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      ‘Paul Robeson’ Review: A Tribute to an Entertainment Titan

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      The film’s subtitle is drawn from one of the performer’s quotes in his autobiography “Here I Stand”: “I’m a Negro. I’m an American.”The opening of “Paul Robeson: ‘I’m a Negro. I’m an American.’” offers an unintentional caveat about the 1989 documentary directed by the East German filmmaker Kurt Tetzlaff. Paul Robeson’s rich baritone undergirds archival footage of Black children playing in a dusty open space, smokestacks in the background. The use by the director of a Negro spiritual, however beautiful, swaps whatever joy these kids might have been experiencing (they are at play after all) for a questionable sentimentality around Black life and suffering.But then much of Tetzlaff’s documentary, recently restored and receiving its first theatrical run in New York, casts an aura — admiring and melancholy — around Robeson to the detriment of a more shaded portrait. The athlete-performer-activist’s achievements are well known (gridiron great, Columbia University Law graduate, first Black Othello on Broadway), but in this film, their roots and meaning go mostly unexplored.The documentary shows glimmers of promise when featuring interviewees who had an intimate grasp of the America that shaped but also tore down Robeson. Harry Belafonte turns teary talking about Robeson’s grace. The singer Pete Seeger’s account of white rioters attacking attendees at a Peekskill, N.Y., concert in support of workers in 1949 remains chilling. Tetzlaff aims to dive into Robeson’s mistreatment by the United States government for his activism, as well as his expressed admiration of the Soviet Union and its people — but the movie sticks to the shallow end.Hinted at, but never fully realized here, is a more compelling film about the tantalizing promise Black progressives like Robeson held for Eastern Bloc citizens, like the director.Paul Robeson: ‘I’m a Negro. I’m an American.’Not rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Saint of Second Chances’ Review: Baseball Inferno

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      This documentary from Morgan Neville and Jeff Malmberg reconsiders the troubled career of Mike Veeck, a son of the M.L.B. impresario Bill Veeck.Bill Veeck, a scrappy, showmanship-savvy Major League Baseball impresario who survived grave injuries as a Marine during World War II, would make a hard act for any child to follow. But you can’t say that one of his sons hasn’t tried. That would be Mike Veeck, the subject of the peppy new documentary “The Saint of Second Chances.”Now in his seventies, Mike is an engaging onscreen presence in this story, whether appearing as himself or as played in re-enactments by Charlie Day (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”). The movie was directed by Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom”) and Jeff Malmberg (“Marwencol”), and is a tad more fanciful than their prior work.But fancy is a good fit for the Veecks, it turns out. We see that Bill believed that “the most delightful way to spend an afternoon or evening” was at the ballpark. In the 1970s, reigning over Chicago’s Comiskey Park with the town’s second-banana MLB team, the White Sox, he was a ramshackle marketing innovator. Mike tried to match him: A disastrous 1979 gathering at Comiskey called Disco Demolition Night, where a record-burning stunt turned into a riot that resulted in dozens of arrests, was Mike’s idea. The fiasco got deserved blowback, which sent the younger Veeck into a long tailspin.This movie’s feel-good narrative essentially hinges on whether you buy Mike’s assertion that he wouldn’t have done the event if he “thought it would hurt anyone.” Once Mike got back in the game years later — through the Independent League ball organization — he brought the fun in eccentric ways, including a ball-carrying pig. Darryl Strawberry testifies here that Mike helped him love the game again. And the story of a personal tragedy in Mike’s family life is affecting.The Saint of Second ChancesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Superpower’ Review: Sean Penn Chronicles the War in Ukraine

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      This documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, includes Penn’s interview with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion.Near the beginning of “Superpower,” Sean Penn tries to pre-empt the criticism generated by his previous trips to conflict zones. “Weathered though it is,” he says in narration, “my famous face gets me access to places and people I may otherwise not have known.”That is undoubtedly true, even if, in the past, he has used that access to lob softball questions at El Chapo. When it comes to chronicling the war in Ukraine, the subject of this documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, it is hard to begrudge the actor’s mission. Like the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has been making his own documentaries on the war, Penn appears to have one eye in the mirror, but at least he’s taking some sort of action.“Superpower” began as a film about the unlikely presidency of the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and his path from comic actor to politician. Much of the first part consists of material Penn compiled from the preinvasion period. Experts lay out the complexities of the country’s 21st-century history. Ukrainians reflect on the legacy of the Maidan protests and express skepticism about Zelensky’s potential.Penn scores a coup by getting an on-camera interview with Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion, and he films him on two additional occasions, in a video interview and in person on a later visit. Zelensky’s words — about what his country needs, about how his 9-year-old has prematurely grown into being like a “wise political man” — are often familiar but still stirring. Potentially more of a stunt is Penn’s trip to the front, which seems as much about proving his mettle as getting the story.SuperpowerNot rated. In English and Ukrainian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Radical Wolfe’ Review: The Substance of Style

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      This by-the-book documentary about Tom Wolfe, a pioneer of the New Journalism movement, can hardly match the stylistic flair that made the writer famous.For journalism students, it’s lore: The tale of how the famed writer Tom Wolfe sold a story about car customizers to Esquire, was hit by writers’ block and handed in a harried 49-page memo on deadline, which the editor published as is — minting a star and helping to usher in a new trend of literary reportage.Wolfe was a mythmaker who gained a mythical stature, with his white suit, contrarian takes and irreverently vivid way with words. For him, style was a kind of substance. This makes the new film about his life and career, “Radical Wolfe,” something of a letdown: Richard Dewey’s staid, by-the-book documentary can hardly match the flair with which Wolfe lived and wrote.The film adapts a 2015 Vanity Fair article by the writer Michael Lewis, who appears as a talking head alongside Wolfe’s peers, like Gay Talese, and loved ones, including his daughter. Their interviews are rather cursory, mostly touching upon Wolfe’s Southern upbringing and incongruously gracious off-page persona, while the archival footage in the film draws heavily on his television interviews.These offer a dazzling view of a time when long-form journalism held top cultural billing, yet there’s little here that interrogates the man behind the words, his process or his politics. Jamal Joseph, the writer and former Black Panther, is made the sole, thankless critical voice in a rushed section about Wolfe’s notorious New York Magazine piece, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s,” a mordant account of Leonard Bernstein’s 1970 fund-raiser soiree for the Panther 21.Wolfe’s knack was for translating sights and sounds exuberantly into words. Jon Hamm’s actorly voice-overs of Wolfe’s writing, woven throughout the film, feel impoverished by contrast — a grasp at a master by lesser artists.Radical WolfeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lift’ Review: The Choreography of Mentoring Young Talents

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      In this documentary, ballet has life-changing power for three New York dancers whose toughest struggles are not matters of technique.Three young New York ballet dancers get the spotlight in David Petersen’s new documentary, “Lift.” Filmed over 10 years, it focuses on the dancer-choreographer Steven Melendez. He grew up in the Bronx and learned ballet while moving in and out of the city’s shelter system. He came back to teach share what he had learned by conducting a workshop for underserved young people.The impressive time span allows the film to follow Victor Abreu, Yolanssie Cardona and Sharia Blockwood as they grow into promising young ballet stars while facing the challenges of poverty and housing insecurity. Melendez, the artistic director of New York Theater Ballet, sees himself in the struggles of his students. He’s visibly retraumatized when he first returns to the shelter where he grew up, and where he teaches the workshop. But over the years, we see this personal history help Melendez connect with his students as they go through trials he knows well.Petersen’s bare-bones, on-the-ground production works well for a story like this, highlighting how vital these small workshops in homeless shelters and community centers can be. There’s a motif of buzzing into locked buildings — a familiar noise to any New Yorker — and close-up shots of barbed-wire fences outside the shelter where the kids practice. Those surroundings stand in obvious contrast to the dance classes inside, where Melendez encourages students to mold the rarefied art of ballet into something of their own making.LiftRated PG-13 for language. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Invisible Beauty’ Review: The Battle to Diversify

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      This documentary presents a vision of the fashion industry through the eyes of Bethann Hardison — a model, agent and champion of Black representation.The documentary “Invisible Beauty” presents a history of the modern fashion industry through the eyes of Bethann Hardison — an octogenarian model-turned-advocate whose life has acted as a proof of concept for Black style. Hardison co-directed the film with Frédéric Tcheng, and through a combination of archival footage and present-day interviews, the pair show the impact of Hardison’s efforts to expand the fashion industry’s view of what constitutes beauty.Hardison was born in 1942, and in interviews, she recalls with pride that she grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. She summered with family in Louisiana, and there, she observed the injustice of racial segregation — an institution which failed to intimidate Hardison. Her unshakable sense of self-worth happened to coincide with a striking exterior beauty and a city girl’s instinct for how to accentuate her strengths. It was this combination of pride and personal style which opened doors for Hardison in the fashion scene of 1970s New York. She became a model, participating in famed fashion events such as the 1973 Battle of Versailles, where Black American artists stole the show from the established French elite. Later, Hardison’s vision of Black style led her to start her own modeling agency, and finally, to push for equal opportunities, hiring and pay.The documentary shows how Hardison embodied a vision of public life; to meet her gaze was to look into a future that was diverse, powerful and unapologetic. Hardison and Tcheng use interviews to show how Hardison acted as a mentor for generations of Black artists, from Iman to Naomi Campbell to Zendaya. At times, the film is hampered by the sheer amount of information there is to condense from across a 50-year career, but Hardison is never less than a fascinating subject — an artist whose medium is industrial disruption.Invisible BeautyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Mr. Jimmy’ Review: Trying for That Perfect Page Re-Creation

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      Akio Sakurai is obsessed with sounding exactly like the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. This documentary plumbs the depths of his devotion.The Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page is the envy of guitar players, and nonplayers, the world over. Mike D of the Beastie Boys expressed the wishful thinking of many when he boasted in a rap, “If I played guitar I’d be Jimmy Page.”No one understands this better, it happens, than Akio Sakurai, a Japanese musician who has devoted decades to playing guitar in the varying modes that Page applied in his years as Led Zeppelin’s lead instrumentalist. He recalls one day off from his job as a kimono salesman, seeing the Zep concert film “The Song Remains The Same,” and being mesmerized by the power of Page’s playing. He became obsessed with recreating it.The first hour of the movie contains lots of guitar wonkiness as Sakurai, nicknamed “Mr. Jimmy,” consults with technicians, working on getting his own axes and amps as close to Page’s gear as he can. After Mr. Jimmy elaborates on the idiosyncrasies of Les Paul guitar pickup guards, one of the artisans he works with comments, “We understand Jimmy’s obsession. It’s very Japanese.”The film, directed by Peter Michael Dowd, centers on Sakurai’s upending his life to move to Los Angeles and install himself in a Zep tribute band; he lasts a couple of years, leaving because the other members didn’t share his single-mindedness in reproducing Page’s onstage work.“That is the meaning of tribute. Not showing myself at all. There is no ‘me’ to begin with,” Sakurai, who is now 59, says at one point. This is a terrifying notion, but the movie doesn’t choose to run with it, instead sticking to Mr. Jimmy’s career travails in the States before landing with a “Spinal Tap”-redolent happy ending.Mr. JimmyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wrestlers’ Is Greg Whiteley’s Latest Underdog Tale

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      When Greg Whiteley was 19 he ventured from his hometown, Bellevue, Wash., to spread the word of the Mormon Church on Navajo reservations in the Southwest. At first he would come in hot, as the kids say, eager to knock on doors and proselytize.“Frequently the thing I’d ask was, ‘Do you have time to hear a message about Jesus Christ today?’” he recalled during a video interview earlier this month from his Southern California home. “And the answer 99 times out of 100 was, ‘No, I do not have time for that.’ I think I spent the first months of my mission talking at people, and it was a very discouraging experience.”Gradually, however, he learned to shut up and listen. “I was amazed at how quickly people would disclose the most vulnerable things at a doorstep within 90 seconds of meeting them,” Whiteley said. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was preparing himself for a successful career as a documentary filmmaker.Today, Whiteley, 53, is best known for creating, producing and directing immersive, off-the-beaten-path underdog sports docu-series for Netflix, including “Last Chance U,” “Cheer” and his latest, “Wrestlers,” which premieres Wednesday. All are notable for what they are not: manipulative, sensationalist, opportunistic.“Wrestlers,” premiering Wednesday on Netflix, explores Ohio Valley Wrestling, a scrappy company that has nurtured several famous wrestlers.NetflixWhiteley finds subjects that offer maximum access and editorial control. “It’s really hard to get that from the New England Patriots,” he said. In other words, this isn’t “Hard Knocks,” the HBO series that purports to offer revealing behind-the-scenes stories from N.F.L. training camps. For “Last Chance U,” which premiered in 2016, Whiteley focuses on individual community college football and basketball teams. In “Cheer,” the subject is a Texas community college cheerleading squad that happens to be a national dynasty. And for “Wrestlers,” Whiteley and his 20-person crew descended upon Ohio Valley Wrestling, a scrappy, underfunded professional wrestling company, with a passionate, blue-collar fan base, based in Louisville, Ky. Famous O.V.W. alumni include John Cena and Paul Wight (who wrestled as Big Show), but the company has maintained an authentic little-guy personality.“Wrestlers” is vintage Whiteley. He identified a few dynamic lead characters, including Al Snow, the fiercely dedicated, disarmingly thoughtful former W.W.F. and W.W.E. wrestler and current minority owner and day-to-day manager of O.V.W., who sees wrestling as a means of telling great stories preferably for television; Matt Jones, the aggressively opinionated O.V.W. co-owner and sports radio personality, focused on touring and keeping the company afloat financially; and HollyHood Haley J, a rebellious (and often irresponsible) young wrestler who is one of O.V.W.’s most popular performers and drives Snow mad with her propensity to smoke weed on the gym premises.Whiteley and his crew settled in and familiarized themselves with the rhythms of the operation. Perhaps most important, he quickly established that he wasn’t trying to burn anyone or manufacture the gotcha moments that fuel reality TV, which those on both sides of the camera are adamant that “Wrestlers” is not.HollyHood Haley J, a brash young performer, emerges as one of the stars of “Wrestlers.”Netflix“There was a great deal of trust,” Snow said in a video interview from his home office. “Professional wrestling as a whole has always been a very closed, very secular business, never open, especially not to the general public and especially not in this manner. It was a tough decision for me to let this happen and be involved in it. But meeting Greg I really got the idea and the impression that he was going to treat it with respect and he was going to be honest.”The trust is largely a byproduct of Whiteley’s patience. He doesn’t push things, preferring instead to burrow in and hang out and get to know his subjects; “Wrestlers” was shot over a period of three and a half months. His ideal is to disappear, or at least create the illusion that he has. He wants his three camera teams constantly rolling film — unless his subjects tell them to stop, in which case they generally do. This, in turn, reinforces the trust level. He tells stories by spending countless hours with his characters, not by asking hot-take questions about drug abuse and romantic problems (both of which are present in “Wrestlers”).Al Snow, a former W.W.F. wrestler, oversees Ohio Valley Wrestling.NetflixSnow, who in the series likens himself to Kermit the Frog presiding over “The Muppet Show,” emerges as a sort of tormented showbiz impresario. He’s like a Broadway director in an old Hollywood musical, agonizing until the final curtain goes down, at which point he starts agonizing anew. The primary tension in “Wrestlers” simmers between Snow, the professional wrestling purist, and Jones, the entrepreneur focused on the bottom line. It doesn’t seem like the most obvious angle, but Whiteley has a gift for finding gold in the unobvious, in this case a conflict outside the ring that turns into a battle for the soul of O.V.W.“Credit to Greg, he sniffed that out,” said Adam Leibowitz, a producer who has been working with Whiteley since “Mitt” (2014), Whiteley’s documentary portrait of Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful bids for president in 2008 and 2012.“When you’re presented with a project like this, you think it’s going to be about funny wrestlers and their crazy costumes and their personalities,” Leibowitz continued. “Yes that’s great, and that’s a part of it. But for all of us, it was the tension between Al and Matt that really made this show super interesting, to have this almost Shakespearean battle between these two completely different personalities over this little gym.”Whiteley traces his patient approach not just to his missionary work, but also to a lesson absorbed from an old-school master of cinéma vérité. He first encountered the work of Frederick Wiseman as a film student at Brigham Young University. Then, when Whiteley was making “New York Doll,” his 2005 documentary about the New York Dolls bassist Arthur (Killer) Kane, he saw Wiseman’s “Public Housing,” an epic look at a Chicago housing project. He was struck by how Wiseman would wait a few beats after a question was answered, a process that often yielded some of the film’s most unguarded moments. Whiteley tried the approach with Kane, at one point asking if he was nervous about an upcoming reunion concert. No, Kane insisted, of course not. Then he stared straight ahead saying nothing, looking very nervous.Whiteley’s approach is to spend countless hours with his subjects and try to disappear into the background.Julien James for The New York Times“I’ve never quite had Wiseman’s courage to let situations breathe for as long as they’ll breathe,” Whiteley said. “But I do know I let them breathe longer than I would have had I not seen ‘Public Housing.’ And some of my favorite moments that we have ever filmed have occurred because we’re not cutting yet. Just stay on this moment.”He also likes to zoom in on characters who don’t seem to be trying out for the camera. For instance, he was fascinated by the swagger and authenticity of HollyHood Haley J, whose real name is Haley Marie James and who wrestles with and against her mother, Amazing Maria (Tina Marie Evans James). Haley, for her part, didn’t seem to care much about the project, even blowing off scheduled interviews.“I had an attitude at times, and Greg handled me very well,” Haley said in a video interview from her home in Louisville. “It was all new to me, especially them following me around. I’d try to run and hide and get away from everyone. And then here comes Greg with the camera.”Whiteley is always after what is real, which in this case sets up a rich irony: a painstakingly authentic look at an endeavor often derided for being fake. But for all of their veracity, Whiteley’s projects also make for fine drama, generating high real-life stakes, off the field as much as on, that go well beyond famous athletes winning big games and matches. None of the wrestlers in “Wrestlers“ are getting rich. The kids in the various iterations of “Last Chance U” are just hoping to catch on with a four-year college, or merely graduate and get a decent job. These are very human stories about people just trying to get by.Whitely wouldn’t have it any other way.“We really only have one gear as a company,” he said. “Let’s just tell the true story.” More