Documentaries

There are relatively few Netflix documentaries – even in this increasingly sensationalized and prurient age – that have made anything like the splash that the new show about the artist formerly known as P. Diddy has caused. Sean Combs: The Reckoning isn’t just hard to watch, but positively mind-blowing in its account of the imprisoned mogul’s actions and predilections. Although he was acquitted of the most serious charges that he was on trial for this year, Combs will not be released from jail until May 2028. Given the number of allegations and civil suits pending against him, any comeback for the disgraced musician looks impossible – even in an era when Kanye West is, apparently, given second chance after second chance.

Nobody liked Bama Rush: not the viewers, not the sorority sisters at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa (where the film is set), not TikTokkers. It is a remarkably unlikable film that ostensibly attempts to position itself as a “shocking” inside look at sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama. Meandering, self-absorbed and lazy, it somehow even manages to fail as anti-Greek life propaganda. Props to director Rachel Fleit for that though: it might be the film’s only achievement in a climate where people are frothing at the mouth to vilify anything resembling a uniquely American and time-honored tradition. (HBO Max/YouTube screenshot) Bama Rush is first and foremost a transparent attempt to cash in on the 2021 viral success of #RushTok.

Sorry for the delay: Cockburn has been busy bleaching his eyes after watching the trailer for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s newest venture, a Netflix documentary on "their story." https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1598287753774477312 People magazine claimed, “It's Meghan Markle and Prince Harry like you've never seen them before,” which makes Cockburn question if the publication has had its eyes and ears shut for the last two years. The documentary series, which is composed of six episodes and will premiere in December, includes personal footage of the pair at their wedding reception, on a trip to Africa and while Meghan is pregnant. But what’s a Meghan and Harry venture without the doom? The trailer also includes footage of Meghan wiping away tears. Perfect timing!

Back in February when the inspiring documentary about the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, was playing in movie theaters around the country, I wrote a review encouraging you to go see it. Now, it is coming to your own home. On Monday night it premiered on your PBS station, and is repeating throughout the week. This is a great opportunity for you — and now made very easy too.In that earlier review, I wrote about meeting someone who had been completely brainwashed about Justice Thomas. The Thomas he knew was a fictitious personality created and maintained by what Rush Limbaugh refers to as 'the drive-by media.' Thomas has been described by the leading lights of the media as bitter, a loner, a brooding recluse.

If you haven’t heard of the Netflix docu-series Tiger King, then you probably haven’t spent much time on the internet during the national quarantine. The series centers around Joe Exotic, a now-incarcerated, gay, meth-addled, big cat breeder and former candidate for both president and governor of Oklahoma, whose bleach-blond mullet, handlebar mustache, sequined leopard-print blouses and eccentric underworld of private zoo-keeping has been the unlikely catalyst to bring a nation together that is stuck at home with severe cabin fever. Tiger King is another indication that we should prepare to say goodbye to classic documentary filmmaking and get used to the docu-series, usually timing in at about six hours long spread across several episodes.

‘The innocence of America is one of its oldest traditions,’ said Oscar Wilde who, like Michael Jackson, was accused of seducing underage boys. Wilde was convicted, and cast into a disgrace that everyone now agrees was a crime against art and morality. Jackson was able to wriggle out of court, more than once. He had money and he had lawyers but, most of all, he had the entertainment business on his side, moralizing to us that he was a great artist. The pagan cult of show business is the real American religion, and the innocence of children is one of its most lucrative assets. The innocence of Michael Jackson, child star turned child abuser, was an article of faith because Jackson could fill a stadium.

One of the embarrassing truths our time is that wealthy and predominantly white people pay good money in order to experience conditions that poorer and predominately brown people have no choice but to undergo. When a college-educated millennial buys an overpriced ticket to a music festival, it’s a rite of passage. When a Bangladeshi village is washed into a tent encampment without running water, it’s a humanitarian catastrophe. Of course, choice is a factor. But once you’re hovering over a brimming chemical toilet and it hasn’t stopped raining for two days, the conditions are the same — a temporary reversion to Neolithic conditions, but with the population density of a modern city.