Documentary Films and Programs

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      Eleanor Coppola, Who Chronicled Her Family’s Filmmaking, Dies at 87

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      She made documentaries of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and her daughter Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” and recalled their lives in books.Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and artist who called herself “an observer at heart,” a description borne out through works chronicling the cinematic triumphs and ordeals of her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, and their daughter, Sofia Coppola, died on Friday at her home in Rutherford, Calif. She was 87.Her family announced her death in a statement, which did not state a cause.Ms. Coppola’s career as a documentarian began when her husband asked her to record the production of “Apocalypse Now,” his 1979 exegesis of the Vietnam War that took so long to make, some began calling it “Apocalypse Never.” By then Mr. Coppola was Hollywood royalty on the strength of his first two “Godfather” movies. But with “Apocalypse Now,” he stumbled.He came close to going broke as the movie, its roots in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” ran way over budget and over schedule. Filming was slowed by steady rains on location in the Philippines, which served as a stand-in for Vietnam. A typhoon destroyed movie sets. Major parts of the script were written on the fly. Marlon Brando was overweight and underprepared for his role as a deranged Green Berets colonel. To top it all off, the film’s principal actor, Martin Sheen, had a heart attack during the shooting.As for the Coppolas, they careened toward divorce, a marital collapse set in motion largely by his sexual infidelities and frequent tantrums on and off the movie set. “My greatest fear,” his wife captured him on tape as saying, “is to make a really pompous film on an important subject, and I am making it.”Ms. Coppola had her own lapses. “If I tell the truth, we both strayed from our marriage, probably equally, each in our way,” she wrote in “Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 account of that period. “Francis has gone to the extremes in the physical world, women, food, possessions, in an effort to feel complete. I have looked for that feeling of completeness in the non‐physical world. Zen, est, Esalen, meditation.”Ms. Coppola with her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, in 2022. They had a trying marriage but remained together. Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesWe 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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      in Music

      The Ultimate Judee Sill Primer

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      A new documentary puts a spotlight on the ’70s musician. Listen to 10 of her essential songs.Greenwich EntertainmentDear listeners,I first encountered the music of Judee Sill a little over a decade ago, when, on a whim at a record store, I blind-bought a reissue of her 1973 album, “Heart Food.” It’s since become a favorite of mine — an LP that somehow marries the searching spirit of Laurel Canyon folk with the technical grandeur of Bach. Finding it impossible to settle on a single descriptor of her music, Sill once called it “occult holy Western baroque gospel.” In an interview featured in the new documentary “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill” (which is now playing in New York and available to rent on various streaming platforms), she says that what she aims to capture in her songs is “that moment of redemption, where the lowest thing and the highest thing meet.”Her life was full of those moments. By her early 20s, Sill had endured an abusive childhood and was struggling with a $150-a-day heroin addiction; one of the most succinctly characteristic facts of her youth was that she learned how to play gospel music when she was the church organist at her reform school. Following a stint in prison and the unexpected death of her only brother, she devoted herself with an almost religious fervor to becoming a great singer-songwriter.Sill is one of those artists who should have been more commercially successful than she was, and “Lost Angel” is filled with her marquee peers — Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, David Crosby — praising her talents and speculating why it didn’t happen for her. Maybe she was too obstinate or self-destructive; maybe her vision was a tad too strange for middle-of-the-road record-buyers in the early ’70s. Or maybe her record company was too focused on promoting other musicians. Sill was the first new artist signed to David Geffen’s nascent Asylum Records, and when the two brilliant albums she made for the label failed to find a large audience, Geffen transformed, in her mind, from a savior to a scapegoat. It was probably some combination of all of these factors that kept her music in relative obscurity, and after a series of unfortunate accidents that once again triggered her drug habit, Sill succumbed to her addiction in 1979 and died at 35.The two dazzling studio albums she completed during her lifetime, her 1971 self-titled debut and the even more compositionally ambitious “Heart Food,” were out of print when she died but reissued by Rhino Records in 2003. (Jim O’Rourke also mixed some of the unfinished material that Sill intended for her third album on a collection released in 2005.) The documentary features impassioned interviews with younger artists — Weyes Blood; Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek of Big Thief — who have since discovered Sill’s music, making the case that she’s more popular and influential now than she’s ever been.Even so, Sill is hardly a household name, so I wanted to make today’s playlist an introduction to her bewitchingly beautiful music. You’ll hear highlights from both of her albums along with a transfixing demo and recordings of two other artists, the Turtles and Nash’s first band the Hollies, interpreting her songs.Sill believed deeply in music’s ability to comfort, transport and heal. So leave behind what ails you and, to paraphrase one of my favorite songs of hers, prepare to soar through mercury ripples of sky.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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      in Movies

      ‘Brandy Hellville’ Documentary Is a New Twist on Exposés About Cults

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      The film examines the retailer’s tactics and is surprisingly similar to exposés about cults.What’s most provocative about “Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion” (streaming on Max), and about the horror show it contends is behind the immensely popular cheap-clothing retailer Brandy Melville, isn’t necessarily its content. Other documentaries have tread similar ground with similar methods — the Netflix documentary “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch,” for instance — which is to say that everything in “Brandy Hellville” has been reported before.Documentary participants allege that the company and its leaders, especially co-founder and owner Stephan Marsan, engaged in a host of terrible behaviors ranging from fat-shaming and exploitative practices to really awful racism and sexism. Aimed at teen girls, the company’s marketing and messaging is to Gen Z what Abercrombie was to my generation: an aspirational brand designed to make you feel terrible about yourself, even if you were the skinny white girl in the pictures or working in the store. You can read about it all, of course; what the documentary provides is a host of eyewitnesses, including girls who worked in the store as teenagers and men who worked closely with the company to open new stores. Experts and activists also attest to the threat that fast fashion (that is, inexpensive, essentially disposable clothing sold at retailers like Zara, H&M, Shein and Forever 21) poses to global economies and the environment.The documentary also looks at the economic and environmental fallout from fast fashion.HBOBut the subtitle of “Brandy Hellville,” directed by Eva Orner, points to an interesting idea, even if it’s underdeveloped in the movie. Brands like Brandy Melville and their ilk resemble a cult, and even harness some techniques employed by cults to keep their “members” (in this case, high school girls, whether as customers or as workers) in line. The documentary shows how employees were flattered, and then shamed by the leadership so that each would want to be more of a “Brandy girl” (which, the film hints at, usually required disordered eating). There was a strict image projected for “Brandy girls,” which many of the former employees in the film detail at length. Being part of the group requires constantly giving your money and time (which is to say, buying marked-up, poorly made clothing, according to the documentary, and then posting pictures on social media) to stay in the group. At times, girls were isolated from family and friends. And as in a cult, there’s a small, secretive inner circle (in this case, Marsan and some cronies) that makes all the decisions. There’s also a whole weird thing related to Marsan’s obsession with Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” but I’ll let you find that out for yourself.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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      in Movies

      ‘Food, Inc. 2’ Review: Pollan and Schlosser Return

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      Directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo, the sequel about food production in the U.S. is, in some ways, a more hopeful film.How many gory details about groceries can any moviegoer digest? The 2009 documentary “Food, Inc.” drew on the muckraking of Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) and Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) to reveal major problems with industrialized food production. The system, it argued, may keep supermarkets well-stocked, but most people have scant insight into how that food is made — and what it does to our health.“Food, Inc. 2,” directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo, doesn’t merely regurgitate those ideas, although it begins by describing how the last few years have shown the risks of letting a small number of mega-suppliers dominate the market. The baby formula shortage? Cramped meatpacking plants that became Covid-19 hot spots? An industry less prone to gigantism might have avoided those horrors.In some ways, the sequel is a more hopeful film. Pollan, who, along with Schlosser, is among the producers, notes the proliferation of farmers’ markets and grass-fed beef since the last movie’s release. (The credits list separate articles that the authors wrote in 2020 as inspiration.) “Food, Inc. 2” is also wonkier than the original: Its proposed solutions don’t simply boil down to finding better sources, but also enforcing antitrust policy, supporting fair-labor practices and finding new ways to return to time-tested farming methods.Pollan visits sites where meat alternatives are manufactured and explains how those products present their own trade-offs. Elsewhere, experts testify to how foods can confuse our brains’ reward systems and how U.S. companies, faced with a food supply that provides more calories than anyone needs, have an incentive to make consumers eat more. You might devour less after watching “Food, Inc. 2,” and what you eat will probably be healthier.Food, Inc. 2Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘It’s Only Life After All’ Review: Indigo Girls Documentary

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      The director Alexandria Bombach benefited from the musician Amy Ray’s archivist instincts in this warm, compelling new documentary.Indigo Girls have been going strong for over 40 years now, and maybe the key to their resilience is that they never were cool. Often, they got it worse: Even at their commercial peak in the 1980s and ’90s, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were routinely mocked for being too earnest, too poetic, too folky, too lesbian. Back then, being labeled a female, gay singer-songwriter was an artistic and commercial curse, as Ray recalls in “It’s Only Life After All,” a smart, compelling new documentary.The director, Alexandria Bombach, greatly benefited from Ray’s archivist instincts: The musician has held on to decades’ worth of artifacts and opened up her vault — 1981 rehearsals, recorded on cassette when Ray and Saliers were in their teens, are startlingly crisp documents of a budding chemistry, for example.From this clay Bombach has sculpted an affecting portrait of two women who have stuck to their beliefs and, just as important, their loyalty to each other. Existing fans will be mesmerized, but non-fans like me should also get a kick out of “It’s Only Life After All.” The film is especially good about contextualizing the band’s emergence in the midst of condescension (at best) from the mainstream media — their dramatic, and very funny, reading of a withering 1989 review in The New York Times is a highlight — along with their personal struggles and steadfast political engagement for causes, including the Indigenous-led organization Honor the Earth.Now that the band is experiencing a cultural moment — its hit “Closer to Fine” was prominently featured in “Barbie,” and an indie jukebox musical movie set to their songs, “Glitter & Doom,” came out last month — it is delightful to see them have the last laugh.It’s Only Life After AllNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      A New Film on William F. Buckley Examines the Godfather of Modern Conservatism

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      The PBS documentary “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” implicitly and explicitly asks: What would William F. Buckley think of today’s Republican Party?William F. Buckley Jr., widely considered the godfather of modern conservatism, defended Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunts. He praised the “restraint” of Alabama law enforcement officers who brutally assaulted civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. He was also a silver-tongued intellectual who abhorred boorish thinking and behavior and savored debates with the sharpest minds of his era.Such a track record invites the question asked, implicitly and explicitly, in a new “American Masters” documentary: What would Buckley think of the current Republican kingpin, Donald Trump, and his followers? Would Buckley, who died in 2008, denounce the direction of the movement he helped start and disown a former (and perhaps future) American president who has expressed his admiration for a strongman Russian president? Or would he find a way to fold Trump and his supporters into his dreams of a conservative empire?In “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” which premiered last week on PBS and is streaming on PBS.org, Buckley’s son, the novelist and former George H.W. Bush speechwriter Christopher Buckley, gives a cryptic assessment of what the senior Buckley would think of Trump: “He might just have said, ‘Demand a recount,’” a riff on William F. Buckley’s oft-repeated joke about what he would do if he won his 1965 New York mayoral bid. In a recent video interview, however, Christopher Buckley was more direct.“I don’t equate Trumpism with conservatism,” he said. “I’m very glad my father and Ronald Reagan are not alive to see what’s happened to the G.O.P. and to the national discourse.”Others, including some who appear in the film directed by Barak Goodman, say it’s not that straightforward.“My own view is that Buckley would probably think about Trump more or less what he thought about McCarthy,” Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University and author of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning J. Edgar Hoover biography “G-Man,” said in a video interview. “He would see Trump as tremendously useful as a concentration of many of the themes and constituencies that Buckley stood for.”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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      in Movies

      The Best True Crime to Stream: Scams, Schemes and Costly Lies

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      Four picks across television, film and podcast that depict the art of the con.There are so many true crime offerings dedicated to scams, frauds and con artists that it can be overwhelming. Many of these stories are astonishing and worthy of attention, whether the deceptions are financial, medical, romantic or otherwise. Often most surprising is how relatively painless it seems to lay such traps, and how many people, regardless of personal circumstances, take the bait.Here are four picks across television, film and podcast that stand out, all of which underscore what can unfold when a hunger for money, power or prestige is put above all else.Documentary Film“Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal”With college acceptance season upon us, it seems appropriate to revisit one of the most outrageous education scandals in recent years: a $25 million bribery scheme that prompted a federal investigation called Operation Varsity Blues. The mastermind behind it was William Singer, a basketball coach turned college admissions counselor who ran a criminal enterprise that opened a fraudulent path for wealthy people to have their children accepted by elite universities under the guise that they had earned entry based on academic and extracurricular excellence. Test scores were doctored, for example, and athletic credentials were fabricated in ludicrous ways.Dozens of powerful people were accused and arrested, most famously the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who both served time in prison.In this 2021 film, the director Chris Smith puts a fresh spin on re-enactments, long the life blood of true crime television and films, by recreating full scenes and pulling dialogue directly from wiretaps. Matthew Modine (“Stranger Things,” “Oppenheimer”), who plays Singer, and other actors bring it all to 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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      ‘Girls State’ and ‘Boys State’ Document Politics Through Teenagers’ Eyes

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      Though both documentaries follow programs for rising high school seniors, their differences speak volumes about the challenges the participants face.Documentaries about the American political system are legion, and grow every week. You can bet we’ll be seeing dozens more by the time this year’s presidential election rolls around. But “Boys State” (Apple TV+), the 2020 documentary directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, came at government from a different and very refreshing angle. That film chronicles a few participants in the Boys State program run by the American Legion in Texas and every other state except Hawaii. It’s an immersive mock government approach, designed to give rising high school seniors a taste of campaigns, diplomacy and the structure of American government.“Boys State” is charming for a few reasons. The participants are terrific onscreen, but more important, their relative youth means even the more politically savvy are still balancing — and in some cases, clinging to — an idealism and optimism about the American democratic process. A week isn’t enough to turn anyone into a hard-bitten cynic; instead, it feels like we, the adults in the audience, are the ones learning lessons, being reminded of what we hope, or wish, our system could be.To my delight, McBaine and Moss followed up this year with “Girls State” (Apple TV+), this time set at the Missouri Girls State in 2022. (Here’s my colleague Natalia Winkelman’s full review.) That year, Missouri’s Girls State and Boys State took place on the same college campus, though they’re separated, with little contact between the two groups.I initially expected “Girls State” to mirror “Boys State,” but it’s a whole different animal and, I think, maybe an even better movie. For one, filming just happened to coincide with the week following the leaked draft of what would ultimately be the Dobbs decision, which struck down Roe v. Wade. The program’s girls, many from small Missouri towns, seem genuinely diverse politically — and that means that matters like abortion law and bodily autonomy are frequent points of discussion.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