Tag Archives: documentary

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster

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June 19

This is the second film of the June Swoon today, and it is a second documentary. However, unlike Black Barbie, this tells the recent tale of a horrible tragedy from this decade. The documentary focuses on the disaster of OceanGate, the submersible that was intended to take people to see the remains of the Titanic, only to have its own catastrophe.

According to Netflix, “The Titan submersible’s ill-fated journey to the ruins of the Titanic dominated headlines in June 2023, yet the shocking decisions that led to the disaster have never been revealed like this. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster delves into the psyche of billionaire OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and explores his relentless quest to bring oceanic exploration to the masses – at any cost. Through exclusive access to whistleblower testimony, pivotal audio recordings, and footage from the company’s early days, the film provides an unprecedented look at the technical challenges, moral dilemmas, and shockingly poor decisions that culminated in the catastrophic expedition. Titan examines the doomed underwater endeavor that forced the world to reconsider the price of unchecked ambition in the depths of the ocean.”

The documentary does a really great job of telling this story up until the actual journey of the Titan. The time spent with the Titan during the time before the implosion gives me a clear and obvious picture of why this tragedy occurred and why this was pushed forward. I feel as if the doc needed to focus in on the time during when the world was unsure of what was going on and were hoping that the people aboard the Titan could be saved.

There were some fascinating interviews with people who had worked on the project or who were scheduled to be in the exposition. These were all really well done. It just felt like the time about the actual submersible’s destruction was handled through box text on the screen.

The most anxious moments of the doc was the sound of the popping during some of the footage, popping sounds that were the submersible cracking. These recordings were tense and astounding.

The doc certainly sets up OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush as our film’s villain, but it would have been nice to go even deeper than what they did. I can see the arrogance and the narcissism, but I would like to know more about it than what was given. He is made out to be the bad guy here though, and he very well may have been.

Overall this was a compelling story that seemed to be missing a few specifics or some more depth that would have made this an absolutely powerhouse of a documentary. As it is, it is fine.

3.6 stars

MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024)

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January 22

Today’s Genre-ary documentary was found on MAX called MoviePass, MovieCrash, which looks upon the rise and collapse of the movie subscription service MoviePass.

According to IMDB, MoviePass, MovieCrash is…”Exploring the company founding and the implosion of the business by outside investors who took over the company, left it bankrupt and under investigation.”

Stacy Spikes, the founder of MoviePass, took his idea and made it a phenom. For a limited fee monthly, you could go to a movie a day at any theater. It was a revolutionary concept that helped movie theaters. Hamet Watt was a board member of the company and was a co-founder with Spikes.

As they were trying to build their business, two other men came into the orbit of MoviePass. Mitch Lowe, who became CEO of MoviePass, and Ted Farnsworth, Helios and Matheson’s CEO. Helios and Matheson purchased the company in 2017. In 2018, Spikes and Watt were fired from the company that they had founded.

It was at this point where the company started to pull shady deals because they were hemorrhaging money and they were trying to find a way to bring down costs. The problem was they did not keep the consumer, their customers, in the loop.

They worked it so one of the massive movie releases of the summer, Mission Impossible: Fallout, would be unavailable for their users to go to, despite still taking their money. More and more error messages would come up when attempting to use the MoviePass card and the business was being driven into the ground. Finally the company had to declare bankruptcy.

There is an air of racial tint to this story as well. Spikes and Watt were both African American and, at the time that they were forced out of MoviePass, the rest of the board was all white. The doc touched upon this aspect, which was some of the more fascinating pieces of the story. One would wonder how it would have gone if Spikes and Watts were white.

The story of MoviePass is a remarkable one, a company that took off like a rocket, creating a huge success in the business of theaters only to be brought down by a couple of con artists looking for an easy score. It is an amazing story.

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

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January 21

The Genre-ary for today is the oldest of the documentaries I watched for this DailyView so far. It was from 1988 and it was called The Thin Blue Line. It documented the case of wrongfully convicted cop killer Randall Adams, who had always claimed that he was innocent. After the release of this documentary, the case against Adams was reexamined and he was set free.

Randall Adams had run out of gas and had been picked up by a 16-year old runaway named David Harris. Adams and Harris hung out for the night, drinking, smoking marijuana and going to the movies. Adams claimed that he then returned to his motel and went to sleep. Harris claimed that they went out again and were pulled over by the police and that Adams shot the cop and drove off, leaving the officer to die in the street.

Apparently, the prosecutors and investigators targeted Adams as their killer, even going as far as to give Harris immunity to be their eyewitness. There were other eyewitnesses whom had driven past the pull over before it turned deadly. These witnesses claimed to have seen Adams too. However, these witnesses were dubious to say the least.

The documentary interviewed both Adams and Harris in an effort to tell the story that had happened. There were also interviews from the defense attorneys, the judge, and several of the police involved before and after.

Another thing that this doc did was to use recreations to show the events of the night through a variety of POVs. At the time, most documentary films did not use this technique in its story telling methods and it gave The Thin Blue Line a different feel. In 2025, some of these recreations were cheesy, but I did get used to them as the film went on. The film also used a soundtrack, scored by Phillip Glass, that was very memorable and created a mood for the film.

This was extremely influential in the world of the documentary. Many true crime style docs take concepts and storytelling techniques from The Thin Blue Line. It was a compelling story at the heart of the doc, with interviews with everyone involved.

Will & Harper (2024)

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January 13

I have not been a fan of Will Ferrell. He has some movies that I absolutely hate. Yet, this Netflix documentary may just make me want to reconsider that opinion.

Will Ferrell and his friend of thirty years, Harper Steele, went on a buddy road trip across America. The hook? Harper Steele had just completed gender transition and was out as a trans woman.

Ferrell met Steele when Farrell joined SNL and they quickly became close friends. When they decided to take this trip across the country, Harper had given Will the right to ask any question about the transition. The openness of the friendship and the kind, sensitive manner in which they spoke to one another gave a real insight into the friendship they had built over the years.

Seeing how Will was protective and, at times, fearful for Harper was so sweet. The places that they traveled to were shown on the doc and the people that they came across spoke with respect and kindness.

But how many actually meant it? They came across the governor of Indiana, Eric Holcomb, at a basketball game and Holcomb dropped his rhetoric to get a picture with Ferrell. Holcomb has been an outspoken anti-trans proponent, passing severe anti-trans laws in his state.

When Farrell, dressed as Sherlock Holmes, took Steele to a steak house in Texas, the crowd at the restaurant was pretty taken aback. The social media response to the dinner was off the charts, with a ton of hatred spewing across the platforms. Of course, these people were all taking their outrage and vitriol to the safety of the internet where they can post their hatred with a certain amount of anonymousness.

However, much of the doc played against the caricature of the ignorant American and showed people who were very supportive and kind. Will Farrell was amazing with Harper, supporting her and treating her with such respect and acceptance that you could see how intimate and special their years long friendship had become.

The film was not just a powerful doc, but it was hilarious as well. Some of the scenes were just outright funny, which I guess you should expect with two funny people at the front of the film.

Will & Harper was a really enjoyable film that showed the power of friendship, the humor of a buddy road trip and the capacity of dialogue and communication.

The Amazing Jonathan Documentary (2019)

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January 2

Day two of the 2025 Genre-ary brought me to Disney + and a film about a magician by the name of the Amazing Jonathan, a documentary that started off as a story about a magician who was diagnoses with a heart condition that gave him one year to live, but ended up in a much different direction that included a deep internal conflict for the documentarian Ben Berman.

The Amazing Jonathan had been diagnoses with a heart condition and he told an audience that he had one year to live. When Ben Berman approached him, that was three years prior and Amazing Jonathan was going back out for a five-show tour.

However, the doc was not as much about Amazing Jonathan as it was about Ben Berman himself and trying to discover exactly was going on. He found out that there were other people working on a documentary about Jonathan, people whom Jonathan had also given permission to. During the doc, we discover three other documentaries in progress besides Berman’s.

As Berman filmed, he began to question what was real and what was being made up by the magician as an illusion or a prank.

Some may say not to turn the camera back on the documentarian, but I feel as if this film does it in a very effective manner. I was more compelled by the story about the making of this documentary than I was about the story of this dying magician. For a good chunk of the film, I saw Amazing Jonathan almost as the antagonist of the doc, which is crazy. I did like how this documentary brought the conflict to a close at the end. It felt like redemption for the film character Amazing Jonathan.

I see some hate for this documentary online, but I thought this was a fascinating tale of the creation of a doc featuring a magician and the documentarian and their intertwining story. I watched this on Disney +, but it was released officially on Hulu.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (2024)

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January 1

It is January 1st, which means that I start the new Genre-ary event at EYG. This year, EYG will be doing the Genre-ary with documentaries. I will watch a new documentary, one that I have never seen before, every day for the whole month.

The first documentary I watched was one I saw on YouTube pundit Dan Murrell’s video of the Best Films of the Year. It was called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin and it sounded like an emotional film. I decided that I would use 2024 documentaries in the Genre-ary instead of waiting on them until the June Swoon.

With the set-up out of the way, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin was truly a beautiful documentary about a young man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who was able to find friendship, love and hope inside the gaming world of World of Warcraft.

Mats Steen, a young Norwegian boy, was diagnosed with the muscular disorder as a child and had to spend most of his life confined to a wheelchair as the disorder slowly restricted his motor skills.

One of the few things Mats was able to do was be on his computer. He found a community or guild, inside World of Warcraft, called Starlight, where he was able to meet others. Mats did not reveal anything about his condition to the people playing the game with him even after they had formed a close online relationship.

The doc uses the actual online dialogue used in the game to create an animated model of the online game. It uses this animation, in the World of Warcraft style, to show how important Mats, as the avatar called Ibelin, would become to the Starlight guild. The doc also used interviews with other guild members and family members of Mats as well as some home movies to build this picture of the young man.

Mats wrote an online blog near the end of his life that the doc used to illustrate more about the thoughts Mats was having. They had an actor read the blog entries in a voice close to Mats. Mats’ family did not know anything of this blog and, after his death, Mats had left the password to his family. This is where they started to understand how much their son had impacted the world through the video game. They posted on the blog that Mats had died and dozens of people responded to them, one of the more powerful moments for me during this doc.

The doc was not about a man who was slowly dying. This doc showed the power of life, friendship and of connections to others, even if it is not in the typical way. Mats had a short life, but his presence was felt by many different people in extremely powerful ways.

This was available to stream on Netflix. It is well worth your time. You may give a second thought to the viability of those kids spending time on their computers.

2024 Year in Review: Best Documentary

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I do enjoy a good documentary. I am going to have a list of top ten documentaries for the year. Nine of them are movie format and one is a weekly series. There were a lot of weekly series that intrigued me, but it is harder to fit those into the schedule than straight movies.

I am also going to officially announce here that in January, for the annual Genre-ary DailyView, where I watch a movie that I have not seen in a certain genre every day for the whole month. This is the third year for the Genre-ary (we have had sci-fi and musicals) and in 2025, the topic for Genre-ary is Documentaries. This starts on Wednesday, January 1st.

Best Documentary

Previous Winners:  Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, My Scientology Movie, Tickled, Finding Neverland, Tiger King, The Beatles: Get Back, Lights & Magic, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

Here are the top 10 docs of 2024.

#10. Elton John: Never Too Late. A look at Elton John’s life and his music. Found on Disney +.

#9. Blink. An emotional story of a family who had 3 out of 4 of their children who had a genetic disorder that would eventual lead them to lose their sight. Their family went on a trip across the planet to give the kids experiences they could always remember.

#8. Brats. I saw this on Hulu this year and it was all about the group of young actors from the 1980s called the Brat Pack and how that nomenclature affected their careers.

#7. Music by John Williams. Another Disney + doc on a famous figure, looking at the life of the iconic composer John Williams and all his amazing movie music.

#6. Bray Wyatt: Becoming Immortal. The WWE documentary on Bray Wyatt, who just passed away. The emotional doc spoke to his friends and his family, including brother Bo Dallas.

#5. Beatles ’64. Another Disney + doc, this time looking at the Beatles from 1964, the year they arrived in the United States.

#4. The Greatest Night in Pop. A Netflix doc that details the events of the night where the song “We Are the World” was recorded. Amazing footage from the actual night.

#3. The Jinx: Part Two. The one series on this list, and one that I considered to make the winner. I enjoyed this weekly series on MAX that followed the rest of the story of killer Robert Durst.

#2. Jim Henson Idea Man. This is the fifth doc from Disney + on this list. Ron Howard directed this documentary on the Muppet creator Jim Henson. Very emotional and a great look on one of the most creative men in entertainment.

#1. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. The doc on Christopher Reeve is powerful, emotional, and shows us what a hero Chris Reeve was, before and after he played Superman.

Getting Lost

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What a treat.

I think I had a knowledge in the back of my mind that there was a documentary in the works for LOST, but I had not gone looking for it. Then, I was on social media (I do not remember if I was on X or Facebook or Bluesky to be honest) and I found someone talking about the documentary being available on Prime for rental. I rushed over to Prime immediately to see if I could find it. And there it was.

I have to explain this. I have never been as connected to a TV program as I was with LOST. It was at the very heart of my being. When it ended, I felt like I had a hole in my heart that I just could not fill. It was a physical gap that had an emptiness about it. All these years later, I still think back on the show with so much love.

I was excited to watch this documentary and it immediately grabbed my attention. It had interviews with nearly everyone in the cast, producers, writers, fans and they were talking about all of the major aspects about LOST, from the cultural significance to the influential impact on TV to the importance of the show on people’s lives.

They talked about the pilot and how they were making the pilot without any expectation that it would ever be picked up. They talked about the Tailies, “The Constant,” Not Penny’s Boat, Charlie’s Death, “We have to go back,” Walt, the finale etc.

The documentary did not shy away from controversy either. They addressed how the finale is a divisive episode that split the community apart. They talked about the report a few years ago stating that the LOST writer’s room was filled with bullying, racism and sexism (which I had not heard about before this) and they asked Damon Lindelof about it. Matthew Fox did not appear via an interview for the doc and there was an ending moment where J.J. Abrams asked if they did not get an interview with anybody and the voice off camera said Matthew Fox. Abrams said, “Seriously? You never got Foxy? Come on, really?” and then said “That’s too bad. His loss.” I wonder if there was something contentious going on there. Dominic Monaghan apparently also declined an invitation to talk.

Filmmaker Taylor Morden included some specific details about the LOST fan community, including the podcasts that sprung up and also some of the charitable work done by the LOST community, especially dealing with cancer. There were some famous fans that were interviewed such as Samm Levine and Bobby Moynihan.

I loved this documentary. I may not be the most unbiased when it comes to my thoughts on it, but I do think that they went out of their way to include everything about the series, even the bad things.

AND IT WAS NOT PURGATORY! THEY WERE NOT DEAD ALL THE TIME!

Um.. sorry about that.

Elton John: Never Too Late

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Elton John is one of the greatest musicians from the 1970s and early ’80s, and there have been several versions about his life from A Life in Song to Rocketman. The latest Elton John documentary came to Disney + this month called Elton John: Never Too Late.

Fans of Elton John should love this documentary. The music is a highlight as they use some of his greatest songs as a soundtrack for the doc. There are moments in Elton John’s life that could have had more details developed within the doc.

Some of my own personal favorite parts of the doc included the section involving John Lennon, the details surrounding Elton John’s suicide attempt and his initial relationship with Bernie Taupin.

I also enjoyed how the doc used animated sections to visualize a series of interviews or tape recording that were used in the doc for the first time. Some of the pain from Elton John’s life was tough to hear and I appreciate how he was willing to go into the story for the doc.

I did enjoy the new song, ‘Never Too Late’ with Brandi Carlile, that played over the credits of the documentary.

This was an engaging documentary, but it could have gone into more depth than it did. However, it does touch on some things that are intriguing and the music is fantastic.

3.85 stars

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

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EYG Hall of Famer Christopher Reeve, who sprang to fame playing Superman in several movies int he late 70s and early 80s, gets the biographical documentary treatment going into depth about his life, his family and the horrific tragedy that changed his perspective for the remainder of his life.

The doc interviews Reeve’s children and his ex-wife, revealing the deep relationship that Reeve had and how his time as Superman affected his career and how people’s POV changed him.

There are some amazingly personal scenes and imagery of Christopher Reeve struggling post-accident that was difficult to watch at times. The emotions were in full example and heartstrings were pulled as the story moved from pre-accident to post-accident. There were plenty of times that I teared up watching the powerfully poignant moments.

Some of the toughest scenes for me was the parts including Robin Williams. Williams and Reeve were roommates during their time at Julliard, forming a lifetime friendship. The relationship had several vital moments and it nearly broke me when it was said that had Christopher hadn’t died, Robin would be alive today. Heart-breaking.

Directors Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonhôte painted a moving portrait of the actor and how he was able to overcome his adversity to help many individuals with their own handicaps.

4.6 stars

20 Days in Mariupol (2023)

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June 25, 2024

“Wars don’t start with explosions. They start with silence.”

Today’s June Swoon 3 film is another Oscar winner that absolutely rips at your soul and had me crying within the first 20 minutes. 20 Days in Mariupol won the 2024 Best Documentary Academy Awards this past March with this chilling look at the Russian invasion into Ukraine, specifically into a coastal city called Mariupol.

Three AP journalists, led by Mstyslav Chernov, who wound up writing, directing and appearing in the doc, end up the final journalists inside war torn Mariupol, dedicated to getting their footage out of the country to show the world the atrocities being committed by Russian soldiers.

Absolutely heart-wrenching as the footage showed men, women, children being torn apart by the shrapnel and the bombing of civilian structures. As I watched, I was taken aback by the continued filming of these tragedies and how the Ukrainian people, for the most part, wanted the filming to continue. I guess the desire to show the world what was happening, to be able to record the travesty was vitally important to everyone involved.

The switching to news clips of Russian representatives claiming these images and film was of actors, that it was “fake news” was downright sickening. The use of that phrase to try and minimize the truth and throw shade at the media is obscene, and I am ashamed of how that term has been used in the US as well as abroad.

The film was so raw and painful to watch these innocent people suffer through because of the aggression of an occupying force. As painful as it was, it also was a homage to the power of the human spirit and the dedication to one’s craft in the face of real-world horrors. This was harrowing.

A Disturbance in the Force (2023)

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June 24, 2024

A Long, Long Time Ago… in a Galaxy far away… Well, maybe not that far away.

Few fandoms are as currently as toxic as the Star Wars fandom. Not to put down the entire group of people for the divisiveness of some, but there is no denying that Star Wars fans lean towards hyperbole. One only needs to look at the discourse surrounding the new Disney + series, The Acolyte, to understand it.

However, the Star Wars universe had something once that is both beloved and reviled unlike anything else. It was something that George Lucas himself wanted to see banished from the canon of his creation. It was something that Star Wars fans desperately tried to see for decades… a badge of honor among those who truly called themselves Star Wars aficionados.

The Star Wars Holiday Special.

So today’s June Swoon focused in on a documentary from Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak all about the creation of and response to on of the most infamous TV specials of all fandom.

Between the release of Star Wars and Empire Strikes back, the CBS network wanted a Star Wars special to broadcast over the holiday season and they turned it into a variety show, featuring Chewbacca’s family as well as Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman and Art Carney. It aired once and then disappeared, only to be seen by those who could find a bootleg copy.

This documentary included clips of all of the Star Wars performers, including Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher with their thoughts on the special. Harrison Ford’s responses are always the most entertaining as he is clearly hoping the special would disappear forever.

There were also interviews of a ton of famous people in the geek community giving their comments and thoughts on the special including such notable stars as Kevin Smith, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Bobcat Goldthwait, Seth Green, Paul Scheer, Donny Osmond, Gilbert Gottfried, and Patton Oswalt. There were a lot of interviews with people involved in the creation of the special including Bruce Vilanch, Mick Garris, Bob Mackie among others.

Though the doc certainly says that this special was bad, there was items included that show how some people, particular those who may have seen the special as a child, loved the show. Jon Favreau is an unapologetic fan of the special and they showed how he included Easter eggs from it in The Mandalorian. The clips from the animated section of the special was shown as the first place we saw Boba Fett.

The documentary was very funny and gave real opinions of people who were desperate at the time for content in the Star Wars community. One wonders what the fandom today would do if something like the Star Wars Holiday Special were to be released on Disney +. The review bombing that would happen would be generational.

All Star Wars fans should be looking for this documentary, which I rented on Amazon Prime. If you are interested in how something like this able to be created, you should check this out. It was highly entertaining and an easy watch.

The Last Repair Shop (2023)

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June 5, 2024

It is a busy day today so I had to get the June Swoon 3 going early this morning and I had another Oscar winner on the list. This was the Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short and it was entitled The Last Repair Shop. I watched it on YouTube, but I see that it is available as well on Disney +. This is just over thirty five minutes long and is a joyous expression of love for music and for those for whom music has changed their lives.

The focus was on a instrument repair shop from Los Angeles that provided a service to the schools of the area to repair damaged or broken musical instruments for free. The film profiles four members of the shop: Dana Atkinson, Paty Moreno, Duane Michaels and Steve bagmanyan.

The film also had words from students who gave quick stories about how they wound up playing the instrument they played. The passion and the joy came through each child’s words as it helped us understand how important these musical instruments would be in their lives.

The stories were very emotional and compelling. The stories of the workers at the repair shop ranged from a man who an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan to a woman who tried to give her children a better life in America only to struggle to a man who played on the same stage as Elvis Presley.

The film ended with a performance of a song called “The Alumni” which featured many of the voices that we heard during the film.

If you love music, or if you ever played an instrument, you will be inspired by this documentary short film. It is a love letter to music and those people who make it or allow other people to make it.

2023 Best Documentary

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Best Documentary

Previous Winners:  Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, My Scientology Movie, Tickled, Finding Neverland, Tiger King, The Beatles: Get Back, Lights & Magic

I have not actually seen a lot of documentaries this year. I usually enjoy seeing documentaries, and there is no real reason why I have not seen very many. 

So here are my top four…

#4. Stan Lee. This Disney + film was a nice doc about Stan the Man. Almost too much of a puff piece, but enjoyable for fans of the icon. Best part was a radio confrontation between Stan and Jack Kirby. Wanted more like that.

#3. Taylor Swift: The ERAs Tour. Not really a documentary, but a lot of fun. I have never considered myself a Swiftie, but I enjoyed the concert film.

#2. American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes. This Peacock special was really well done. The WWE always puts together the best docs about their wrestlers. This story of Cody Rhodes’ journey was compelling and gave us some true insight on the American Nightmare.

#1. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. An Apple TV + film that brought us into the story of Michael J. Fox and his struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, and how his life was affected from it. Michael J. Fox was interviewed extensively for the doc.