April 2025 documentary 10-pack: Liza, Halyna Hutchins, Joe Lieberman, Katharine Graham, Liz Carpenter, politics and more.
Reviewing ten new documentary films.
Happy April, and welcome to my monthly capsule review roundup of new documentary films. This month, I look at a retrospective of a showbiz icon, an examination of a tragedy on a movie set, a couple of looks at the political moment, a portrait of a pair of late media icons, an examination of a leading centrist politician, one cult (murderers in Japan), another cult (Michael Jackson fans), and possibly the saddest scammer story of all time.
LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
A documentary that debuted on the festival circuit last year and landed this week on PBS’ American Masters. It’s a generally straightforward examination of the life of Liza Minnelli, featuring lots of archival footage, testimonials from her friends and admirers, and a contemporary interview with Liza herself.
It delves, of course, into her love life and four marriages; no one has a single positive thing to say about her late, not-so-great fourth husband David Gest. And while the film does mention her collaboration and brief romance with Martin Scorsese; this does appear to be a rare occasion in which Marty turned down the chance to appear in a documentary. (I was very amused, though, by multiple generations of gay men sharing their testimonials about their love for Liza- and then actor Darren Criss popping up to say he got into Liza because he watched Cabaret and thought she was hot.)
The film ultimately congeals on a throughline: Liza long lived in the shadow of her mother Judy Garland, and has gone down several of the same paths, from substance abuse to a tendency to marry men who turned out to be gay. But Liza, unlike her mom, has survived to old age and appears to have found a group of people who have acted as a loving chosen family. And as demonstrated when she belts out a tune at the end, she’s still got it at age 79.
Liza is available to watch on the PBS streaming platform.
Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna
Ever since the Rust movie set tragedy in October of 2021, roughly 90 percent of the media coverage has been about… Alec Baldwin. The trial of Alec Baldwin, how Alec Baldwin feels about what happened, the case being discussed on Alec Baldwin’s new reality show, or the occasional viral video of someone yelling at Alec Baldwin on a street corner and calling him a murderer.
Now, there’s a documentary about the case that turns the attention, for the most part, back to Halyna Hutchins, the woman who lost her life in what was almost certainly a tragic accident, albeit one brought about by carelessness and recklessness. Some bad things were going on on that movie set, clearly, although the film doesn’t definitively solve what happened.
But some of it — too much, in fact — is about Alec Baldwin again.
Directed by Rachel Mason, who made one of my favorite documentaries of recent years, Circus of Books, about her parents’ adventures as owners of Los Angeles’ most famous gay porn bookstore, the documentary features a surprising amount of footage taken on the day of the crime.
The documentary is on Hulu now, while Rust itself remains unreleased, although it’s set for a release date in May.
Democracy Under Siege
Here’s a documentary in which a bunch of liberals look into the camera and complain about how unfair everything is. Sure, I agree with almost everything they say- but what’s the point of this? I feel like I’ve seen this same film ten times already in the last decade- and no one who is the slightest bit persuadable will ever see this.
Directed by Laura Nix, the film portrays some people, including a fired editorial cartoonist, who are resisting the forces of bad heading into the 2024 election.
The problem is, we’ve seen all of this before! I’m a great admirer of Congressman Jamie Raskin, but this has to be at least the tenth time I’ve heard him tell his January 6 story. Also, a little bit of Elie Mystal goes a long way.
White With Fear
This is a better political documentary, which focuses on the last 25 years of Fox News and the right wing marshaling racial prejudice for right-wing ends.
The film focuses singularly on that and keeps that up. This won’t be news to anyone watching, although there’s some fun nostalgia, which will appeal to people who used to watch cable news back in the Bush and Obama eras.
It’s all very convincing, although the whole argument is undercut, a bit, by Trump winning last year with a much more multiracial coalition than he’d assembled previously.
White With Fear is in some theaters now.
Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter
This is a documentary about brassy Texas lady with white hair, who worked as a White House corresponent and was known as something of a character, as well as a liberal hero and feminist icon.
No, I’m not talking about Molly Ivins, although she had her own documentary a few years ago. Liz Carpenter, who died in 2010, was a journalist who eventually went to work for the Lyndon Johnson White House and became an activist later on.
Also available on PBS.org and on PBS Passport, this film was a fun examination of someone who I admit I was not familiar with previously.
Becoming Katharine Graham
This documentary begins with a break-in. No, not the one at the Watergate, but rather the time the pressmen rose up against the Washington Post, in 1975. It’s part of telling the story of Katharine Graham, who was publisher of the Post for 30 years, starting in 1963.
If you’re of a certain age and someone who has followed media and politics for some length of time, this stuff is not going to be new. A lot of this stuff, including the “leave out the part about her tit and print it” story, was in All The President’s Men, as well as Steven Spielberg’s pseudo-prequel, The Post. But the documentary does point out, accurately, that — aside from that line — there was no Graham character in All the President’s Men, something that rankled her.
Graham died in 2001. It’s impossible not to watch this, a story of a Washington Post publisher backing her journalists against a lawless president, without contrasting it with the newspaper’s current owner, who has chosen to do the exact opposite. And the documentary, ironically, lands on the streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video, founded by that very owner.
Centered: Joe Lieberman
Here’s a documentary telling the story of the late Senator Joseph Lieberman, through extensive interviews before his death last year. The first Jewish candidate on a national ticket when he ran with Al Gore in 2000, and a rare Orthodox Jew in national politics, Lieberman spent the later part of his career backing Republicans, despite nominally remaining a Democrat.
If you’re going to approach this as a study of the politics of the last 30 years, it works. If the point is to make Joe Lieberman look like the most honorable man in politics during that time, it’s a failure.
Like Joe Biden, Lieberman got elected to office in his 20s, stuck around for many decades, and never really had much of a career doing anything else.
Yes, Lieberman was a “centrist,” in the sense that he was willing to espouse terrible ideas from both sides of the political spectrum. He spent many years censoriously going after Hollywood and video games, something the documentary almost entirely avoids.
In addition to his break with the Democrats about something he was undoubtedly wrong about, Iraq, Lieberman was long associated with No Labels, a stupid political movement that believes in nothing and has never accomplished a thing.
His fellow ex-Senator, Chris Dodd, slams “those who say my way or the highway,” as if we hadn’t heard Lieberman sing “My Way,” at an election victory party, five minutes earlier. The film ends with him singing the same song, on Conan O’Brien- but isn’t that song the unofficial American Selfish Asshole National Anthem, and something that shouldn’t be associated with a public servant claiming to be altruistic?
Aum: The Cult at the End of the World
The “yoga school to doomsday cult” pipeline is more well-traveled than you’d think. That’s the big takeaway from this documentary about the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which was Japan’s version of the Peoples Temple.
Directed by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto, and based on the book of the same name by David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, who both appear as talking heads, the film is not too far afield from the standard treatment of cults in most documentaries.
But the music- the music is bad! I don’t know why spooky music in these sorts of documentaries is always necessary.
Aum is available to watch on VOD channels.
Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson
Yes, Michael Jackson is the most difficult “separate the art from the artist” case of them all. I love Michael’s music, he was a one-of-a-kind artist, and I don’t think it’s at all possible that every one of his many accusers is lying.
Filmmaker Dan Reed sought to puncture that particular balloon a few years ago with the original Leaving Neverland, in which a pair of men went on the record to accuse the King of Pop of molesting them. This was followed by lawsuits, as well as high-pitched freakout from the late singer’s fans, who Reed, in one interview, dubbed “the Islamic State of fandom.”
The new film is really merely a follow-up to Leaving Neverland, giving us an update on the various legal cases, as well as the aftermath of the previous film. It isn’t much of a documentary on its own, though- and it no longer has the backing of either HBO or Oprah.
We do, however, see Dave Chappelle — who will always defend every celebrity accused of anything, no matter what, and usually from a stand-up stage halfway through one of his Netflix specials — declaring “I don’t believe those motherfuckers.”
The film is available to watch on YouTube.
Con Mum
That poor guy. That’s the thought that kept occurring to me as I watched this Netflix documentary about a British chef, who meets a woman claiming to be his long-lost mother, who claims to be the independently wealthy daughter of the Sultan of Brunei.
The very title of the film should give away exactly how that turned out, although the ending is a bit of a gut punch. But a word of advice- if someone shows up out of nowhere and claims to have a bunch of money for you, be skeptical. In the meantime, don’t give them any of your money.
Con Mom is streaming on Netflix.