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      ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ Review: Thinker, Player, Searcher, Spy

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      Two master performers, the filmmaker Errol Morris and the writer John le Carré, circle the truth in this mesmerizing biographical documentary.When a onetime private detective sits down to question a former spy and confessed performance artist, you might expect some verbal fisticuffs, a bit of bobbing and weaving or defensive prickliness. And when the interlocutor is the filmmaker Errol Morris and his subject is David Cornwell, a.k.a the sublime fabulist John le Carré (who died in 2020), those expectations only intensify.Yet “The Pigeon Tunnel,” a four-day conversation Morris recorded in 2019 (and adapted from Cornwell’s 2016 memoir of the same name) is nothing if not smooth, Cornwell’s sentences as creamy and cunning on the tongue as on the page. Polished, urbane and preternaturally prepared, Cornwell’s sometimes mischievous demeanor forms a kind of shadow narrative, a fascinating carapace that Morris’s interrogatory arrows fail to fully pierce. This drains the film of spontaneity, but pumps it full of a strangely satisfying intrigue: Who is playing whom?Morris is a master exploiter of this kind of duality, and he sounds positively gleeful here. Returning repeatedly to the notions of deception, betrayal and performance — the movie’s three philosophical pillars — he coaxes Cornwell through his spectacularly unsettled childhood to his career as a young operative in the British Secret Service. A gift for artifice emerged early as he learned to emulate his upper-crust schoolmates and a social class to which he did not belong. Espionage came easily after that, his Cold War adventures spurring deep reflections on the nature of duplicity (the infamous double agent Kim Philby, he believes, was addicted to it) and fuel for the novels he would later write.Looming over every anecdote, though, is the formidable shadow of Cornwell’s father, Ronald, a grandly unapologetic swindler and the film’s original deceiver.“I can see my life as a succession of embraces and escapes,” Cornwell says at one point. And while he managed to avoid embracing Ronald’s final, heartless scam — perhaps the most tragic of the film’s many betrayals — it’s clear that he never fully freed himself from his father’s larcenous influence.Much of this will already be known to those familiar with Cornwell’s memoir, his previous interviews or Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography. But even if you have never read a le Carré novel — or seen one of the many movies based on them — “The Pigeon Tunnel” will delight the curious. Cornwell might disappointingly refuse to discuss his reportedly colorful sex life, but he seems more than willing to bare psychological wounds. Of particular poignancy is his fear that human beings have no center, that what he calls our “inmost room” is empty and the things we seek mere chimeras.Intellectually rich and cinematically disciplined (brief movie clips, another perfectly aligned Philip Glass score), “The Pigeon Tunnel” is a cautious, playful portrait of an expert manipulator. And though Morris’s dramatization of the titular event — Cornwell’s boyhood memory of a horrifying hunting trip — offers a delightful visual metaphor for Morris’s interviewing style, his other re-enactments are unnecessary: Surrender to Cornwell’s eloquence and the images create themselves. Exactly how many of them are inventions perhaps even he couldn’t have said for sure.The Pigeon TunnelRated PG-13 for wrecked birds and resolute smokers. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      At NY Dog and Cat Film Festivals, Love, Licks and Looniness

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      Collections of short films, both documentary and fiction, make their annual visit to Manhattan, followed by tours around the country and Canada.The cinematic events debuting at the Village East by Angelika this weekend won’t feature any of the acclaimed actors from the recently concluded New York Film Festival. Some of the major figures in these movies have been known to jump on their directors, fall asleep on the job, drool on camera and chew the scenery (in every sense).But that’s no surprise: They’re among the four-legged performers in the sixth annual NY Cat Film Festival and the eighth annual NY Dog Film Festival. Each offers short documentary and fictional works illustrating how people affect the lives of animals, and how animals affect the lives of people — usually in positive ways.“I try to keep them to films that are lighter and that simply uplift you,” Tracie Hotchner, the founder of both festivals, said in a video interview. And even though some of the featured dogs and cats are in difficult circumstances, the movies, she added, are “more of a celebration of the groups that rescue them.”These grass-roots film programs also benefit their subjects: Of the $18 all-inclusive ticket price for each festival, 10 percent goes to a pet-adoption nonprofit. (The Manhattan screenings will help support Muddy Paws Rescue and Meow Parlour Cats.) And fans who can’t see the programs this weekend may be able to catch them in the coming months when they tour to independent cinemas nationwide and in Canada.“BARC if You Need Help” examines a program that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals.Tula Asselanis/The Latham Foundation“These are not, you know, Hollywood-style movies,” said Hotchner, an author, radio host and podcaster based in Vermont. They’re “like the poetry of films.”Some are clearly light verse. The 102-minute feline festival, at noon on Saturday, includes “The Cat Duet,” by Lorelei De Armas and Julian Wood, 12-year-olds from Detroit who filmed themselves singing “Duetto buffo di due gatti,” a comic song often attributed to Rossini. (The only lyric is “Meow.”) The 110-minute dog festival, at noon on Sunday, features Nepal Arslan’s “47 Seconds,” his haiku-like response to discovering decades-old footage of a couple with a dog eerily resembling his own.“Silent Paws,” by the global initiative Mutual Rescue, even incorporates a real poem: a work of the same title by Gabriel Spera, which scrolls by during an elegy to lost feline companions.Neither festival, however, has a shortage of serious documentaries. Michelle Williams’s “Bear the Courthouse Canine” explores the pivotal role that a gentle Labrador retriever plays for the Contra Costa County, Calif., district attorney. Trained to lie under the witness stand during trials, Bear comforts traumatized victims who are testifying, especially children.The dogs in “BARC if You Need Help” work on the other side of the criminal justice system. Produced by the Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education, this film examines Building Adolescent Responsibility and Compassion, a program in Michigan that recruits juvenile offenders to train animals — frequently pit bulls that have troubled histories, too.“It’s like a mirror for them,” Tula Asselanis, the documentary’s director, said of the teenage participants. And the film suggests that “redemption is a powerful possibility, just through using the human-animal bond.”But what struck Hotchner most about the festivals’ submissions this year was how much they tried to capture the inner lives of animals.With cats, “it’s like, you know, ‘E.T.,’” she said. “So this alien comes into your life, and they’re so beautiful and so lovely. But what makes them tick?”The filmmakers’ speculations are often comic, as in “Insomnia,” by Kim Best, who provides subtitles detailing a cat’s ruminations on this most unlikely of feline problems: “Embarrassingly, I considered sleeping with a dog.”A scene from “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” about dogs aiding climbers on Mount Hood.Joe DanielOther films that venture inside the minds of their subjects include Ned Thanhouser’s docudrama “Ranger: Canine Alpinist,” which relies on voice-over to relate the perspective of a dog who assisted human climbers on Mount Hood in Oregon almost a century ago. In the fictional “Set Adrift,” the British director Jennifer Sheridan uses only her furry actor’s expressiveness to convey a dog’s grief. Peta Hitchens’s Australian documentary “Filming Dogs” investigates a psychological question: Do pets like her own really enjoy performing for movies and television?Intriguingly, Juhi Sharma’s comedy “Purrrfect Intervention” features no animals — until the credits. Kisha Peart, who produced and wrote it, stars as a New Yorker so cat-obsessed that her friends arrange treatment for her.“Obviously, I’m a cat lady,” Peart said, adding that she turned her own pet’s camera shyness into a visual joke. Her character, she said, is “this crazy cat lady, but where are her cats?”Live animals won’t attend the screenings, either, but they will be at parties on the eve of each festival. These celebrations, which require separate tickets, will feature mingling with the filmmakers and authors of books about pets. One of Hotchner’s contacts even arranged for a visiting celebrity at the pooch festivities: Bastian the Talking Terrier, whose YouTube channel has almost two million subscribers.“I don’t know any famous dogs,” said Hotchner, who owns two Weimaraners. “But he said yes.”NY Cat Film FestivalSaturday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com.NY Dog Film FestivalSunday at the Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; dogfilmfestival.com. More

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      ‘The Devil on Trial’ Review: Whodunit? Satan?

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      This documentary revisits a 1981 homicide that the defense tried to attribute to demonic possession.It isn’t for me to say whether Arne Cheyenne Johnson really killed his landlord Alan Bono because he was possessed by a demon, as his lawyers tried to argue in a landmark 1981 trial in Connecticut known as the “devil made me do it” case. But on the basis of the spurious, crudely sensational documentary “The Devil on Trial,” it isn’t for the director, Christopher Holt, to say what really happened, either.The film strives to present a credible account of a disturbing story, which also involves the supposed possession of a young boy and an exorcism conducted under the guidance of the self-declared ghost hunters and demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren — events loosely depicted onscreen in “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” a fictionalized account.The story is that Johnson accidentally summoned the demon possessing the child to enter his own body, igniting the mayhem that followed.While the documentary’s opening credits insist that “all the audio recordings and photographs” used are real, the film appears to have little interest in the truth and even less in reportorial integrity.The photographs, which purport to show evidence of possession, have been so heavily filtered and processed that “real” seems misleading. The old, garbled audio recordings are not compelling testimony either, and the filmmakers know it: They’ve goosed them up with sound effects and dramatic theme music.Firsthand accounts of the events from Johnson and others are used as fodder for slick re-enactments, which is where Holt really goes to town: Houses shake, lights shudder and shadowy figures lurk mysteriously, all in the style of a third-rate horror movie. The desperation to be scary, rather than engaging or provocative, is an intellectual failure, and an artistic one — a failure of imagination. Instead of challenging assumptions, exploring implications or discussing the difficult questions here, Holt merely mines the material for superficial shock value and lurid titillation.The Devil on TrialRated TV-MA for disturbing imagery and violence. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Insurrectionist Next Door’ Review: Getting Personal

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      In her latest film, the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi has disarming chats with people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.In the compulsively watchable “The Insurrectionist Next Door,” Alexandra Pelosi visits rank-and-file people arrested because of their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. And then, instead of condemning, she asks them about themselves. Her brisk emotional portraits of Americans are disarming, unpredictable, funny, sad, and, yes, at times enraging.Palming her own camera, Pelosi fires away why’s and what’s-your-deal’s to her polite subjects: a genial former wrestler; a military man who shares a love of wine with his husband; a family guy with a “Proud Boy” forehead tattoo and a rabble-rousing hit rap song; and a practitioner of parkour who apparently learned about some kind of war in 1776 from a Trump speech.Some joined the mob out of anger or boredom; others plead mass hysteria or even lovesick depression. (Jan. 6 was also a popular family road trip.) Pelosi has made films about the Tea Party and wealthy donors, and her barroom directness feels sincere, while also being canny. She even asks someone about the targeting of her mother, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, on Jan. 6, when the filmmaker too was in the Capitol.The terrifying attacks are not excused or minimized, and Pelosi acknowledges that these “normies” were very useful for the goals of militant organizations. She also presses the convicted on their blind devotion to President Trump. Yet it’s possible to feel despair despite the bluff banter: Yes, but now what?In the end, as a document, it’s undeniable: The unvarnished human detail gives the film a life of its own that escapes any particular polemic or hope.The Insurrectionist Next DoorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      After ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,’ Stream These 8 Great Concert Movies

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      For that live show experience, these films capture exhilarating music by Beyoncé, Shakira, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads and more.If you saw “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” in a theater and enjoyed the vicarious thrill of watching a concert onscreen, here are eight more films of live shows — picked by the Culture desk writers — that will give you a taste of the same experience.Beyoncé, ‘Homecoming’Available to stream on NetflixBeyoncé just announced a new concert film, due in December. Until then there’s her 2018 performance at Coachella. It was the stuff of legends. Marching bands! A Destiny’s Child reunion! So when “Homecoming” dropped on Netflix the next year, it truly felt like a gift. The film is one of intriguing contradictions, feeling both intimate and outsize at once. You see the painstaking hard work in every stunning piece of choreography and hear it in every breathtaking vocal, yet Queen Bey makes it look effortless. Mekado MurphyTalking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’In theatersWhat elevates “Stop Making Sense” — and what has made its recent 40th anniversary rerelease now in theaters such a sensation — is its formal elegance. David Byrne begins alone onstage with a tape player and, as fellow musicians gradually accrue with each song, ends as the large-suited ringleader of a rock ’n’ roll circus. The director Jonathan Demme knows he doesn’t need spectacle or special effects to transfix: He just allows each frame to fill with the charisma of a great band. Lindsay Zoladz‘Summer of Soul’Available to stream on Disney+ and HuluIf 1970’s “Woodstock” is one of the defining concert documentaries, “Summer of Soul,” released in 2021, acts as a sort of complement and rejoinder to it. Questlove’s Oscar-winning film exuberantly unearths footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival — which took place the same summer as Woodstock — and cuts together some of the most extraordinary performances from artists like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone and so many more. Questlove includes interviews with participants and attendees that contextualize the sets musically and historically, but the film’s power is the ability to make you feel as if you are in the crowd even if you are just sitting on your couch. Esther ZuckermanThe Rolling Stones, ‘Gimme Shelter’Available to stream on MaxThis 1970 documentary directed by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin is known as something of a Zapruder film for the death of the ’60s, with its footage of a killing at the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway a year earlier. Still, the movie’s great music gets across the promise that was lost: Mick Jagger in an Uncle Sam top hat and a long lavender scarf, hip-thrusting his way through “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” The Flying Burrito Brothers raving up “Six Days on the Road” when it still seemed like Altamont could be “the greatest party of 1969.” And most explosively, Tina Turner, singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and giving a microphone the time of its life. David Renard‘Depeche Mode: 101’Available to stream or rent on major platformsThe Music for the Masses tour brought the British synth band’s yearning songs — reverberating like confessional hymns in a cathedral — to the Rose Bowl and beyond in 1987-88. “Depeche Mode: 101” takes in the smokily lighted shows (with lead singer Dave Gahan in a billowing white shirt) and the bright-eyed “bus kids,” fans who went along for the ride. D.A. Pennebaker tunes into the heartbeat of Depeche Mode’s electronic sound, co-directing with Chris Hegedus and David Dawkins. Nicolas Rapold‘Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Mexico City’Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.I would wager this is the only concert film, directed by Joe DeMaio, that periodically cuts away from the performance to show documentary segments about the Zapatistas, the rebel political group of southern Mexico. Tonally, it’s a turn-of-the-century time capsule: The frenetic live footage (recorded in 1999 and released in 2001) seems to have been edited by a can of Red Bull. But the band’s knockout blend of overt leftist ideology and inventive, funky rap-over-metal holds up. Look for the guitarist Tom Morello’s rhythmic tapping of the unplugged tip of his guitar cable to make music, like somebody using the board game Operation as an instrument. Gabe Cohn‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Available to stream on the Criterion ChannelMichael Rapaport’s documentary about the groundbreaking rap group A Tribe Called Quest isn’t exactly a concert film per se, but it is bookended by a pair of critical tours: a 2008 run that rapper Q-Tip bitterly declares backstage is its last performance ever, and another in 2010 that sees the trio cautiously reuniting. In between is a vibrant tribute, particularly enhanced after Phife Dawg’s death in 2016, and a no-frills look at the story of a singular group that changed hip-hop, even as success distanced them from one another. Brandon Yu‘Shakira: Live From Paris’Available to rent or buy on most major platformsIf Shakira’s recent performance at the MTV Video Music Awards impressed you, this 2011 release will floor you. Singing in three languages (often while dancing vigorously) and playing multiple instruments, the Colombian megastar commands the stage with a magnetic intensity. There isn’t much artifice on display here, only Shakira surrendering her entire body to the vitality of her genre-defying, globally inspired music. Take as proof her sensational belly dancing during “Ojos Así” or her transition from tenderness to fury in the rock ballad “Inevitable.” Carlos Aguilar More

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      Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour’ Movie: 4 Takeaways

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      There’s something in the singer’s highly anticipated new concert documentary for newcomers and superfans alike.As she greeted the audience at the premiere of her new movie, Taylor Swift sounded a bit sheepish.“You’re stuck with me, because I’m going to sit with you and watch this thing,” she told the crowd at the packed premiere of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” held at the sprawling Grove shopping complex on Wednesday night. Well, one of the crowds, anyway: Thirteen of the theaters at the Grove’s AMC multiplex were filled with eager fans, and Swift stopped by all of them to give a special introduction, eventually settling into an auditorium’s audience that included stars like Adam Sandler and Julia Garner.Regular moviegoers can only hope that an apologetic Swift shows up for more house calls as her concert documentary makes its way into theaters this week. Though it was originally set for release on Friday, Swift just announced that the film will begin screening one day early because of fan demand.Still, even if they can’t watch “The Eras Tour” alongside the singer herself — who came to the premiere in a pale blue Oscar de la Renta gown and danced in her seat for most of its running time — the movie is poised to deliver in a major way.For theatrical exhibitors, whose business has been in jeopardy since the actors strike scuttled plans to release tentpole movies like “Dune” this fall, “The Eras Tour” is being likened to the second coming of Barbenheimer: It’s got the grab-your-besties-and-go appeal of “Barbie,” the shock-and-awe soundscape of “Oppenheimer” and the box-office tracking to rival them both. Bullish film analysts expect an opening weekend between $150 to $200 million, meaning “The Eras Tour” has a shot at taking this year’s box-office tiara from “Barbie,” which notched a $162 million debut.In the meantime, here are four of the takeaways from the premiere.Expect no extras, though you’ll get a front-row seatIf fans are looking for insight into how Swift put her show together, or what was going on in her life behind the scenes, they won’t find it in “The Eras Tour”: There is no additional embroidering in this concert documentary, which was culled from Swift’s six-night August stint at the SoFi stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. For those who caught one of the 53 shows Swift played in North American this past year, or for the fans hoping to see Swift in her remaining American dates (an international tour begins in February), this film is more or less the same thing as buying a concert ticket.Swift stopped by all 13 screens in the multiplex of them to give each audience a special introduction.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere’s one crucial difference, of course: No stadium seat could offer as close a look at Swift’s performance as this documentary, which is vigorously shot and directed by Sam Wrench. And since the 33-year-old singer designed “The Eras Tour” as a journey through the shifting musical genres of her past 10 albums — from the country-pop “Fearless” all the way up to the recent, stripped-down records “Folklore,” “Evermore” and “Midnights” — this film is the closest thing that exists to a definitive document of one of the world’s biggest performers.In that way, it’s perfect viewing for newcomers and superfans alike: Curious people who were unwilling to shell out for tour prices can now check out Swift at a reduced rate, while Swifties who’ve already attended the concert can relive it in a compelling close-up. My teenage niece, who went to one of the SoFi shows, accompanied me to the premiere and was thrilled by the better look at Swift’s facial expressions and choreography. I noticed that hardly a song goes by without some big smiles from Swift and her backup singers: There’s enough joy on these faces to power entire blocks of Barbie Land.Only a few songs get snipped“The Eras Tour” runs a robust two hours and forty-eight minutes, and though that’s nearly as long as “Oppenheimer,” Swift’s real-life concerts during this tour were even more mammoth, typically clocking in just shy of three and a half hours. Do fans have reason to fear there have been major cuts to the set list?By my count, only a handful of her regular songs go missing on the way to the big screen, including “The Archer,” “Cardigan,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “no body no crime,” which Swift performed at SoFi with the band Haim.Taylor Swift fans Karen Boncan, left, and Petrushka Seville at the premiere on Wednesday.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressStill, fans will get plenty of bang for their buck, since Swift performs nearly 40 songs during the movie, including a 10-minute version of “All Too Well” and two other bonus tunes, “Our Song” and “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” that Swift plucked from a rotating selection of surprise songs during her tour. And another trim is sure to be appreciated: Swift now moves between the different eras and costume changes in the blink of an eye onscreen, eliding all the time those segues took onstage.In Hollywood, everyone is a SwiftieBlockbuster premieres have been hard to come by since the actors strike began, and an eclectic cross-section of celebrities turned out for the “Eras Tour” premiere, including Sandler, Mariska Hargitay and the singers Maren Morris and Hayley Kiyoko. Fashion choices ran the gamut from silver sequins to cowgirl fringe, and Alex Atallah, a co-founder of the NFT marketplace OpenSea, entered the theater lobby sporting the colorful, tie-dyed “I Am Kenough” hoodie seen on Ryan Gosling in “Barbie.”“I have very few shirts with this many pastel colors,” Atallah told me before posing for a photo with the “Barbie” co-star Simu Liu.Nearby, I caught Flavor Flav deep in conversation with Swift’s father, Scott. Though they made for an unlikely duo, the 64-year-old rap icon is no fly-by-night fan: He said that he’d seen the “awesome” Swift on two previous tours.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” Flav insisted.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” said the rapper Flavor Flav.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesBut Swift’s biggest invite was reserved for another A-lister (and no, it wasn’t her new beau Travis Kelce, busy with a football game the next day): Before the premiere began, Swift dined and posed for pictures with Beyoncé, who has her own concert movie “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé” due for release on Dec. 1. Like “The Eras Tour,” Beyoncé’s film bypassed traditional Hollywood studios and will be distributed by AMC Theaters.Finally, Swift will enjoy some big-screen successThough she’s a superstar in the music industry, Swift’s forays into film haven’t been as well-received. Her last three movie credits as an actress include the minor young-adult drama “The Giver,” the memorably cataclysmic adaptation of “Cats,” and last year’s David O. Russell-directed “Amsterdam,” which coaxed Swift to pop in for a quick cameo and then promptly ran her over.Unlike Lady Gaga, who has lately toggled between music and movies in equal measure, Swift has treated Hollywood as more of a side hustle, only committing to the occasional supporting role. But last year, after she signed a deal with Searchlight to write and direct an upcoming original film, eyebrows were raised all over town: Was Swift ready to take her movie career a bit more seriously?Bullish film analysts expect opening weekend box office takings between $150 to $200 million for the movie.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt remains to be seen whether Swift will star in her feature directorial debut, but “The Eras Tour” still supplies her with some much-needed big-screen juice. A fun presence in her biggest numbers, like the bouncy “Shake It Off” and rocking “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift is even more appealing in acoustic numbers that trade busy choreography for simple guitar playing. And in the centerpiece song “Tolerate It,” she shows acting chops during a well-choreographed routine about a dinner date gone wrong: It begins with her beseeching an inexpressive lover and ends with her swatting a vase of roses off the table.Her real talent, though, is selling humility with a megawatt charisma that few celebrities can muster. Introducing one song, Swift insists she had to invent an outsized version of herself in order to write it: “In my fantasy, I’m not a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair,” the singer says, even though she’s spent the whole film looking impossibly glamorous in sky-high Christian Louboutin heelsAnd yet, you’re still tempted to believe her. What is that, if not a movie star? More

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      ‘Reality Winner’ Review: Caught in the Cross Hairs

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      Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary unpacks the circumstances surrounding its subject, but fails to crack her complexity.It is not always fruitful to compare a documentary about an event with a narrative film portraying that event. Yet “Reality Winner,” Sonia Kennebeck’s hazy nonfiction chronicle of Reality Winner — a National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced under the Espionage Act in 2018 when she was 26 — and this year’s film “Reality,” a searing dramatization of her interrogation, form a tidy double feature. The latter eschews context to paint an evocative real-time picture of a young woman in the F.B.I.’s cross hairs; the former painstakingly maps out the state of affairs surrounding Winner, only to see her personhood trickle away, like water cupped in one’s palms.Rotating among a handful of timelines, Kennebeck’s documentary spends the most time with Winner’s parents and sister as they push for Winner to receive a fair trial. These scenes are interspersed with blurred re-enactments (not unlike those starring Sydney Sweeney in “Reality”) and actual field-recording audio, as well as an interview with Winner, who orates directly into the camera à la Errol Morris’s Interrotron technique.One of the more troubling aspects of this complex case was The Intercept’s mishandling of the leaked document, and “Reality Winner” unpacks how The Intercept’s actions contributed to exposing Winner’s identity to the N.S.A. Indeed, the documentary’s most valuable testimonies come from other whistle-blowers (including Edward Snowden) who come across as extraordinarily well equipped to analyze the story’s knottier details.Despite this access, “Reality Winner” fails to decode its ideologically heterodox subject. The film is clear in showing how the media put her into boxes: a traitor, a terrorist, a progressive, an innocent, a lost cause. But who is Reality Winner? This documentary doesn’t dig deeper than her patently well-meaning exterior.Reality WinnerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Plan C’ Review: Abortion by Mail

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      In this documentary by Tracy Droz Tragos, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.The director Tracy Droz Tragos anchors her abortion documentary “Plan C” on a grass-roots organization by the same name. At the center of the organization is Francine Coeytaux, a public health activist in the United States, previously known for her campaign to get contraceptive pills sold over the counter at pharmacies.Under the leadership of Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, the group, which was founded in 2015, focuses on providing information to patients about medical suppliers and providers who can prescribe at-home abortion pills — medication which can safely end a pregnancy up to 12 weeks.The footage of Plan C’s activities covers four years, beginning in 2019 and extending after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Some scenes of abortion providers at work are shot vérité style, while in others Coeytaux and her associates speak directly to the camera about their efforts to assist people seeking abortions.Plan C’s methods are mobile, often including telehealth or prescriptions delivered by mail, and the group’s actions come with both legal and physical risks.There are over a dozen doctors, abortion rights advocates and patients interviewed in this film, and most don’t reveal their full names for safety reasons, fearing violence from anti-abortion activists or prosecution in states such as Texas, where residents can receive rewards for reporting abortion providers. Some don’t reveal their faces, and Tragos blurs their images or conceals identifying features.At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.As people navigate this new reality, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.Plan CNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More