In the opening moments of “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” a new documentary about the late television host and author, now playing in theatres, we hear the titular character’s voice state the obvious. “This does not have a happy ending,” he says.
For fans of Bourdain, the former heroin addict chef-turned-author-turned-television-star-turned-cultural-avatar, “Roadrunner” comes with high expectations.
The edgy but empathic Bourdain, who was 61 when he took his own life while shooting a television show in France, inspires strong feelings. A standard, hagiographic look at his life, rehashing the well-known details of his career, would be met with a collective yawn. Get too prickly and it might be seen as disrespectful to the memory of a man many still miss.
“Roadrunner” somehow straddles the line, providing a balanced overview of the scrappy chef’s personal and professional lives. Using outtakes from Bourdain’s shows “No Reservations,” “The Layover” and “Parts Unknown,” new interviews with friends and family and home footage, director Morgan “20 Feet from Stardom” Neville compiles a Russian nesting doll look of his subject.
What emerges is a deep dive into the life a complex man; a person who circled the globe dozens of times searching for meaning with every air mile point earned. “His whole personality was of a searcher,” says Alison Mosshart, the vocalist of The Kills and The Dead Weather. “He was always looking for something, and it was agony for him.”
Neville captures some of that agony, forcing the viewer to see familiar footage recontextualized by Bourdain’s co-workers and friends. With no shortage of material to choose from—Bourdain’s 250 days a year on the road were meticulously filmed and documented—Neville cherry picks moments that reveal the toll Bourdain’s schedule, celebrity and search for normalcy took.
Often the most revealing footage isn’t of the man speaking, but of the exhausted or melancholy look visible in his eyes as he performs for the camera. “Life was never going to measure up to how he pictured it,” says “Parts Unknown” segment producer Helen M. Cho. “He set himself up for disappointment.”
The circumstances of his death, of course, are investigated. His colleagues become tearful describing his last months as a lifelong addict who turned his addition to Italian actress and director Asia Argento. “Roadrunner” examines Bourdain’s final days but this isn’t a whodunnit or an exercise in pointing fingers. It’s a story about his life, not death.
“Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” provides an emotionally raw portrait of a gifted, charismatic man who travelled the world but never quite figured out where he needed to be. “You are not going to outrun or out smart pain,” comments artist David Choe, who provides the movie with a suitably Bourdain-esque ending.
Fifty-two years ago, during a hot, sticky New York summer, a music festival was filmed for posterity in front of a gigantic crowd. No, it’s not “Woodstock.”
That happened, but I’m talking about The Harlem Cultural Festival, a star-studded, six-week extravaganza featuring everyone from Stevie Wonder and the 5th Dimension to Mahalia Jackson and Nina Simone that drew tens of thousands of people to Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The concerts were filmed, but when no taker could be found for the footage, it sat, unseen for fifty years in the basement of a producer named Hal Tulchin.
Now rescued and wrestled into a two-hour documentary by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots, it brims with excitement, pain, hope and, of course, dynamic performances and great music.
Part concert documentary, it’s a must see if only for Nina Simone’s performance of “Backlash Blues.” It is just one of the dozens of musical numbers, all expertly curated by Questlove, but here there is no sense of nostalgia, just the pure power of performance.
Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples bring another emotional highlight, duetting on Martin Luther king Jr.’s favorite gospel song “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” The civil rights leader was assassinated the year before, and their singing brings out both the beauty and the ache inherent in the song and the circumstances.
Also deftly woven in are remembrances from people who were there, on stage and off. Marilyn McCoo wipes away a tear as she watches the footage of her band The Fifth Dimension. New York Times journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault helps set the scene politically and culturally while
Rev. Jesse Jackson recalls the story behind the electric performance pf “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”
Far from simply using the music and the festival as a framework for the film, Questlove mixes in, with the expert hand of a DJ who understands rhythm and syncopation, archival news footage and contemporary interviews. This approach provides much needed historical context and makes the effect of the music even more impactful.
The Harlem Cultural Festival took place at a time when music was changing—you hear the influences of Latin Jazz and soul and gospel, all brewing together to create something new—and as the world changed. “Summer of Soul” is the rare music documentary that balances the historical with the musical with such grace and power.
“The Dissident,” now available on VOD/Digital, is a detailed documentary about the October 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist and political commentator Jamal Khashoggi that plays like a thriller.
With over two million Twitter followers, Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian dissident, author, columnist for The Washington Post, was the most famous political pundit in the Arab world. An outspoken critic of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi lived in exile and, in October 2018, entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to file some papers related to his upcoming marriage.
He never left the building.
We now know he was killed and dismembered with bone saws in the consulate, but it was two weeks, and hundreds of headlines later, when forensic evidence uncovered the brutal slaying and a cover-up that suggested Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s grisly slaughter.
Director Bryan Fogel goes behind the headlines, meticulously sorting through the information and misinformation to provide chilling context to the tragic events surrounding Khashoggi’s assassination. Using talking head interviews with the late journalist’s friends and colleagues, stylish graphics and even animation, he gives the film a forward momentum that dismantles a global cover-up and culminates in an unsettling retelling of the murder by a forensic expert who coolly reads a transcript made from tapes of the event. It is disturbing to say the least, made more so by the clinical presentation.
The hard-hitting “The Dissident” does not mince words. It occasionally feels like a story that could have come straight from the pen of Frederick Forsyth or John le Carré, but as it examines the machinations of Khashoggi’s death, it also paints a picture of his values and love of his country. It is urgent filmmaking that unequivocally points the finger of guilt at bin Salman and wonders aloud about the fate of others who wish to speak their minds in the face of a free speech clampdown. There isn’t much new information here, just expertly presented facts.
“Totally Under Control,” the title of the new Alex Gibney now on VOD, is a bad joke. Kind of like nicknaming a tall guy Tiny it’s an ironic, sarcastic comment on President Donald Trump’s repeated denial of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Made in secret over the five months leading up to the U.S. Presidential Election, it features damning interviews with scientists, medical professionals and government insiders.
The opening narration sets the stage, not that anyone alive needs reminding that we are living in very strange times. “2020. Since the 1980s, it’s been a magical year for science fiction writers, the year of predictions about the future, and the ruthless power of technology and humanity would be bound together by a world wide web. Artificial Intelligence would exponentially expand the powers of the human mind. And the world would be dominated and controlled by information based mega corporations without need for government intervention. But all that turned out to be a technocratic illusion when nature set loose a terrible disease that took advantage of the very connectivity we had manufactured.”
The narration goes on to say, “At a moment of crisis the world’s most powerful nation didn’t rise to the occasion it descended into division and chaos,” before asking the million dollar question, “Why did it fail to reckon for a danger for which it should have been so well prepared?”
To answer the question Oscar winner Gibney with co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger invented the “Corona Cam,” an easy and sanitary way to do interviews—this does not look like a Zoom meeting—to interview a variety of experts like whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright who says, “We, the scientists, knew what to do for the pandemic response. The plan was in front of us, but leadership would not do it.”
Add to that recent newsreel footage, investigative reporting and ominous narration and you have a portrait of catastrophic systemic bungling, beginning in January 20, 2020 when the U.S. and South Korea both discovered their first cases of COVID-19, that has left hundreds of thousands dead, many hundreds of thousands more ill with side effects that will linger for years and an economy in tatters.
It’s a haunting collection of facts that would be unbelievable if it wasn’t true. Gibney, Harutyunyan and Hillinger’s aim to expose “a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of Presidential leadership,” is methodical and urgent, digging behind the headlines to reveal a timeline that should be of concern to everyone reading this or watching the film. It is a difficult watch, not because it isn’t slickly made but because it an infuriating reminder of how we got into this situation.
The movie’s tagline says it all, “The truth will make you sick.”
Swedish filmmaker Nathan Grossman has been documenting teen activist Greta Thunberg since before she became a worldwide cause célèbre. From her early protests encouraging a “School Strike for the Climate” to her famous journey across the Atlantic Ocean en route to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, Grossman was there assembling the footage that became “I Am Greta,” a new documentary now playing in theatres.
Charting the course of the polarizing eco warrior’s life and career in two flashpoint years, 2018 and 2019, Grossman paints a glossy but ultimately superficial portrait. His unprecedented access to his subject allows for a lively look at Thunberg’s concerns about climate change, punctuated by her fiery addresses to world leaders.
The incendiary headline making speeches are all represented here—”You lied to us,” she admonishes London’s Parliament. “You gave us false hope.”—and her, “We haven’t taken to the streets for you to take selfies with us and tell us you admire what we do,” dismissal of bandwagon jumping celebs is as zingy a barb as we’re likely to hear from a public figure but as exciting as those public moments are Grossman never gets really up close and personal with his subject.
In part it’s understandable. Thunberg is a public figure who has been open about her activism and Asperger syndrome, which she describes as a superpower that allows her to cut through the information overload of her cause and focus on her mission, but she’s also a young woman thrust into the glare of a judgmental press and public. She isn’t obligated to reveal her personal life but the title “I Am Greta” promises insight that never appears.
Still, as a verité depiction of a time when the world was focused on Thunberg’s methods and important message, “I Am Greta” is sure to interest her supporters.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, all David Arquette wants is some respect. The “Scream” and “Eight Legged Freaks” actor and sometimes wrestler is the subject of “You Cannot Kill David Arquette,” a new documentary, now on VOD, that traces his journey to redemption in and out of the ring.
You likely know Arquette as part of the famous Hollywood family. His grandfather Cliff was a well-known comedian, his father Lewis was best known for playing J.D. Pickett on “The Waltons,” and his four siblings, Rosanna, Richmond, Patricia and Alexis (whop passed away in 2016) all became successful actors. He was once married to Cortney Cox and has been acting since his teens. Like everyone with a long career he’s been in hits and flops but, according to the documentary, “Scream,” the movie that made him a star also type cast him as a goofy, dim witted guy and ruined his serious acting career.
It was another movie, however, that sent him in a different direction. The actor was always a wrestling fan but “Ready to Rumble,” the story of a pair of slacker wrestling fans upset by the ouster of their favorite character by an unscrupulous promoter, brought him into the wrestling biz. Brought into Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, he became a comic relief attraction and eventually winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It was a marketing attempt, but wrestling fans were incensed that an interloper, a Hollywood actor, could take the championship away from “real” wrestlers. He became the he most hated man in pro-wrestling and gave up the ring for eighteen years.
Ostracized by Hollywood and the wrestling world, he battled substance abuse, a public divorce and a life-threatening heart attack. It’s here “You Cannot Kill David Arquette” begins.
Battling self-esteem issues—he frequently refers to himself as a loser—and the backlash that set him professionally adrift, Arquette, at age 48, and unable to get the acting auditions he wants, attempts a return to the ring. Like a flies-on-the-wall directors David Darg and Price James follow the actor as he loses fifty pounds, quits smoking, practices, gets his ass kicked, rehearses on the streets of Mexico and in one harrowing sequence, suffers a serious injury during an aptly named death match.
Wrestling takes up a great deal of screen time and it is clear that this is meant, in part, to be Arquette’s love letter to the sport, the important stuff in the film happens outside the ring. Arquette is laid bare here, exposing his struggles in a raw and candid way. He lays it bare, telling his tale on his own terms. It’s a story of personal redemption that never quite feels fulfilled, but Arquette’s directness and eagerness to set things right, if only in his own mind, is compelling.
Many parents wonder what kind of world their children will inherit. The question played on filmmaker Damon Gameau’s mind so he did a deep dive. The result is “2040,” a relentlessly upbeat documentary about what a sustainable, environmentally aware world would look like in twenty years when his daughter Velvet will be 25 years old.
Crew in tow, Gameau heads off for a worldwide trip to study how various countries are utilizing already existing technology to combat climate change. But instead of heading out with a head full of thunder, he brings a tone we don’t often hear in the enviro discussion, optimism.
Using inventive talking head interviews mixed with cute kids, animation, humour and CGI recreations, he’s looking for answers to difficult questions surrounding the mass assembly of cars, the over-harvesting of land, beef production and other hot button topics. An exercise in what he calls, “fact-based dreaming,” the idea is simple, What would happen if we used already existing technologies and systems to improve the planet? It’s a question designed to inspire, not alarm the viewer. He uses real life examples of these technologies at work—i.e., a micro-grid solar-power sharing in Bangladesh—to show the world of possibilities that exist on the planet.
Gameau is an entertaining host in the mold of Michael Moore, a documentarian who is also part comedian. He’s the spoonful of sugar that keeps the movie’s scientific information at eye level. He’s an amiable presence, although an erotic yoga scene feels out of place and even inappropriate.
“2040” is clear, simple and uplifting in its message and even supplies a hopeful, dramatized glimpse at what the world could look like when Velvet (played by Eva Lazzaro) is an adult. That Utopian vision of the future is all the more interesting in that it is based in technologies and systems that already exist.
Early on in “Western Stars,” a concert-concept film based on Bruce Springsteen’s album of the same name, the rock icon says, “It’s my 19th album and I’m still writing about cars.” It’s a funny comment but loaded with meaning. Metaphorically the cars in Springsteen’s songs are always moving forward and at just shy of age seventy Springsteen does the same, showcasing music here unlike anything he’s ever made. Looking in the rearview mirror to influences like the country-pop music of Jimmy Webb while keeping the pedal to the metal, he charts new territory.
Shot in the hayloft of a 140-year-old barn on Springsteen’s Colts Neck, New Jersey property (“A place filled with the best kind of ghosts and spirits,” he says) in front of a small, private audience, the concert features a 30-piece orchestra and band, including wife Patti Scialfa. Taking center stage under the cathedral ceiling he unfurls the album’s 13 songs of melancholy (plus a bonus track at the end). Told from the point of view of a faded cowboy b-movie star, the tunes evocatively tell stories of blue-collar Hollywood stuntmen, loss and bravado (“Once I was shot by John Wayne,” he sings in the title track. “Yeah, it was towards the end. That one scene brought me a thousand drinks. Set me up and I’ll tell it for you, friend.”) The performances are energetic but solemn; this isn’t the fist-pumping “Dancing in the Dark” Boss but an introspective artist sharing soulful, personal moments through the narrative of his music.
Instead of the usual concert film interviews—”It was an honour to work with Bruce… etc.”—Springsteen and longtime collaborator Thom Zimny link the songs with arty short films that illuminate Springsteen’s headspace as he wrote the songs. Shot in the Joshua Tree desert, these moody visual pastiches of Bruce in American legend mode, in cowboy hats and boots, are personal reflections that deepen the understanding of the music. “We’re always trying to find somebody whose broken pieces fit with our broken pieces,” he says, “and something whole emerges.” His words reflect on the art but his comfortable on-stage interaction with Scialfa, his wife and musical partner of thirty years, also intimates he found that with her. It’s a cinematic riff on his “Springsteen on Broadway” show but instead of anecdotes here he gives a look at his inner life, laying bare some profound personal introspection.
“Western Stars” is an intimate performance with great music, lyrical soul-searching (“The older you get,” he says, “the heavier that baggage becomes that you haven’t sorted through.”) and a restless spirit that suggests Springsteen is mining his baggage to create vital, beautiful new art.
David Crosby has eight stents in his heart, the most you can have, and a laundry list of famous former colleagues with whom he no longer speaks. “All really dislike me, strongly,” he says.
He’s a jailbird, a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and is still gunning for a third induction, just to make Eric Clapton jealous. He’s a guy who says he wants to be loving, but admits to alienating people in his life with a temper he cannot control. He’s a prickly pear with the voice of an angel and the subject of “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” a new documentary that transcends the usual rock doc career retrospective to create an unflinching portrait of the man one bandmate called “insufferable.”
Directed by A.J. Eaton and featuring interviews by Cameron Crowe, who first interviewed Crosby in 1974, the movie hits all the points you expect. From a Hollywood childhood with a cinematographer father who never told his son he loved him, to the heady days of the Laurel Canyon scene that gave birth to The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash (and later Young) to hanging out with The Beatles and being dumped by Joni Mitchell in a song, his early days are amply covered. Fast forward to the darker stuff, heroin addiction (“Addiction takes you over like fire takes over a burning building,” he says.), the death of his longtime girlfriend Christine Hinton and a stretch in a Texas prison for drug and weapon charges. All are covered with extraordinary candor by filmmaker and subject alike.
“David Crosby: Remember My Name” never feels like a shill for Crosby or an advertisement for a new record. Although it contains biographical elements and plenty of nicely chosen archival footage, it’s not a Ken Burns style historical piece. Instead it’s a deeply felt tribute to a man who has left his mark but wants more. Crosby’s face brims with emotion as he discusses the past and concern as he talks about the future. “I’m afraid of dying, and I’m close,” he says. “I’d like to have more time.” It’s those moments that separate “Remember My Name” from the average bio. In an era of curated celebrity content the honesty on display here, coupled with some truly great music, is refreshing and fascinating.
