Doc Corner: Spike Jonze's 'Beastie Boys Story' + 'Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert'

By Glenn Dunks

If live experiences are one of the things you are missing most about being in isolation, then documentaries can be one small way of getting that groove back. Beastie Boys Story and Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert probably won’t be enough to recreate the experience—certainly, both are limited in their creative and technical scopes, nor are they the sort of concert extravaganzas that the subjects have released before—but for music-loving watchers, they may just offer at least something that approximates the joy of being among the throngs of others enthralled in musical rapture.

Beastie Boys Story in particular feels like a greater missed opportunity given it is directed by none other than Spike Jonze (he also directed the stage-show that it captures). But the band at its core are so interesting in their history and captivating in their stage presence that is almost doesn’t matter. Almost.

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Doc Corner: Is 'Crip Camp' an early Oscar frontrunner?

By Glenn Dunks

As if on cue to allow isolated audiences one hell of an emotional purge, James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham’s sublime Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is here. Seemingly built to make audiences burst into tears out of honest to goodness heart-melting positivity and righteous activist anger in equal measure (a delicate balance to say the least), it is perhaps for the first time since this pandemic began that I contemplated my own small place in this big world outside of COVID-19.

It’s big-hearted and impassioned; an unsurprising winner of Sundance’s audience award and an obvious frontrunner for the Academy Award.

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Doc Corner: The politics of 'Slay the Dragon'

By Glenn Dunks

I had expected 2020 to be jam-packed with political documentaries. We have already had Hulu’s four-part Hillary and in the lead-up America’s presidential election had assumed that nary a week would go without a documentary about some sort of politics examination, exploration or expose. Who knows what the rest of the year holds for us anymore in terms of release for the sort of niche, boutique non-fiction fare and whether they will make their way to audiences, but I am sure they will hold lessons and important interrogations nonetheless.

Case in point: Slay the Dragon. A feature-length documentary that is getting out somewhat ahead of the pack and which picks up where digitally-released short films like Crooked Lines and Suppressed: The Fight to Vote left off on the issue of gerrymandering and the efforts (by let’s be honest: Republican politicians) to manipulate the voting process...

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Doc Corner: Hulu's Four-Part 'Hillary'

By Glenn Dunks (who is currently counting down his top documentaries of the decade over on Twitter. Follow along or swing by next week for the conclusion!)

It’s remarkable, really. Hillary—Nanette Burstein’s four-part Hulu biography of the woman who needs only one name these days—is so much like its subject, it’s just uncanny. Ambitious and by most conceivable marks of quality a perfect candidate for greatness.

And yet.

One almost has to admire the chutzpah of Hulu releasing Hillary when they did. Like Taylor Swift uploading her back catalogue to streaming services on the same day Katy Perry had a new album out, it feels like some sort of joke, even if it was more likely simply a smart and shrewd way of getting eyeballs in a tough market by utilising the political attention of another wild democratic primary race as cross promotional advertising...

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Doc Corner: Oh, the horror! 'Scream, Queen!' and 'Horror Noire'

By Glenn Dunks (who is currently counting down my top documentaries of the decade over on Twitter. Follow along!)

Horror movies are obviously an audience-beloved industry-entrenched part of the movie business. Even if the genre hasn’t always gotten the respect it deserves, horror has been a vital part in the cinematic stories for African American audiences and for queer audiences. These are, after all, viewers that have been ignored by the mainstream industry at large for as long as movies have existed. Minority audiences have often found the catharses and long-documented history of othered subtext of scary movies to be rare portals of release.

How great it is then to see two new documentaries Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror focusing on these elements and offering glimpses into the complicated realm of what it is like to be a viewer and a creator in these spaces...

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