3 eye-opening documentaries : NPR

Excerpt from the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion.

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HBO

Excerpt from the HBO documentary Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion.

HBO

Documents about true crimes, documents about crooks, serious documents… one of the most notable developments in the era of streaming television is the release of new films and documentary series. permanently. The difficulty for someone who would like to check some of them is that they are blurred and many of them have similar titles and promotion. There are still some expensive entries: On April 21, HBO will premiere a follow-up series to its huge true-crime hit The curse – but there are also plenty of less high-profile projects, so let’s take a moment to check out some of the current projects.

What Jennifer did

A feature film about a 2010 home invasion that killed a woman and left her husband in a coma, What Jennifer did is told primarily from the point of view of the police who gradually focused on the couple’s daughter, who was at the home at the time. Crime documentaries tend to be the least interesting to me, and in this case I feel like there’s a huge lack of context about the family in favor of a fairly straightforward “she wanted to be with” narrative. her boy friend”. But I say this partly because I read Karen Ho’s 2015 article in Life in Toronto which considers more broadly what led to this bizarre act. Netflix, available now.

Brandy Hellville and the cult of fast fashion

I can honestly tell you that I wasn’t very familiar with the Brandy Melville brand before watching this film, which is about how social media helped turn a lot of small, nondescript shirts into juggernauts. (It’s more complicated than that, and… neither.) The story of gross store culture (which reminded me of a plot parts of the Netflix film White Hot, about Abercrombie & Fitch) is interesting and quite lively, but I would have preferred to spend a little more time on the fast-fashion element, which I think is ripe for more documentary work . Max, available now.

The Synanon Fix

Sometimes it feels like documentaries are their own expanded universe. I was just watching a completely different show about the “troubled teen” industry and its dark history, and it mentioned how Synanon, which started in California as an addiction treatment program, influenced much of what became the “we’ll catch your misbehavior.” teenager from his bed, take him to a secluded place, allow him no contact with anyone, and turn him around” model. And now, Synanon has its own docuseries, which examines if and when Synanon became what you call it a cult (Was it head shaving? Mass marriages? Reproductive dictates?) But what stands out most is the reflection on how a program and a community can change. shape, and it takes some time for people inside and outside the program to change shape. HBO, streaming now.

We’re only scratching the surface of what’s out there: Netflix’s #1 show as of this writing is their Unlocked: Prison Experience, about a “program” that gives more freedom to incarcerated men. And I am 100% committed to finding time before it expires on April 20 to watch Pleasure Menus — Les Troisgrosthe latest from the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman, available on PBS.

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