Most people don’t get to see documentaries until they arrive on a home video platform of some kind, whether it’s DVD, Blu-ray, VOD, iTunes, TV, Netflix streaming, etc. Join us every Tuesday for a look at what documentaries and reality programming is recommended by myself and other contributors to the site. As always, if you know of something we missed or should be aware of, drop us an email or a note down below.
Here are our ordered picks for February 24, 2015:
1. Kung Fu Elliot
[Now Available to Stream on Amazon Instant Video] — This documentary is merely entertaining for its majority, and then it gets really, really interesting in the final act. Here’s what I wrote about it at Movies.com during the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival: “The first two thirds of this debut by Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau have a very Anvil! The Story of Anvil kind of vibe. It’s about a happy-go-lucky, rather naive Canadian filmmaker and kickboxing champion named Elliot “White Lightning” Scott who makes very low-budget martial arts action movies. They’re coproduced and shot by his bitterly sarcastic, more down-to-earth girlfriend and most costar a friend of his who might be the nerdiest man in Nova Scotia — he reminded me a lot of American Splendor’s Toby Radloff (played in the movie by Judah Freidlander). In fact, everyone seems like they’ve jumped out of a Daniel Clowes or Harvey Pekar comic. But the filmmakers never seem to judge the subjects, not even when events go a little off the rails in the third act and climax rather shockingly.” (★★★★)
2. Fetishes and Four Other Nick Broomfield Films
[Now Available to Stream on Fandor] — Whether you’re unfamiliar with the work of Nick Broomfield or you’re a fan, now’s a good time for a marathon of five of his films, which just became available to stream on Fandor. There are the two controversial music docs, Kurt and Courtney and Biggie and Tupac, which were my introduction to the filmmaker and his special brand of inquisitive faux-naive first-person investigation. Then there’s two docs involving sex, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam and Fetishes, which everyone should see as a doc option alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey. Finally, they’ve got the non-doc war film Battle for Haditha, which is almost a doc made up entirely of reenactment, if you accept it as such or merely one of the rare great dramas made by typically nonfiction filmmaker.
Here’s what Daniel Walber had to say on Fetishes in Time Out New York’s list of the 100 best sex scenes of all time (it’s number 81): “Fetishes is important because of the way it demystifies the world of sadomasochism, but it remains relevant because of its interest in the personalities of the women who work at Pandora’s Box. [The scene with Maria Betty] is significant because it shows sex workers not simply as the fantasies of clients, but as people on their own professional journeys. (★★★★)
3. Armadillo
[Now Streaming for Free via POV] — I’m not sure of the reason this 2010 Janus Mertz Pedersen doc just become available on the PBS website, but all that matters is you have until March 25th to watch it there for free. It’ll make a great pairing with Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha. Here’s what I wrote about it for Movies.com in a post focused on 2011 Oscar possibilities: “Of all the recent embedded looks at the Afghanistan War, this one involving Dutch soldiers is my favorite, mostly due to how cinematic it is. Between the cinematography and the incredible coverage Pedersen manages by placing cameras seemingly everywhere, the Academy would probably have mistaken it for a fiction war film anyway. Even then, it’s one of the best war films in years.” (★★★★)
4. In the Land of the Head Hunters
[New to DVD and Blu-ray via Milestone Films] — Edward S. Curtis’s 1914 film on the Kwakwaka’wakw people native to British Columbia could be considered the first feature-length documentary, if you’re in the camp that classifies it as a documentary. Otherwise, maybe it’s the first feature-length hybrid? In any event, it’s a piece of film history with enough nonfiction elements to recommend as a Home Pick, and while I haven’t yet seen Milestone and UCLA’s new 100th anniversary restoration release, now retaining the original score (newly recorded, of course), I guarantee it’s an essential set. (★★★★★)
Two-Disc Deluxe Blu-ray or DVD edition features:
- In the Land of the Head Hunters (Restoration of the 1914 version with original musical score, 66 mins, Tinted)
- In the Land of the War Canoes (1973 version by Bill Holm & George Quimby, 44 mins, B&W)
- The Image Maker and the Indians. Making-of documentary by Holm and Quimby (1979. Color, 16 mins.)
- Turning Point Ensemble and the score (2013, Color, 3 mins.)
- Optional English subtitles for the Kwak’wala dialogue on the In the Land of the War Canoes soundtrack
- Documents of Encounter: The Head Hunters Reconstruction Project. (2014. Video, 38 mins.)
- Cultural Presentation by the Gwa’wina Dancers. (2008. Color, 83 mins.)
- Commentary Track featuring Bill Holm, Andy Everson, and Aaron Glass, Edited by Keith Sanborn
- Still Gallery, courtesy of the University of Washington Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and Mick Gidley
5. The Connection
[New to DVD and Blu-ray via Milestone Films] — The same great distributor has another Shirley Clarke restoration for us this week. Here’s a bit from Landon Palmer on the doc via a list at Film School Rejects of filmmaking tips from the director: “Clarke’s work flirts with boundaries. 1962’s The Connection is based on a stage play about junkies and beatniks in an apartment, and the film uses the proscenium context of the original to play with direct address, making the audience a participant in the many events unfolding in a single dilapidated room […] Clarke never used style as a prescription of particular rules, or as guidelines for making a film one way or another, but rather combined styles that are otherwise thought to be mutually exclusive, thus creating something challenging and new in the process.” (★★★★★)
Bonus features:
- The Connection Home Movies (B&W, 6:27.)
- A Conversation with Albert Brenner. (4:35 minutes.)
- Connecting with Freddie Redd (27 minutes.)
- The Connection — Behind The Scenes. (5:50 minutes.)
- The Connection trailer (1:36 minutes)
- Carl and Max at the Chelsea (04:11 minutes.)
- Two 45rpm songs: “Who Killed Cock Robin” and “I’m in Love”
6. Disorder (Xianshi Shi Guoqu Weilai)
[Now Available to Stream on Amazon Instant Video] — This 2009 documentary by Huang Weikai is one of the essentials of the New Chinese Documentary Film Movement (Lixin Fan agrees). And one of the shorter ones, for anyone looking for a gateway in. Here’s an excerpt of a review by our friend Kenji Fujishima, who does it better service than I can while calling it an “anti-city-symphony” thematically detailing “a trickle-down systematic breakdown of law and order” and comparing it to more recent docs Leviathan and Life in a Day: “Among the most formally innovative and visionary works of cinematic nonfiction to come along in recent years. […] All of this is depicted through unabashedly rough black-and-white footage which merely adds to the sense of gritty hyper-reality; ‘stranger than fiction’ has rarely been made so visceral. And there are moments in Disorder that transcend mere documentation, most memorably in a poetic image of a cat chasing after a mouse in a garbage heap, arguably the most brutally beautiful image of its kind since the children playing with scorpions in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Huang orchestrates all of this into a 59-minute barrage of scenes and images that take the pulse of a society teetering on the edge of a moral abyss; it never quite falls into said abyss, but there’s no reason not to think, as the film cuts to black and the sounds of a noisy crowd remain as the credits roll, that it won’t do so in the fullness of time.” (★★★★)
7. Vessel
[New to Netflix Watch Instantly] –This entry previously appeared in an earlier Home Picks. I caught this feature debut by Diana Whitten at a few festivals last year, and while I wasn’t initially a huge fan, it has really grown on me. The first time I saw it, I took it for a simple issue film, a lengthy advertisement for the organization Women on Waves. But it’s more a character portrait of the organization’s leader, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, and how complex her life is as the face and embodiment of her project to provide abortions in international waters to those in nations where the procedure is illegal. The politics and compromises and struggles and failures and successes of and by the organization and how it’s more about an idea and awareness than action is also fascinating, a look at non-profits that turned my cynicism around after such docs as Pink Ribbons, Inc. and Fatal Assistance. Also, with further viewings I’ve really appreciated the music by T. Griffin and Heather McIntosh and the animation by Emily Hubley, Emily Liu and Hsin Pei Liu.” (★★★★)
New to DVD [and/or Blu-ray]:
America in WWII
August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand [American Masters]
Brian and the Boz [30 for 30]
Century of War
Code Black [Nonfics rating: ★★★; Nonfics review]
The Connection [Nonfics rating: ★★★★★] [Also on Blu-ray]
Daughters of Dolma
In the Land of the Head Hunters [Nonfics rating: ★★★★★] [Also on Blu-ray]
Incredible Moments in Aviation
Irreplaceable
Italian Americans
The J. Geils Band: House Party Live in Germany
Joe Cocker: The Legend
Leonardo: From the National Gallery
Mass Extinction: Life on the Brink
Miss South Pacific: Beauty & The Sea
Oratorio for Prague
The Power of the Heart
Richter: The Enigma [Also on Blu-ray]
The Saxon Chronicles
Shakespeare Uncovered Series 2
Sonny and Cher: I Got You Babe
The Whale
When the Garden Was Eden [30 for 30]
New to Netflix Watch Instantly:
The Fluffy Movie
Vessel [Nonfics rating: ★★★★; ]
New to iTunes/Amazon Instant/VOD/etc.:
The Alps From Above: A Symphony of Summits — Amazon
Appalachian Spring — Fandor
American Arab — iTunes, Cable VOD
Armadillo [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — PBS
Attack on Prague — Doc Alliance
Be Seeing You — Fandor
Biggie and Tupac [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — Fandor
Black Orpheus and That Bossa Nova Sound! — Fandor
Citizenfour [Nonfics rating: ★★★★★; Nonfics review] — HBO GO
Class of Struggle — Fandor
Code Black [Nonfics rating: ★★★; Nonfics review] — Amazon, iTunes
A Dancer’s World — Fandor
Dangerous Roads Collection — Amazon
Disorder [Nonfics rating: ★★★★]- Amazon
Fetishes [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — Fandor
Give Me Shelter — Amazon, Vimeo On Demand
God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance [Nonfics rating: ★★★★★] — Fandor
The Greatest Ears in Town: The Arif Mardin Story — Vimeo On Demand
Health War — Doc Alliance
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — Fandor
The Human Tower — Amazon
Into the Clouds We Gaze — Doc Alliance
Inventing to Nowhere — Amazon
Irreplaceable — Amazon
Joyful Work — Doc Alliance
Kung Fu Elliot [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — Amazon
Kurt and Courtney [Nonfics rating: ★★★★] — Fandor
Life Crossroads — Doc Alliance
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau — Vimeo On Demand
Mothers — Amazon
Night Journey — Fandor
OT: Our Town — Amazon Prime
Revisiting Black Orpheus — Fandor
Standing Army — Fandor
Tax Discipline — Doc Alliance
Through a Lens Darkly [Nonfics rating: ★★★; Nonfics review] — PBS
Ultimate Christian Wrestling [Nonfics rating: ★★★] — Vimeo On Demand
Uncle Bob — Fandor
The Vanishing City — Fandor
Watchers of the Sky — Amazon
What’s For Dinner? — Amazon
Must-See Nonfiction TV:
(All Times Eastern)
Wednesday — 02/25
9:30pm: The Amazing Race Season 26 Premiere [CBS]
Thursday — 02/26
1:00am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO 2 West]
3:20am: West of Memphis [Starz Cinema]
7:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO]
7:35am: Gloria: In Her Own Words [HBO Signature]
9:45am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO Latino]
10:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO West]
10:35am: Gloria: In Her Own Words [HBO Signature West]
11:35am: Tyson [Encore Black]
12:45pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO Latino West]
8:00pm: King Corn [Fusion]
8:15pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO]
8:35pm: Bears [Encore Family]
9:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO]
10:30pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO Latino]
11:15pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO West]
11:15pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO Latino]
Friday — 02/27
12:00am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO West]
1:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO Latino West]
1:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO]
2:15am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO Latino west]
4:00am: Grizzly Man [Outdoor Channel]
4:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO West]
11:00am: Finding Vivian Maier [Showtime Family Zone]
11:45am: The Yes Men [Epix 2]
11:55am: The Crash Reel [HBO 2]
2:55pm: The Crash Reel [HBO 2 West]
5:00pm: Last Call at the Oasis [Pivot]
6:00pm: Citizenfour [HBO]
6:10pm: Mad Hot Ballroom [Showtime Next]
9:00pm: Citizenfour [HBO West]
11:45pm: 12 O’Clock Boys [Showtime Extreme]
11:45pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO]
Saturday — 02/28
12:45am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO Latino]
2:45am: 12 O’Clock Boys [Showtime Extreme West]
2:45am: Nas: Time Is Illmatic [Showtime Showcase]
2;45am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO West]
3:30am: Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic [Showtime 2]
3:45am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO Latino West]
5:45am: Nas: Time Is Illmatic [Showtime Showcase West]
6:30am: 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film [Pivot]
6:30am: Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic [Showtime 2 West]
7:15am: Citizenfour [HBO 2]
7:15am: Mad Hot Ballroom [Showtime Showcase]
10:15am: Citizenfour [HBO 2 West]
10:15am: Mad Hot Ballroom [Showtime Showcase West]
2:30pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO 2]
5:30pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO 2 West]
8:00pm: The Hip Hop Project [Aspire]
8:00pm: Soul Power [Starz in Black]
10:15pm: Citizenfour [HBO 2]
Sunday — 03/01
1:15am: Citizenfour [HBO 2 West]
2:00am: Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic [Showtime]
5:00am: Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic [Showtime West]
6:00am: Crips and Bloods: Made in America [Fusion]
7:00am: West of Memphis [Encore Suspense]
7:35am: Tyson [Starz in Black]
9:30am: Standing in the Shadows of Motown [Encore Black]
10:00am: Winged Migration [Starz Cinema]
2:00pm: King Corn [Fusion]
4:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO 2]
4:10pm: Citizenfour [HBO and HBO Latino]
4:40pm: Tyson [Starz in Black]
4:45pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO 2]
4:45pm: Standing in the Shadows of Motown [Encore Black]
5:35pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO 2]
7:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 1 [HBO 2 West]
7:10pm: Citizenfour [HBO West and HBO Latino West]
7:45pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 2 [HBO 2 West]
8:00pm: The Cove [Pivot]
8:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO and HBO Latino]
8:00pm: Pearl Jam Twenty [VH1 Classic]
8:35pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 3 [HBO 2 West]
10:30pm: The Cove [Pivot]
11:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO West and HBO Latino West]
11:30pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO and HBO Latino]
11:55pm: Tyson [Starz in Black]
Monday — 03/02
2:30am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO West and HBO Latino West]
3:25am: Citizenfour [HBO and HBO Latino]
5:10am: My Kid Could Paint That [Starz Cinema]
6:05am: Standing in the Shadows of Motown [Encore Black]
6:20am: Bears [Starz Edge]
6:25am: Citizenfour [HBO West and HBO Latino West]
12:50pm: Stories We Tell [Epix]
3:50pm: Stories We Tell [Epix West]
9:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO]
11:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO Latino]
Tuesday — 03/03
12:00am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO West]
2:00am: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO Latino West]
10:20am: The Yes Men [Epix 2]
4:50pm: Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown [HBO 2]
7:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO Signature]
7:50pm: Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown [HBO 2 West]
10:00pm: The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst — Part 4 [HBO Signature West]
11:30pm: Citizenfour [HBO and HBO Latino]
