DRONE starts from the presumption that remotely piloted airborne vehicles are a bad idea – they turn actual combat into video games that remove any risk to the pilots and thus distance them from the consequences of their lethal actions. By the end of the picture, you’ll find it hard to disagree with that argument. Interviewing pilots, developers and victims of drone strikes, the Norwegian filmmaker explores this disturbing new trend in long-distance warfare – and what it’s doing to geopolitics and the rules of engagement. She makes a compelling argument that we’ve already lost control of the machines. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
HE NAMED ME MALALA‘s Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) observes young, global icon Malala Yousafzai as she makes speeches and accepts awards, but also in her home life, squabbling with her brothers and feeling awkward at her Birmingham school. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION traces the rise and fall of Black America’s most militant movement. The doc has a little bit of everything good: mercurial personalities, passion and plenty of drama.
Mining interviews with former Panther members – and the police officers who mercilessly attacked them – and a whack of stunning archival footage, the film tracks the way a community woke up and how the group found its political footing and then fell apart. (See full review).
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Available: iTunes
Amy Winehouse
AMY opens with footage of the young Amy Winehouse singing Happy Birthday at a friend’s party. She is 14 years old, and half her life is already behind her.
Reconstructing Winehouse’s life (and death) by marrying more than a decade’s worth of footage to archival interviews with the singer and new audio recordings with the people who knew her best, the doc reclaims her legacy from the clutches of the tabloids. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
Tim “Nailer” Foley (left) is part of an anti-immigration force in gripping doc Cartel Land.
CARTEL LAND is cut like an action movie, with director Matthew Heineman accompanying paramilitary forces into free-fire raids to capture drug lords in Mexican bodegas, Cartel Land is an unapologetically cinematic take on the crime documentary – breathless, intense, spectacular.
Heineman rides along with two civilian militias that have formed in recent years to combat the lawless thuggery of the Mexican drug industry. His footage of the Michoacán Autodefensas – formed by physician José Manuel Mireles to stop cartel forces from occupying entire towns – is immediate and terrifying, revealing both the cost of resistance and the inevitable corruption of the righteous. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
Lavender Menace supporters fight for their rights.
SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY sees feminist activists look back in this survey of the American women’s movement’s rebirth in the late 60s. “Survey” is the operative word here director Mary Dore glosses over the issues. But who can blame her when you have to cover equal pay, reproductive choice, childcare, sexuality, women’s health and everything else? What issue is not a women’s issue? Regardless, it’s moving to see the likes of Kate Millett (Sexual Politics), Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will) and the late Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic Of Sex) speaking out in their heyday, and the recent interviews with influential activists of the 60s and 70s are even more stirring. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE director Amy Berg’s thorough documentary on blues-rock legend Janis Joplin has many things going for it, including unprecedented access to Joplin’s letters and to her family and friends, who speak candidly about the famed singer/songwriter.But it’s the footage of the charismatic Joplin herself that makes this pic so exhilarating. Early performances are gloriously incendiary, but the multi-talented artist also was a painter in high school and a surprisingly deep thinker with uncommon intelligence. (See full review).
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Available: Netflix
Ex-Scientologist Paul Haggis speaks openly about his experience in Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief.
GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF proves that while many faiths make space for doubt, this doc demonstrates that one belief system uses it as a weapon. Alex Gibney’s highly anticipated documentary puts as much of Lawrence Wright’s 2013 book as possible into two hours of screen time, exploring the history of L. Ron Hubbard’s manufactured religion and the damage it’s done to its followers thanks to a structure built around courting celebrity members and exploiting everyone else. (See full review).
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Available: iTunes
CHAMELEON follows Ghana’s foremost investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas as he researches a series of exposés – busting an abortion provider who insists on having sex with his patients, freeing women forced into prostitution, rescuing children from an abusive religious cult. Anas – who brings police and government officials into his probes to ensure his targets don’t just disappear when he catches them in the act – has become a superstar in his homeland, and he’s a charming, appealing subject. (See full review).
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Available: iTunes
THE LOOK OF SILENCE – Joshua Oppenheimer’s companion piece to his brilliant 2012 documentary, The Act Of Killing – sees optometrist Adi travel through Indonesia discussing the 1965 military coup that enabled the slaughter of 1 million suspected Communists with patients who either deny their involvement or rationalize it into nothingness. In the previous film, Oppenheimer allowed his subjects to literally shape their memories into movies, which gave the experience a slight ironic distance and allowed the disconnect between the perpetrators’ self-mythologizing and their monstrous deeds to sink in slowly. (See full review).
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Available: iTunes
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