2014
>>> Harmontown NNNNN
When he was fired as the showrunner of NBC’s Community, Dan Harmon channelled his rage and passion into a weekly stage show with his friends in the back room of an L.A. comic book store. The show became a podcast, the podcast went on a 20-city tour, and director Neil Berkeley came along to record it.
Notoriously difficult to work with – he’s been fired from almost every gig he’s ever had – but harder on himself than anyone else, Harmon is a self-described “functioning alcoholic” whose need for validation is matched by his insistence on casting himself as the villain of his own life. As such, he’s become a beacon for misfits who feel his social alienation mirrors their own inability to interact with others.
Harmontown places its subject under the microscope as he’s accompanied onstage by (and locked in a tour bus with) girlfriend Erin McGathy, friend and sidekick Jeff Davis and fan-turned-dungeon-master Spencer Crittenden, all of whom defend him lovingly while acknowledging – and dealing with – his hair-trigger emotions and self-loathing.
The result is a riveting, brutally honest and hysterically funny examination of a unique creative talent. Also, there’s some great Dungeons & Dragons gameplay.
Read our profile of Dan Harmon, published in April of 2014, here.
Norm Wilner
>>> To Be Takei NNNN
To paraphrase the famous intro to the sci-fi TV series that made him a star, George Takei has boldly gone where few have gone before.
He’s a pioneering Asian-American actor who refused to play demeaning stereotypes a passionate educator about the massive Japanese-American uprooting, relocation and internment, which affected his family and tens of thousands more during WWII and, with his partner of 25 years, Brad Altman, he’s been a vocal and articulate advocate of same-sex marriage equality since coming out in 2005.
That’s a lot to pack in, so director Jennifer M. Kroot can be forgiven if her entertaining and informative doc leaps around haphazardly.
Everyone from the crew of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise chimes in, including a surly, clearly uncomfortable William Shatner. (Takei’s smackdown of him during a celebrity roast provides the film’s biggest laugh.) Younger artists like John Cho – who’s playing Takei’s Trekkie role, Mr. Sulu, in the current big-screen incarnations – and BD Wong help put his career as an Asian-American actor in context.
There’s lots of footage from a new musical called Allegiance, about the Japanese-American internment, in which Takei plays a patriarch – which makes him reflect on his own relationship with his father.
And a series of clips of Takei on shock jock Howard Stern’s show illustrate the evolution of the actor’s comfort with coming out.
We spend plenty of time with Brad, who helps organize every aspect of his husband’s life. But it’s the velvet-voiced Takei himself who commands attention, whether he’s delivering inspiring speeches, meeting fans at Comic-Con or discussing his popularity on social media.
Stay for the end credits.
Don’t miss our interview with Takei here.
Glenn Sumi
>>> Virunga NNNN
Home to the last mountain gorillas on earth, Virunga National Park in eastern Congo became a flashpoint for political and industrial conflict while Orlando von Einseidel was shooting a documentary there.
The result is Virunga, which almost immediately expands beyond the “gorgeous HD movie about endangered creatures” genre to dig into the corruption and brutality that threaten both the gorillas and the people devoted to their protection. (Be warned, however, that the camera doesn’t shy away from atrocities committed on animals or humans.)
Norm Wilner
>>> The Overnighters NNNN
Winner of a special jury prize at Sundance, Jesse Moss’s thoughtful character study focuses on Jay Reinke, a Lutheran pastor in Williston, North Dakota trying to shelter the hundreds of people drawn by the promise of lucrative jobs in the fracking industry. His message of charity grinds up against a town fearful of roughnecks with unknown pasts, and over time Pastor Jay’s choices seem perhaps riskier and more personal than they need to be.
Moss is an incredibly sympathetic filmmaker, and his master stroke is to structure The Overnighters as a portrait of both an individual and a community. Everyone is allowed a point of view, even when that point of view seems reactionary and ill-informed. In a weird way, that’s America in a nutshell.
Norm Wilner
2013
>>> Blackfish NNNN
Blackfish opens like a boilerplate Hollywood thriller. Calls placed to 911 from SeaWorld in Orlando, playing over the film’s opening credits, set the scene of the crime: “A whale has eaten one of the trainers.”
On February 24, 2010, SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was drowned by Tilikum, a 550-kilo bull orca. Blackfish offers a psychological profile of Tilikum and, in turn, of the humans who want to keep animals in captivity.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite never resorts to “save the whales” heartstring-pulling, even in a film where everyone interviewed – from shaken SeaWorld employees to an ex-whaler tasked with capturing (and killing) orcas – seems to hover on the verge of tears.
She moves carefully from cinematic tropes (those establishing 911 calls) to an investigation of the labour economy of whale-hunting and capture, the spectacle of training them for slack-jawed tourists and SeaWorld’s move into globalization by selling whales to poorly equipped parks across the globe. In all, Cowperthwaite presents whale captivity as an industry like any other.
In doing so, she creates a doc that is more than merely educational. Its analysis of modern capital and the business of entertainment proves as sophisticated and empathetic as the mammals – human and whale – that form its emotional centre.
John Semley
>>> Cutie and the Boxer NNNNN
There are plenty of eccentric couples in the art world, but few compare to Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, the fascinating pair at the centre of Cutie And The Boxer.
One of Japan’s leading avant-garde artists, Ushio is best known for his “boxing” paintings made by punching canvases with paint-smeared gloves, and big sculptures constructed from recycled cardboard. When he moved to New York City in the 1960s, he became famous – there’s a great picture of him with Warhol – but his works didn’t sell.
In his early 40s, he met 19-year-old Japanese art student Noriko. Over the next few decades, she raised their son and became Ushio’s unpaid cook and assistant while her own work was put on hold.
The film opens as Ushio turns 80 and they’re struggling to pay the rent. He’s three years sober, but their adult son obviously has a drinking problem. Collectors express some interest, but no one’s buying. And Noriko begins working on a series of autobiographical drawings inspired by her relationship with her bullying, self-absorbed husband.
Director Zachary Heinzerling gets great access to the couple, whose arguments are full of buried resentments. Look how a discussion of Steven Spielberg’s films segues to a dig about artists’ later works. And it’s great to see the power dynamic subtly change as Ushio is blocked and Noriko finds her voice.
Heinzerling cleverly mixes present-day footage with home movies, old photos and even another doc on then rising star Ushio for maximum emotional effect. What emerges is a complex, feminist look at the act of creation, but also a touching portrait of enduring love.
Glenn Sumi
Our Nixon NN
The key element in this pic about Richard Nixon’s closest aides is the 400 reels of home movies they took during his presidency. Later interviews with the Nixon associates who took the footage – special assistant Dwight Chapin, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and domestic affairs adviser John Erlichman (before the latter two died) – assess events while these movies roll.
Unfortunately, not all the material is gold, mainly because the gang couldn’t shoot straight. Footage of Nixon’s historic China foray is decent, but there’s a ton of repetition – we don’t have to see the White House gardens five times.
The White House tapes figure prominently – Nixon’s homophobic rant is especially wild – but I’m not sure why this film deals neither with the Watts and Detroit riots that so powered Nixon’s paranoia nor the 1970 nationwide student strike that followed the Kent State shootings. Unless the crew thought neither of those things was important, which means they weren’t the most politically astute aides a president has ever had.
But it’s great to see current Secretary of State John Kerry as a young Vietnam Veteran Against the War addressing a mammoth peace march in Washington.
Susan G. Cole
Terms & Conditions May Apply NNN
Terms And Conditions May Apply will make you think twice the next time you click “I Agree” on a user agreement for your computer or mobile device.
You know the situation: you’re signing up for some free service (Gmail, Facebook, Instagram), but before you get it you have to scroll down paragraphs of legalese written in tiny font all-caps. Do you read it? Of course not.
According to Cullen Hoback’s well-researched doc, it’d take about 180 hours to peruse all that fine print each year. But as he and dozens of talking heads – lawyers, marketers, analysts and a couple of celebrities like writer Margaret Atwood and musician Moby – suggest, you’re signing away a lot of freedoms with that innocent little click.
We’re not just talking about the reams of consumer information gleaned from your browser history. In a post-9/11 society, Big Brother is a reality. Just ask the UK bloke who was heading to a U.S. vacation but got detained half a day at customs because he’d texted friends he was going to “destroy America” (i.e., party hard). Or the writer for the TV show Cold Case who googled terms like “wife killer,” “decapitation” and “car crash photos” while working on a script, only to find police knocking on his door.
Unfortunately, these illustrations come late in the documentary, as does a gonzo attempt by the filmmaker to capture Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in a private moment, which could have been a smart motif. Ironically, the dense and serious material can occasionally be heavy going, with no way to scroll down to the end.
Glenn Sumi
The Unbelievers NNN
Biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss are the rock stars of the atheist movement, travelling the world to debate religious fundamentalists and deliver rational, well-argued speeches about finding meaning in the very meaninglessness of a world without gods.
Gus Holwerda’s upbeat doc mostly focuses on the pair’s tour of Australia, where they speak at the Sydney Opera House and a number of colleges despite some minor agitation from Christian and Muslim protesters.
It’s weird to feel unfulfilled by a documentary about people with whom I absolutely agree, but Holwerda’s desire to package Dawkins and Krauss’s ideas in a slick, fast-moving presentation works against the pair’s conversational rhythms – to say nothing of what it does to their more complex arguments.
Everything’s chopped down to a rallying cry, reducing the conflict between secular and theological positions to a simplistic us-versus-them argument that only one side deserves to win.
If you’re already on that side, you can come away feeling empowered. But painting the opposition as blinkered, howling idiots doesn’t really help. It might feel satisfying in the editing suite, but it doesn’t serve anyone in the long run, even the film itself.
Norman Wilner
2012
>>> Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry NNNN
Ai Weiwei helped design Beijing’s Olympic stadium and has been celebrated all over the world. He’s also put himself and his family in danger by taking to Twitter to openly criticize the Chinese government’s draconian policies – leading to his detention for 81 days in the spring of 2011.
Alison Klayman’s documentary follows Ai’s efforts to make art and trouble (sometimes simultaneously) as he prepares for a show at Britain’s Tate Modern and conducts an investigation into the construction of Chinese schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake – which leads to his being assaulted by a police officer and requiring emergency surgery to relieve the resulting swelling in his brain. (He put that on Twitter, too.)
Klayman’s sympathetic lens shows Ai as a man rather than a symbol – and one with a puckish wit that enables him to make light of the darkest situations. But we’re never allowed to forget the risks he’s taking by poking fun at a system that has no sense of humour.
Don’t miss our cover story with director Alison Klayman here.
Norman Wilner
2011
>>> Becoming Chaz NNNN
This story about the offspring of Sonny and Cher Bono as he transitioned from Chastity to Chaz works for three main reasons.
First, though it can’t help but pay attention to Chaz’s pedigree, it isn’t obsessed with it. Second, a last-reel sequence in which families assist young transgendered children with their eventual transitioning process feels very new.
And most important, the film takes an intimate look at the major steps in Chaz’s transition – the hormone treatments, the breast surgeries – and their impact on his relationship with his very candid live-in girlfriend, Jennifer Elia, who’s not comfortable with all the changes.
Impressive.
Susan G. Cole
Bobby Fischer Against the World NN
Genius, champion, madman – whatever you call Bobby Fischer, it only captures one facet of his curious personality.
The American-born chess master eludes classification once again in Bobby Fischer Against The World, which examines his rise and fall through the prism of his legendary 1972 faceoff in Iceland with Soviet champion Boris Spassky.
Director Liz Garbus (The Farm) hangs her analysis on the pop thesis that Fischer was somehow driven mad by chess, avoiding the flip side of that theory, which suggests that the rigidity of the game appeals to people seeking stability. (The famously obsessive Fischer certainly displays Asperger’s-like symptoms in the archival footage Garbus relies upon.)
But there are few things duller than watching people watch other people playing chess, and Garbus never finds a way to bring the sport to cinematic life.
Norman Wilner
>>> Senna NNNN
Hollywood has attempted to make a biopic about late, great Brazilian Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna (at one point Antonio Banderas was tapped to star), but such efforts never made it to the finish line.
That’s okay, though, because the new documentary Senna has all the full-throttle momentum and sweeping emotion any big-budget feature could hope for.
Asif Kapadia’s film tracks the charismatic, cocky driver’s career from his first Grand Prix to his final, fatal race in San Marino. It never lags, thanks to a refreshing absence of typical talking-head interviews. Instead, Senna is composed entirely from archival television material and pulsating footage taken from cameras inside the cars.
Each race comes with its own set of challenges, whether a title is on the line, questionable politics come into play or some heated personal drama raises the stakes. The catty feud between Senna and French rival Alain Prost is certainly the film’s driving force.
Kapadia avoids Senna’s personal life and chooses not to dig deep into his reckless antics, as if too many details would tarnish the near-saintly figure painted here. We can forgive the director these oversights, since taking such detours would only steer the film away from its chosen path.
As it is, Senna is a focused nuts-and-bolts tribute that’s engineered to move you.
Radheyan Simonpillai
Hot Docs 2015 starts April 23. Find out more here.
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