Documentary

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies

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  • Title: Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies
  • IMDb: link

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is exactly what sounds the like. The 2020 documentary takes a look at nudity in film from its humble beginnings to the ups and downs of regulation to current views. Interviews with actors and film historians examine the give-and-take in Hollywood pushing experimentation and mores of the time versus waves of censorship in a constantly evolving view on the subject which changes with the times.

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Rookie Season

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  • Title: Rookie Season
  • IMDb: link

The documentary Rookie Season takes us behind-the-scenes of Rebel Rock Racing fighting to establish its prescience on the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge. With cameras in the car, on the track, and in the pits, along with behind-the-scenes interviews with drivers and pit crew, director Adrian Bonvento‘s film takes us along for the highs and lows of the team’s first season on the ten-race circuit which began with multiple wrecks to start the season and ends in glory.

The highlights of the film are putting the audience in the car with the driver, especially late during a race in rainy conditions and limited visibility where you get a feel for just how challenging the races are. While I think the documentary could get more in depth with its subjects, there’s certainly enough here to warrant a look for anyone interested in the sport.

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Charli XCX: Alone Together

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  • Title: Charli XCX: Alone Together
  • IMDb: link

Feeling isolated during the 2020 COVID quarantine, English singer and songwriter Charli XCX decided to create a new album from her home, which would become How I’m Feeling Now, and enlisted the help of her fans to help with the collaboration with plans to create and release the album in a matter of weeks with only what was available to her in isolation. Charli XCX: Alone Together documents the unusual process showcasing the artist’s daily life, her relationship, her fans, and the work involved putting together the album.

While likely more of interest to those already fans of Charli, the documentary does touch on several interesting themes and ideas including an artist’s relationship with her fanbase, the struggles of the creative process (in most unusual circumstances), and as a snapchat of life in quarantine and the emotional and psychological toll of all the days captured on film.

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MLK/FBI

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  • Title: MLK/FBI
  • IMDb: link

Director Sam Pollard‘s film examines J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI‘s extensive, and legally ambiguous, investigation into Martin Luther King Jr.‘s life through recently declassified documents, archival footage, and interviews from those involved.

The documentary is a sobering reminder how the broad brush of Communism could justify nearly anything during the height of the Red Scare, even allow Hoover and his minions to wiretap King in hopes of discrediting one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement based not on his political or civil rights agenda but the man’s private life taking place behind closed doors. With the wiretaps themselves not declassified until at least 2027, the documentary mainly has to speculate what is on those tapes (and their legitimacy), but the range of the FBI’s dirty tricks to discredit a black man who they saw as dangerous to their own interests couldn’t be more clear.

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Found

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  • Title: Found
  • IMDb: link

Found, the documentary from Amanda Lipitz, introduces us to three American teenagers born in China, given up for adoption, and raised in the United States. Finding each other after genetic testing at 23andMe, which links them all as blood-related cousins, the three young woman connect with each other first visually and then in person when they travel to China in hopes of finding answers about their family history.

The documentary plays on themes of connection, discovery, friendship and family as we get to know a little of each of the three girls separately before putting them together on their journey to China. While the three girls aren’t the only ones Lipitz followed for the documentary, their combined story allows the director to capture their shared, but still deeply personal, journey as the search for answers (even if the film occasionally plays on the timing of revelations for a more cinematic experience).

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