15. “Boys State” (d. Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine) – available through Apple TV+
It is almost suspicious how well Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine chose the four main subjects of their film, but however they managed it, it makes for engaging, suspenseful viewing as the political leaders of tomorrow learn the ropes of electioneering within a two-party system at Texas Boys State, a yearly model-government educational program for teenagers. Segregated from a similar Girls State program, the boys are arbitrarily divided into two parties (without real-world affiliations), and tasked with developing a policy platform and electing leaders, with the goal of winning the final election for “governor.” The subjects we know best all end up playing very pivotal roles, and while there are some sterling lessons learned about just how far honesty can get you in politics, and how fickle the electorate can be, mostly the outtake here is heartening, if a little misleading: it is good to see kids so unusually engaged in the democratic process. But what “Boys State” really observes is the emergence of the one division that cuts much deeper than any quickly-assumed tribal loyalty: between pragmatism and idealism. It’s both fun, and a little depressing, to see that eternal battle play out in this practice arena.
14. “Spaceship Earth” (d. Matt Wolf) – currently on Hulu
We live in a world that has largely forgotten about it, so there is a retroactive sadness that informs Matt Wolf’s deep dive into Biosphere II, a 1980s experiment in which eight people lived in a sealed, supposedly self-sustaining three-acre biodome for two years. This subtext makes the (admittedly overlong) film more than the story of a failed utopian adventure, in which we point and laugh at the hippie idealists and sigh a collective well duh, when media pressure, ego, and money intervene to corrupt the purity of their ambitions. Wolf’s assembly of contemporary footage and recent interviews gives both long-view perspective and an as-it-happened immersion into a small community who built remarkable things (a ranch, a ship, a hotel, and an art gallery, among other globe-spanning projects) before the reach of their charismatic leader’s indefatigable attitude exceeded his grasp; yet Wolf refuses to write them off as cult even while acknowledging their cultish aspects. The narrative that emerges is fascinating and moving – the story of something that as a species it feels like we’ve lost – and contains no single real villain, at least until the eleventh hour, when Steve Bannon shows up.
13. “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan” (d. Julien Temple) – watch On-Demand
You’re not likely to approach this portrait of the ex-Pogues frontman expecting an oil painting, but still, it’s a shock to see Shane MacGowan as he is today: waxy-pale, slurring, and chairbound. And yet it’s weirdly heartening how quickly one gets past that, as it becomes clear that MacGowan’s mind is as sharp as his delivery is blurred and his wit is as caustic, stubborn, and unself-pitying as it has ever been. And so while ostensibly this musical biodoc, from a director who is no stranger to the form, ought to be solely for fans, its appeal is much broader, providing a rambunctious potted history of the London music scene of the 1980s, and of Irish/British relations during the height of Republican/Unionist hostilities. There are some aspects that don’t work – the cheap-looking animation segments for one thing – but even they contribute overall to the film’s messy anarchism, which if you know anything about MacGowan beyond his legendarily terrible dentistry, is highly appropriate. And elsewhere, the judiciously chosen film clips and archival segments are inspired, cut together with dynamism and drama, set to a fantastic soundtrack as much composed of MacGowan’s influences as his own music. Watch it drunk.
12. “The Painter and the Thief” (d. Benjamin Ree) – currently on Hulu
Of all the odd-couple pairings that cinema has thrown at us over the years, the strangely symbiotic, mutually fulfilling, passionate yet platonic relationship that develops between a struggling Czech artist and the drug-addicted Norwegian career criminal who stole her most valuable paintings while high, must be among the most surprising. Director Benjamin Ree is not above some temporal manipulation, some information-withholding, and a few razzle-dazzle reveals to keep his film careening along, but the dual portrait that emerges, of painter Barbora Kysilkova and her thief/muse Karl Bertil is striking enough to earn them and then some. Both an unpredictable journey of self-discovery for the pair and a two-way redemption song, it’s also a funny and unusually clear-sighted description of the power of art to heal the soul, whether through its creation, or its appreciation. And it delivers individual scenes, such as when Karl first sees the painting Barbora has made of him, or when her final portrait of him is revealed to contain a crucial, beautifully vulnerable change from the source photograph, that are among the most unexpectedly poignant of the year.
11. “Mayor” (d. David Osit) – available in virtual cinemas
Like with public buses (for which city officials are also responsible), you wait ages for a civics-minded non-fiction feature on the duties and pressures of Mayorship, when two come along at once. But while David Osit’s fly-on-the-wall look at a few months in the life of Musa Hadid, mayor of the embattled de facto Palestinian capital Ramallah, also has a fine-tuned sense of the minutiae of everyday municipal government, it sets itself apart from Frederick Wiseman‘s “City Hall” (see below) with its inevitable moments of high drama. The very existence of Ramallah, a Palestinian stronghold in the otherwise Israeli-controlled West Bank, is politically fraught, with skirmishes frequently breaking out on its fringes. During one such, Hadid is so close to the action that he has to be hustled away amid whistling bullets, at another, he’s trapped in the town hall while soldiers roam the city, apparently just to show they can. Despite all this anxiety, “Mayor” maintains a light, at times almost absurdist tone, which seems to emanate from the deadpan Hadid himself. Perhaps, when you go from a discussion about kerning in the city’s slogan “WeRamallah” (#TeamNoSpace) to a tense militarized standoff in a matter of minutes, a hangdog sense of humor is a survival tactic.