December 2024 documentary review 10-pack: Martha Stewart, Chucky, Shatner, Elvis, Minnesota local news, and more
Capsule reviews of ten new documentaries.
Welcome to my monthly roundup of reviews of new documentary films. This month’s includes several films from recent weeks and a couple that I’ve watched during awards-season cramming. Without further ado…
Martha
Veteran documentarian R.J. Cutler directed this life-spanning portrayal of Martha Stewart from the rise of her business empire to her troubles with the law to her re-emergence, in her 70s, as a hip celebrity who’s friends with Snoop Dogg.
What I liked about this is that it’s not pure hagiography, and was willing to get into uncomfortable subjects, like Stewart’s affairs and breakups. And while Stewart has been critical of the film since its release, especially the amount of time it spent on her trial and prison term, I see that as a virtue- it’s not a good sign for a documentary, especially these days, if the subject is too happy with it.
Martha is streaming on Netflix.
Doc of Chucky
This is a five-hour documentary about the Chucky character and the Child’s Play franchise. And I don’t mean it’s five parts- it’s just a movie that’s five hours long.
Despite never being especially into the Chucky movies, I liked this quite a lot. Director Thommy Hutson has assembled most of the living participants, and franchise creator Don Mancini is the highlight, having a lot to say about how his being gay informed the character. I also enjoyed Jennifer Tilly — who’s in her mid-60s and looks amazing — in her analysis of the Bride of Chucky chapter.
Doc of Chucky is streaming on Shudder.
Broadcast Wars
When I heard there was a new documentary about the ratings wars among the local news stations in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the 1970s and ‘80s, I upended my carefully planned awards-screening schedule and watched it immediately. And I’m glad I did.
Produced by veteran local journalist Cathy Wurzer, this very enjoyable film looks at how the WCCO juggernaut of the 1970s was upended, first by KSTP and later by KARE. It features all the key living figures — Ron Magers, Pat Miles, Don Shelby, Mark Rosen — from a market where the biggest local celebrities have always been TV news people. And the echoes of Anchorman are plentiful, starting with a 1970s news anchor named Ron who favors loud jackets and bristles at the addition of a female co-anchor.
If you grew up in the Twin Cities and are a certain age, you’re almost guaranteed to love this. Broadcast Wars is streaming, anywhere in the country, on the PBS app, where you can access lots of great local documentaries. Sadly, the narrative ends before it gets to the Jeff Crilley dildo incident in 1990, which I wrote about early this year.
Am I Racist?
In what’s the highest-grossing documentary of 2024 — albeit with a box office of only about $12 million — conservative provocateur Matt Walsh goes undercover to infiltrate things like Race2Dinner, Robin DiAngelo’s DEI workshops, and other operations that have been frequently blamed for the result of the 2024 presidential election.
The obvious template is Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen’s other hidden-camera bits, and Walsh has picked some juicy targets, mostly the kind of stuff that has fallen out of favor, even on the left, in the past few years. But Walsh’s problem is that he’s just not very funny. He annoys his targets, but never gets any blows in on them, and the segments drag on seemingly forever.
Am I Racist? is available on the Daily Wire’s streaming platform.
You Can Call Me Bill
This documentary about William Shatner lingered on my JustWatch list for much of the year before I finally got around to watching it last week. It’s not quite what I expected- while there’s plenty of footage of Star Trek and his other acting work, there’s also a great deal of contemplative, existential worry from the now-93-year-old actor.
We see Shatner not as the sometimes comical figure he’s become in his older age but rather as an elder sage and a man massively affected by the brief trip he took to space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle a couple of years ago. And while there have been hints that Shatner’s politics these days lean right, he seems very, very concerned about climate change.
You Can Call Me Bill is streaming on Hoopla.
Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley
Another documentary that centers on Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback special, not to be confused with Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback, from just last year, nor the Baz Luhrmann/Austin Butler Elvis movie from 2022.
This one, from The Last Dance director Jason Heher, doesn’t add much that’s new, but it does have something the others don’t: Conan O’Brien, who’s on board as a superfan talking head. Bruce Springsteen provides some insights as well.
Return of the King is streaming on Netflix.
Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes
I’m not loving this new trend of documentaries about long-deceased historical figures, in which an actor is hired to imitate the subject. It’s better than using A.I., I suppose, but it’s still not great.
That terrible Alfred Hitchcock documentary last month did this, and so does Bogart, directed by Kathryn Ferguson, although it’s not nearly as embarrassing as the “your world frightens and confuses me” nonsense from the Hitch film. If you can get past that, it’s a conventional but entertaining romp through Bogie’s life and career.
Bogart has been released theatrically and is not yet available for streaming.
Buy Now!: The Shopping Conspiracy
This is the latest in a series of one of my least favorite types of documentaries, one that uses scaremongering and spooky music to warn against the nefarious actions of Big Tech, when most of what it exposes is either common knowledge or otherwise obvious.
Like most films of its kind, it’s blaming “tech companies” and “technology” when the thing it’s really critical of is capitalism- and that’s before we remember that it’s being distributed by a tech company, one that’s using your data and providing recommendations while you watch that very film.
Buy Now is streaming on, yes, Netflix.
Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World
Directed by Michael Fiore, this is a lively portrait of life at the titular East Village Ukrainian restaurant, against the background of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Narrated by David Duchovny, the film covers the effect the war has had on the restaurant’s mostly Ukrainian staff, including one kitchen worker who is trying to get his mother out of the war zone.
There’s not much focus on the food, but instead, the film is about the stories of the people. They even get a visit from a Ukrainian baseball team- who knew they played baseball there?
Veselka is available on video on demand.
Starring Jerry as Himself
This is a fascinating pseudo-documentary, which leads up to a major twist that retroactively makes the whole thing less interesting.
In the film, which mostly consists of re-enactments of events that may or may not have happened, Jerry Hsu is a Chinese-American immigrant living in Florida who is retired. One day he gets a call that he’s being recruited as an informant concerning a criminal plot in China, which leads to some twisty and ultimately heartbreaking intrigue.
Compelling as it is, the film ultimately adds up to more of a PSA than anything else.
Starring Jerry as Himself is available on video on demand.