Style
“Rafa”: the Destruction of a Man, and the Making of a Legend
For tennis champion Rafael Nadal, pain has always felt like weakness leaving the body, and a new Netflix docuseries shows the boons of…
Tag
documentaries
Style
Sofia Coppola Stays in the Shallow End with the New Marc Jacobs Documentary
In the show notes handed to audience members at Marc Jacobs’s Fall/Winter 2026 presentation, at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in early…
Style
Two New Documentaries Are Haunted by Unsettling Natural Wonders
In “Pompei: Below the Clouds,” Rosi is as quietly watchful as ever, though he is either remarkably skilled or remarkably fortunate in…
Style
Why Frederick Wiseman Was the Greatest Documentary Filmmaker Ever
His work depended on access. He filmed in hospital rooms where patients and families faced incommensurable agonies with the aid of the…
Style
What a “Melania” Cinematographer Hoped to Accomplish
What did you make of the President and Melania? And what’s different about filming a movie in the White House or on Air Force One? Well,…
Beauty
The Best Documentaries of 2025
Among 2025’s best docs are portraits of female icons, celebrations of major moments in music, and an explosive entry to the true-crime…
World
Two New Movies Revivify the Portrait-Film Genre
Documentaries about individuals are ubiquitous, but “Suburban Fury” and “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” explore the…
World
A Musical Indictment of the Harris County Jail in “Criminal”
From the outside, the Harris County Jail might be mistaken for a high-end condo, with walls of windows that overlook the bayou in downtown…
World
“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” Is a Film for the Ages
The Harlem Renaissance—the subject that everyone had gathered to discuss—is described in the film by Major as the first time that Black…
World
“My Undesirable Friends: Part I” Is a Staggering Portrait of Russian Journalists in Dissent
Because the Russian alphabet has no direct equivalent of the letter “H,” speakers often substitute a “G” sound; “Harry Potter” thus…
Beauty
The 87 Best Documentaries of All Time
What makes a documentary “important”? What makes it worth referencing, or remembering, or even watching in the first place? Why, at a…
Beauty
These 11 True-Crime Documentaries Will Send Shivers Down Your Spine
Looking for something to make your pulse race and your hair stand on end? The best true-crime documentaries and docu-series crawl with…
Style
Glory and Gore in “Afternoons of Solitude”
You don’t have to like bullfighting to watch “Afternoons of Solitude” with fascination, any more than you have to like crime to enjoy a…
World
“Drop Dead City” Spotlights a Lost Era of Liberal Government
At a time when the very function of government is being destroyed from within, an extraordinary historical documentary, “Drop Dead City,”…
Style
Before He Formed Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page Played a Prom in Ohio
Back in 2021, I wrote an essay about the great musicians who, surprisingly, had performed at my high school, in Kansas City, in the…
World
The Real-Life Drama of “Dying”
In observational documentaries, one important thing tends to be left unspoken: namely, why the films’ subjects let filmmakers embed in…
Style
A Ninety-Nine-Year-Old Lawyer’s Final Case in “Frank”
“Young man!” a voice shouted down the telephone line. “We’re all different! But we’re all the same. And we’re all God’s children.” Thus…