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      Celine Dion Can Only Be Herself

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      The singer’s over-the-top sincerity and expressiveness were once seen as irredeemably uncool. In the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” they have become her superpowers.“I always envy people who smoke and drink and party and don’t sleep,” Celine Dion tells her physical therapist with an exaggerated sigh, midway through the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion.” “Me, I have water and I sleep 12 hours.”This monastic constraint has long been a core part of the Celine Dion legend. A professional singer since 12, she spent decades meticulously caring for her voice as though it were an endangered hothouse flower, committing to long stretches of vocal rest, complicated warm-up rituals and a lifestyle of exacting discipline — all so she could leap octaves and belt soaring notes with gobsmacking precision.In a cruel twist of fate, though, even the ceaseless care Dion devoted to her voice could not preserve it. In 2022, she revealed in an emotional Instagram post that she has stiff person syndrome, a rare and incurable neurological disorder that causes painful muscle spasms and affects roughly one in a million people. After watching “I Am: Celine Dion,” a remarkably candid portrait directed by Irene Taylor on Amazon Prime Video, it is difficult to imagine a disease that would be more personally devastating to Dion, whose entire career has been one long exercise in control, sacrificing all for the ecstatic release of live performance.Since her emergence as a Québécois child star with a precociously huge voice, something about Dion’s essential nature has remained constant, impervious to both changing trends and scathing critique. Whether power ballads were in fashion or not — and by and large, they were not — she sang them with the conviction of someone who’d never even heard the word “restraint.” “At her best,” wrote Elisabeth Vincentelli in a Times review of Dion’s most recent New York performance in February 2020, “Dion projects a sense of bigness — besides fairly simple graphics, the background videos in her show often showed cosmic images, as if they were the only thing measuring up on the Dion scale.” This bombastic approach gained her a worldwide fan base and a requisite backlash that she may have finally outpaced.In 2007, the music critic Carl Wilson used Dion’s 1999 blockbuster album “Let’s Talk About Love” as the inspiration for an insightful, ultimately sympathetic book-length examination of musical taste, the assumption being that (at least 17 years ago) Dion’s name was a symbol for all things gauche, sincere and uncool. (The book’s subtitle? “A Journey to the End of Taste.”) “Schmaltz rots faster than other ingredients in the musical pantry,” Wilson wrote, “which may be why we doubt the possibility of a Celine Dion revival in 2027.”Dion allows cameras to follow her as she struggles with stiff person syndrome in a new film.Amazon 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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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Director Talks About Capturing the Star’s Seizure

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      Irene Taylor, director of the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” talks about the decision to include a grueling scene of the pop star in crisis.This article contains spoilers.Celine Dion welcomed the cameras. For the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), the singer set no restrictions on what to film.What follows is a painfully intimate portrait of a pop star’s body fighting itself. Dion announced in 2022 that she had stiff person syndrome, an autoimmune neurological condition that causes progressive stiffness and severe muscle spasms. During a session with her physical therapist that was being filmed for the documentary, Dion has a seizure. The camera continued to roll throughout the medical crisis.In an interview via video call on Monday, the director, Irene Taylor, discussed shooting the documentary and why Dion’s emergency was included in the final cut. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How far into preproduction did you learn about Dion’s illness?I spoke with her at length, and I did not know she was ill. We were in the middle of the pandemic and I didn’t think twice about her being at home. Most of us were, and performers around the world were sort of out of commission temporarily.We got to a place where we agreed to make the film. It was several weeks after that mutual decision that her manager asked me for a call. I figured it must be something serious because we got on the phone that day, and he told me that Celine was sick and that they didn’t know what it was. We were filming several months before there was a definitive diagnosis.After getting the diagnosis, was the conversation on the table to stop filming?Definitely not. When I realized that a) she had a problem with no name and b) when I actually started filming I could see how her body looked different, her face looked different, I was able to focus. The iris of my perspective got much smaller.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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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Review: You Saw the Best in Me

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      Dion’s voice made her a star. A new documentary on Amazon Prime Video brings her back to Earth, showing her intimate struggles with stiff person syndrome.Illness shows no regard for even the most revered figures in pop music.In “I Am: Celine Dion,” a documentary about the global songstress on Amazon Prime Video, it quickly becomes clear that Dion can’t even move her body, let alone deliver a soaring ballad with the full force that, from her teenage years on, roused millions. The film, by the director Irene Taylor, records the singer’s agonizing reality as she battles the rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome.In an Instagram post in December 2022, Dion tearfully revealed her diagnosis to her fans, but the documentary had already been in production by then. Taylor opens the film with relaxed scenes of Dion at her home in Las Vegas with her children and staff. Then the part that’s painful to watch: The singer is heard moaning as she has a seizure on the floor. Learning early on that she had always wanted to sing “all my life” intensifies the tragedy of watching Dion, now 56, struggle to continue to live that dream. Dion’s voice made her a star; this film is keen on making her a person.But there is nothing subtle in Taylor’s montages, such as a high-energy past performance cut with the subdued domestic energy on display while Dion is vacuuming her couch. One shot pans to her eerily empty living room, a severe departure from playing packed stadiums. Even the score aches. All this palpable sadness is, perhaps, why Taylor interjects clips of Dion in better times.I understand the inclination to not define Dion by her diagnosis. But Dion’s spontaneously expressive personality already shines through her pain in raw footage that feels more connected to her healing journey, like when her physical therapist nags her about a cream she hasn’t been applying to her feet. “Give me a break,” she says with playful exasperation.She then sings “Gimme a Break,” the Kit Kat commercial jingle. While that welcome touch of humor pulls you into this intimately told story — what’s more Celine than an impromptu vocal? — inconsequential clips take you out of it: her impersonation of Sia on a late-night talk show; a part of her “Ashes” video that lets the Deadpool cameo go on for too long; her career-defining ballad “My Heart Will Go On” but, mystifyingly, the “Carpool Karaoke” version with James Corden.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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      ‘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