Plan C is an illuminating, inspiring, and impeccably researched analysis of the modern fight for reproductive rights and the risks women take to bring access to all under governments that seek to silence them and with the threat of violence always looming. Superbly stirring, and terribly timely.
Fantastic Machine has some interesting insight on the power of a camera here-or-there - along with an impressive collection of archival footage - but the overall structure feels very scattered, and without a strong central thesis tying it all together, it’s hard to engage.
Is Anybody Out There? is emotionally enlightening and empowering, emphasizing how important it is to find those who make you feel less alone in this world, centered around a woman with a disability so rare no reliable statistics for it exist. Lovely and life-affirming.
STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie honors the life and work of Michael J. Fox with heartwarming honesty and structures its story with subversive style and inventive editing. It’s full of intimate insight and never shies away from the star’s struggles, but also never forgets to have fun.
A Still Small Voice is an achingly affecting analysis of the emotional and existential cost of being a hospital chaplain in spiritual care, and how to find hope and meaning in seemingly hopeless and meaningless situations. Almost unbearably unflinching, but all the better for it.
Judy Blume Forever is such an openhearted ode to the iconic author and all she’s given to girls by breaking every barrier imaginable and starting uncomfortable conversations about sexuality no one else would. A resonant tribute to the relationships she formed with readers.
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields is insightful, inspiring, and infuriating simultaneously. An incisive analysis of not just the media’s sexualization of Brooke Shields, but of all young women, and how Shields reclaimed her agency and became the author of her life and an American icon.
Deep Rising takes an important and imperative issue - deep sea mining - and covers this conversation in the most plain and perfunctory manner possible. It sparks to life when Jason Momoa is narrating over vibrant visuals of our oceans, but dulls everywhere else.
Kim’s Video is such a welcome surprise, functioning as a nostalgic ode to the culture that video stores cultivated, a plea for the preservation of physical media, and an unexpected documentary/heist film hybrid that proves endlessly entertaining. It’s stretched a little thin (even at 90 minutes) and could’ve used more spirited narration, but all film fans will find something to enjoy here.
Little Richard: I Am Everything is sometimes too straightforward and standard of a documentary to truly capture the spirit of its central star, but it comes together in the end by offering a comprehensive - and most importantly, honest - look at its subject’s entire life and all its ups and downs, from the industry’s erasure of his work to his lifelong struggles with his sexuality.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Sr. is a lovingly crafted and life-affirming look at family, filmmaking, and finding enjoyment in everyday existence by making memories with what you have right in front of you. A celebration of Robert Downey Sr.‘s career and farewell between father and son that nevertheless still affects all audiences. One of the best documentaries of the year, and potentially even an Oscar frontrunner.
Moonage Daydream is an explosively engrossing, once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience that resurrects the style, soul, and spirit of David Bowie for 2 1/2 hours, immersing us not only in a seemingly never-ending showcase for his most famous songs, but also in the entirety of his beautifully aberrant and brilliantly audacious artistic identity. It’s a miracle of a movie, plain and simple, and I’ve never seen anything like it.
(This one holds a special place in my heart too, because there are few…