November 2024 documentary review 10-pack: Bruce Springsteen, John Williams, Bitcoin, coddled college kids, and more

Reviewing ten recent docs: 'Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band,' 'Music by John Williams,' 'Black Box Diaries,' 'The Coddling of the American Mind,' 'America's Burning,' and more

We’re in the thick of awards season, and that includes a massive surge of new documentaries. Here are reviews of ten of them, and in the meantime, don’t forget to watch the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, this Sunday night.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band

Bruce Springsteen celebrated his 75th birthday on the same day I saw this movie, reminding me that he’s six days younger than my father, who turned 75 the previous week. 

And while Bruce can certainly still bring it in a live performance — as I saw last week, when he played a Harris-Walz rally with Barack Obama — there’s no escaping that Bruce and his bandmates are getting up there in years, especially by rock-star standards.

Now available on Hulu, Road Diary is part of a seemingly endless series of recent documentary projects, all on different streaming services, from The Boss’ in-house filmmaker  Thom Zimny. 

Netflix did an amazing mounting of his Live on Broadway show, while Apple beautifully presented the making-of album of his Letter to You album. 

This isn’t quite on the level of those and doesn’t go into quite as much depth, but Bruce fans are still likely to enjoy it. 

Music by John Williams

Speaking of documentaries about music legends who you’ve probably been aware of for your entire life, Disney+ is now streaming this documentary about the prolific music composer, whose signature compositions have gone on everything from Star Wars to Superman to the bulk of Steven Spielberg’s filmography. 

There was probably no way I wasn’t going to love this.

In the film, directed by Laurent Bouzereau, you’ll hear all that great music and also quite a bit from Williams himself, still spry and talkative at age 91. It’s even more of a treat that the film focuses extensively on his long friendship with Spielberg and the towering cinematic legacy of their many collaborations. 

The film also covers quite a bit of Williams’ background and personal life; somehow I never knew until now that he lost his wife at a young age. 

Black Box Diaries 

Here’s a great but infuriating documentary, one of the best of the year. 

Japanese journalist Shiori Itō is both the subject and director, and based the film on her memoir. In 2015, she accused a prominent male Japanese journalist — a close ally of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — of raping her, and went forward with a lawsuit, which is something not commonly done in Japan. 

Shot over the course of five years, the film follows the entire process, including the extensive use of the filmmaker’s own diaries.  Itō proves a compelling documentary subject, as well as a very talented filmmaker.

The film opened in some theaters earlier this fall. 

The Coddling of the American Mind 

Hey, did you hear college students these days are out of pocket, and it’s making them miserable? 

You probably have. And this documentary, based on the nonfiction book of the same name by  Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, just adds to what you’ve already read about 500 articles about in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and every conservative publication on earth. 

Look, these people have a point about some things. College discourse, especially in the years, say, between 2014 and 2021, was a bit too stifling and censorious. But the backlash has been much stronger than the original movement, and the film ultimately amounts to a jeremaid against a political tendency that’s already fallen out of favor. 

As for the interview subjects, it’s a bunch of people reaching the conclusion  that amounts to, “Back when I cared about things, I was miserable. But now that I don’t care anymore, I’m much happier.” 

The Coddling of the American Mind is available on VOD channels. 

America’s Burning

But no, that’s not the worst political documentary that you can watch on VOD this election day. 

A couple of years ago, David Smick made a movie called Stars and Strife, which was about all the bad stuff going on in politics at the time. However, in his analysis, Donald Trump and Trumpism barely came up. 

Now he’s made another film, America’s Burning, which is essentially more of the same, except the budget is bigger; he even sprung for Michael Douglas to narrate. 

“Both sides are bad” is the order of the day, and while we see footage of January 6 and other civil unrest, the central figure of American politics in the last decade for some reason goes unmentioned. 

The conclusion by Smick, in both movies, is the same: “Our nation is bitterly divided, and the only solution is for everyone in both parties to come together and do everything I want.” 

Just a Bit Outside: The Story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers

The first voice we hear in this film is that of Bud Selig, but no, I won’t hold that against it. 

This film, released earlier this fall in theaters in (I believe) only the state of Wisconsin, looks back on the colorful Brewers team from 1982, the only one in franchise history to make it to the World Series. 

The whole thing is a rollicking good time, featuring talking-head interviews with the team’s suprisingly long list of Hall of Famers, including Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons, and the former Acting Commissioner for Life himself. And of course, Bob Uecker is in it too, rivaling John Williams as the season’s best nonegenarian documentary interviewee. 

The ’82 season was a little bit before my time, but almost every player is someone whose baseball card I once owned. And yes, Gorman Thomas looks exactly like how you’d expect him to look at this point in his life. 

64 Days

There have been so many documentaries about January 6, and the political extremism that led up to it, but this is one of the better ones. 

Directed by Nick Quested, who you may remember testifying before the January 6 committee, this film follows the Proud Boys between Election Day in 2020 and January 6. 

We know they’re not smart guys, but agreeing to be followed on camera for that length of time, while planning a massive criminal conspiracy, was one of their dumber overall moves. 

And yes, as you vote today, one of the strongest arguments for defeating Trump is to keep these insurrectionist scumbags in prison. 

Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery 

Speaking of the antisocial dipshits who formed the underbelly of the first Trump era, there was also QAnon, the conspiracy theory-of-conspiracy theories that seemed to captivate all the worst Facebook posters you know. The best documentary about that was 2021’s Q: Into the Storm, a six-part HBO series in which filmmaker Cullen Hoback dove into the Q subculture, hung out with these bizarre goofballs, and… appeared to solve the mystery of who was behind it. 

Now, Hoback has returned with another documentary, in which he dives into another strange subculture with a mystery at its center: Bitcoin, the question of the identity of its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. 

In Money Electric, now streaming on Max, Hoback speaks to various people who have been named as potential Satoshis over the years, and claims to have found the real one, although naturally, that person denies it. 

I can’t determine whether Hoback got this right, but I liked that the film avoids the mistake of most past documentaries about crypto: It doesn’t see the technology as the savior of humanity, it doesn’t get taken in by a swindler (in which there are many in that world) and it isn’t content to just point at the weirdos. 

On the other hand… 

God Bless Bitcoin

This documentary is on YouTube, and everyone involved in it should really be ashamed of themselves. 

The interviewees are unanimous: Bitcoin is the greatest, it will one day replace the current financial system, and make us all free. The talking heads also include a bunch of religious leaders, including someone called “The Bitcoin Rabbi,” who appear to have altered their religious dogma to place Bitcoin at its center. 

I’m not sure exactly when this film was made, but there’s no reference to FTX, or the crypto collapse a couple of years ago. Or any other reason to believe that yes, there are downsides to investing in fake money because you think you’re too good for regular money. 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock

But that’s not the worst documentary I’ve seen this fall. That distinction goes to this, a documentary that explores Hitchcock’s entire filmography, while also featuring a “narration” that’s just actor Alistair McGowan doing an extended, not very good Hitchcock impression. 

It’s just incredibly dumb, featuring baffling gags like McGowan-as-Hitch talking about modern technologies that came along decades after his death. When he talks about “your cell phones,” he reminded me of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. 

Rather than the film itself, which is now in theaters, I’d much rather watch a documentary about how the hell the filmmakers got Hitch’s estate to agree to this.