp Crazy,” the documentary HBO series investigating the world of chimpanzee ownership. “If it’s your natural born child, it’s just natural because you actually gave birth to that kid. But when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much, much deeper.”“Chimp Crazy” arrives in a summer of cultural and political obsession about the place of animals in our family lives. When JD Vance became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies” resurfaced, positioning them as adversaries of the traditional family. New York magazine published a special issue questioning the ethics of pet ownership, featuring a polarizing essay from an anonymous mother who neglected her cat once her human baby arrived. In the background of these stories, you can hear the echoes of an internet-wide argument that pits companion animals against human children, pet and tot forced into a psychic battle for adult recognition.These dynamics feel supercharged since 2020, the year when American family life — that insular institution that is expected to provide for all human care needs — became positively airtight. The coronavirus pandemic exaggerated a wider trend toward domestic isolation: pet owners spending more time with their animals, parents more time with their children, everyone less time with one another — except perhaps online, where our domestic scenes collide in a theater of grievance and stress.When a cat, a dog or certainly a chimp scampers through a family story, it knocks it off-kilter, revealing its hypocrisies and its harms. In “Chimp Crazy,” Haddix emerges as the avatar for all the contradictions of the domestic ideal of private home care: She loves her chimp “babies” with such obsession that she traps them (and herself) in a miserable diorama of family life.Haddix, a 50-something woman who describes herself as the “Dolly Parton of Chimps,” believes that God chose her to be a caretaker. She was a registered nurse before she became a live-in volunteer at a ramshackle chimp breeding facility in Missouri, where she speaks of a male chimp named Tonka as if she is his mother. Haddix also has two human children; she just loves them less, and says so on television.As she appoints herself the parent to an imprisoned wild animal, she asserts an idealized form of mothering — one she describes as selfless, unending and pure. “Chimp Crazy” is the story of just how ruinous this idea of love can be, for the woman and the ape.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      The Best Movies From 1999, According to Our Critics

      by

      In our view, these eight comedies, dramas and more have attained classic status 25 years later. Let us know your own picks.On the 25th anniversary of what many argue is the greatest year in movie history, we asked film staff writers and critics to share the movie from 1999 that they love the best or feel is most overlooked. After reading their picks, let us know your choices.Best Comedy‘Being John Malkovich’Capping a decade of high-concept comedies, Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich” (available on most major platforms) raised the stakes with the most outlandish premise yet: When a downtrodden puppeteer (John Cusack) takes an office job to make ends meet, he discovers a hidden portal there that allows him to enter the mind of medium-famous character actor John Malkovich. Jonze’s smartest instinct is to resist piling onto a concept that’s already perilously clever. Instead, the movie is underplayed, intimate and even a little scuzzy-looking. But that approach to Charlie Kaufman’s surprising screenplay leaves room for viewers to wonder as they watch: Why are we so certain that our lives would improve with even a modicum of fame? And are these bodies the wrong containers for what we feel inside? KYLE BUCHANANBuchanan’s other 1999 favorites: “eXistenZ,” “Three Kings,” “Election,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley”Best Drama‘Beau Travail’Claire Denis’s film focuses on the French Foreign Legion soldiers stationed in Djibouti.Pathé TVA haunting exploration of desire and violence, Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail” (available on major platforms) takes place in the East African country of Djibouti, a onetime French territory. There, French Foreign Legion soldiers practice drills, their bodies synced and individualities subordinated. At times, they dance with African women, their gazes uneasily summoning up the history shared by the formerly colonized and their colonizers.Loosely inspired by Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd,” Denis’s beguiling tour de force takes shape after one soldier (Grégoire Colin) rescues another, an act that disturbs a sergeant (Denis Lavant). The soldier “seduced everyone,” the sergeant says in voice-over. “Deep down I felt a sort of rancor, a rage brimming.” With minimal dialogue, ravishing visuals and meticulous attention to sensuous detail, Claire Denis elliptically charts what binds these men — tracing lines between love and hate, past and present, nation and self, masculinity and militarism — in a film that remains as disturbing as it is seductive. MANOHLA DARGIS

      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

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘I Like It Here,’ Documentary Maker Ages Wistfully in the Hudson Valley

      by

      Looking back at the lives he and his friends led, the documentarian Ralph Arlyck delivers a memoir, an essay on mortality and a portrait of his community.“I got taxied into the world in the middle of the last century,” a man’s voice says at the start of “I Like It Here” (at the Firehouse theater in New York). We’re gliding slowly across a green rural landscape. “This is where I live now,” he continues. “I’m 78.”The voice is Ralph Arlyck’s, and the movie is his, too. Arlyck is a veteran documentarian, and “I Like It Here” is part memoir, part personal essay on aging and mortality, part portrait of his community and home in the Hudson Valley. There’s no plot, per se. But I’ve seen the movie twice, and both times I found myself moved near tears.“I Like It Here” feels like a cousin to Agnès Varda’s documentaries, particularly the curiosity and humor of “Daguerréotypes” (1975, Criterion Channel), in which she records the daily lives of her neighbors on the Rue Daguerre. Arlyck also introduces us to several of his friends, most of whom he’s known for decades. They’ve grown old alongside one another, sharing lives that intersect and diverge. Most have started to recognize they’re the age their parents and grandparents were when they thought of them as “old.” It’s a realization that’s equal parts unsettling and amusing.Arlyck’s recollections of his own family history, his marriage and his career as a filmmaker are part of the film. But they’re woven into the present narrative perfectly, without seeming at all self-indulgent. Instead, he’s doing precisely what great memoirists do: invite us into their stories as a way of making space for us to reflect on our own.“I Like It Here” is loaded with gentle humor as a counterbalance to the pathos inherent in any reflection on mortality by a man who knows most of his life is behind him. Near the beginning of the film, we see hands pull a box of 36 new pencils from a desk drawer. In voice-over, Arlyck notes that he doesn’t go through pencils very fast, and it occurs to him that this is probably the last box of pencils he’ll ever purchase. It’s almost a morbid thought, but it’s also kind of funny, and he treats it as such. Pencils: they mean nothing, and everything.The “here” of the title — Arlyck likes it here — opens up in complexity as the film progresses. It’s that green landscape from the beginning, where the neighbors and horses and Arlyck and his family live. But it’s also the planet, and an ineffable moment in time that he’s been lucky enough to inhabit. He and his friends talk about being aware that the end is coming, and have mostly gotten used to the idea. But late in the movie, he expresses a wistfulness that there’s nobody he can bargain with to stay longer than his time. “I’m having fun,” he says, while we see his grandchildren playing. “I’d actually rather not leave just yet.” More