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      ‘Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey’ Review: Emotional Rescue

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      In this heartfelt wildlife documentary, a volunteer conservationist and an endangered critter develop a parent-child connection.The healing goes both ways in the documentary “Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey,” as a troubled man and an endangered mammal form a startling bond. The result is a movie so sweet and soothing you’ll be forced to admit that sometimes the universe — or, in this case, Netflix — gives you exactly what you need.What Kulu needs is rescuing and rehabilitation. As a pangolin, sometimes known as a scaly anteater, this gentle beast is in high demand because of the importance of its scales in traditional Chinese medicine. Saved from illegal traffickers as a baby during a sting operation, Kulu is underweight and panicked. Once installed at the Lapalala Wildlife Reserve in South Africa, he will need constant care and monitoring for many months until he is able to survive on his own.In the hands of Gareth Thomas, a former poker player turned Volunteer Pangolin Walker, Kulu is as cherished as the average human newborn. For Thomas, whose difficult adolescence and the loss of close friends led him to seek a more emotionally meaningful life, Kulu’s well-being is a round-the-clock obsession. Leading the animal to the tastiest anthill, braving predators to sleep outside his burrow, or just cuddling and playing — Thomas isn’t joking when he describes himself as a helicopter parent.Beautiful to look at and unabashedly sentimental, “Pangolin,” patiently directed by Pippa Ehrlich (whose 2020 documentary, “My Octopus Teacher,” also revolved around a cross-species love connection), is informative yet blessedly light on talking heads. Slices of narration by the ant specialist Dr. Caswell Munyai tell us that the pangolin is believed by some African people to possess mystical powers; observing Kulu’s ability to entrance his protector, that seems all too believable.“There’s got to be a point where you let go,” Thomas says, sadly, near the end. I, for one, am not convinced that he has.Pangolin: Kulu’s JourneyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Ani DiFranco Documentary Shows Her First Time Writing a Song With Another Artist

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      The film “1-800-ON-HER-OWN” follows the fiercely independent artist as she tries a career first: writing a song with another artist.Ani DiFranco’s approach to her music career has always had a stripped-down, D.I.Y. vibe. In fact, Dana Flor’s new documentary about the singer, “1-800-ON-HER-OWN” (in theaters) draws its name from the phone number for DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, the label she founded in 1990 so she wouldn’t have to work with a major company. It was an unusual thing for anyone to do back then, but especially for a 20-year-old female artist whose songs lay somewhere between folk and punk. That’s just her style.The documentary mimics that handmade aesthetic, sometimes accidentally. The major arc follows DiFranco, now in her 50s and a mother of two, as she tries out collaboration as she never has before. Arriving as a guest of honor at a songwriting retreat held by Justin Vernon (a.k.a. the frontman of the band Bon Iver), she confesses that she’s never written a song with anyone else in her entire career. Yes, DiFranco has often worked with others — she toured with a band, and the label was run by a team — but her solo songwriting and a more recent solo tour have sometimes felt lonely.DiFranco talks throughout the film about her career and her memories, often while sitting in a car. But while the film starts out conventionally, seeming as if it will focus, as she puts it, on finding “some other way to be home more and still be an artist,” it soon pivots. When the pandemic strikes, being home more is not a choice — it’s just life.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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      Kids, Inc.

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      A pair of documentaries are calling attention to the dangers of child influencer content. But regulation can be difficult in an industry that blurs the line between work and home.The scenes leave a pit in your stomach. In Netflix’s “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing,” two early teenagers are pressured to kiss by adults — a parent and a videographer — on camera. Hulu’s “The Devil in the Family: The Ruby Franke Story” shows the dramatic footage of Franke’s 12-year-old son showing up at a neighbor’s door with duct tape markings around his ankle, asking them to call police.The pair of documentaries, released this year, shine a light on the perils of child-centered online content. “Bad Influence” examines claims of abuse and exploitation made by 11 former members of the teen YouTube collective “The Squad” against Tiffany Smith — who ran the YouTube channel, which drew two million subscribers — and her former boyfriend Hunter Hill. Both denied the allegations, and the suit was settled for a reported $1.85 million last year.Ruby Franke, a mother of six, pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse in 2023 after denying her children adequate food and water and isolating them as she built a family YouTube channel that amassed nearly 2.5 million subscribers before it was taken down. She will serve up to 30 years in prison.Concerns about the treatment of child entertainers have abounded since the days of Judy Garland and through last year’s “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” in which former Nickelodeon actors described performing under harmful and sexually inappropriate conditions. Less examined is the working world of child influencers, who are now speaking out about the harsh, unsafe or emotionally taxing constraints of being broadcast by their parents.Viewers may be tempted to ask, “Aren’t there laws against this?”“We have pretty documented evidence of the troubling pipeline for Hollywood and child actors, but we don’t have nearly similar numbers for child influencers, primarily because the phenomenon of influencing is so young,” said Chris McCarty, the founder and executive director of Quit Clicking Kids, an organization dedicated to stopping the monetization of minors. “A lot of the kids are too young to even really fully understand what’s going on, let alone, like, actually speak out about their experiences.”Child entertainer laws — which in some cases make provisions for minors’ education, set limits on working hours and stipulate that earnings be placed in a trust — regulate theatrical industries. The world of content creators, where an account with a sizable following can generate millions of dollars a year for creators, is largely unregulated.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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      ‘Pets’ Is the Rare Documentary for Children, About Children

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      The movie, directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, celebrates animals while planting a seed of interest in rescue operations.Most documentaries are not really aimed at children. The film world seems to think they are only interested in animated movies about, frequently, talking pets. If a documentary is for families, on the other hand, there’s a good chance it involves wildlife.But “Pets” (on Disney+) remixes all of that: It’s a documentary about the title subjects and their humans, aimed at and largely populated by children. Directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, it’s a sweet-tempered film that celebrates the animals we love and seems to have a secondary purpose, too: to convince viewers to support and even develop a love for animal rescue.Howard accomplishes this by taking a kind of segmented approach. Adorable children give studio interviews about their own pets — their names, their characteristics, the ways they seem to understand the children’s emotions. These are interspersed with home videos, largely the kind of vertical ones you might catch on a social media feed: dogs doing tricks, cats smirking, pigs waddling around and so on. Then there’s a series of mini-documentaries about people who work with animals, especially rescues or otherwise traumatized creatures. Among those subjects are Sterling “TrapKing” Davis, a rapper who is a contagiously enthusiastic cat guy; Rodney Stotts, a master falconer who dedicates his work to both the birds and local children; and Shinobu Takahashi, who runs the no-kill shelter Dog Duca in Nagoya, Japan.I don’t think anyone inclined to watch “Pets” really needs convincing that animals are cool and that we should like them. But this focus on rescuing those that are, for whatever reason, in harm’s way is rather lovely. And to Howard’s credit, the theme is integrated seamlessly into the celebration of life alongside animals, which might broaden the viewership but certainly will plant a seed of interest in youthful viewers.What struck me about the movie was an influence I have not often considered when thinking about documentaries. The segmented structure and varied style in “Pets” felt familiar, and about halfway through I realized I was thinking of “Sesame Street,” on which generations of kids have been raised. That show also has its own varied style and structure, broken up by different types of filmmaking, like interviews with children, fun kid-on-the-street clips and short documentaries about ordinary things that are somehow fascinating, including observational footage from factories that make crayons or saxophones.Kids are actually interested in the real world around them, the ordinary things they encounter, and curious about how everything works. Documentaries are good at feeding that curiosity, at giving children a peek into worlds they can’t necessarily access on their own. “Pets” is engineered to make a child not just want a pet if they don’t have one, but also want to find one that needs a home and some love. And in that way, “Pets” serves up both entertainment and something for its young audience to consider. More

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      ‘One to One: John & Yoko’ Review: A Year in the Life

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      Kevin Macdonald’s immersive documentary follows the couple from their heady first days in New York to their galvanizing concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972.That John Lennon contained multitudes and mysteries was clear to anyone who listened to him when he was in the Beatles and after he discovered himself anew with Yoko Ono, who united with him mind, body and soul. They first met in 1966, kept in touch and finally shared a long night that ended with their making love at dawn. “It was very beautiful,” Lennon later said. They were still together in 1980 when he was fatally shot in New York. He was only 40. In the years since his death, Ono — who turned 92 in February and has retreated from public view — has helped keep him vividly present through her art, music and activism.Lennon and sometimes Ono are exhilaratingly present in “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary flooded with music and feeling that revisits a narrow if eventful period in the couple’s life. Directed by Kevin Macdonald and heroically edited by Sam Rice-Edwards (who’s also the co-director), the movie focuses on the early 1970s when Lennon and Ono were living in a modest apartment in the West Village amid clutter, clouds of smoke (cigarette and otherwise) and a hardworking television. “I just like TV,” an offscreen Lennon says in the documentary. “Whatever it is,” he adds, “that’s the image of ourselves that we’re portraying.”The image of Lennon and Ono in “One to One” is of an appealing, loving, creatively — and politically — fired-up couple who have happily lost and found themselves in the ferment of New York. By the time they landed in the city in 1971, Lennon and Ono were married, and the Beatles were no more. (The group made it legal in 1974.) When the couple met in 1966 it had been at one of her gallery shows. There, Lennon climbed a ladder featured in one of Ono’s artworks to read a single word that she had scribbled on the ceiling: “Yes.” Perhaps it was prophetic: They were married to other people, but soon said yes to each other, leading to a lot of ugliness directed at Ono, who was wrongly blamed for the Beatles’ breakup.For “One to One,” Macdonald has drawn from a wealth of engrossing, at times arresting archival material, including footage of Lennon and Ono at home, as well as never-before-released phone calls, for a movie that is as busy and as populated as their lives appeared to be. Allen Ginsberg pops up here, once while reciting best practices for anal hygiene. So do Angela Davis, Phil Spector, George Wallace and Jerry Rubin, who spoke about revolution alongside Lennon and Ono on “The Mike Douglas Show” in an eye-popping 1972 clip. Cinephile alert! The blond guest in that snippet is the filmmaker Barbara Loden, whose “Wanda” opened the year before. Lennon was right: TV was worth watching then.In making the documentary, Macdonald et al. have taken an immersive rather than an instructional approach, one that plunges viewers into a rushing stream of moving and still images, among them home movies, concert footage, news reports and far too many period commercials. There are no original voice-overs or talking-head interviews to help guide the way, and most of the text onscreen is transcripts of the phone calls. There are, less happily and helpfully, far too many shots of a re-creation of their apartment made specifically for the movie. (Ono and Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, served as the music producer.)The thread that winds throughout “One to One” is the Aug. 30, 1972, concert of the movie’s title that Lennon and Ono coordinated at Madison Square Garden alongside the likes of Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack. Earlier that year, the television reporter Geraldo Rivera had shocked the viewing public with a harrowing expose of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, an institution for people with developmental disabilities where the children’s ward was crowded with grimly neglected boys and girls. Horrified, Lennon and Ono helped organize the event (they performed twice that day) to raise money for the children; it was, as the movie puts it, “the only full-length concert John gave after leaving the Beatles.”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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      Is Yoko Ono Finally Getting Her Moment?

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      A new biography and film about Yoko Ono offer more opportunities to assess her contributions to culture. Two pop music critics debate if they’re worthy of their subject.LINDSAY ZOLADZ Are we living through a Yokossance? Though the 92-year-old conceptual artist, musician and Beatle widow Yoko Ono has spent much of the past decade far from the public eye dealing with health issues, each year seems to bring a new opportunity to reassess her contributions to culture.In the 2020s alone, there has been a tribute album, a small shelf’s worth of biographies and, just last year, a blockbuster, career-spanning show of her artwork at London’s Tate Modern. (That retrospective, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” comes to Chicago in October.) All of that followed Peter Jackson’s long-awaited 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back,” which reignited debates about Ono’s influence on the band she was unfairly accused of “breaking up.”David Sheff, a longtime friend of Ono’s who is best known for writing a memoir about his son’s struggles with addiction, “Beautiful Boy” (Ono gave him permission to title it after a John Lennon song), argues strongly against that assumption in his new biography, “Yoko.” He even takes it a step further, proposing that “it’s possible that the band stayed together longer than they would have because of Yoko,” since she gave Lennon several years of relative groundedness during which the Beatles made “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” “During the writing and recording of those albums, John had a foot out the door,” Sheff writes. “If he hadn’t had Yoko, the other foot might have followed sooner than it did.”We get extended glimpses of Ono and Lennon a few years later in “One to One: John & Yoko,” Kevin Macdonald’s forthcoming documentary that focuses on a well-told chapter of their story, their time living in New York City in the early 1970s.“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” on display in Germany last September. The retrospective comes to Chicago in October.Martin Meissner/Associated PressI’m curious, Jon: Did either Sheff’s biography or Macdonald’s film add anything to your understanding of Ono? I’m also thinking of an essay that our colleague Amanda Hess wrote in 2021 about Ono’s transfixing presence in “Get Back.” She said she had observed the slow evolution of Ono from “a cultural villain” into “a kind of folk hero.” Do you think that shift is now fully complete?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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      “Thank You Very Much” Looks at the Life of Andy Kaufman

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      “Thank You Very Much,” directed by Alex Braverman, uses archival footage and interviews to explore the appeal of a stand-up who didn’t tell jokes.A documentary subject like the comic Andy Kaufman, who died in 1984, has got to be both a dream and a nightmare for a filmmaker. Archival footage is usually used to suggest a glimpse into who someone “really” was, but Kaufman’s public appearances almost always involved him playing some kind of character, like the sweetly hapless Foreign Man (who evolved into Latka Gravas on “Taxi”) or the abrasively awful nightclub singer Tony Clifton. Kaufman suggested — and friends concur in “Thank You Very Much” (available to rent or buy on most major platforms) — that he was always playing a character, even if that character was a guy named Andy Kaufman. Trying to get at the “real” guy in this case seems quixotic.“Thank You Very Much,” directed by Alex Braverman, features several friends of Kaufman’s musing on who the real Andy was, and taps into elements of his childhood to explain some of his obsessions. But understanding the real Andy is not the ultimate point of this film. Instead, Braverman seems to be roving in search of the source of Kaufman’s appeal: Why did fans want to watch someone who was so often deliberately off-putting and exasperating? Kaufman’s act didn’t involve telling jokes (“I’ve never told a joke in my life, really,” he once said) and often seemed designed to push audiences as far as possible to see if and when they’d break.When, beginning in 1979, he started performatively wrestling women and spouting misogynistic garbage, it was awfully hard to tell whether he was satirizing women, feminists, misogynists, wrestlers or all of the above. His is not the kind of comedy you just chuckle at and move on. Today we might call him a troll.As “Thank You Very Much” shows, Kaufman was a comedian of the uncomfortable, the absurd, the confusing and at times the excruciatingly boring. Braverman wisely does not try to imitate Kaufman’s style in the film, instead opting to explore his career through old footage and conversations with people who knew him, like Lorne Michaels, Kaufman’s father (in archival interviews), the comedian Bob Zmuda and the musician Laurie Anderson (in new takes).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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      ‘Henry Fonda for President’ Review: A Legend and His Contradictions

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      Fonda was the embodiment of America, the director Alexander Horwath posits in this documentary.Henry Fonda was inarguably one of the greatest actors ever produced by the United States. The Austrian filmmaker Alexander Horwath pushes this self-evident truth further in his purposefully expansive documentary “Henry Fonda for President.” The movie convincingly posits that Fonda was, cinematically, the embodiment of America itself.Horwath has gathered a vast amount of archival material from film, television, radio and more to make his case. We hear not just from Fonda himself, but from Peter and Jane, the Fonda children who followed in Henry’s professional footsteps.But the fulcrum from which Horwath mostly focuses his view of Fonda is a 1981 interview with the journalist Lawrence Grobel for Playboy magazine; Horwath plays sections of the tape throughout. Fonda sounds in rough shape, his distinctive Midwestern twang subsumed by rasp. He’s also in a bad mood. His crankiness is bracing and sad. He would die the next year.The movie travels across the United States, taking us to significant places in both Fonda’s life and filmography, beginning with the actual village of Fonda in upstate New York. Henry was a descendant of that town’s founder, who was killed and scalped in a raid by the Mohawk tribe there.Horwath concludes that Fonda is playing his own ancestor in John Ford’s “Drums Along the Mohawk.” The documentary later shows Robert De Niro’s mohawk haircut in “Taxi Driver,” threading that with an old TV ad in which Fonda extols the virtues of a viewer toy to that film’s co-star Jodie Foster. These connections have plentiful entertainment value, but Howarth knows they signify more than just trivia: Their threads make up the fabric of American culture, such as it is.Henry Fonda for PresidentNot rated. Running time: 3 hours 4 minutes. In theaters. More