Selections from DOC NYC 2024

Capsule reviews of 'Gallagher,' 'Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse,' 'Gaucho Gaucho,' 'Surveilled,' '2073' and 'Secret Mall Apartment'

The annual DOC NYC documentary film festival is currently in progress and continues through December 1. I didn’t make it up to New York for any of it this time, but thanks to screeners and the robust online portal, I was able to watch quite a few documentaries in the festival lineup. 

I’m going to have a separate piece about the music docs specifically, and there’s plenty of stuff in the lineup that I wasn’t able to catch, including docs about such diverse subjects as Benjamin Netanyahu, the one-handed baseball pitcher Jim Abbott, the New York economic crisis of 1975, and the collapse of the media company Vice. I hope to get all of those sometime soon.

Some capsule reviews of DOC NYC films: 

Gallagher

Yes, it’s a documentary about the famed watermelon-crushing comedian, in his twilight, leading up to his death in November of 2022. 

Directed by Josh Forbes, the doc has a few clear things to say: That Leo Gallagher was a hugely influential comedian who pretty much invented the HBO comedy special, and that his comedy success never successfully crossed over to movies or any other medium.

Also, he spent his final years as a bitter and miserable bastard who frequently spewed racist and sexist invective in public- which wasn’t exactly in line with those particular times. Interviews from that last phase paint a not-so-rosy picture.

There’s plenty of footage from all of the above, including both the watermelon-smashing, and plenty of analysis about how much Gallagher bristled at being defined by that particular bit. There’s also plenty about his feud with his aspiring comedian brother; between them and Oasis, the 1990s were quite a time for feuding brothers with the last name Gallagher. 

 It’s an entertaining and balanced look back at the man’s life, and it even features an animated reenactment of the time Gallagher stormed out of a podcast interview with Marc Maron. 

There’s no word on a release date for this. 

 Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse

A relatively straightforward but thought-provoking look at the American cartoonist, best known for Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust-themed graphic novel. Directed by Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, the documentary is yet another film this year dealing with the legacy of the Holocaust, especially on subsequent generations.

There’s also plenty of discussion about Spiegelman’s other, lower-brow work, including his creation of the Garbage Pail Kids. 

Maus, of course, gained new relevance when some school boards in recent years have sought to ban it, and the film tackles that as well. 

Disaster is My Muse will air on PBS as part of the American Masters series, but it’s not clear when. 

Gaucho Gaucho

This black-and-white documentary about cowboys and cowgirls in Argentina might be the most aesthetically beautiful nonfiction film of the year. 

Directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, who made The Truffle Hunters four years ago, here explore a different subculture in a different corner of the globe. 

It’s set for a VOD release in early December, including on the Jolt streaming service. 

Surveilled

This hour-long documentary follows Ronan Farrow as he investigates a fascinating subject: The Israeli company NSO Group, which can break into pretty much any cell phone in the world, and sells its wares to various governments. 

It’s a fascinating subject and is presented compellingly. But it also feels more like a commercial for a New Yorker article that was already published. 

Plus, I’m still sort of upset that we never got a movie adaptation of Catch and Kill, Farrow’s memoir about his time investigating Harvey Weinstein, and one of the most cinematic nonfiction books I’ve ever read. 

Surveilled lands on HBO and Max later this week. 

2073

This is a fascinating idea for a film, from one of the world’s major documentarians, and it’s terrible. It speeds through Everything Bad Happening in the World today, before settling into a particularly boring remake of 12 Monkeys. 

Directed by Asif Kapadia, it’s a riff on La Jetee, featuring Samantha Morton in a post-apocalyptic future in the year of the title, juxtaposed with a particularly lecturing, self-righteous documentary about every modern-day horror, from climate change to surveillance and various other things that have already been the subjects of numerous documentaries. 

It’s all just strange and pointless, and a rare miss for the normally dependable Kapadia. I’m also not exactly sure why, considering how much fictional footage there is, this is even a documentary at all. 

2073 is getting a theatrical release later this year. 

Secret Mall Apartment

This one is… about exactly what it sounds like. It’s the story of a bunch of oddballs who secretly lived inside a room at Providence Place Mall for four years. Directed by Jeremy Workman, this was a South by Southwest debut and feels a lot like one in every way. 

It was part living scheme, part anti-gentrification statement, and part art project. And I can’t be the only one who found these people sort of insufferable (one subject’s then-wife, and I emphasize the “then,” seems to feel the same way.) 

Like most squatting schemes, the mall apartment gambit probably entailed more effort and work than living in a normal apartment and paying normal rent would have been. It’s all based on the very Gen X attitude — also the premise of the era’s most popular Broadway musical — that people, especially artists, shouldn’t have to pay rent. 

I did, however, enjoy the Sigur Ros-aping musical score. 

There’s no word on a release date.