What to stream: Catch up with some of this year's best documentaries
Published in Entertainment News
As August rolls in, there’s time to catch up with some of the films you may have missed throughout the year, including documentaries, which are good counterprogramming for summer blockbuster season. Here are a few of the best documentaries of the year, new to streaming.
Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa follows up “Fire of Love,” about a pair of married French vulcanologists, with another story about family and our changing environment, “Time and Water.” While she went chasing volcanoes last time, now Dosa applies her lyrical and rigorously scientific approach to glaciers, using the story of Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason’s family. This mournful tale is about grieving the loss of glaciers in Iceland as the planet warms, and it’s about generations of family members linked across time, and in their relationship to water, in its different forms.
It’s a deeply spiritual film about science, land, family and ultimately love — all the things we risk to lose as our planet changes. But the film’s unique tone is unlike other climate documentaries. This beautiful elegy is one of the best movies of the year. Stream it now on Hulu and Disney+.
Another film that grapples with death in a unique way is the documentary “Coroner to the Stars,” directed by Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno. The film follows the life and career of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who worked as the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner from the late 1960s to the early ‘80s, performing the autopsies for Marilyn Monroe, the Manson family victims, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, William Holden and more. While facing racist attacks as a Japanese American, Dr. Noguchi approached his work as a way to speak for the dead, and to maintain the truth in the public eye, even when it was uncomfortable. His career offers a fascinating look at American culture at that time. “Coroner to the Stars” will be available to rent on VOD on Aug. 11, so keep an eye out for it.
Another fascinating documentary, “Stolen Kingdom,” is available to rent this week. You may have heard of “Disney adults” but you haven’t seen guys like this before. Joshua Bailey’s documentary dives into the world of illegal Disney explorers who document their jaunts around the backstage of rides and through abandoned attractions on social media. Often the trespassing turns to theft for collector’s items that go for a pretty penny on the black market. The focus of this film is on the disappearance of Buzzy, an Epcot animatronic. “Stolen Kingdom” is part pop-doc curio, and part true crime story, but it also raises questions about if these rogue characters might serve as a kind of people’s archivist when institutions don’t care to do that themselves. Rent it on Letterboxd video store and on VOD on Aug. 18.
Finally, if you just want to kick back with some great music, be sure to catch Baz Lurhmann’s “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” made up of newly unearthed and restored footage of Elvis Presley’s long-running Las Vegas residency. You’ll see Presley in vivid color like never before, and likely find a newfound appreciation for his artistry and live performance. Stream it on Paramount+ or rent on other platforms.
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