Category Archives: Recommendations

Earlier today, Indiewire posted the top ten lists of various film industry respondents, including mine. You can see the full list here and my picks here.

As noted there, I’ve restricted my list to non-fiction as a counterbalance, since most of these sorts of year-end rankings tend to only begrudging include one or two documentaries and otherwise heap praise on fiction films. My picks are also limited to official releases in 2017. Various festival favorites which have not yet come to theatres/ancillary will likely make it on next year’s list.

Here are pointers to what I’ve written about my top ten docs of 2017 on what (not) to doc previously. The films are unranked and in alphabetical order. I’ve also named ten additional docs or doc series as a secondary list below.

Top Ten, followed by ten more:

ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL

ALL THIS PANIC

DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME

DINA

JANE

KEDI

MOTHERLAND

QUEST

RAT FILM

STRONG ISLAND

BRIMSTONE & GLORY

CITY OF GHOSTS

EX LIBRIS: THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

FACES PLACES

ICARUS

THE KEEPERS

LA 92

LAST MEN IN ALEPPO

ONE OF US

WORMWOOD

Coming to PBS’s American Masters in an unabridged director’s cut tomorrow, Friday, December 29:
THIS IS BOB HOPE…

Director:
John Scheinfeld

Premiere:
American Masters (Nov 2017, abridged version)

About:
An in-depth look at the life and eight-decade career of the comedian and performer.

Popular across a broad spectrum of entertainment, from his early years in vaudeville through popular music, radio, stage, and screen, Bob Hope happily lived most of his 100 years in the public spotlight before his death in 2003. Once a cutting edge comic talent, he was viewed as old-fashioned by the 1970s, and fell out of favor. Scheinfeld’s affectionate portrait reminds audiences of his prodigious comic abilities and showmanship, drawing from Hope’s personal archives as well as a wealth of performance footage and interviews with family members and celebrity friends and fans like Billy Crystal, Conan O’Brien, and Margaret Cho. The well-constructed and comprehensive film details Hope’s rise to stardom, buoyed by his popular song “Thanks for the Memories,” and his lasting contributions to comedy, including his development of the topical monologue and conversational humor that influenced generations of stand-ups. In addition, Scheinfeld explores Hope’s charity work and long association with the USO, providing entertainment to military audiences for decades – and, in the case of his appearances during the Vietnam War, painting him as a hawk politically, further underlining that he was out of touch with younger audiences. Still, as demonstrated in the ample examples here, there’s no denying Hope’s talent.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, December 22:
A GERMAN LIFE

Directors:
Christian Krönes, Florian Weigensamer, Olaf Müller, and Roland Schrotthofer

Premiere:
Visions du Réel 2016

Select Festivals:
Munich, Jerusalem, DMZ, Docslisboa, Docpoint, Zagreb Dox, One World, It’s All True, CNEX Doc, Bergen, Jewish fests in San Francisco, UK, Washington, and Barcelona

About:
Joseph Goebbel’s secretary looks back on her life.

In Krönes, Weigensamer, Müller, and Schrotthofer’s captivating portrait, Brunhilde Pomsel is presented in stark black and white, her wrinkled face framed in close-up, underlining her 103 years, as she recounts how she came to work for the notorious Nazi Propaganda Minister. Intercut with these reflections are quotations from Goebbels and footage from the period produced by both Germany and Allied forces. Pomsel notes that she was apolitical and, beyond that, “one of the cowards,” and that, despite what viewers might want to think about themselves, they too would likely have complied rather than resisted when faced with the Nazi regime. At the same time, Pomsel offers contradictory views about what she did and didn’t know about the actions of the Nazi high command for which she worked – she claims not to know what was being done to the Jews in concentration camps, but her friendship with a Jewish friend who suffered under the Nazis is a recurrent thread here. Still, the filmmakers aren’t engaged in some kind of trial here – instead, they allow the centenarian’s words to underscore the human costs of compliance and expose the moral complicity in unquestioningly permitting hatred and persecution to become the new normal.