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      ‘The Storms of Jeremy Thomas’ Review: A Transgressive Producer

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      Thomas’s dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary.If you’re familiar with a certain streak of transgressive independent cinema, you’re likely familiar with the films of the producer Jeremy Thomas, even if you don’t know his name: Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” with David Bowie, and several works byDavid Cronenberg and Nicolas Roeg, including Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel “Crash.”Thomas is, by all accounts, a filmmaker’s producer, and his dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.”Cousins, the man behind the behemoth documentary series on the history of cinema, “The Story of Film,: An Odyssey,” seems more than determined to make Thomas into a household name.Presented as a road movie, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” follows the two men as they wind their way through France toward the Cannes Film Festival, where Thomas is promoting his latest project, Takashi Miike’s 2019 crime thriller “First Love.” Cousins presents the audio of his interviews with Thomas over footage of their travels — in subject-focused chapters titled “Sex,” “Politics,” and the like — edited together with clips from the films Thomas has produced and a plethora of other cinematic references and influences.The whole effort comes across more as an advertisement for Thomas’s genius — and Cousins’s obsession with him — than a true portrait of a discerning producer of outsider cinema. Even Tilda Swinton, a star of the Thomas-produced Jim Jarmusch film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” can only offer platitudes, characterizing Thomas as a “storm” within the industry.You may come away from “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” thinking of him as a fascinating man, but perhaps not as the cinematic prince that Cousins insists on crowning him.The Storms of Jeremy ThomasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ Review: Exhumation at Sea

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      A 1970s submarine recovery operation by the C.I.A. is the subject of this documentary, which prioritizes the excitement of undercover work over any serious consideration of the agency’s legacy.The C.I.A. mission recalled in “Neither Confirm Nor Deny,” Philip Carter’s neat and steadily paced documentary, sounds like the stuff of a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller. In the film, C.I.A. veterans and journalists recount a 1974 U.S. operation to recover a Soviet nuclear submarine that had sunk in the Pacific six years earlier. It’s a high-risk mission made more suspenseful by technical challenges, the looming specter of Watergate and a need for secrecy in the face of scrutiny from Russia and the press.The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies. The goal: obtain valuable nuke data. The tool for the job: a big ship with the ability to snatch the sub and sneak it away to American shores. The cover story: an undersea mining operation fronted by Howard Hughes.David Sharp, who directed the mission and wrote a book about it, is the most prominently featured of the wonky talking heads here. He relates amazing details — like what the U.S. did with bodies of Soviet sailors that were discovered — in the understated manner of a kind science teacher. The Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh, who wrote about the operation for The New York Times in the 1970s, offers a salty insider perspective.Almost in passing, we hear of the C.I.A.’s role in the bloody 1973 overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who was then the democratically elected leader of Chile. In that light, the documentary, with its triumphant account, feels a little too selective in presenting the agency’s legacy, and its title — which seems to celebrate the government’s concealment of its actions from the public — comes across as misjudged.Neither Confirm Nor DenyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘26.2 to Life’ Review: Running in Circles

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      Christine Yoo’s new documentary follows the inmates of San Quentin Prison in California who train to run a grueling marathon inside its yard.Christine Yoo’s documentary “26.2 to Life” tells the story of a unique race: the San Quentin Prison Marathon, run by inmates of the maximum-security facility in California within the walls of its heavily guarded yard.As the film makes clear, with its deliberate, observational style, the mental fortitude required to endure this marathon is extraordinary: The competitors must trace the same tedious loop around a makeshift track more than 100 times to complete the 26.2-mile distance, with only their fellow inmates and a handful of volunteers to cheer them on. It’s not a setting that inspires a meditative state of mind.Many of these men are facing life sentences with little hope of parole, and training for the marathon enables them to derive some meaning from their time inside. “It allows you to feel like you’re doing something normal,” one runner describes. “Like you’re doing something that’s not prison.”Yoo was granted exceptional access to San Quentin, and when she depicts the mundane qualities of life there — inmates working odd jobs, writing letters, passing the time alone in their cells — the movie gains some of the penetrating clarity of one of Frederick Wiseman’s films. The in-prison material also has a lo-fi look that’s a refreshing change from the glossy style of many recent docs, and the various off-site interviews with family members of the inmates expand the scope of their stories in an enriching way.When the movie concentrates on the race, it verges on sentimental, trotting out heartfelt speeches and cloying musical cues — not entirely unjustified, considering the inmates’ tragic back stories and inspiring achievements. But it compromises an already compelling event.26.2 to LifeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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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