Tag Archives: documentaries

Berlinale 2021: North By Current

Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan home town after the mysterious death of his two-year-old niece, Kalla. His sister Jesse, the girl’s mother, is a suspect, his brother-in-law David is arrested, Kalla’s cause of death inconclusive, and the family tragedy as a whole is just a lot to process when there are so many eggshells to tiptoe around.

Minax is himself a trans man with a fraught relationship with his Mormon family. As he intercuts present day footage with old home movies of his childhood, it’s easy to see how his sister might have struggled with such an unstable upbringing and addiction issues. Motherhood seemed to have grounded her for a time, but the death of her daughter and her own possible responsibility and/or culpability seems to have both unraveled her but also encouraged her reproduction, replacing one baby with the next before the last one’s out of diapers. Grappling with trauma and depression, Jesse all but refuses to discuss the matter, but slowly their mother starts to open up, but she’s not exactly a great source of comfort to either. In fact, Minax’s mother is quick to point out that she’s lost two girls – Kalla, and the little girl that Minax himself used to be. While Minax’s mother may be entitled to her grief, it’s clear his transition and queer identity are still the family’s biggest challenge – even the murder of one family member at the hands of another is more easily overlooked.

North By Current is a testament of grief, tinted by faith, family, history, and isolation. Spanning topics including depression, domestic violence, motherhood and transgender masculinity, I’m not sure to what extent any true healing or catharsis occurred, but I know Minax, at least, is headed in the right direction.

Sundance 2021: A Concerto Is A Conversation

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Kris Bowers is a rising Hollywood film composer and now he can add director of an Oscar-nominated documentary short to his impressive resume as well.

Having just premiered a new violin concerto, “For a Younger Self,” at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles last year, Bowers felt himself compelled to take a look back at this own lineage and trace the path of his success. Relying on his 91 year old grandfather, Horace Bowers, recently diagnosed with cancer, Kris can follow his road all the way back to Jim Crow Florida, which his grandfather left with only a few dollars in his pocket. Facing racism and discrimination, Horace soldiered on, determined to provide a better life for his family, and if grandson Kris is any indication, he’s obviously done an excellent job. Kris Bowers knows that, as a Black composer, his success has come from the sacrifices of generations before him, and to be able to share his gratitude with his grandfather in such a tangible way is a very moving experience for the documentary’s subjects as well as its audience.

You can watch A Concerto Is A Conversation here, and I recommend that you do.

After The Murder of Albert Lima

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Albert Lima travelled back and forth to Honduras many times, but the last time, he never returned. He was abducted and murdered, and though his murderer was tried and convicted, he remained free.

Albert’s grown son Paul Lima has spent over a decade seeking justice for his father; some would even say he was obsessed. Unable to move on, failed by the legal system (or as he would say: “dicked around”), Paul has the very bad idea to take things into his own hands. he hires two bounty hunters to follow him to Honduras to track and capture the killer, who has since become virtually untouchable after ascending the ranks of drug kingpin. I’m not sure what could go wrong! Some possibilities though: the bounty hunters are inept, murderers are murdery, Honduras is corrupt, the weapons are cheap and borrowed, the law is not on their side, planning is not their strong suit, and Paul is often too busy looking tough for the camera to realize he’s in deep shit.

I didn’t think too highly of the bounty hunters, but I can hardly believe they stuck around even after Paul wonders if this is “kidnapping, per se” (it is). Then again, I also can’t believe the camera operators stuck around after the first gun was accidentally fired in an enclosed space. No one involved in this film is very smart and it’s astonishing that anyone survived to tell the story. What happened to Albert Lima is a tragedy, but a bunch of amateurs pursuing his killer is only going to result in a higher body count and I don’t for one second believe that’s what he would have wanted for his son.

Some movies you have to see to believe. After The Murder of Albert Lima will be available to stream on CRACKLE in the US on March 18 2021.

Kid 90

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Soleil Moon Frye starred on an 80s sitcom called Punky Brewster when she was just 7 years old. When the show ended, she’d had a strange and abbreviated childhood. Only a wild and weird adolescence could possibly follow, but this one she would spend behind a camera rather than in front of it.

She and her friends, all of them young Hollywood royalty, had the money and access to do whatever they pleased. It was the 90s; the internet wasn’t a worry yet, going viral meant something else entirely, they could do what they wanted with no consequences. And they were young: they hadn’t learned yet to be jaded or guarded or filtered. Among friends, they let it all hang out, and it didn’t matter that one of them constantly hauled around a camcorder because behind it was Soleil’s friendly face. Thirty years have gone by, and Frye is only now taking this footage out of the vault to share with us. She’s created a living portrait of a lot of famous faces, but also of a time and place that no longer exists.

Frye’s famous friends include Stephen Dorff, David Arquette, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Jonathan Brandis, Charlie Sheen, Balthazar Getty, Jenny Lewis, Brian Austin Green, and briefer appearances by Robin Thicke, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joey Lawrence, Mark Wahlberg, Sara Gilbert, Corey Feldman, Mark McGrath, Kevin Connelly, and way more besides. Hard-hitting topics covered include Brian Austin Green’s misguided rap album, Soleil Moon Frye’s breast reduction, a live Bronco chase watch party, and the meteoric rise of House of Pain. And more seriously, suicide, a subject that comes up much more often than average within Frye’s set.

Soleil Moon Frye, who is the documentary’s subject as well as its director, constantly challenges the notion of memory – does she remember these heady days correctly? The same as everyone else? Does it even matter? It’s an act of remembering and remembrance – sometimes wistful, sometimes painful, sometimes playful, sometimes tinged with regret. Fry had hundreds of hours of footage but crafts something that is very watchable, and that serves a greater narrative. It’s fun to see some famous faces de-aged, it’s fun that so many of her famous friends were musicians who contribute to the soundtrack. But this, for a young woman who didn’t have a normal high school experience, is her yearbook. Many of the faces she’s lost touch with over the years, others she’s grieved and lost. But these images live on, telling a story with one common theme: we were here.

Kid 90 will stream on Hulu on March 12 2021; the Punky Brewster reboot is already available on Peacock.

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry

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Whether or not you’re a fan of Billie Eilish, you should probably watch her documentary. The music industry has a habit of chewing up and then spitting out female artists and Eilish’s meteoric rise to fame at such a young and tender age would normally be an immediate red flag. Couple that with her seemingly dark personality and you might be tempted to put her on your worry list, but Eilish surrounds herself with a tight-knit family who don’t just care for her – they care for each other.

RJ Cutler’s Billie Eilish documentary has a tremendous amount of access. We get to see her from the young woman first tasting success on SoundCloud to, almost instantly, a global superstar weighted down with Grammy awards. The film follows her while she writes her first album, whether she’s on the road, or at home, or even up on stage, performing to hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of people. And yet Billie, still a kid, doesn’t seem to love the attention, or being looked at, or being treated like an idol. She struggles to write songs, she struggles with quality vs. quantity when touring non-stop takes a toll on her body and she’s unable to deliver the top-notch performance that only she expects of herself. For such a young kid, her work ethic is remarkable, but even more so is her ability to stay grounded. Clearly mom Maggie, dad Patrick, and big brother Finneas have a lot to do with this. Mom will be helping Billie do the blocking for her next music video in the backyard while dad obliviously picks up dog poop. Finneas delivers sitcom-quality pep talks, psyching up his sister as only he can, and only he understands she needs. The two are clearly close, he her writer and producer, as much responsible for her success as she is. They are a team, often together, never seen squabbling, delighting in each other’s success.

Maybe because this documentary is being shot so early in her career, Eilish in her family seem totally authentic and filter-free, not that they have anything to hide. They’re a surprisingly wholesome family, Billie’s biggest complaint that Maggie drives a minivan, an unappealing thought for a teenager about to get her first driver’s license, and her parents’ main concern seems to have been a tweenage obsession with Justin Bieber that’ll really come full circle by the documentary’s end.

Eilish is a massively talented woman with a solid lime green head on her shoulders and her Nikes firmly on the ground. She is a different kind of pop star, not divorced from her image, but not co-opting it either. She’s protective of herself without being jaded. You will hope, while watching this, that she can continue down this path, continue to make healthy choices, and to blaze a path for a new kind of entertainer – the kind that doesn’t have to sell her soul to get what she wants and deserves.

Sundance 2021: Homeroom

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Say hello to the Oakland High School senior class of 2020. They’re a representative sample of kids going to school in Oakland’s public schools, where rising crime rates, cuts to education, and inadequate health care mean the students here aren’t exactly being well prepared for their transition to adulthood.

Peter Nicks’ documentary clearly means to show us how difficult it is to be growing up in this rapidly changing climate – especially for this class of 2020 who of course were cut short by COVID-19. But it also really inspired me. These kids are different. They’re passionate. They’re awake. They mean to change the world. At least some of them do – like Denilson Garibo, for example – if the world is in his hands, I’m super comfortable giving him the reigns. This growing up stuff is tough but these kids are tuned in and ready to take to the streets for what they believe in. Yes the world is changing but so are the young people who’ll be left in charge of it.

The 2020 school year was of course unprecedented in many unforeseen ways and only time will tell how this blip will ultimately affect the young generation who put their lives on hold to wait it out, but this documentary will serve as a very interesting little time capsule that, as interesting as it is to watch today, will be even juicier to look back on when we have a little perspective. So many documentaries turn out to be quite different than what was originally intended, but Peter Nicks lets things roll as they may – and what choice does he have?

Nicks’ camera is a silent observer that can only show us small snippets of a few kids’ lives, but together they draw a very interesting portrait of what it’s like for the youth of today. You will feel heartened to get to know them.

Sundance 2021 Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir

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Amy Tan is the wildly successful author of The Joy Luck Club and more. Her books, and the movies inspired by them, have had a huge cultural impact. The Joy Luck Club is largely credited with being the first mainstream American film with an all-Asian cast – a feat sadly not repeated until Crazy Rich Asians. Tan’s stories reach well beyond the Chinese community, hers are universal tales of immigration, and mothers and daughters.

In Unintended Memoir, we get to understand her work in new depth thanks to a close examination of her own childhood, and her relationship with her mother, even as she begins to lose her to dementia. It’s a dynamic that many of us may find familiar.

Also illuminating is the insight into Tan’s process as a writer, and her struggle with writer’s block. But most of all, Tan is a superlative story-teller, and her true family history is stranger, richer, and more interesting than fiction. James Redford has put together a compelling, straight-forward documentary that has storytelling in its heart, which makes it hard not to love.

Sundance 2021: Misha and the Wolves

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Is the world ready for a post-modern holocaust movie?

Too late. Ready or not, here it is! Don’t blame director Sam Hobkinson, he’s just the guy delivering the bad news, but he’s delivering it because it’s interesting, it’s juicy, and you’re going to be thinking about it for a long, long time.

Misha Defonseca had been living in America for years, hazy about her past until one day she started opening up. As a little girl, her parents were murdered by Nazis and into the forest she fled, surviving thanks to the kindness of the wolves who adopted her. You read that right: wolves adopted her. Which is why she’s practically the Carole Baskin of wolves today (if you live under a rock and didn’t watch Tiger King on Netflix last year, you missed out, but long story short, Carole Baskin is the Tiger Queen). It’s a pretty amazing story, so amazing that a publisher comes calling, eager to make millions off the story, and soon Misha’s story is blowing up. Misha gladly travels all over Europe, accepting accolades, repeating her inspiring story, and seeing her book translated into many languages. Back home, she’s a little more reticent. Oprah comes calling and Misha doesn’t call back. Imagine the temerity! Misha’s publisher is pretty miffed at the missed opportunities, but then again, Misha’s pretty miffed at the publisher, who’s hiding money. So Misha sues the publisher and ruins her name and gets a huge judgement because she’s a sympathetic holocaust survivor and the publisher’s just a bitch who bilked her. But actually, the publisher’s beginning to poke holes in Misha’s story, and a researcher well versed in holocaust investigations agrees that Misha’s story isn’t quite holding up. But to accuse a survivor of lying is pretty delicate work and holocaust denial is pretty unpopular.

Hobkinson’s documentary is more twisty and turny than any detective story, and every time you think you’ve figured it out, you’re probably about due for another hairpin curve. You absolutely need to check this one out and be prepared to do your best sleuthing. It’s not often that a documentary can cultivate this much suspense and sustain it during most of its run. It’s a wild, well-told story that’s an engrossing watch and will pay dividends at dinner parties (or zoom dates) for years to come.

Sundance 2021: Cusp

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Isabel Bethencourt and Parker Hill debuted their brilliant documentary, Cusp, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

In a Texas military town, three teenage girls go about their summer break as if no one’s watching. Drinks, drugs, guns, and toxic masculinity – a terrible combination mostly shrugged off by the girls who don’t know any better way to be. Autumn, Brittney, and Aaloni are so cavalier about their perceived helplessness that it’ll make you sick to your stomach. And yet these girls are representative of so many more that it’s both illuminating and deeply disturbing to hear their thoughts on freedom, consent, and ubiquitous sexual violence.

With a vérité approach, Bethencourt and Hill chronicle the lives of 15 year old girls with sensitivity and truth. Mimicking their lazy, unstructured lives, the camera is merely a witness to the intimate moments within their family homes and their social circles. In some ways Autumn, Brittney, and Aalani are dealing with more adult problems than I encountered in my own youth, yet they seem so much less mature, less equipped to survive these formative years on the cusp of adulthood.

Bethencourt and Hill manage to observe unobtrusively while eliciting organic, surprisingly nonchalant confessions from their subjects. It’s an eye-opening documentary that all parents should see, and take away at least one valuable lesson: to teach your daughters to say no, and your sons to hear and respect it.

Sundance 2021 Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street

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Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street is an easy documentary to love. Not many among us grew up without Sesame Street. The thought is inconceivable. Sesame Street IS childhood. It was a mainstay in our home thanks to my mother’s exuberant rate of reproduction; there was always a toddler falling in love with it for the first time. Although I haven’t seen an episode in years (decades more likely), I could still recognize not just characters but recurring sketches, animations, and songs. This stuff really soaked into my brain, and that’s exactly what it was born to do.

Aimed at preschoolers, specifically those from underprivileged and inner city backgrounds, it was an educational program built with a curriculum to teach to, guided by princes of early childhood development. The people behind the show realized that kids were spending up to 8 hours a day in front of the television set, and wanted to seize the opportunity to give them a leg up when it came to the fundamentals, like abcs and 123s.

Director Marilyn Agrelo interviews from an impressive breadth of sources, including camera operators, actors, puppeteers, writers, songwriters, and more. Jim Henson and director Jon Stone are consulted repeatedly through archival footage, and it’s a pleasure to hear from them both. It’s also quite fascinating to see the joy and the intention with which this show was conceived and created. Of course, the best part is, unsurprisingly, the Muppets themselves. It’s exciting to revisit childhood friends, but it’s also a delight to see Big Bird’s first design, to hear Bert and Ernie address the nature of their very special relationship, to learn how Count got his name, to discover why Oscar was always so very hard to please, and why Kermit felt it was so difficult being green. The show fearlessly took on Big Topics like race, death, and inequality, but they did it with such joy in their hearts and with the very best interests of children in mind that Sesame Street transcended mere television. It has an intangible quality that this documentary does its best to describe.