January 2025 documentary 10-pack: 'Don’t Die,' 'Sabbath Queen,' 'ChiefsAholic,' 'Biggest Heist Ever,' 'The Honey Trap,' 'New York Sack Exchange,' 'Michael Jack Schmidt' 'Kitty to Cooperstown' and more
Reviewing ten documentaries from the last weeks of 2024.
Happy New Year, everyone. For the first post of the year, I present my monthly look at the latest in documentaries. Here are capsule reviews of ten documentaries that arrived in the closing weeks of 2024.
The films are on such topics as a rich guy trying to age in reverse, a rabbi riding the wave of many controversies, a Pat Mahomes-loving bank robber, a couple who stole billions in Bitcoin, a rapper who joined ISIS, four bickering old football players, one baseball legend who the fans bickered with, another Hall of Famer who once wore the Phillies’ colors, 22 stories from Gaza, and the colorful life of Elton John.
Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever
The first documentary of the year, which landed on Netflix on New Year’s Day, is a film about Bryan Johnson, a guy you’ve probably seen on social media. He’s a tech millionaire who decided at some point that he wants to undergo a bizarre, intensive regimen to reduce his natural age, and therefore “live forever.”
Johnson’s scheme goes way beyond diet and exercise: It’s more like “bio-hacking,” which entails blood transfusions with his son, gene therapy, and other efforts that cost him an estimated $2 million a year. It also results in the 47-year-old Johnson having a creepy, uncanny valley look.
He’s also, it appears, addicted to this stuff, and talks about food much the way a person with an eating disorder talks about it. He’s also selling supplements, and his combination of physique and dodgy claims about science recalls those of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And one gets the sense he agreed to this, in part, to clear the air about some bad headlines about him, including an ugly lawsuit from an ex-girlfriend.
That said, we soon learn his story is a bit more interesting than we thought: Johnson was raised in Mormonism, broke with the religion, and essentially has adopted the age-hacking scheme as a new religion in its place.
Directed by Chris Smith, of American Movie fame, and who most recently directed the Vince McMahon docuseries, the film is a compelling portrait of this guy, which never gets judgmental, but also provides a fair look at him.
Sabbath Queen
But the most fascinating documentary subject of late 2024 is Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, a scion of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, who appears to have taken Judaism in a different direction than most of his forbears: He’s openly gay, has a drag persona, is somewhat skeptical of Zionism (but as skeptical as some would prefer), and has ended up at odds with the Conservative movement over his decision to preside over an interfaith wedding.
Filmed over more than 20 years, the film follows this fascinating figure through various changes in his own life, as well as in American Jewish life.
The film was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, who directed an equally thought-provoking doc almost 20 years ago called Trembling Before G-d, about gay Orthodox Jews.
I’m not sure when this one is coming to streaming, but when it does, it’s worth seeking out.
ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing
This film, which landed on Prime Video in late December, tells the wild story of Xaviar Babudar, a Kansas City Chiefs superfan who would dress as a wolf at games, had a massive social media presence… and turned out to have a secret second life as a prolific bank robber. If you were wondering how he afforded such good seats, well…
The doc isn’t nearly as interesting as it sounds, and in fact it mostly represents a deep dive into a fandom subculture that I find kind of abhorrent. Superfans like him are annoying as hell, even before the armed bank robbery comes into play. By the end, I was rooting for him to get caught.
They might not be actual criminals, but I can think of a half-dozen guys, just in my home market, who wear dumb costumes at games, and mostly make the experience about them, instead of about their team. (The Wall Street Journal review of the film begins by arguing that shows Chiefs fans even more deranged than Eagles partisans.)
Also, enough of the stupid memes and Twitter tweet sounds in documentaries.
Biggest Heist Ever
This is a very fun Netflix documentary about Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, the couple who stole more than $4 billion worth of Bitcoin a few years back, while at the same time maintaining a zany social media presence that included some of the worst rap music ever produced.
This is a pretty straightforward look at the story, wielding all of the necessary archival footage, including all that weird stuff with the music videos.
I’m kind of allergic to Bitcoin as a documentary subject, but I did like this one quite a bit.
The Honey Trap: A True Story Of Love, Lies And The FBI
This is one of those unfortunate documentaries that instead of being about the thing that it’s about, has decided that it has to be about everything.
Directed by Chris Moukarbel and now on Paramount+, the documentary is ostensibly about Denis Cuspert, a man who went from German rapper to MMA fighter to, ultimately, a major recruiter for ISIS. Before he was killed, Cuspert drew tabloid headlines when an American FBI translator, assigned to monitor Cuspert, went to Syria and married him.
That story is pretty compelling on its own, but the documentary keeps veering wildly off-course, in trying to tell the entire story of the military-industrial complex, as well as some silly stuff about the military and Hollywood working together.
New York Sack Exchange
I admit I was a bit skeptical when I first heard ESPN had a 30 for 30 about the “Sack Exchange,” the New York Jets defensive line of the 1980s. They were on a team that never won anything, and I had some doubts about whether this would be of any interest to anyone outside of the greater New York area.
But I was wrong, because the doc is hugely entertaining, mostly because these four guys (Mark Gastineau, Marty Lyons, Joe Klecko and Abdul Salaam, who passed away shortly after the interviews were filmed) all have long-buried resentments with each other, as is made clear when they’re all in the same room together, or even giving talking head interviews on their own.
And honestly, it seems about 95% of the acrimony is Gastineau’s fault. Gastineau appears to currently be suffering from some combination of CTE and dimension, but there are plenty of stories about him being a massive asshole back in the day. He infamously retired in the middle of the 1988 season to care for his then-fiancee, Rocky IV star Brigitte Nielsen, who may or may not have had cancer.
A clip from the film, of Gastineau confronting Brett Favre about “laying down” for Michael Strahan, in 2001 and costing Gastineau his single-season sack record, went viral in December; it might be the first time I’ve felt an ounce of sympathy for Favre since his first season with the Vikings.
Michael Jack Schmidt
The “MLB Network Presents…” series, earlier in 2024, provided a first-rate, well-rounded portrait of Greg Maddux, letting us into the life and career of a Hall of Famer not known for speaking up much. HBO’s Charlie Hustle: On the Matter of Pete Rose docuseries, provided a multifaceted portrayal of a cornerstone of the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1980 championship team.
Michael Jack Schmidt, a new MLB Network Presents… look at the Baseball Hall of Famer, is neither of those things. Instead, it’s about one thing in particular: Schmidt’s often contentious relationship with the fans in Philadelphia, the city in which he played his entire career.
Certainly, the vicissitudes of Philly sports fandom is something I’m very interested in personally. But it’s not the entire story of Mike Schmidt’s baseball career, and frankly it’s kind of insulting to Schmidt for the documentary to focus on that and only that.
Kitty to Cooperstown
Speaking of documentaries about baseball Hall of Famers that debuted in December, this documentary, which is available on VOD, tells the entire baseball story of Jim Kaat. Kaat pitched for many teams, was an announcer for a long time after that, and finally got into the Hall of Fame in 2022, decades after his retirement, at age 84.
This doesn’t quite have the slickness of the more “official” MLB docs like the Schmidt one, and consists largely of Kaat and his old teammates being interviewed at Target Field and other ballparks, leading up to his triumphant, much-delayed Hall of Fame speech.
But you’re likely to enjoy this if Jim Kaat ever meant anything to you, either as a pitcher or an announcer.
From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza
The last of the year’s many documentaries about Israel and Palestine is this collection of 22 short films from Palestinian filmmakers, all of them made during the current war.
Some of the segments are better than others, but I commend the filmmakers for doing their work in certainly perilous circumstances. And as I always say: I think everyone on the opposite side of the conflict should open their minds by seeing this film.
The film, while officially a 2024 release, comes to theaters later this month. Michael Moore has come onboard as an executive producer, but I won’t hold that against the film.
Elton John: Never Too Late
Career-spanning documentary about Elton John, which landed on Disney+ in December, but is not particularly necessary considering there’s already been a biopic, and then there was a documentary about the final concert of his farewell tour, and neither of them was all that long ago.
There two directors, R.J. Cutler and David Furnish. Cutler is a veteran documentarian, who most recently made the film about Martha Stewart that was much more memorable, even if it got Martha mad at him; Furnish is Elton John’s husband, and therefore not the most detached of documentary observers.