Descendant
In 1808, the United States banned the importation of slaves, attempting to effectively putting an end to the transatlantic slave trade.
But in Margaret Brown’s complex film, the discovery of a sunken slave ship in Mobile, Alabama, becomes a way of distinguishing between what passes for history in mainstream textbooks written by those in power and the painful reality that eyewitnesses have kept alive for generations.
As the wreck of the Clotilda is found, the film records how this discovery brings closure for some questions, in a shifting and sometimes contradictory conversation that gives the families of survivors, for the first time, their share a hand in the public narrative.
The past remains present, as Brown weaves a rich tapestry, which is open to the viewers interpretation.
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
Rory Kennedy’s riveting, often rending tale of two plane crashes and the jet that linked them. On Oct. 29, 2018, an Indonesian carrier plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff. Nineteen weeks later, an Ethiopian Airlines flight also crashed, leaving a deep gouge near the Addis Abba Bole Airport. Both planes were new Boeing 737-Maxes; all told, 346 passengers and crew were killed. Kennedy, drawing on the eloquent testimony of family members, aviation industry experts, former Boeing engineers and a squadron of commercial pilots (including arguably the nation’s most trusted, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger), builds a case against Boeing that offers an object lesson in the tragic consequences of corporate greed and hubris. —Lisa Kennedy
Fire of Love
At times, nothing is as gratifying to watch as a movie about obsession that lures you into sharing the obsession. Sara Dosa’s film is the story of Maurice and Katia Krafft, who became the world’s most ardent volcanologists. Starting in 1966, when they met, and over the next 25 years, they traveled to as many active volcanos as they could find, from Zaire to Colombia to Iceland to America to Japan, getting as close as possible to the danger and spectacle of these seismic tectonic eruptions. The Kraffts wanted to touch the uncanny, and did; volcanos became their life force. Seeing the footage they shot is a lot of what makes “Fire of Love” a spellbinding experience (the close-ups of spewing lava are like Jackson Pollock paintings in motion; the oozing chunks of black rock are like something out of “The Blob”). Yet the film also tells the enthralling story of two daredevil soulmates addicted to awe. —OG
From Where They Stood
In the seminal 1956 Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog,” the French director Alain Resnais contrasted horrific black-and-white footage shot in the concentration camps with scenes filmed in color, often at the same locations, after the war; he captured the past embedded in the present. The director Christophe Cognet employs a similar strategy in this haunting film — a meditation built around photographs taken inside the camps by Jewish prisoners, some of whom were members of the Sonderkommando. The prisoners, who took great risks to steal and smuggle cameras and to hide the rolls of film after they were shot, did it as a form of resistance: a testament to what went on in the camps, which in some cases amounts to an astonishing undercutting of victimization mythology. The images express something disturbing and elemental, sitting on the fault line between life and annihilation. —OG
Good Night Oppy
The stars of Ryan White’s inspirational and engaging film are the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which were designed to last 90 days on the Red Planet. Instead, they went on exploring the alien terrain for years, sending invaluable data and images back to NASA the whole time. As it turns out, for nearly 15 years there was life on Mars. White convinces us that these two solar-powered, remote-controlled research tools weren’t just machines but sentient characters with personalities, every bit as relatable as Pixar’s lovable trash compactor WALL-E. Anyone who sees “Good Night Oppy” will find themselves actually caring about these gizmos — 5’2″ space pioneers, heroically going where no man has gone before. —PD
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
It’s a documentary about the song “Hallelujah,” and if that sounds like a lot of movie to devote to one song — well, “Hallelujah” is a lot of song. You might call it a feel-good hymn for a secular society, because part of the reason people feel so good listening to it (or singing along with it in oversize stadiums) is that the song says to its audience: If you find this beautiful (and who doesn’t?), then you’re a spiritual person. But Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s film is also a portrait of Leonard Cohen, the ultimate pop-star-who-wasn’t-really-a-pop-star-except-that-he-so-was. He started off as a poet, but was sexy in a rapt Canadian Pacino-meets-Serge-Gainsbourg way — a clean-cut troubadour, a professor of lyric enchantment. The movie, which is studded with good anecdotes, plumbs the mystery of Cohen’s journey as it lays out the journey of “Hallelujah,” a song that kept changing, becoming, acquiring layers of soul and enchantment. —OG
