Documentary Films and Programs
Roxane Gay on Harry and Meghan
“Harry & Meghan” is interesting if you want nearly six hours of granular information about the Sussexes’ marriage and how their relationship with the royal family fractured irreparably. Though Liz Garbus is credited as director, the Sussexes were clearly in control, at all times. I don’t begrudge them that. For the past several years, they […]
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‘Last Flight Home’ Review: An Intimate Memorial
In the moving, boundlessly humane documentary “Last Flight Home,” the director Ondi Timoner filmed the final days of her father’s life. Her father, Eli Timoner, chose to die at age 92 under California’s End of Life Option Act, which at the time required, among other steps, a 15-day waiting period after the patient’s first oral […]
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Why Alex Jones’s Trial Won’t Stop the Spread of Lies
If it hadn’t been so excruciatingly sad, Alex Jones’s defamation trial might have been cathartic. Mr. Jones, the supplement-slinging conspiracy theorist, was ordered to pay more than $45 million in damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of a 6-year-old who was murdered in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School […]
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Pregnant Men Were a Movie Punchline. Now They’re Horror Villains.
“Men” is a film that does not challenge the gender binary so much as wallow in it. Harper’s ill-fated getaway is suffused with dour shots of fertility idols and portentous biblical references; before she is terrorized by a pack of pathetic and violent men, she chomps an apple she’s plucked from someone else’s tree. Garland, […]
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Nolan Ryan Had a Softer Side. He Just Hid It (Very) Well.
Like the Beatles did shortly before him, Nolan Ryan performed at Shea Stadium and sang on the Ed Sullivan Show. The former is a well-known and well-told part of Ryan’s life, the early days of a Hall of Fame career that eventually launched the Ryan Express as if by rocket fuel. The latter, when he […]
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Making ‘Aftershock,’ a Documentary About Black Maternal Mortality
“Black lives matter because Black wombs matter!” Shawnee Benton Gibson chanted from the stage during a National Action Network rally in Washington, D.C., in 2020. In October 2019, her daughter Shamony Gibson died just two weeks after giving birth. Her death, at age 30, was another grim emblem of a national crisis: the epidemic of […]
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Trying to Capture the Life and Lyrics of That Wry Sage Leonard Cohen
The documentary “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” illuminates the unpredictable paths taken by a singer-songwriter and his music. The directors, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (“Ballets Russes”), trace Cohen’s career from his early days in Montreal to his 21st-century renaissance, exploring his creative process, his spiritual search and how his perhaps best-known song, […]
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The Best Films of 2022, So Far
A little over halfway through 2022, the year in movies has already been intriguing, with one of the best-reviewed releases so far topping the box office. That would be “Top Gun: Maverick.” But if you’ve already seen it and want to catch up on other strong films, I asked The Times’s co-chief critics, A.O. Scott […]
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Ivanka Trump Expressed a Different View on the 2020 Election to a Filmmaker
Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of former President Donald J. Trump, told a documentary film crew in the middle of December 2020 that her father should “continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted” because people were questioning “the sanctity of our elections.” The video, which was played for The New York Times by […]
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