Documentary Films and Programs

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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

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      ‘How to Rob a Bank’ and the Limits of a True-Crime Documentary

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      The story of a Seattle-area bandit is rife with big questions, but the movie doesn’t explore them. Not every podcast needs to be a film.There is a platitude, beloved of the documentary community, that truth is stranger than fiction. It’s often correct. But lately I’ve been worried that the glut of documentary content required to fill the yawning maw of streamers is putting this axiom to the test more frequently. Not all stories are worthy of the documentary treatment.Such, unfortunately, is the issue with “How to Rob a Bank” (on Netflix), yet another true-crime documentary. Its directors, Seth Porges and Stephen Robert Morse, have turned out great work in the past — Porges as co-director of the fascinating “Class Action Park”; Morse as producer of the influential “Amanda Knox.” This film feels more perfunctory, a strong example of the kind of documentary that could have just been a podcast. (Of course, it has been.)The film tells the true story of Scott Scurlock, a free-spirited fellow known to Washington State law enforcement agents as the Hollywood Bandit. (Sometimes they dropped the bandit part.) In the 1990s, he pulled off a whopping 19 confirmed bank robberies in the Seattle area, stealing more than $2.3 million, with the aid of a few friends and some elaborate disguises.“How to Rob a Bank” is filled with re-enactments of the robberies and interviews with friends and associates, who explain that Scurlock was a gentle soul who lived in an enormous treehouse that was a hub for his friends. He also cooked meth for a while, was an adrenaline junkie and journaled a lot about trying to find his purpose in life. Police officers and investigators are less sanguine about Scurlock, noting at one point that bank robbery is not a victimless crime, even if nobody gets hurt physically. It can be traumatic to anyone who was inside the bank, and to a teller facing a gun. Scurlock tried to paint his crimes as altruistic, and did give away some of his money to friends in need. But people were still hurt — including, ultimately, Scurlock himself.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 Television

      ‘Hitler and the Nazis’ Review: Building a Case for Alarm

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      Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away.The series was directed by the veteran documentarian Joe Berlinger (“Paradise Lost,” “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster”), who has a production deal with Netflix and has given it popular true-crime shows like “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” and the “Conversations With a Killer” series.In promotional material, Berlinger explains his decision to step up from true crime to total war and genocide: “This is the right time to retell this story for a younger generation as a cautionary tale,” he says, adding, “In America, we are in the midst of our own reckoning with democracy, with authoritarianism knocking at the door and a rise in antisemitism.” In other words, you can’t make a documentary about Germany in the 1930s and ’40s without holding the United States of the 2010s and ’20s in your mind.To that end, Berlinger has made a deluxe version of the sort of history of Hitler, the Third Reich and the Holocaust that for years has been a staple of American cable television. The information is not new, but the resources available to Berlinger are reflected in the abundance of material he deploys across nearly six and a half hours: archival film, most of it meticulously colorized for the series, and audio; staged recreations with a sprawling cast of actors; and the copious roster of interviewees.A new telling of an old story requires a twist, of course, and Berlinger has several. The American journalist William L. Shirer serves as the series’s unofficial narrator, despite having died in 1993 — an A.I. recreation of his voice recites passages from his many books about the period, and occasionally his actual voice is heard in excerpts from radio broadcasts. He is also represented onscreen by an actor in scenes recreating the series’s other primary framing device, the first Nuremberg trials in 1945.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 Music

      Cyndi Lauper Could Only Ever Be Herself

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      One Friday afternoon in May, Cyndi Lauper stepped out of her Upper West Side apartment building and into the streets of New York City. She wore glitter-encrusted glasses, sneakers with rainbow soles and a stack of beaded bracelets on each arm. A rice-paper parasol swung in her hand. As she walked, she examined the crowds and remarked when glints of interest caught her eye.“Of course, up here it’s fashion hell,” she allowed of her tony neighborhood. And yet, every few blocks she rubbernecked at another woman’s look, her famous New Yawk accent lifting and tumbling in pleasure at what she saw:“Look at these dames, how cute are they?”“Did you love those pants? I kind of loved those pants.”“Look at this lady,” she said, stepping off the curb and clocking a passerby. The woman moved nimbly, tomato-red streak in her silver hair, body draped in shades of fuchsia and cherry as she pushed the gleaming metal frame of a walker. “Fabulous,” Lauper exclaimed. “Come on!”At 70, the pop icon and social justice activist isn’t just charging back into the streets. On Monday, Lauper announced her final tour, the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour, which will have her headlining arenas across North America from late October to early December. And “Let the Canary Sing,” a documentary about her life and career that premiered at the Tribeca Festival last year, is streaming on Paramount+.Lauper has not staged a major tour — “a proper tour, that’s mine” — in over a decade. But now her window of opportunity is closing, so she’s leaping through it. “I don’t think I can perform the way I want to in a couple of years,” she said. “I want to be strong.”Lauper photographed at the Scarlet Lounge on the Upper West Side, the Manhattan neighborhood where she lives with her husband and two pugs.Thea Traff for The New York TimesAnd until recently, when she finally agreed to sit for the director Alison Ellwood, she could not envision committing her life story to film. “I wasn’t going to do a documentary because I’m not dead,” she said. More to the point, she did not feel particularly misunderstood. From the moment she danced across the city in the 1983 video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she felt that she had articulated precisely what she wanted to say.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