Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2021 | USA | 89 minutes | Rory Kennedy)

For those who have been paying attention, particularly out of hometown interest in our once-local producer of commercial aircraft, few details of Rory Kennedy’s account of Boeing’s troubles will come as earth-shaking revelations. However, casting the harrowing story of two catastrophic crashes of their new 737 MAX jets within the span of half a year in the broader context of the company’s history makes for a damning indictment.

Seattleites will do doubt perk up at the sequences that use historical footage and contemporary interviews to revisit Boeing’s central place in the Pacific Northwest’s economy, as a source of good jobs and a point of local pride. Tracing the company’s transition from a place where engineers ruled the roost and safety was paramount to one that bailed Seattle for a Chicago headquarters in the wake of a merger with McDonnell-Douglass re-centered priorities around expedient profits lays the groundwork for the looming disasters. Kennedy tells the story of corporate obfuscation with a mix of re-enactments of cockpits in peril, staged sequences of a Wall Street Journal aviation reporter making phone calls, interviews with family members of crash victims, and conversations with former employees. While these are the tools of the trade for popular documentaries, the stagey re-enactments often distract from the narrative flow of a story whose facts about the human toll of lies, negligence, and cover-ups are compelling enough to speak for themselves.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing played in the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival; it will be released globally by Netflix on February 18th.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (2021 | USA | 89 minutes, part 1 | Clarence “Coodie” Simmons & Chike Ozah)

In 1998 a Chicago comedian called Coodie (Clarence Simmons) took a job hosting a public access television show called Channel Zero. He thought it would bolster his reputation on the comedy scene, instead, while filming Jermaine Dupri’s birthday party for the show, he stumbled into the crib of a twenty-one-year-old upstart producer named Kanye West. Sensing that this kid who was becoming known for making good beats for cheap had bigger ambitions, Coodie sensed the potential to make a hip-hop Hoop Dreams and kept his camera on him, going as far as to follow him to New York to document his efforts to land a record deal for himself as a rapper. That Kanye agreed to it speaks to the deep roots of his confidence in his own genius and instincts for shaping his own image. But the great mystery is the degree of restraint and patience it took to allow so much incredible footage to sit in the vaults for so long before seeing the light of a splashy multi-part docuseries on Netflix.

The first episode premiered at Sundance this week and it paints, with mountains of fly-on-the-wall footage, a vivid portrait of the artist as a young striver, desperate to be in the spotlight for his own talents (rather than simply selling beats and producing massively successful tracks) and hungry to gain a prized place on the roster of his idols’ Roc-a-Fella record label. Filmed with the incredible intimacy of a friend and collaborator, we follow West as he sets up in New Jersey, makes an unexpected visit to corporate offices, and faces the sting of not being taken seriously as a rapper by all the high profile musicians who are more than eager to avail themselves of his production skills. So much of what we’ve come to know about Kanye is there from the beginning: the superiority/inferiority complex, a tendency toward playing out feuds in the media, and a supreme confidence in his own ability to reshape the narrative in his own image. Coodie catches all of the bravado and nascent talent along with phenomenal moments like a confidence-boosting visit to his mother Donda’s bachelorette pad where she and her son work through lyrics for the College Dropout and the moment that Kanye gets the news about being signed while eating burgers in Times Square. If these first ninety minutes are any indication, we’re in for quite a show. Which, regardless of how you feel about Kanye and his recent exploits, is exactly what you’d come to expect.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy played in the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival; it will be released globally by Netflix later this year.

Lucy and Desi (2021 | USA | 103 minutes | Amy Poehler)

Coming as an something of an antidote to Aaron Sorkin’s recent biopic, Being the Riccardos which convoluted the flow of history for the sake of drama and let with Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem playing dress-up and chew scenery, Amy Poehler’s scholarly documentary widens the lens on the extremely consequential lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz across the decades. Drawing from deeply-catalogued audio recordings, present-day onscreen interviews with their children, and generous tributes from celebrities like Carol Burnett and Bette Midler, the reverent documentary tells the story of the beloved couple, onscreen and off, from the start of their relationship past their eventual divorce. Reflecting her own background and interests, Poehler’s eye is keenly attuned toward beyond their celebrity to their enduring legacy as both comedians and mega-producers.

Poehler brings an objective eye to a subject that she undoubtedly admires, beginning with Lucy’s origins as a hard-working B-movie beauty whose acting talents were long overlooked and pairs this with Desi’s traumatic teenage flight from Cuba during its Communist revolution. Both origin stories would would echo in their relationship with each other as well as their approaches to their careers. The heart of the story is, of course, their collaboration to make one of the era’s — if not television history’s — most popular shows.

While examining the heart of Ball’s gifts as a physical comedienne and deeply committed actor, the story also celebrates Arnaz’s innovations as a producer. Importantly the film emphasized how it was these formidable talents fostered the groundbreaking nature of the show and the depiction of the couple themselves. Poehler pays particular attention to the ways that I Love Lucy was revolutionary for the portrayal of women as friends rather than rivals, the surprisingly seismic element of Lucy’s onscreen pregnancy, and her intense dedication to rehearsal as a means of honing her craft. The film captures some of the controversies, but its primary interest is on the longevity of its subjects, following the lives of both Luci and Desi beyond the show, after the dissolution of their marriage, and onto their vast influence on the broader entertainment industry. It’s a sweeping history and an assured collection of film and television artifacts, one that will be embraced by fans who already love Lucy as well as those that are meeting her for the first time.

Lucy and Desi was official selection of the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It will be released later this year by Amazon Studios.