15. “Five Came Back”
Without doubt, a cinephile’s delight, this one [our review]. But Mark Harris, one of our very best and most gifted film journos, adapting his own novel into three episodes for Netflix, with simple and effective direction from making-of documentarian extraordinaire Laurent Bouzereau, ensure this is much more than just one for the movie obsessives. There’s real, tactile history brought to life in this unearthed story of the five Hollywood filmmakers—John Huston, Frank Capra, John Ford, George Stevens, William Wyler—who, during the height of their powers, shot propaganda and documentary films for the US government during World War 2. The three hour miniseries/movie (you decide, we can’t be bothered to argue over this) never bores, instead opting for a more vital approach wherein a lot of the footage from the filmmakers’ work is used for context and to show off some amazing imagery. The real crafty move was pairing up a current filmmaker with each subject—Francis Coppola, Guillermo Del Toro, Paul Greengrass, Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Spielberg, respectively—so they could add insight from their devoted fandom, but it also elevates this version and adds something new from the (already great) book. — EM
14. “Casting JonBenet”
If an era is defined by its crimes, mid-nineties America was an epoch dominated by two murder cases: The OJ Simpson trial and the JonBenet Ramsay killing. The still-unsolved case of the six-year-old pageant queen who was found dead in the basement of her family home at Christmas in 1996 has given rise to a good deal of sensationalism over the years, but that lurid impulse is both exploited and wittily critiqued in Kitty Green‘s fascinating hybrid doc. Focusing less on the crime than its mythology and the way it affected the community, it’s actually the story of a casting call for a putative narrative film about the subject. The often oddball professional and non-professional actors who show up provide a hugely entertaining oral history of the many theories behind the murder: everyone who comes to audition has their own pet theories and their own reasons for wanting to participate. Sometimes the ethics niggle (we’re never sure at what point the subjects are told the real nature of Green’s intent, or that their personal anecdotes and reminiscences will actually form the basis for the film), but it builds to a climax that thoroughly justifes the subterfuge. More a live art installation than a reconstruction per se, in the end, using a kind of meta-on-meta “Synecdoche NY” approach, the actors play out all the theories simultaneously on the one soundstage, built to replicate the Ramsay home. It’s a live-action diorama that is weird, dazzling and oddly haunting, and while any sense of JonBenet herself remains resolutely absent throughout, that too becomes part of the point. — JK
13. “Kedi”
An unfeasibly charming feline-centric documentary that also operates as a street-level (and birds-eye) love-letter to the gorgeous city of Istanbul, “Kedi” follows a collection of street cats on their daily prowls around the ancient Turkish city, and, tangentially, tells the stories of the people whose lives they touch and invariably improve. Turkish-born, American-based director Ceyda Torun shoots inventively with a special rig that puts her at cat’s-eye level, really capturing the personalities of the seven distinct kitties that she follows, from the “neighborhood psychopath” to the fish thief to the resident restaurant rat-catcher to the little gray puss who paws adorably at the window of a delicatessen but never crosses the threshold, and is rewarded for his courtliness with slices of the finest manchego and smoked turkey. It may not be hard-hitting, but it’s such a soothing experience that it becomes borderline profound anyway: it’s said that owning a cat lengthens your life, and watching “Kedi” is the next best thing — you simply feel your stress levels drop. So good you’ll even enjoy it if you’re a dog lover — although the film is pretty persuasive with the idea that the difference between cats and dogs is that “cats know God,” which is what makes them so self-possessed and often dismissive of the humans who nonetheless worship them. — JK
12. “City Of Ghosts”
When horrible things are happening somewhere in the world, without some intrepid souls to document and report on them, the rest of humanity remains oblivious. Matthew Heineman’s sobering documentary “City of Ghosts” [our review]tells the incredible story of how an ad-hoc band of everyday expatriate Syrians turned themselves into an emergency alert system. Using the same deeply embedded intimacy that was so effective in his 2015 debut “Cartel Land” [our review], Heineman follows the members of Raqaa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who have flooded the Internet with horrific first-person accounts of the terrors ISIS inflicted on their city after overrunning it in 2014. While not skimping on the gruesome details of the beheadings and other medieval punishments used by the thuggish theocrats on Raqaa’s civilians, Heineman keeps his narrative focused on the RBSS members themselves. Exiled to Europe, the remote reporters remain under a dual threat: from ISIS assassins and from often suspicious local populations as migrants in turbulently nationalistic times. Their story is a heroic one and thrillingly recounted. But although the movie was completed before Raqaa’s liberation from ISIS in late 2017, Heineman’s concluding note of traumatic uncertainty suggests that the legacy of what RBSS reported will long outlast any military victory. — CB
11. “Quest”
Jonathan Olshefski’s documentary portrait of a black family’s life changes (or lack thereof) throughout the eight years of the Obama administration felt startlingly timely, according to our reviewer, when it premiered, in a Sundance Film Festival that was happening concurrently with the inauguration of his successor, an orange sack of shit. But “Quest” is more meditative than pointed, ennobled by Olshefski’s rigorous verite style, which loops voiceover over picture but otherwise does not intrude on the observation of these lives. Dramas do occur, even senseless violence, but it’s the aftereffects that become the focus of this humane and empathetic film: how we get up again after being knocked down. Dad Christopher “Quest” Rainey, mother Christine’a and daughter PJ are no strangers to being knocked down but what emerges most clearly is their decency, a quality that gets talked about a lot by politicians but seldom truly celebrated. The Raineys are the kind of people who will work in a homeless shelter even when their own roof is held together with sheet plastic, or do menial jobs to support a recording studio that gives a platform to otherwise disenfranchised local talent. The TV may always be on and constantly signalling scandals and political shifts and controversies, but “Quest” reminds us that those chattering pundits are not America. This is.