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      ‘The Disappearance of Shere Hite’ Review: The Feminist Mystique

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      Nicole Newnham’s documentary charts the life and times of the feminist Shere Hite, whose pioneering research on women’s sexuality earned her both fame and notoriety.“The Disappearance of Shere Hite” opens with a 1976 TV interview with Shere Hite about her pioneering study, “The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality.” As she talks about the revelations of her research — that women masturbate, and most men don’t know how to please them — the interviewer tells a crew member to stop snickering.Then a cut reveals that what we’re watching is actually a clip being screened within another archival clip, from a 1994 interview, in which Hite reflects on her early media appearances. It’s a nifty opening that drives home Hite’s prominence in culture from the 1970s to the ’90s — and how strange it is that the groundbreaking feminist, who died in 2020, is barely discussed now.Nicole Newnham’s film recoups Hite’s story from the margins of feminist history with both style and substance, taking its cue from its subject. Tall, blonde and immaculately dressed, Hite was a model who appeared in Playboy, and a Columbia University graduate student who railed eloquently against sexism and classism.“The Hite Report,” which compiled questionnaires completed anonymously by thousands of women, was a best seller — but in interview after interview, Hite struggled to be taken seriously. By the time her later studies on male sexuality and women’s love lives were published, she had been labeled a male-basher and a fraud, and went into self-imposed exile in Europe.Newnham weaves deftly between biography and history, damningly situating the backlash to Hite’s taboo-breaking work alongside Anita Bryant’s anti-gay activism and Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. Yet the film also shimmers with hope. Dulcet-voiced readings of Hite’s memoirs by Dakota Johnson (also an executive producer) remind us that it is possible, even in an unyielding world, to think far beyond one’s time.The Disappearance of Shere HiteRated R for brazen talk of women’s sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘JFK: What the Doctors Saw’ Review: A Clinical Take

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      Barbara Shearer’s documentary unpacks the medical opinions of physicians who treated John F. Kennedy in Dallas.Amid a climate of invigorated interest in the assassination of John F. Kennedy — stoked by the media capitalizing on the 60th anniversary of his death to reignite familiar debates — Barbara Shearer’s “JFK: What the Doctors Saw” contributes some clarity to the conspiratorial noise by centering on a tiny piece of the puzzle: the professional opinions of the physicians present in the president’s Parkland Memorial Hospital emergency room.While some documentaries feel like rundowns of a Wikipedia page, “What the Doctors Saw” (streaming on Paramount+) more closely resembles a Q. and A. session with Siri. What did the staff observe? An entrance wound on Kennedy’s throat. What does that suggest? A bullet entered from the front. Why is that significant? It contradicts the findings of the Warren Commission.I’m willing to bet that viewers drawn to this documentary will have a basic knowledge of the history. It is smart, then, that this film so clearly defines its scope. Rather than dwell on the actions of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, the documentary dedicates its running time to medical analyses, unpacking the inconsistencies between injuries that doctors observed in Dallas and the autopsy report conducted in Bethesda.This approach also has its drawbacks. The recollections of those who treated Kennedy in Trauma Room 1 at Parkland are remarkably consistent, which is another way of saying that much of this documentary is remarkably repetitive. You will finish the film agreeing that what the doctors saw is crucial. But what it all means for America’s most enduring mystery is no less clear.JFK: What the Doctors SawNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      ‘The Stones and Brian Jones’ Review: Sympathy for a Founding Rocker

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      A new documentary looks back at Jones’s rise and fall, but also underlines his crucial strand in the Rolling Stones’ DNA.There’s a particular indignity to being dropped from the band you founded.In the annals of tragic pop mythology, Brian Jones’s ejection from the Rolling Stones has continued to reverberate long past his exit; Jones died at home in England just one month later, at age 27, in July 1969. Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary, “The Stones and Brian Jones,” looks back at Jones’s rise and fall, lingering on the intra-band power plays and fast living that helped bring him down.Mick Jagger and Keith Richards today enjoy rock immortality, but Broomfield underlines Jones’s crucial strand in the Stones’ DNA. Jones’s love for blues set a fire burning in the band’s soul, even as it shifted gears musically. The Stones bassist Bill Wyman is on hand to praise (and sweetly act out) his bandmate’s inspired instrumental touch, from slide guitar work to his fluttering recorder on “Ruby Tuesday.”But the interviews (many audio-only) lean decisively into Jones’s personal instability. His rebellious streak led his family to throw him out; later, he fathered children by multiple women. The tender twist to this film is that some of his exes — who included Anita Pallenberg and Zouzou, the French actress — help narrate much of his drug-aided decline, most with fondness. Zouzou Gallically muses that Jones pursued women who resembled him though he disliked himself.Despite Broomfield’s having made investigative docs about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and Biggie and Tupac, he doesn’t reopen the case of Jones’s drowning. His announcer-like voice-over and sometimes dishy interviews might evoke a “Behind the Music” exposé, but he seems most like a fan with a rueful sympathy for his devil of a subject.The Stones and Brian JonesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      “Harry Potter” Stuntman Tells His Story in a New Documentary

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      In a new documentary, David Holmes, a stunt performer in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, recalls his life before and after a harrowing accident on set that left him paralyzed.When David Holmes arrived at rehearsal to perfect a fight scene for the penultimate “Harry Potter” film, he was strapped into a harness that was supposed to send him flying backward.But Holmes was jerked back too fast, hitting a wall and breaking his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.His career as a stunt performer was over, at age 25. He had portrayed Daniel Radcliffe’s title character and others, including Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom, since the franchise’s first installment.After years behind the scenes, Holmes will now tell his story in a new documentary, “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived,” which is streaming on Max and will air on HBO on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and on Sky Documentaries and NOW in Britain on Saturday.Holmes is teaming up again with Radcliffe, the executive producer on the project, which captures his life before and after his injury. Radcliffe and Holmes said they hoped to call attention to stunt performers, who often put their lives at risk with little recognition.“It’s nice to know my legacy in film is not just me hitting that wall,” Holmes said in an interview.Holmes hasn’t fully embraced the limelight, Radcliffe said, and “just wants to shine it onto other people.”Radcliffe and Holmes had known they wanted to work on a project together for a while, they said. Initially, though, Holmes didn’t want to be the focus.“You put on a costume, and you take on a character the same way an actor does. You have that safety net to live behind that character,” Holmes said. “It’s very different now because it’s me.”Radcliffe and Holmes had worked together on a podcast called Cunning Stunts, interviewing stunt performers and coordinators about their work. Radcliffe had also filmed some of the interviews and thought that he’d try his hand at directing a documentary. But he wasn’t quite satisfied with his work.“We started filming some stuff, and then after a while I thought, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’” he said. “We should bring someone else in.”To direct, they landed on Dan Hartley, who had worked as a video assist operator among other roles in the “Harry Potter” films and recently directed “Lad: A Yorkshire Story,” a coming-of-age film about a 13-year-old boy befriending a park ranger after losing his father. The three eventually agreed to shift the focus of the film to Holmes.It wasn’t the plan to use someone from the “Harry Potter” crew, but Hartley seemed like a perfect fit, Radcliffe said.The cast and crew grew close on the film sets, and Radcliffe referred to Holmes as a “cool older brother.”“We wanted someone who has the same kind of connection to Dave that we do,” Radcliffe said. “Not someone from the outside who is going to shape Dave’s story into something else for the sake of making something more sensationalized.”As they started creating the film, they realized it was the first time they had all spoken together about Holmes’s accident.“No one wanted to be the first one to bring it up,” Radcliffe said, “but I definitely think there was something like quite cathartic for everybody on this film who got to talk about it with each other.”Holmes spoke about what life was like after the injury and the people he had met while he was hospitalized, including Will Pike, who was injured in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and was in the bed next to his.Hartley and Radcliffe said that seeing young men being emotional was moving, as was parting from traditional masculine stereotypes that can be prevalent in stunt culture.“What I think is really powerful is seeing these young, sensitive men talking,” Hartley said. “They were just so vulnerable and honest.”Above all, Holmes said he wants his story to bring hope.“We all experienced loss in our life. I learned that at the age of 25,” he said, “and it taught me to be present to appreciate the now.” More

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      Orin O’Brien Broke Barriers in Music but Doesn’t Want Center Stage

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      A new documentary tells the story of Orin O’Brien, a double bassist who became the only woman in the New York Philharmonic when she joined in 1966 and helped open doors for others.For decades, the New York Philharmonic, the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, was an all-male bastion. Then, in 1966, came Orin O’Brien, who played the double bass.Often described as the first woman to become a permanent member of the Philharmonic, O’Brien was part of a pioneering group of female artists who opened doors for other women. Last year, for the first time in its 180-year history, women outnumbered men in the ensemble.O’Brien, who retired from the Philharmonic in 2021 after a 55-year career, has resisted speaking publicly about her life in music, preferring to stay in the background.But a new documentary short, “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” directed by her niece, the filmmaker Molly O’Brien, looks at her struggles and achievements. (The film premiered last week at DOC NYC, a festival that celebrates documentary film.)The Philharmonic, which was founded in 1842, was long closed off to women. It was not until 1922 that it hired its first female member: Stephanie Goldner, a harpist. But she departed after a decade, and the orchestra became a male bastion once again until the arrival of O’Brien.In a recent interview at her Manhattan home, O’Brien, 88, reflected on her early days in the Philharmonic, the strides made by women in classical music and growing up in California with movie-star parents. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.A scene from “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” the documentary film made by O’Brien’s niece, Molly O’Brien.The Only Girl in the Orchestra ProductionYou made history at the Philharmonic but you’ve avoided talking about your time there. Why did you agree to take part in this film?I hate the idea of being photographed. I hate the idea of talking about myself. It’s just awful. In music, you’re part of a group and you enjoy the camaraderie with the other musicians. My niece begged me for years. She told me, “Maybe it will help the cause of classical music.” If she wasn’t my relation, I would just say no. It’s all her fault.Your appointment to the Philharmonic was the subject of many news reports that focused on your gender. How did you feel about the attention?I didn’t like it because, first of all, the difficulty was not being female. The difficulty was studying for years and practicing and also being encouraged by your teachers and being encouraged by your colleagues.I felt there was undue attention on me, especially because the orchestra was so great and Leonard Bernstein, the music director, was so great. Bernstein would yell out once in awhile, “Bravo, Orin!” because I could count. And I felt so embarrassed. I felt my face turning red. He was trying to be nice and friendly and welcoming. But I felt that the other musicians would resent it because I was new. I mean, who was I? I was just a member of a section. I wasn’t anybody that important. But I was made important by the P.R. at the time, and I shrank from it.Much of the coverage at the time was sexist. A Time magazine article said that you were “as curvy as the double bass she plays.” A New York Times article called you “as comely a colleen as any orchestra could wish to have in its ranks.”It seems a little frivolous, doesn’t it? It doesn’t say anything about my background or experience or the fact that my teacher, Fred Zimmermann, was in the orchestra for 36 years before me, and that I had a tremendous working knowledge of the orchestra because I had heard every concert they played for two whole years when I worked as an usher at Carnegie Hall. I absorbed their style that way.In the 1960s and 1970s, the maestro Zubin Mehta opined that he did not think women should be in orchestras because they “become men.” He also said that female musicians were “just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60.” He was named the Philharmonic’s music director in 1976. How did you feel about his remarks?They were so unfounded and ridiculous and prejudiced. I thought it was laughable because there were so many talented women. One of the best musicians in the Philharmonic, although her name was very often not listed, was the pianist Harriet Wingreen, who could sight-read any score. And the concertmaster at New York City Ballet was Marilyn Wright. I remember the violinist Nathan Milstein came and sat in the front row to listen to her play the big violin solo in Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.” And she didn’t flinch and played perfectly.“I felt I was welcomed in as a musician, as a member of the group. The feeling was ‘You’re a musician like us,’ except they were my heroes.”James Estrin/The New York TimesWhen you joined the Philharmonic, there were no dressing rooms for women. At the beginning of the 1970s, there were only five women in the orchestra. How did you feel you were treated in those early years?I felt I was welcomed in as a musician, as a member of the group. The feeling was “You’re a musician like us,” except they were my heroes. They were special people. I knew them by name. And now they were talking to me? I was very thrilled to be there.Some women in the Philharmonic have said that they struggled to be paid as much as their male counterparts and were offended when male colleagues referred to them as “the skirts.” Did you encounter those issues?I never heard that. They were too polite to say that to me, I think. Everybody has a different experience.How do you feel about the fact that women now make up roughly half of the New York Philharmonic?It’s an uncomfortable subject. It was when I joined, and it still is for me. I don’t think that it has anything to do with music. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t think that female composers are any better than men or any worse. I have friends in the orchestra of both genders.One of your fans was Bernstein, who led the Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969 and once described you as a “source of radiance in the orchestra.”I remember when Bernstein said he was going to take some time off to compose something special. I had just bought a book about Masada, the ancient fortress in Israel. I wrote him a letter saying, “I think I found a theme for you for an opera or maybe a cello concerto. And if you want, I can loan you my book.” And the next week at rehearsal he stops and he says: “Orin, thank you for your letter. It’s a very good idea.” And all the guys turned and looked at me and I thought, “Oh my God, I’m never going to write him another letter. Never.” And I never did. I was so embarrassed and humiliated.You say in the film that you chose the double bass because you liked being in the background. Was that a reaction to the fame of your parents, George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill, who were both movie stars in the 1930s?That was definitely part of it. My brother and I would go out to dinner with my father and fans would come up and ask for his autograph. We were bitterly resentful of that because that took him away from us because he loved the attention. “I’d love to sign an autograph.” And we were then deprived of his attention for awhile and we were hurt by that. But you could see that he just reveled in it. He enjoyed the perks of fame and fortune. And my mother probably did, too — she was an actress onstage here in New York before she went to Hollywood. If you’re a bass player, you don’t expect that much attention. And that’s maybe one reason I gravitated to it.How do you feel about the future of classical music, as cultural institutions work to recover from the pandemic?I’m a little bit in despair because I see audiences not coming as well-informed as they used to be, and the programming is being watered down. I’m sorry to say, but not every composition is a great composition and the great compositions are still basically the lifeblood of an orchestra: Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Haydn, and so on. Sometimes I feel that the real great repertoire is neglected in favor of other things. Musicians need to play the classics.After you retired from the orchestra, you continued to teach and perform. How do you see the totality of your career?I just feel so lucky that I was able to do something that I loved all my life, and I was so lucky that I landed in my favorite orchestra. When my father would pick me and my brother up, he would ask, “Are you coming into church?” I would say, “No, I’m going to stay in the car and listen to the New York Philharmonic.” And that’s when I decided music was my religion.If I can convince my students to love music the way I’ve been lucky to love it — through their whole lives — and if it gives them the same joy it’s given me, that’s all I really would like. More

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      ‘David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived’ Review: Harry Potter’s Stunt Wizard

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      A documentary looks at the friendship that formed during the Harry Potter movies between Daniel Radcliffe and his main stunt double, who was seriously injured in 2009.Viewers of the eight Harry Potter features may never have considered the bonds that formed over the decade required to make them. “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived” revolves around the friendship between Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry, and Holmes, who served as his stunt double for most of those years.Radcliffe, an only child, describes viewing Holmes as a cool older-brother figure. “He did so much for me that was crazy,” Radcliffe says. The documentary shows a side-by-side comparison to illustrate how Holmes would shoot an action sequence and Radcliffe would copy his moves. “I’ve probably got more broomstick air miles than any other human being on the planet,” Holmes quips.In 2009, Holmes was seriously injured in a rehearsal for a “Harry Potter” stunt; the accident ultimately left him partly paralyzed. “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived” puts his life and his philosophy of living at its center. He has remained upbeat over the years, despite multiple setbacks and surgeries. The film also depicts his continuing rapport with Radcliffe and other members of the franchise’s stunt team, who gather in the documentary like lifelong school buddies. (Radcliffe says the “Potter” alumni he was closest to were not his fellow stars but members of the crew.)The documentary, directed by Dan Hartley, isn’t all optimism. “In the nicest way, I’m going to say I wish I’d never met him,” Greg Powell, the stunt coordinator on the series, says of the guilt he still feels over what happened to Holmes, even though both have expressed having felt like father and son during the films. “The Boy Who Lived” provides an unusual behind-the-scenes portrait of how life goes on after movies are made.David Holmes: The Boy Who LivedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      ‘The Lady Bird Diaries’ Review: A 1960s First Lady Speaks

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      Lady Bird Johnson proves an engrossing narrator to her own story and that of a roiling nation.“The Lady Bird Diaries” opens with images of a drizzly November day in Fort Worth, and the voice of Claudia Alta Johnson. Lady Bird Johnson — a nickname she acquired as child growing up in Texas — is recounting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Her cadence is measured, her account riveting. But it is a sliver of wrenching poetry that distinguishes the memory and hints that the subject of this documentary, directed by Dawn Porter, will be a singular and deeply observant guide to her own — and the nation’s — story. As their car sped off — a secret service agent physically covering her husband, the vice president, to protect him — Johnson looks back and sees, “a bundle of pink, like a drift blossom, lying in the back seat. It was Mrs. Kennedy lying over the president’s body.”Shortly after Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in on Air Force One, the new first lady began recording her thoughts. Those 123 hours of audiotape became a trove for the journalist Julia E. Sweig’s best-selling biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” which makes a persuasive argument that the first lady was the president’s go-to adviser for good reason. Based on Sweig’s book as well as her subsequent podcast, the documentary cements that reappraisal with first-person force.Many of the archival images Porter so fluidly employs will be familiar, but they gain fresh energy and timely urgency from Johnson’s absorbing narration and her often stirring observations about Lyndon Johnson, their political partnership, the environment and the two events she so presciently knew would shape us for decades to come: the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.The Lady Bird DiariesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and on Hulu. More

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      ‘This Much We Know’ Review: Asking Why After a Friend’s Death

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      L. Frances Henderson’s intricate debut documentary investigates a suicide, raising plenty of questions, including one about its own ethics.Our yearning for answers and the limits of knowing are at the heart of the intricately crafted, unsettling documentary “This Much We Know.” The director L. Frances Henderson based this very personal debut on John D’Agata’s lauded book “About a Mountain,” which deftly yoked the suicide of a teenager in Las Vegas to the Department of Energy’s since-scuttled plans to use Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of that city, as a repository for nuclear waste.Henderson says in her poetic and philosophical narration that she discovered the book while searching for answers to a friend’s suicide. It drew her to Las Vegas, where in 2002 16-year-old Levi Presley leaped to his death from a tower. That same year, Congress was pushing forward plans to bury waste beneath Yucca Mountain. Like many of the words, data sets and facts here, Presley’s final act gets probed.Certainty and doubt are juxtaposed repeatedly. In one scene, Vegas’s longtime coroner upends Henderson’s somewhat hopeful theory of an accidental suicide. In another, a confident engineer of the Yucca project is rattled by a quote Henderson reads to him stating that scientific truths can change.“This Much We Know” opens with a frenetic re-enactment of Presley’s final hours leading up to when a security guard approaches him. This kind of flashy filmmaking sets an ethically disquieting tone the film never completely shakes, even after Henderson gently interviews Presley’s parents and his friends. As eloquent as it is, “This Much We Know” may also be exploitative.This Much We KnowNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States. More