Documentary Films and Programs

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      ‘Polar Bear’ Review: On Thin Ice

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      This Disneynature documentary traces one female polar bear’s journey from cub to mother.Catherine Keener narrates and acts as a guiding ursine presence in “Polar Bear,” the latest Disneynature documentary to be released on Disney+, just in time for Earth Day. Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson, the film recounts a female polar bear’s journey from a cub traveling by her mother and brother’s side to being a mother of her own, navigating the ever-shrinking ice flows and seal population that the bears depend on for their survival.Apart from its flashback storytelling, “Polar Bear” is as straightforward as these family-oriented animal documentaries come, with Keener providing a one-woman personification of the polar bears’ lives. In one scene, as the protagonist wrestles with her brother while their mom hunts a seal, Keener quips, “I wanted to help her, but I was busy.” In another, when the starving family is forced to chow down on seaweed during the lean summer months, Keener voices her distaste of the marine algae like a kid being forced to eat spinach at the dinner table.This can get awkward: Early on, the film establishes male polar bears as a looming threat to its central family, then quickly backtracks when it’s time for our main character to find a mate. But to its credit, “Polar Bear” isn’t just playing in the snow; there’s a very conscious through-line of conservation, highlighting how climate change has negatively affected the Arctic’s ecosystem, and the film ends with a postscript encouraging donations to Polar Bears International.Polar BearRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain’ Review: Influential Rappers, Still Smokin’

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      This documentary by Estevan Oriol chronicles the rise of a group that he has been around since its inception.In 1991, just a few years after Public Enemy released the single “Bring the Noise,” Cypress Hill, a hip-hop trio out of South Gate, near Los Angeles, released a debut that followed that exhortation to astonishing effect. The rapper B-Real delivered his anti-cop, pro-weed rhymes in a taunting, nasal tone, countered by the abrupt barks of Sen Dog. DJ Muggs created beats that were inventively off-kilter and put high-pitched whistles and sirens under and around hooks that were more than earworms — these tracks got under your whole skin.Directed and narrated by Estevan Oriol, a photographer and filmmaker who’s been around the group since its inception, “Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain,” named for one of its signature songs, is an often engaging chronicle of the group (which has sold more than 20 million albums), one that is probably best appreciated by fans. B-Real has harrowing tales of his experiences in gangs as a teenager. As he and his cohorts started to make music, they imposed an impressive discipline on themselves, doing two or three years of woodshedding at DJ Muggs’s home before seeking out a recording deal.Their early music was suffused with threat. One of the group’s first hits was titled “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” and its debut album kicked off with an anti-police song titled “Pigs.” Their stance morphed to some extent as they rapped about what they were in favor of — which is prodigious marijuana use. Whatever the mode, the exhilarating abrasiveness of the Cypress Hill sound held true. And in the contemporary interview segments here the members are modest, soft-spoken, thoughtful and hardly at all burned out.Cypress Hill: Insane in the BrainNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Showtime. More

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      ‘White Hot’ Review: A Retailer Whose Reputation Went Down in Flames

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      This documentary, subtitled “The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch,” is a new film that dresses up old headlines about the clothing company.Pitching yesterday’s fashions as today’s news, the documentary “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch” charts the onetime popularity and subsequent public disgrace of the clothing retailer, which in the 1990s positioned itself as the avatar of aspirational frattiness. In the early aughts, the brand came under fire for selling racist T-shirts and for its hiring practices. Sued for race and sex discrimination, the company settled a class-action case in 2004. In 2015, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Abercrombie in another case, which involved a Muslim refused employment because she wore a head scarf.In this documentary from Alison Klayman (“The Brink”), the “rise” part of the story is patronizing and tedious. Subjects offer inflated descriptions of Abercrombie’s centrality in American life and explain the ’90s in comically condescending terms. “MTV, the Video Music Awards and the ‘House of Style’ television show gave flyover country access to the things that they wouldn’t see ordinarily,” says Alan Karo, a marketing executive. Patrick Carone, a former editor at Abercrombie’s quarterly magazine, enlightens viewers on the concept of a mall: “Imagine, like, a search engine that you could walk through.”The documentary gets more substantive when the “fall” component kicks in. Former employees share descriptions of encountering more or less open racism working at the company, whose advertising courted white, wealthy consumers. But these stories aren’t new (multiple interviewees were among the class-action plaintiffs). And while the movie provides encouraging evidence of how much societal sensibilities have changed, it is fundamentally dressing up well-worn material.White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & FitchNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      The Murdochs, From Page to Screen

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      A documentary series uses new material and archival footage to expand on a New York Times Magazine investigation.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Greed. Betrayal. Family backstabbing. The rise of the Murdochs, the world’s most powerful media family, which was chronicled in a three-part, 20,000-word investigation published in The New York Times Magazine in 2019, had all the right ingredients for a gripping documentary series. Some might say it had “Succession”-level drama.The drama was brought indeed in “The Murdochs: Empire of Influence,” a new documentary series that premiered on CNN+ last month and will be broadcast on CNN later this year.The series relied on the reporting of the two journalists behind the magazine article, Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg, who served as consulting producers. For more insight, the team at the production company Left/Right, which partnered with CNN and The New York Times, used new voices and archival footage to expand on the magazine article across six hourlong episodes. The team even enlisted Mr. Mahler and Mr. Rutenberg to appear on camera.“It can be easy to go off track or speak a little loosely in ways that we wouldn’t in an actual written and edited piece,” said Mr. Rutenberg. “So a lot of the challenge is getting used to sticking to our reporting when we’re sitting in a chair riffing.”Work on the series began in the fall of 2020, said Kathleen Lingo, The Times’s editorial director for film and TV and an executive producer on the project. “It was an opportunity not just to retell the story as it appeared in the magazine, but to expand the timeline into additional events,” she said. “You really get to see how the Murdoch family’s presence in world events played out over so many decades.”Mr. Mahler and Mr. Rutenberg met weekly with the showrunner of the series, Erica Sashin, and a team from Left/Right to work on the script. They took an expanded look at the formative years of the family patriarch and founder of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, in Toorak, a neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. The show also grew to include developments since the magazine investigation was published, such as the 2021 Capitol riot and how Fox News, which Mr. Murdoch founded and is now run by his son Lachlan, covered the events that day.The television editing process took some getting used to, Mr. Rutenberg said.“It’s much harder to go in and tinker,” he said. “If we wanted to edit anything, we had to get in touch with their editors, who’d have to rearrange the timing of the whole episode.”But there were aspects the two men relished about the documentary format.“With a documentary, you can be a little more expansive,” Mr. Mahler said. “We hadn’t had room to get into things in the magazine series that were just a little too tangential, like the strike at Rupert’s plant in Wapping,” he added, citing a workers’ dispute in London, “or the story of the daughter, Elisabeth Murdoch,” Those are topics that they are able to explore in the series.The TV format also lent the opportunity to transport viewers to important scenes in the Murdoch family history via archival images and video footage.“In the section when Rupert first moves his family to New York, you’re able to see that era of New York City’s skyline and the streets while you’re also learning about his personal goals,” Ms. Lingo said. “I love how a documentary can transport you to a specific era or time in a visceral way while also giving you information.”When Mr. Mahler and Mr. Rutenberg began to work on the documentary, it had been a few months since they were knee-deep in the nuances of the investigation. But fortunately, Mr. Mahler said, the fact that they had written the article collaboratively meant they had kept more organized notes than they otherwise might have.Both men watched the documentary about half a dozen times each during the editing process. Their takeaway?“It’s better than ‘Succession,’” Mr. Mahler said of the HBO drama whose Roy family is said to have been inspired by the Murdochs.Mr. Rutenberg wouldn’t go quite that far, but he was certain of one thing: “You can’t watch this and not think ‘Succession’ is overwhelmingly based on the Murdoch family,” he said.Stream “The Murdochs: Empire of Influence” on CNN+. More

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      ‘Women of the White Buffalo’ Review: Speaking Out on the Reservation

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      This documentary sheds light on the destitute conditions in two South Dakota reservations through the stories of the communities’ women.The documentary “Women of the White Buffalo” explores the myriad challenges experienced by Indigenous people on reservations, as well as the historical roots of these social maladies. The story is told through Lakota women living on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations in South Dakota, where rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty and violence threaten the Lakotas’ way of life and future generations.The director Deborah Anderson features first-person interviews with nine women (and one man), ranging in age from 10 to 98, who are trying to heal generations of trauma in their communities. And though the film lacks a clear narrative arc, put together, these stories draw a line between the historical genocide and displacement suffered by Indigenous people and the present destitution on reservations.Vandee Khalsa-Swiftbird is a survivor of sex trafficking who now works on behalf of other victims and fosters a young girl whose troubled mother could no longer care for her. Julie Richards founded the nonprofit Mothers Against Meth Alliance after her own daughter became addicted to methamphetamine. And SunRose IronShell is a high school teacher who helps her students process their traumas through art.Children are featured prominently throughout the film, whether riding horses or dancing in traditional garb. This choice helps plant the documentary firmly in the present, illuminating the past but not dwelling on it. Indeed, the Lakota women appear more interested in solutions and in instilling in Native children a sense of self-worth and self-determination. The way forward, they seem to agree, is to return to their spiritual roots. Delacina Chief Eagle, a young woman who became addicted to meth after her brother died, said of her recovery: “I found myself, through my culture, through my family, through the children.”Women of the White BuffaloNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Cow’ Review: Dairy Cogs in the Machine

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      This documentary from Andrea Arnold takes an immersive approach to capturing the plight of industrial dairy cows.“Cow,” the first documentary feature by the British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, captures the plight of industrial dairy cows by zeroing in on the life and times of one, Luma, up till her unceremonious demise.Devoid of explanatory text and almost wordless, this feel-bad documentary takes a soberly immersive approach, with the cinematographer Magda Kowalczyk often using a hand-held camera to approximate a bovine point of view.Shot over four years at a farm in Kent, England, it’s not terribly unlike a horror movie when the shaky camera, for instance, follows a group of panicked calves — Luma’s offspring among them — being forced onto a livestock trailer and taken on a violently bumpy journey into the terrifying unknown (i.e. another pen).The sound design, for its part, is a formidable creator of dread and suspense; it emphasizes the cow’s breathing rate, which grows distressingly fast during stressful situations. In one scene, a cow getting her hooves trimmed is locked into what looks like a giant panini press; it’s practically a contraption from one of the “Saw” movies, complete with the victim’s darting, terror-stricken eyes.Unlike “Gunda,” another observational documentary about livestock, but with romantic, expressive flair, “Cow” is more of a sensory experience, and it’s a little masochistic. Though its primary takeaway is pretty much the same: animals have feelings, too. It’s an evergreen — if not-so-remarkable — lesson.Thankfully, Arnold — the director of “Fish Tank” and “American Honey,” both dramas with a social realist bent — seems to have a bigger picture in mind. We somehow feel connected to these animals — not by their precious, humanlike relatability — but by the cyclically banal and thorough means with which they are exploited, milked and bred on aggressive schedules that break their bodies down prematurely. Too brief periods of freedom and respite in the form of open grazing punctuate Luma’s life, but for perpetual “employees” like her, it’s all work and hardly any play.CowNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘A-ha: The Movie’ Review: The Creative Purgatory of the ‘Take on Me’ Trio

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      The documentary about the Norwegian synth-pop band plays like a slavish yet intermittently lucid Wikipedia entry.A tragicomic air clings to bands who light up the sky like a firework and fade away. The Norwegian subjects of “a-ha: The Movie” are best known for their 1985 hit “Take on Me,” but, despite successful shows, seem mired in creative purgatory. Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holm’s documentary trawls the band’s career with musings from its three members — Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, Magne Furuholmen and the Ken Dollesque lead singer Morten Harket — and key associates.Bouncing around synth-pop-happy London in the early 1980s, the driven trio of accomplished musicians landed a contract with Warner Brothers. “Take on Me,” with its infectious arpeggios and liberating high notes, made them stars, boosted by a delightful part-animated music video from Steven Barron (who also made videos for “Billie Jean” and “Money for Nothing”).Then what? The documentary reviews the band’s chronology like a slavish yet intermittently lucid Wikipedia entry. We don’t learn how a-ha continued to get the privilege of releasing albums (including denim and shiny-shirt phases at either end of the 1990s) or what kept thousands of fans coming back for more. But we do witness a hundred muted shades of glum and listless: Furuholmen still seems sad about abandoning guitar for keyboards, decades ago, while Harket talks about needing his space. Waaktaar-Savoy’s attitude can be summed up by a sticker behind him in one shot: “No Stupid People.”There’s a slight wonky interest in seeing the grind of recording sessions and fan service. But the film feels promotional enough that it won’t lean into the potential humor of their situation.a-ha: The MovieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘¡Viva Maestro!’ Review: A Documentary in Need of a Conductor

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      A wunderkind conductor attempts to keep young Venezuelan musicians working despite political strife at home in this film from Ted Braun.The Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel earned his reputation as a wunderkind by leading prestigious symphonic groups like the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In front of the orchestras he leads, Dudamel is a live wire, his signature curls bouncing with each wave of the wand. And when the music stops, Dudamel turns his passion for his profession toward advocacy, supporting programs that help young Venezuelan musicians develop professionally.The documentary “Viva Maestro” follows Dudamel, combining vérité footage of him in rehearsals with interviews in which Dudamel explains how orchestras can help young people create a more beautiful world.The film begins in 2017, as political and economic strife in Venezuela forces an end to Dudamel’s planned tour with the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the country’s premiere youth orchestra. Dudamel leaves Venezuela, and the orchestra’s tour is canceled, leaving the young members of the Bolivars to join millions of protesters in the streets of Venezuela. But Dudamel continues to fight for his musicians to be able to perform, organizing international concerts as a way to keep his acolytes focused on a positive vision of the future.Dudamel is a joyfully appealing figure, and the film benefits from following such an amiable subject. But the documentary lacks the rigor it would take to turn this warm portrait into a proper cinematic symphony. The protests in Venezuela represent a major upheaval for Dudamel, even resulting in the death of one of his musicians. But the director Ted Braun does not take the time to show the protests or to explain what has prompted them, and so, much of the film’s conflict feels indistinct. Braun prefers to fondly listen to Dudamel’s musings in interviews. But even the most passionate speakers can come off as rambling with enough repetition.¡Viva Maestro!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More