Pretend It's a City (2021)

Fran Lebowitz is my spirit animal. She is the quintessential New Yorker. I know her humor isn't for everyone but I could listen to her complain all day. She's incisive and she's usually right. And I love how much Martin Scorsese adores her too. This is his second documentary on Fran. He laughs at her quips along with the us. This works as a series, as we see recurring footage that works in multiple contexts.

The Last Dance (2020)

It's no coincidence that The Last Dance was released at the height of the Coronavirus quarantine, while everyone is stuck at home, while all live sports are on hiatus until further notice. If the world, of sports and period, ever needed saving, the time is now and Michael Jordan maybe the hero we need. The Last Dance features unprecedented footage from Jordan's final season (the second time in 1998--the series ends before the third time with the Wizards) and cuts back and forth between the final season (the eponymous Last Dance) and his legendary career up to that point from the beginning. The time jumping is a little confusing, but it serves for heightened drama. The really unprecedented access is only the final season footage, so it's sprinkled through every episode. At a time when there is no sports, we were pleasantly reminded of the reason we love sports. It's not just the competition, it's the stories. The playoffs are exciting, but it's Dennis Rodman disappearing to Las Vegas that makes them interesting. In recent years, LeBron James and Stephen Curry may have soaked up all the thunder, in an era that the NBA has gone global thanks to Michael Jordan, but Jordan has returned to remind the world who the boss is. He's a competitor at heart; pushed by his drive to take revenge on anyone that ever "showed him up," even if he had to fabricate the sleight. You don't have to be a basketball fan to enjoy The Last Dance. It's accessible to everyone as a reminder of the outside world we used to enjoy.

Blue Planet II (2017)

Blue Planet II is an astonishing 7-part nature documentary series from the BBC. This has taken the nature documentary to new heights. The filmmakers have managed to capture things on camera that have never been seen before by mankind, things that humanity had no idea about.The camera quality is so sharp and beautiful. The camera is patient, and it pays off. David Attenborough's narration is wonderful. There is so much suspense watching the sea life move and act in ways I've never even thought of before. It's a magical series I highly recommend. 

Salt Fat Acid Heat (2018)

Samin Nosrat's Netflix documentary based on her book of the same name is revelatory. It is part cooking show, part travel documentary. She boils down good cooking to four basic elements, each of which she explores in four different different episodes in four different locales. Nosrat is a student of the world. She shows off her Italian and Spanish skills. And she impresses with her knowledge of different food cultures. Nosrat is a character. She gets so excited about food, it is deeply moving to watch her eyes light up with joy and to see her eyes tear up at the beauty. Her laugh is infectious. And her food looks delicious. She is the fun, funny, down-to-Earth culinary-expert friend that everyone wants to have.

Amazing Grace (2018)

I wish I had seen this glorious movie under better circumstances; it has been a tiring week and I could not keep awake, but this is no indication of the quality of the movie. I am planning to see this again because this is by far the most powerful movie so far this year. Now that out of the way...

Amazing Grace is a legendary two-night concert documentary. Filmed in 1972 when Aretha was just 29 at the height of her singing prowess, Sydney Pollack famously messed up by forgetting the clapboard, leaving the audio un-syncable. With new technology forty years later, it was finally possible. And I'm so glad it has finally seen the light of day. Other than the big snafu, Pollack's verite style is a unique and intimate way to experience a concert.

I'm not a religious person. But I feel taken to church. Watching this movie was a transcendent, other worldly experience that can only be explained by the grace of god. From the first words out of her mouth, "Wholy Holy", I began to tear up. It is immediately evident how much gospel music means to Aretha and to James Cleveland (who is also hilarious) and the wonderful choir. It is loving, powerful, beautiful music. And in turn, you see what the church means to the audience, participating in the call-and-response interacting with Aretha and with God.  Amazing Grace was Aretha's tribute to the beautiful American institution that is the black church.

Rat Film (2018)

The documentary Rat Film is a mesmerizing tale of the city of Baltimore told through its relationship with rats. Baltimore is full of interesting characters. Johns Hopkins is, of course, at the center of the story. A professor at Hopkins devised a new rat poison when the war cut off supplies of traditional rat poison from the Mediterranean. But killing the rats is just treating the symptom. A different professor wanted to tackle the disease itself. Ecology fostered an environment that was favorable to rats. By improving the living conditions of Baltimoreans, they would reduce the rat population. But where are the rats today? They are in the poorest neighborhoods, unjustly kept poor by policy and practice. Theo Anthony stares unrelentingly at the cold truths of racism and inequality in the Greatest City in America.

Apollo 11 (2019)

Apollo 11 is a magnificent movie about a feat of engineering and the inspiring human spirit at the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. The movie consists solely of archival footage (and a few animations to demonstrate phases of the mission), including authentic sound. There are no voice overs, no interviews, just pure footage pulled from the archives, some never seen before. We obviously know how it ends, but the movie still manages to be thrilling. The footage speaks for itself. I wonder if I had any memory of the moon landing if I would have experienced the movie differently. I loved seeing all the (mostly) men who worked on the Apollo mission behind the scenes and the many who camped out in their cars to see the launch. It is interesting to compare this to They Shall Not Grow Old, another recent documentary featuring amazing archival footage. Let's hope there's more of that.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

A documentary film of soaring ambition, They Shall Not Grow Old was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London. They chose Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, a WWI-buff who also happens to be an excellent director. After the end credits is a  short documentary narrated by Jackson about the making of the money and it is maybe even better than the movie because he's such a nerd and he's funny. They used his uniform collection to match colors in the movie. They use his authentic WWI weaponry for sound in the movie. They use his WWI propaganda collection for stills. The Museum could not have chosen a more apt director. The discussion about the sound and color and lipreading and look of the movie is fascinating. These are soldiers that had never seen a movie camera before, they didn't even know what to do! He went through hundreds of hours of archival footage they had to enhance and archival sound recordings from the BBC. The amount of research that went into this movie is very impressive.

The beginning and end of the movie, the black and white parts outside of the trenches, are excellent. I admit I fell asleep in the colorized trenches portion. Not because it was bad. In the parts I was awake, it was actually stunning. The color pops in 3D like a moving painting. I love the concept of the movie (and the trailer beautifully, perfectly explains it) keeping film alive. I know it's kind of controversial that the footage was given color and sound. But I think it's a brilliant way to breathe new life into this excellent footage that no one would otherwise have seen, some of which was literally unviewable without his digital restoration. Film is meant to be seen.

Minding the Gap (2018)

Bing Liu has quickly become an essential filmmaker, documenting American life with humanity and empathy. Along with Chloe Zhao, he makes another Chinese-turned-American filmmaker turning a camera on middle America. This film making process is deeply personal for Liu. There is some amateur footage from his early teenage years and he has honed his craft beautifully. The visuals are striking and his storytelling ability is developed far beyond his years. In his debut, he vulnerably puts himself in the hot seat in addition to two of his friends. They know each other from their shared hobby, skating. And we come to learn that each of them skate to escape something, different problems in their home lives revolving around the same theme of domestic violence. Airing the family's dirty laundry for an audience is profoundly brave and therapeutic. You get the feeling that these kids have never talked about their problems out loud, but that being encouraged to is liberating.

RBG (2018)

RBG is a pretty standard documentary about a pretty extraordinary woman. She is reserved and brilliant and an icon. I do think the movie misses two major points in understanding Ruth Bader Ginsburg's career. She was allegedly thought that Roe v. Wade was the wrong case to set the precedent legalizing abortion, as the privacy standard the Court decided on was too weak. As co-founder of the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU, and following Thurgood Marshall's legal strategy for securing civil rights for African Americans, Ginsburg supposedly laments that Roe v. Wade beat her own stronger case to set the important foundation for abortion. The other point that was missed was Bill Clinton's saga of a nomination process. Ginsburg was not always viewed with the admiration that we have for her today. Feminists distrusted Ginsburg, misunderstanding her calculating approach. She was a polarizing figure and it was not a given that she would get on the Court. Though the movie is all about praise, it would have been interesting to explore that polarization during her pre-Court career. And of course, today she is the most iconic Justice of the Supreme Court. The elderly woman is a cool badass. And the movie amply explores her celebrity status.

Three Identical Strangers (2018)

Yes, it is an unbelievable story. But what makes this documentary so special is the storytelling. The story unfolds piece by piece very deliberately, revealing left turn after left turn while giving hints along the way if you were paying close enough attention. I often do not pay close enough attention, and so the filmmakers replay key foreshadowing moments. And then it clicks and you go "oh, of course".

Shirkers (2018)

Shirkers is a very personal documentary. Sandi Tan is an honest and open storyteller. The strange music coupled with the grainy film images without sound make for a mesmerizing and mysterious tone. Sandi, Jasmine and Sophie are actually really funny, and as students of the cinema there are abundant references to film history. Today, they have separated but they all work in film in one way or another. Tan and her two friends and her teacher set out to make an indie road movie in 1990s Singapore, a first for the island whose film industry has now further developed but was nascent at the time. Shirkers, the movie that could-have-been, is a poetic take on Catcher in the Rye (and dare I say there is a tinge of Donnie Darko too). Now that she has the footage, she theoretically could start post-production and fulfill her dream, but instead with this documentary, she ended up with a more interesting and meditative movie on dreams, power, time and the movies.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) & The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead is the accompanying documentary to the long awaited "The Other Side of the Wind". Not only is this a making-of documentary, but it also assists in deciphering the very experimental movie. This is important because the saga of the making of the movie is the majority of the allure. And in its own meta way, the ordeal of the creation of "The Other Side of the Wind" is self-referential. You see, the "The Other Side of the Wind" is about the final day of director Jake Hannaford, who is extraordinarily Orson Welles-like, who is struggling to finish a movie called "The Other Side of the Wind". Welles may have said that the movie was not autobiographical, but the documentary insinuates so much as fact. And the documentary is quite interesting because Welles was a character.

The ironic film-within-a-film structure is trippy. Welles was supposedly parodying Michelangelo Antonioni, whose style he abhorred. He does so with such disdain, it is actually spot on, very pretty looking but wondrously empty and wordless. The broader film is shot in documentary style. It seems as though Welles pioneered the modern documentary style. Though in reality, he was so far ahead of his time that we still have not caught up. Documentarians follow Hannaford's every move, on different cameras, in different colors and aspect ratios. And they're all cut together very quickly. The edits are lightning fast accompanied by a jazz score. It's so fast it is impossible to follow. And it makes the task of cutting together someone else's hours and hours of footage a gargantuan task. I don't think it's Netflix's fault that the movie is so incoherent, Orson Welles just left us with a really difficult movie. Too artsy for me.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

A lovingly-made tribute to one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century, a television pioneer, and a decent man at a time such people are hard to find. You cannot overstate the number of lives Fred Rogers touched, teaching young children how to navigate the world by treating them like people, acknowledging their feelings and helping them understand the complex world around them. I hadn't realized how much thought he put into this show to really get a message across to the kids. Children's programming today is totally devoid of content and this would appall Mr. Rogers. Maybe I would emote better had I watched Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Maybe I would have watched it if it was a little less creepy. Something as simple and mundane as puppets, but they're some creepy looking puppets. At the beginning of television, Mr. Rogers was there. All in all he filmed over 1500 episodes. Some iconic highlights that are featured in Morgan Neville's documentary: RFK's assassination, Francois Clemmons and Fred Rogers soaking their feet in the pool, Koko the Gorilla, quadriplegic Jeff Erlanger, the Challenger disaster, and 9/11.

Free Solo (2018)

Alex Honnold is a crazy free solo climber. Alex Honnold is a free solo climber, and that is crazy. Alex Honnold is crazy, so he free solo climbs. All true statements. This documentary from National Geographic is a character study of a madman preceding the main attraction, the first and only free solo climb of El Capitan at beautiful Yosemite National Park. The camerawork, filmed by drone and by professional climbers/cameramen hanging off the face of the rock is stunning. There are some really incredible shots. And I appreciated that they also discuss the ethics of filming a free solo climb. It adds pressure to the climber, who has no ropes, who could fall at any moment. There are many points along the route where he is barely even hanging on. The stakes could not be any higher. Honnold is quite a funny and charismatic subject. I admit, I fell asleep a little around the one hour mark. I wanted to get to the main show, which does deliver.

Quincy (2018)

This intimately presented biographical documentary is a talented daughter's love letter to her extraordinary father. Rashida Jones's amateur camerawork is full of love. She interviews her dad on camera asking questions the way only a family member could. Quincy Jones is naturally comfortable just chatting among family.  The movie jumps back and forth between two time lines, both marching to the present with tons of old photographs and home video, some really incredible footage from the 1930s/40s. I really like how Quincy soothingly narrates much of his own life story and there are audio clips and cameos of plenty other famous people who have worked with Quincy. It's a really touching movie with a great soundtrack and a fascinating subject.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017)

This documentary is just a bit too long. It's quite beautiful but I fell asleep it was so long and kind of slow (sort of Japanese-style slow). Ryuichi Sakamoto is a legend. His music is stunning--the soundtrack to . And his career is very impressive, not just as a composer but as an actor, music star, activist, etc.

Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

Searching for Sugar Man is an incredibly unlikely story. It's a tale of what-could-have-beens. Rodriguez is a musician from Detroit of immense songwriting talent and a good voice to go with it. He released an album in the late 60s that did not do well in the United States. Unbeknownst to him, his music was the soundtrack of a generation of Afrikaaners. On the other end, the Afrikaaners knew little about Rodriguez, just that his music spoke to them. Rodriguez has been living a normal life out of the spotlight. The documentary is one-part history, one-part investigation, one-part revelation, and all parts humanity itself.

Step (2017)

This is a documentary about the greatest city in America...Baltimore, Maryland. Not only do we root for these kids featured in the documentary, but so does the community at large. Baltimore is a real tight-knit community. We really care about these kids. We want them to succeed. It pains us to watch them fail. It joys us to watch them win. And their lives make us feel all sorts of feelings to watch these girls struggle. Because the struggling kids stand in for the struggling city. Baltimore has great potential, but it sometimes struggles to reach it.

Fire at Sea (Fuocammare) (2016)

There are some really beautiful moments in this hard hitting documentary. It's sometimes hard to watch--teh camera forces us to stare the crisis in the face when many Europeans would rather turn a blind eye. Refugee documentaries like this are really devastating. But there is so much life in these people that have gone through hell and back to reach opportunity. The movie is really slow (and music-less), intentionally so. But it is mesmerizing. It is kind of an interesting concept to mix documentary with staged scenes. But the metaphor is brilliant and unmistakable. The young Lampedusan boy is adorable. He supposedly has a lazy eye and so he wears an eyepatch to force him to train his weaker eye. The metaphor, of course, is that Europe must train itself to see with its other eye the pain that these refugees have suffered. There is a staged scene where the boy sees a doctor and discusses his anxiety, an anxiety that is common among locals dealing with the influx of refugees. The boy is supremely Italian in this scene, as he "acts"--the intonation of his voice is so Italian. But it is that scene that it really all clicks. And you see how brilliant Gianfranco Rosi's direction is.