Klayman, Alison

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    ‘Unfinished Business’ Review: Skimming the Surface of Women’s Basketball

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    Unfortunately, this documentary about the W.N.B.A. and the New York Liberty hits the rim and then bounces out — it’s only close to good.This documentary about professional women’s basketball keeps toggling between two subjects so big, each could easily fill an entire series: the W.N.B.A. and one of its founding teams, the New York Liberty. The title refers both to the league’s constant battle for recognition since its creation in 1996 and the Liberty’s fruitless (so far) quest for a title. But “unfinished business” also describes this scattershot film, which is directed by Alison Klayman (“The Brink,” “Jagged”).The biggest asset here, as with the W.N.B.A., is the roster of formidable women. Most of the talking heads are effortlessly charismatic, especially the guard Teresa Weatherspoon, who led the Liberty’s early years, and the 2021 rookie DiDi Richards. The first anchors reminiscences about the 1990s and the second is part of the effort to recover from an abysmal 2-20 season in 2020. (The Liberty’s governor and co-owner Clara Wu Tsai is one of the documentary’s executive producers.)Aside from nail-biters from classic games, the film is hampered by elusions and little sense of drama — Klayman could have mined the Liberty’s rivalry with the Houston Comets much more effectively, for example. And for all the talk about the obstacles women face in professional sports, including sexism and homophobia, there is no mention of the contentious appointment of Isiah Thomas, who had been sued for sexual harassment when he worked for the Knicks, as Liberty team president in 2015.It’s hard to begrudge “Unfinished Business” for emphasizing empowerment and sisterhood, but these women deserved more. They can take it.Unfinished BusinessNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and available on Amazon Prime Video. 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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      ‘Jagged’ Review: The Painful Road to Era-Defining Success

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      This documentary from Alison Klayman catalogs the odds that Alanis Morissette overcame to make her 1995 hit album “Jagged Little Pill.”Alanis Morissette’s megaselling, epoch-defining 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” sounds like an obvious centerpiece for a film. Until, that is, you consider the comparatively low number of documentaries about women in rock and pop, especially focusing on the creation of a record. Just look at how few female musicians are represented in the long-running documentary series “Classic Albums.”Kudos, then, to the director Alison Klayman for getting “Jagged” done in the first place.It kicks off with Morissette’s start as a teen sensation in the 1980s and tracks her transformation into a generation’s electrifying bard. Klayman (“The Brink”) is at her best illustrating Morissette’s candid, thoughtful reminiscences with period footage, and documenting the wild year that followed the release of “Jagged Little Pill,” when the newly minted star toured nonstop, backed by male bandmates who now semi-sheepishly confess to preying on the girls and young women flocking to the concerts. (Morissette has recently distanced herself from “Jagged,” accusing it of having a “salacious agenda” and offering a “reductive take.”)The film, which is fairly conventional aesthetically and narratively, follows the testosterone-laden “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage” in HBO’s Music Box series. Taken together, they paint an unsettling portrait of the structural and behavioral sexism pervasive in the music world — a former radio program director interviewed in “Jagged” remarks, for example, that “it was regarded as a no-no to play female artists back to back.”This makes the vision of Morissette reclaiming her life and art in great, powerful yelps while pacing arena stages in baggy T-shirts all the more thrilling: We know the cost.JaggedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More