As with all of Penny Lane’s films, Listening to Kenny G, the idiosyncratic auteur’s TIFF-premiering, DOC NYC-opening, exploration of the beloved/reviled “smooth jazz” saxophonist and his globally ubiquitous sound (to this day “Going Home” signals closing time throughout China) turns a straightforward subject into an unexpected philosophical inquiry. In this case, Lane begins her journey down the G-hole with a simple question: Why does the bestselling instrumentalist of all time, our most famous living jazz musician, “make certain people really angry”? Using interviews with G as well as elite jazz critics and academics as well as archival footage, Lane arrives […]

The title tagline “A Year in the Life of Earl ‘DMX’ Simmons” is a rather anodyne description that belies the emotional rollercoaster ride that filmmaker (and podcaster) Christopher Frierson takes us on in his riveting debut feature DMX: Don’t Try to Understand, which currently plays on HBO as part of the channel’s Music Box series. Filmed during what would turn out to be the last year of the acclaimed rapper’s life, the doc moves with lightning speed from packed concerts to corporate conference rooms, from meaningful meetups with fans to intimate reconciliations with family members. It’s a whirlwind of a life, […]

As perhaps one of the few people on the planet who managed to nightclub through the ’90s without any awareness of shooting star Alanis Morissette (her music just didn’t penetrate my punk/goth/new wave bubble) I came to Alison Klayman’s latest doc Jagged, part of HBO’s new Music Box series, with a positively clean slate. The film is an in-depth look at the Canadian-American musician-singer-songwriter-actress through an exhaustive amount of archival material, juxtaposed with straightforward interviews with the mercurial Morissette herself. (For those also in a Morissette-defying bubble, this would be a good time to state that the musician is not […]

Jean Smart is the very definition of versatile. The three-time Emmy winner’s first act highlights include Designing Women, Frasier, 24, and now a new act in her career, filled even juicier roles, starting with Fargo, Legion, and Watchmen, has led to current HBO favorites Mare of Easttown, with Kate Winslet, and a starring role in Hacks. In this half-hour she talks about the importance of hearing the character’s voice, why not being an ingenue may have helped her career, frustrating ways the industry has changed for actors, her love for her current co-stars, why studio audiences throw her off her […]

Binge-worthy doesn’t even begin to describe The Lady and the Dale, Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker’s four-part, one-of-a-kind docuseries, premiering January 31 on HBO. Produced by the Duplass brothers, this twist-and-turning saga stars a three-wheeled car called the Dale (that may or may not have been viable) and its marketer extraordinaire, a visionary female entrepreneur (and longtime serial con artist) named Elizabeth Carmichael. With a promise of 70 miles to the gallon at a time when the 70s oil crisis was leaving Americans to linger at gas stations in Soviet-long lines, the Dale seemed to many a dream come true. And […]

In his short films, compulsive shooter John Wilson combines a nervous voiceover with impossible amounts of nonfiction footage; the joke often alternates between the unexpected metaphorical/pun juxtaposition of dialogue with shots selected from his vast archives and sometimes nerve-wracking encounters with assorted eccentrics. That seemingly free-form structure, in which Wilson’s voice ties many disparate elements together, was established in shorts with titles like How to Walk to Manhattan and How to Keep Smoking. Now it’s been expanded in the six episodes of the first season of his HBO series, How to With John Wilson. Nathan For You’s Nathan Fielder is an executive producer, and the […]

Lovecraft Country was inspired by one of those punch-line horror conceits like “Meeting your partner’s family is scarier than a house under siege” (You’re Next). Or, “Nothing’s scarier than meeting your lover’s liberal, racist, white family”(Get Out). Lovecraft Country is a high production value literalization of the pun that H.P Lovecraft invented no horror scarier than his own racism: the invisible effects of racism manifest the series’ monsters, reflected in the actions of the show’s predatory whites. It’s also no coincidence that racism materializes in such outlandish forms that white people wouldn’t believe in them if the victims told them, […]

Katherine Waterston is one of our most brilliant and committed actors. She brings superstar power to indies like Queen of Earth and State Like Sleep, and a captivating authenticity to franchises like Fantastic Beasts and Alien. It was Inherent Vice that first brought her to my attention. In this episode, she talks about why she was “a pig in shit” making that film, why having lots and lots of time to live with a script is ideal for her, becoming comfortable being uncomfortable, the “best feeling I can experience without breaking the law,” and her exciting new multi-part project The […]

To call HBO’s The Swamp a thrilling character-based portrait of three conservative white guys might seem oxymoronic, but in the capable hands and open minds of co-directors Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme (Get Me Roger Stone) it’s a completely apt description. The doc is an unexpected, up-close look at the daily D.C. lives of a trio of House members who few subscribers to HBO would ever conceive of voting for: far right-wingers Matt Gaetz (R-FL 1st District), Thomas Massie (R-KY 4th District), and Ken Buck (R-CO 4th District). In other words, it’s exactly the caricature-busting film that progressives (like myself) really need […]

A show like HBO’s Succession risks being either tone-deaf or ineffectual, especially at a moment of heightened sensitivity toward income inequality and billionaires’ amoral business practices. Armstrong’s background in unsparing British cringe/political comedy, namely acclaimed sitcoms Peep Show and The Thick of It, helped him adopt an intimately satirical approach to the story of the dysfunctional Roy family, nouveau riche owners of the fictional media/hospitality empire Waystar Royco (a la the Murdochs and News Corp or the Redstones and ViacomCBS). Armstrong filters Shakespearean and Grecian tragedy into the series’ premise—patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) fights to preserve his empire from the […]