White, Ryan (Filmmaker)

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    ‘Pamela, a Love Story’ Review: A Frank Look Back

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    This documentary from Ryan White rewinds, to powerful effect, on Pamela Anderson’s life and fame.Are you ready for Pamela Anderson, ordinary person? Ryan White’s genuinely engaging documentary “Pamela, a Love Story” presents the sex symbol plain, wearing little if any makeup, dressed in a shift and a robe.The story she tells is of a small-town girl — she was raised partly on an island in British Columbia — who endured abuse from an early age. Speaking of the babysitter who molested her, she says, “I told her I wanted her to die, and she died in a car accident the next day.” She attributed the turn of events to “magical powers.”She did possess a kind of magic, being both very pretty and very photogenic. She was discovered via sports arena Jumbotron in 1989. After posing for Playboy magazine, she got famous before she was even vaguely ready for any such thing. “I’ve never sat across from an interview subject before and said, ‘May we talk briefly about your breasts?’” the interviewer Matt Lauer, of all people, states in an archival clip.Anderson admits a longtime romantic predisposition toward “bad boys.” In the ’90s, when she was the bombshell star of “Baywatch,” she wed one of the baddest, the rock drummer Tommy Lee.Her still indignant and hurt recollections concerning the couple’s infamous sex tape, which she has always insisted was stolen property, are bracing.This star’s personality doesn’t veer into any ideology, let alone a feminist one. But when Anderson recalls being deposed by hostile lawyers while trying to shut down the marketing of the sex tape, she remembers thinking, “Why do these grown men hate me so much?” The collision of her good-faith lack of inhibition with institutionalized misogyny makes this Canadian’s biography a very disquieting American story.Pamela, a Love StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Good Night Oppy’ Review: Life (Kind of) on Mars

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      NASA’s Opportunity and Spirit rovers didn’t shoot cinematic-quality footage of Mars, but this documentary offers the next-best thing.NASA’s Opportunity Rover landed on Mars in January 2004 and chugged along for more than 14 years before giving out. (In February 2019, NASA declared the mission over.) Opportunity’s anticipated time in service — a span that Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the mission, is heard likening in “Good Night Oppy” to a warranty — was only around 90 days. Oppy, and to a lesser extent its sister rover, Spirit, which “died” several years earlier, was the robot geologist that refused to quit.Neither rover, alas, shot cinematic-quality footage of the red planet, but in this documentary from Ryan White (“Assassins,” on the killing of Kim Jong-nam), visual effects work from Industrial Light & Magic allows viewers to imagine they’re exploring craters and bedrock right alongside the androids. The orange- and copper-blasted images are convincing enough that moviegoers might be fooled, but the technique never plays like an unreasonable sleight of hand.Similarly, the way “Good Night Oppy” anthropomorphizes the robots might sound like pure Hollywood hokum. (The movie, unusually for a documentary, is graced by the imprimatur of Amblin Entertainment.) But White, through interviews and archival footage, makes clear that scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., couldn’t help but regard these bots as living things.Kobie Boykins, a mechanical engineer who was instrumental in building the rovers, recalls getting tingles at Opportunity’s first steps. Vandi Verma, who sometimes piloted the rovers from Earth, says that each one had its own personality. (Driving a Mars rover, we learn, does not offer the instant gratification of turning a steering wheel, because of the time it takes commands to reach Mars.) In keeping with a tradition observed by human astronauts, Opportunity and Spirit were given a blast of pop music to wake up in the morning.“Good Night Oppy” accelerates the decade-plus saga into a suspenseful series of close calls. We hear of how the scientists had to design the rovers in time to make the alignment of the planets; failing would mean being set back by more than two years. Solar flares damaged the rovers’ software en route. And once “Good Night Oppy” finds Opportunity and Spirit safely on opposite sides of Mars, the movie recounts one near-mishap after another, as the droids survive dust storms, lose contact with the humans, encounter steep drop-offs or get caught in sand. Some problems require scientists to play around in sandbox simulations on Earth.The pace is snappy enough that it’s easy to forget just how long many of these maneuvers took. Sometimes the rovers’ travels from one destination to another lasted years, and it’s hard not to gasp as title cards tick off the passage of time. And while descriptions of the aging robots as experiencing arthritis and memory loss are perhaps too cute, by the end of “Good Night Oppy,” Opportunity and Spirit have become no less lovable as characters than R2-D2 or Wall-E. It’s tough not to feel for their loss.Good Night OppyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Assassins’ Review: Duped Into an International Murder Plot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Assassins’ Review: Duped Into an International Murder PlotA documentary tries to explain how two women were able to cause the death of the North Korean leader’s half brother.Doan Thi Huong, center, in the documentary, “Assassins.”Credit…Greenwich EntertainmentDec. 10, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETAssassinsDirected by Ryan WhiteDocumentary1h 44mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The two women who smeared a nerve agent on the face of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, causing his death, have left a light pop-cultural footprint in the United States. This is especially so given that one of them was wearing a shirt reading “LOL” during the act. Anyone that meme-ready deserves at least one movie.Enter “Assassins,” a documentary from the filmmaker Ryan White (“Ask Dr. Ruth”), which traces with impressive clarity the path that led Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong to Kuala Lumpur International Airport that morning in February 2017. It makes a convincing case that they had no idea they were involved in an international murder plot.[embedded content]Both women — the Indonesian Siti and the Vietnamese Huong — were released from prison last year, with Huong pleading guilty to the charge of causing bodily harm. White’s film suggests that the Malaysian justice system had treated them as scapegoats. Drawing on the defense lawyers and plenty of video evidence, the movie maintains that Siti and Huong were independently recruited as actresses for prank videos. One routine their bosses taught them? Rub baby lotion on a stranger.As filmmaking, “Assassins” is not new: It pulls from the usual paranoid-documentary playbook, inviting the audience to pore over surveillance footage and leaning on a sweat-inducing score from Blake Neely. Its main virtues are a wild story and a stealth sense of outrage. It argues that these so-called assassins became political pawns and had to face the courts without witnesses who might have aided their defense.AssassinsNot rated. In Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, English and Malay, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More