September 2024 documentary 10-pack: 'Merchant Ivory,' 'One of a Kind,' 'Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames,' 'Catching Fire' and more

Capsule reviews of ten recent documentary films.

One of a Kind

MLB Network Presents… isn’t exactly anyone’s favorite ongoing sports documentary series. Still, it’s really outdone itself with One of a Kind, a documentary about Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux that debuted at the end of August. 

The film is very much of the “old ballplayers sitting around telling great baseball stories” variety, in the tradition of the Facing Nolan doc a few years back about Nolan Ryan. What’s especially fascinating here is that Maddux wasn’t known during his playing days as a big personality. But a scene with Maddux and Barry Bonds reviewing a single at-bat deservedly went viral before the doc arrived.

I have MLB Network through Hulu + Live TV, and the documentary remains available to watch on demand through that channel, although I’m not sure if it is for other providers. 

Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln 

Directed by Shaun Paterson, this film, coming out in theaters this Friday, features several historians arguing that Abraham Lincoln, the most important of U.S. presidents, likely had numerous intimate relationships with other men. 

Was Lincoln homosexual? Sexual orientation didn’t mean the same thing in the 19th century that it does today, but the film did convince me that the 16th president, at the very least, leaned in that direction. 

That said, the film is a bit long-winded, often featuring multiple talking heads saying the same thing; I was kind of surprised that the narrative reached Lincoln’s death, and there were still 20 minutes left to go. Plus, since I gather the notion of Lincoln being gay is somewhat controversial, we don’t ever hear from anyone arguing the opposite case. 

Merchant Ivory

James Ivory and Ismail Merchant were creative and life partners for decades. They created a cinema company of filmmakers and actors who spent a couple of decades adapting classic literary works into gorgeously mounted costume dramas. Now, that entire story is told in a documentary of the same name, directed by Steven Soucy. 

Ivory, still alive and lively at age 96, is the main talking head, sharing his own perspective all the way up to the Oscar he won a few years ago, at 90, for writing Call Me By Your Name. It also ventures into the scandalous; both men had affairs, while their film productions weren’t always a model of harmony. 

The film is in theaters now. If the Merchant Ivory films meant anything to do at all, you’ll probably love this. 

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg 

Anita Pallenberg was a European actress of the 1960s, appearing in films like Barbarella. However, she may be better known as a muse of the Rolling Stones. She had lengthy relationships with two of them (Brian Jones and Keith Richards) and was the mother of three of Keith’s children. 

Directed by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg is part of an increasingly popular genre- a documentary based on a posthumously discovered unpublished manuscript. 

The documentary, streaming on Hulu, is a fascinating look at someone I admit I didn’t know much about. 

Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames 

This documentary about the late filmmaker Blake Edwards, which recently debuted on PBS’ American Masters, has two overarching points to make: Edwards had a great romance with Julie Andrews throughout their more than 40-year marriage, and he directed a long list of significant movies—Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 10, the Pink Panther series, Victor/Victoria, and more. 

Andrews and admirers such as Rian Johnson are interviewed, and plentiful archival footage from Edwards’ movies and life is available. 

Above all, it made me want to go back and re-watch a lot of these movies. 

Hollywoodgate

I give Hollywoodgate this: Its degree of difficulty was extremely high, perhaps the highest of any nonfiction film this year.  It’s either this, one of the other war docs, or one of the numerous documentaries this year about mountain climbers and/or daredevils.  

The title makes it sound like it’s about some Tinseltown scandal. In reality, it’s as far away from that as possible. “Hollywood Gate” is a base operated by the U.S.— and allegedly, the CIA — in Afghanistan, which the Taliban took over after the U.S. withdrawal. 

The film, directed by Ibrahim Nash’at, shows what happened after the Americans left. The threat exists that the Taliban commanders will kill him or otherwise do harm, but they just act incredibly annoyed. 

Rule of Two Walls 

Since the war in Ukraine began in early 2022, several documentaries have been made about it, especially the best one, last year’s Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol. 

Rule of Two Walls focuses on artists in Ukraine dealing with Russia’s invasion. Directed by David Gutnik, it introduces us to filmmakers, musicians, and street artists who not only bravely chose to stay rather than flee but have also continued to pursue their art. 

Even better, it’s a Ukraine doc that doesn’t feature Sean Penn or Bernard Henri-Levy wandering around Kyiv and making themselves the center of attention. 

Torched: The Story of the Austin Torch 

Torched joins the recent Minnesota Mean, as part of a new mini-genre of documentaries about bad-ass all-female/nonbinary teams in obscure sports. 

This time, it’s an ultimate frisbee team in Austin, as the members juggle the team with their real lives. The ultimate team at my college didn’t do much in their off-time besides get stoned, but I suppose the adult version is much more compelling. 

Directed by the wonderfully named Hoag Kepner, Torched is available now on all major VOD channels. 

To Be Destroyed 

I haven’t especially liked most of the political documentaries MSNBC has been airing lately as part of its Turning Point series. But this one was better than most, following a recent controversy in which books were banned from the schools in Rapid City, South Dakota. 

One of the banned authors, Dave Eggers, appears in the film as he visits Rapid City to meet with students and fight the bans. There’ll be some pandemic flashbacks for some, as we see crazy people yelling in school board meetings. 

This aired on MSNBC back in early August, and it is still available on VOD channels. 

Love, 2020 

I think I’m about all set with pandemic documentaries. Especially now that four years have passed, and this stuff is pretty firmly in the distant past. 

Love 2020 is about the efforts to stage the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as scheduled, in the summer of 2020 as COVID-19 raged. So we get the usual stuff, including interviews from Zoom calls and an obligatory pause to reflect on the George Floyd protests. It all leads up to a tennis tournament in which not much memorable happened. 

Directed by Jacqueline Joseph, Love 2020 is ultimately not nearly as interesting as the basketball version of this, The Day Sports Stood Still, a couple of years ago. 

(Note: This review originally had the wrong trailer attached, for a different movie called Love 2020.)