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      ‘God & Country’ Review: One Nation, Under the Cross

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      Dan Partland’s blunt documentary follows the rise of Christian nationalist voters and argues that they threaten pluralism and democracy.The separation of church and state is a foundational principle of the United States, but as Dan Partland’s ominous documentary “God & Country” argues, a daunting portion of the country’s Christian voters may not hold this truth to be self-evident.Partland, who directed the 2020 documentary “#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump,” draws upon Katherine Stewart’s book “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” for his new film.“God & Country” describes the growing threat to democracy posed by voters who subscribe to the belief that the United States is above all a Christian nation and that this should influence policies on abortion, public education, immigration, and so on. The film’s insights about the role of religion in politics feel especially well-informed because many of its commentators draw on their own personal and professional experiences with the Christian church. They’re believers, too, and they’re worried.The historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez; the pastor Rob Schenck; Reza Aslan, the author of “Beyond Fundamentalism”; and David French, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, all discuss the ways in which this movement can threaten political and civic life.The rise of Donald J. Trump as a presidential candidate and his subsequent term in office galvanized antidemocratic attitudes in the country, and in the film the former president is likened to a fire-and-brimstone televangelist. A pocket history lesson charts how televangelists grew in power in the 1970s and ’80s, opportunistically using wedge issues such as abortion for conservative political goals.The film’s format can be blunt, cutting between unsettling talking head interviews and clips of crowds cheering on Christian leaders at politically charged events or conservative politicians making brash proclamations. But rather than come off solely as a grim forecast, the film presents possible alternatives for the country, most notably from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the minister and social activist who offers a voice of hope and inclusivity that feels genuinely healing.God & CountryRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wham!’ Documentary Had an Unusual Choice for a Director

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      The director Chris Smith was not a fan of the ’80s pop band when he decided to take on the project about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley.Two young Londoners — one of Greek Cypriot origin, the other of Egyptian descent — set up a pop band in the 1980s that goes on to sell more than 30 million records. They break up several years later, at the pinnacle of their fame, when the two hit the ripe old age of 23.That, in a nutshell, is the story of Wham!, the British pop duo, and its two stars, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. It’s a story that the director Chris Smith tells in a Netflix documentary, which is nominated in Sunday’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs.Other contenders in the documentary category include “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” about the actor’s battle with Parkinson’s disease; and “American Symphony,” a year in the life of the musician Jon Batiste.Smith previously directed the Emmy-nominated 2019 documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” about a fraudulent music festival that landed its organizer in jail.Two years earlier, he directed “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” on the making of the 1999 movie “Man on the Moon,” in which Jim Carrey played the entertainer Andy Kaufman.Smith said that he was approached to shoot “Wham!” by its producers. There is no narrator: The tale is told using documentary footage of the duo during their career, paired with audio excerpts from interviews with the two pop stars themselves, which are voiced over — Michael died in 2016 at 53.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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      How ‘The Greatest Night in Pop’ Got the ’80s Right

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      The Netflix documentary revels in nostalgia. But the heart of the film spotlights the relationships between the pop superstars who recorded “We Are the World.”The title of Netflix’s new documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which chronicles the recording of “We Are the World,” is a little mystifying. Pop music needs a big audience, but what happened inside A&M Studios in Los Angeles, in the vampire hours between 10 p.m. on Jan. 28, 1985, and 8 a.m. the next day, was seen by only 60 to 70 people in attendance, from Michael Jackson to a small film crew. The song that resulted in this frantic, logistically improbable session is stirring but callow, with a gospel-style chord progression that gives false weight to the platitudinous lyrics.Prince, who declined repeated entreaties to join the ensemble, sat it out because he thought the song was “horrible,” according to the guitarist Wendy Melvoin. It sold over 20 million copies, with some fans reportedly buying multiples less out of enthusiasm for the music, it seems, than a desire to donate money toward feeding Ethiopians, who were in the midst of a famine that reportedly killed as many as 700,000 people. The song won four Grammys, including song of the year, but almost 40 years later, it has all but vanished from view.But now, “We Are the World” and the private machinations that went into writing and recording it are up for reconsideration, thanks to the documentary, which was viewed 11.9 million times in its first week of release last month, topping Netflix’s list of English-language films. “The Greatest Night in Pop” earns its swaggering title in two ways. Until someone invents a time machine, it’s the greatest way to see what the mid-1980s were about, thanks to a parade of stylistic and technological hallmarks, and even anachronisms: big hair, cassette tapes, primary colors, satin baseball jackets, leather pants, leotards, fur coats, perms, walkie talkies, even a Rolodex. (Cassettes, unlike perms, have made a comeback.)It’s also a wonderful illustration of the old maxim that show business is about relationships. The “We Are the World” session brought together most of the singers who made 1984 “pop music’s greatest year,” as many have called it, and benefited from an unrepeatable set of variables. The chain of action that preceded that night was, the film shows, all about calling friends, calling in favors and cannily casting the song with a broad demographic appeal. Here’s a look at how a few accomplished musicians and one relentless manager organized a gala event in only four weeks.Harry Belafonte and Ken KragenThe actor and activist Harry Belafonte, left, approached Ken Kragen, the artist manager, with an idea for a benefit concert.Reed Saxon/Associated PressHarry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist, wanted to draw attention to the famine in Africa, and he approached Ken Kragen, one of the industry’s most high-powered artist managers. Belafonte had seen how much money the Irish singer Bob Geldof was raising for famine relief with the “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” single, and proposed a benefit concert. Kragen had a different idea: “I said, ‘Harry, let’s just take the idea Bob already gave us. Let’s do it, but let’s get the greatest stars in America to do it,’” he recalls in one of the documentary’s archival interviews. (Kragen died in 2021.)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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      These Grandmas Are Going to the Oscars

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      In the documentary short “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” Sean Wang chronicles the inner lives of his grandmothers. Now, the film is nominated for an Academy Award.After he moved back home to the Bay Area in 2021, weighing a move to Los Angeles amid the pandemic, the filmmaker Sean Wang would often spend time with his two grandmothers. Yi Yan Fuei, his 96-year-old Nǎi Nai (paternal grandmother), and Chang Li Hua, his 86-year-old Wài Pó (maternal grandmother), live in the same house together, and Wang quickly began to observe two versions of them. There they were, enmeshed in the quiet rhythms of their daily lives — folding laundry, peeling fruit, napping in their shared bed. Then, Wang, 29, would intrude, coaxing out their playful sides: receiving a slap on the butt or spurring a dance session.His time with them, enjoying both their tranquillity and these moments of youth-like joy, was juxtaposed against an alarming spate of anti-Asian violence that was happening on streets around the Bay Area to grandparents just like his. It was a dissonance that both angered Wang and magnified this time with his grandmothers. Wang took to his camera to make what he thought of as a home video of them, enshrining their routines in “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” a documentary short that was recently nominated for an Oscar and is streaming on Disney+.“When I walk into the kitchen and I see them there, reading the newspaper or washing the dishes, from a very personal level, I want to remember that image,” Wang said in a video call from his apartment in Los Angeles, where he did eventually move. “I want to remember what it was like to see them do that.”The film, alternately cheeky and humanist, flits between two visual languages, what Wang called “the movie of their lives and the movie that they’re in.” Silly skits that the director constructs for them — arm wrestling, watching “Superbad” — sit alongside quotidian snippets of their inner lives. The film is also philosophical, as his grandmothers reflect on hard pasts and consider the realities of aging.Wang and his family’s reaction to the Oscar nomination was captured on video and recently went viral: Wang jumping for joy and embracing his grandmothers before they can even process the announcement on the telecast.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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      ‘The Space Race’ Review: Why Was NASA So White?

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      The days of shooting for the stars, interpreted through the stories of people of color whose aspirations were repeatedly thwarted.The story of man’s foray into space is a thrilling one, encompassing war, technological innovation and the power of imagination. The story of the Black man’s foray into space — the subject of the documentary “The Space Race” — comprises a different set of milestones. For African Americans who dreamed of traveling beyond the earth’s atmosphere, the barriers weren’t just physical or scientific, but also social and political.Directed by Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, “The Space Race” offers an alternative history of American space travel through interviews with pioneering figures — including Ed Dwight, an Air Force captain who was the first Black trainee at the Aerospace Research Pilot School; and Guy Bluford, who became the first African American to go to space almost two decades later, in 1983.But the film’s most fascinating revelation is that the Soviets beat the Americans in sending a Black person to space in 1980 with Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a Cuban pilot — an achievement that never got its due during the Cold War.This fact, mentioned only cursorily, reinforces the limitations of the movie (which also, it should be noted, features hardly any stories of Black women). A theme running through the interviews is that for the U.S. government, sending a Black astronaut to space was more a matter of propaganda than racial justice. Cortés and de Mendoza capture these contradictions through archival footage of Civil Rights leaders’ excoriating the nation for spending millions on space travel while poverty decimated communities on the ground.But for the most part, “The Space Race” doesn’t quite interrogate these tokenizing narratives, leaving the central question unaddressed: Can the glorified achievements of a few result in change for the many?The Space RaceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Disney+ and Hulu. More

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      New True Crime: ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ and ‘Mostly Harmless’

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      Two new movies reflect the range of quality in the booming genre. They also raise questions about why we are drawn to such stories.Remember the old “Arrested Development” axiom that “there’s always money in the banana stand”? For streamers, that banana stand is true crime, judging from the rate at which these movies are turned out. Many of the lurid tales of kidnapping, murder and stolen identities have been covered already in podcasts, but documentaries add tantalizing visual elements — photographs of the deceased, talking-head interviews, archival footage — that apparently keep fans coming back.Of course, as entertainment goes, this is nothing new. Flicking through cable stations years ago would reveal plenty of documentaries and docudramas that retold similar tales. What’s changed is how bingeable they are — you can listen to endless podcasts and watch endless streaming shows, one after the other — and, perhaps as significantly, how the anonymity of the internet has become a key feature of both the crime and the investigation.Two of this week’s new releases fit this mold, and also indicate the quality range of these kinds of films, from passable to genuinely revelatory. (Both, incidentally, have already gotten the podcast treatment at least once.)On the lesser end is the Netflix documentary “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” directed by Sam Hobkinson, which recounts the ordeal that a man named Dave Kroupa went through when he started receiving strange, menacing messages from an ex-girlfriend he met through dating apps. The tale is mildly twisty, and Kroupa and several others participate in the documentary, which makes it watchable. But the major turn happens far from the end of the film, and it’s hard to maintain tension after that. Most of the filmmaking feels perfunctory, too. Yet, as our critic Glenn Kenny put it in his review, “By now these are accepted conventions, so there’s little point in complaining.”My expectations weren’t all that high for the Max documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless,” directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, about a dead hiker found in Florida’s Big Cypress Natural Preserve. He was emaciated and had no identification on him but, curiously, did have food and cash. Trying to identify his body, law enforcement found itself at a standstill, with no idea who he was.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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      ‘They Called Him Mostly Harmless’ Review: Digital Sleuthing

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      In this schematic HBO true-crime documentary, amateur detectives take the lead in the quest to identify the body of a male hiker.In 2018, an emaciated male body was found in the Florida wilderness. Blood work showed that he was healthy, with no drugs in his system beyond Tylenol. Among his belongings were food and money, but no phone. The man had been hiking the Appalachian Trail. Several hikers recalled encountering him within the eight months before his death — he was handsome — but they only knew him by his trail name, Mostly Harmless.Mostly Harmless did not want to be found.Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, the HBO true-crime documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless” is, on one level, about the quest to identify the body. Hikers, a detective, and the Wired journalist who wrote the articles that inspired the documentary, feature as talking heads.But the other, arguably more unsettling, half of the story centers on the amateur detectives who helped crack the case — all middle-age women involved in a Facebook group dedicated to the cause.This artless documentary, composed primarily of interviews and B-roll footage (of walks along the trail from a first-person perspective; the amateur detectives looking at their computers, brows furrowed), mechanically pieces together the mystery. It’s a film for those who don’t know the outcome, playing upon the viewers’ thirst for answers as it chips away at a clearer portrait of the man.More interesting is the film’s meta-true-crime dimension, which links the case’s obsessive amateurs to a broader fascination with the genre and its fraught form of escapism. Dead ends and false leads aggravate the digital sleuthing hive (a cancer survivor testifies to the online harassment he faced after being falsely identified as Mostly Harmless), and petty rivalries ensue between the Facebook group’s leaders. The documentary doesn’t treat them with outright mockery, but the tone is mildly condescending — a feeling heightened by an outcome that points to the futility of it all.They Called Him Mostly HarmlessNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ Review: True Crime With Lots of Twists

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      This documentary directed by Sam Hobkinson focuses on a jump back into the dating pool that soon turns horrific.True-crime doc watchers who are in committed relationships may see “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” a bracing account of a lurid series of misdeeds directed by Sam Hobkinson, and breathe a sigh of relief over being out of the dating pool.It begins in 2012, when Dave Kroupa, an auto mechanic in Omaha, was rebounding from a breakup. He finds himself at 35, single and ready to mingle. On a dating app he meets Liz Golyar (likes bowling, enjoys giving the finger to video cameras, as per the archival footage) and then, believing their relationship to be nonexclusive, also takes up with one Cari Farver.Soon into the liaison, Farver starts freaking out. Dave is pelted with nasty texts and emails — the screen fills with vulgar words and threats and the soundtrack becomes awash in digital glitches. The violence soon escapes the virtual: Golyar’s house burns down.As the litany of harassment unfolds, Farver has yet to be seen. The puzzle here might have been solved by the application of Occam’s razor, had all the variables been known at the time. Even so, the twists include a few that even the keenest of armchair sleuths would not have guessed.The filmmakers indulge in some legerdemain, having the real-life participants recount the events as if certain facts were not already in the open at the time of the interviews. The movie also contains staged footage, including arguably cheesy Midwest-law-enforcement world building: Two detectives who help break the case are introduced while killing time in a pool hall. By now these are accepted conventions, so there’s little point in complaining, especially when the end result is so brisk, in a tight 90 minutes.Lover, Stalker, KillerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More