Doc Corner: 'Gaga: Five Foot Two' Does the Lady a Disservice

by Glenn Dunks

Lady Gaga can be a great musician, it’s true. But the new documentary about her, Gaga: Five Foot Two, would make anybody unfamiliar with her question why. The film follows a year with the singer as she records her latest album, Joanne (admission: I’m not a fan), and prepares for the big stage of the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Yet something about this film lingers as ever so slightly off.

Part of the problem with Chris Moukarbel’s film is that it’s never quite verite. The camera is never just a fly on the wall to Gaga’s world, but instead a witness to events that lack authenticity...

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Doc Corner: Tribeca's Big Winner, 'Bobbi Jene'

by Glenn Dunks

Who is worthy of a documentary about themselves is a question that comes up a lot when watching and occasionally writing about documentaries. A long life doesn’t necessarily make you any worthier of one, just as youth doesn’t imply unworthiness. Of course, who is a worthy subject is ultimately in the eye of the beholder so to speak and it is the film itself is what should be judged.

I am sure there was a reason that director Elvira Lind chose to follow Bobbi Jene Smith for a documentary. Beyond ‘she’s a great dancer’, of course...

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Doc Corner: Emmy Awards Go to Meryl Streep, Ava DuVernay, and Somebody Close to an EGOT

Like sand through the hourglass, the Emmys gave out far too many trophies. I actually forgot that the television Academy’s ‘you’re not famous enough’ ceremony was on last weekend – because who wants to see RuPaul win an Emmy? Hello, anybody? Good call, Emmy! – and so my planned pre-Emmy focus on some of the documentary/non-fiction titles proved poorly timed. However, I thought we might look through the winners of the unfairly forgotten ceremony since at least in these categories, the voters are often forced to choose new winners every year. Meanwhile, the televised telecast could be a repeat and, truly, would anybody actually notice?

O.J.: Made in America, Meryl Streep, and which winner is just a Tony away from en EGOT after the jump.

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Doc Corner: 'House of Z'

Fashion documentaries have been going downhill ever since Unzipped. Douglas Keeve’s 1995 portrait of Isaac Mizrahi, a box office smash and critical hit, remains the pinnacle of what so many since have attempted. Like Madonna: Truth or Dare, from which it took much inspiration, that riotously funny glimpse into Mizrahi’s world full of design, famous friends, creativity and wickedly self-depreciating neurosis was a perfect storm of sorts between personality, fashion and celebrity that a film about this sort of person ought to be.  

Every year brings us several of these sorts of documentaries. Like the majority of them, Sandy Chronopoulos’ debut feature, House of Z, is easily digestible and barely raises a sweat; a work of celebrity portraiture that fans won’t regret watching, but which offers little beyond what is promised on the tin. Taking the same narrative hook as Unzipped of a talented young designer’s comeback from the precipice of total failure, House of Z is an act of personality redemption for a man whose career nearly fell apart because of his outlandishness and brattish behaviour. This makes it a humble film in many ways, one that deliberately chooses to show its subject as one appreciative of his position.

That also means that it is a humourless one, too; sapped of the fun and the outrageousness and the glamour that should be natural.I can only imagine how fun this film may have been half a decade ago.

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Doc Corner: 'Icarus' Doesn't Fly

By Glenn Dunks

It is easy to see why Netflix purchased Icarus for a record five-million dollars. Charting director-and-subject Bryan Fogel’s attempts to prove how easily it is for athletes to dope and how easy it is to get away with it before getting sucked into the Russian Olympic doping scandal of 2015, it’s a premise that swings between two wildly popular forms of documentary. But blending the personality theatrics of Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me with true crime, Icarus ultimately isn’t able to replicate the entertainment and the sheer chutzpah of that 2004 perfect storm of charming lead and grotesquely captivating experiment.

For starters, Fogel greatly overestimates the desire to watch somebody screw the system and (attempt to) get away with it. After all, we live in a world with Lance Armstrong already in it – and it takes Icarus just 58 seconds to feature him in archival sound and video – so there seems little need for a talented, but self-admitted amateur cyclist to muddy the waters and prove how scandalous it all is...

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