Best of the 2022 DOC NYC Film Fest
The latest iteration of the nation’s biggest documentary film festival ended Nov. 17 in New York theatres but provides 90 streaming options for US cinephiles through November 27.
The bloc of music related fare at DOC NYC was quite strong this year, from the acclaimed in their industry to the criminally overlooked.
Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill rights the wrong of this LA singer-songwriter never having the success of Asylum Records contemporaries Joni Mitchell or Jackson Browne. Blessed with talent, Sill could not overcome a twang in her voice, a past that included being a hooker and addict and one who spoke her mind too sharply, including to Asylum’s David Geffen, who dropped her under debatable circumstances. Directors Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom utilize graceful animation and recordings of Sill singing and speaking in a heartbreaking cinematic breakthrough.
The irrepressible country legend and a current star who brings her back are the subject of The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlile. Director Kathlyn Horan captures Tucker’s wild child past juxtaposed against her comeback 17 years after giving up. She and Carlile are so vital and emotional during the filming that even non-country fans will root for Tucker’s hesitant redemption.
Ann McCabe also follows a female star, she of Broadway fame, in Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage? She’s on a national tour culminating in her dream of Madison Square Garden. But Menzel, who grabbed the world’s attention from the inaugural production of Rent, is dealing with trying to be present for a husband and child and the woozy repercussions of in-vitro fertilization, all while having to look and sound perfect. Menzel’s charm and stunning voice never fail to captivate.
Dawn Porter’s Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net goes front stage, back stage and even under water as that acclaimed performance group rushes to reopen the Las Vegas version of their O show, after more than a year’s closure due to the pandemic. Performers and technicians and coaches are on adrenaline buzz as certain tricks may not be ready in time. Meeting a few company members helps invest the viewer even more in the struggles of this flagship production of an entertainment juggernaut that had to close 44 companies worldwide when COVID hit.
Showtime contributed the sneakily disarming 2nd Chance, a portrait of seeming do-gooder Richard Davis, inventor of a bulletproof vest that is so reliable, he regularly shoots himself in the torso with live ammunition. But director Ramin Bahrani leaks in the other side of Davis, one willing to cross ethical lines while distrusting new investors who seem capable of putting the military and law enforcement at risk.
But the most outrageous figure in these docs is the matron-saint of a Greek-American family in Queen of the Deuce. Director Valerie Kontakos has in Chelly Wilson a Jew who celebrates Christmas, a lesbian who marries a man she is repulsed by physically and who goes on to open a successful string of gay male porn movie theatres in New York, even employing the help of her family. Wilson, indefatigable, gives new meaning to the seemingly jingoistic phrase, “Only in America.”
