Documentaries
The doco that looks beyond the Hemingway myth
After watching Hemingway, Lynn Novick and Ken Burns’s three-part documentary, it turns out the man himself wanted to be Hemingway, too.
- by Barry Divola
Latest
For too long, documentaries have been ignored on free-to-air TV. SBS has fixed that
Documentaries rate super well in streaming services and at film festivals, yet are rare on free-to-air television, a gap SBS wants to own.
- by Debi Enker
Battle to make sex abuse documentary accessible in schools
A documentary warning teens about the dangers of online entrapment has had its audience reach limited by a controversial classification ruling.
- by Deborah Snow
Opinion
Review
In ‘disheartening and interminable’ TV show, a great gallery humiliates itself
Can’t get to Brisbane to see the brilliant treasures from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art? There’s TV’s Inside the Met. But what a disappointment.
- by John McDonald
‘It just set a bomb off’: how the controversial movie Kids changed a group of teenagers’ lives
Eddie Martin has made a documentary that shows the fall-out from an art-house classic from the 1990s.
- by Garry Maddox
‘I got questions’: Spike Lee entertains 9/11 conspiracy theories in new doco
Reintroducing Spike Lee: legendary filmmaker, veteran actor, powerful producer, Oscar-winning screenwriter and – September 11 conspiracy theorist?
- by Christi Carras
The greatest Australian singer you’ve never heard of gets a fresh shot at fame
A movie about opera star Marjorie Lawrence will have its world premiere in the Victorian town of Winchelsea, in the theatre her father built in 1925.
- by Karl Quinn
★★★★
Review
Did Val Kilmer take the wrong road in his acting career?
Val Kilmer’s obsession with documenting his own life on video forms the centrepiece of this revealing documentary.
- by Paul Byrnes
Todd Haynes doco seeks the genesis of the Velvet Underground
The most often-repeated thing said about the Velvet Underground is Brian Eno’s quip that the band didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one started a band.
- by Jake Coyle
Val Kilmer on a life in illusion and the new doc Val
For years, hours of tapes documenting his life in film had just sat in boxes. Now Val Kilmer is “blessed and grateful” to share his story with the world.
- by Jake Coyle
★★★★
Australian Open
Naomi Osaka on Netflix captures a troubled star at her most vulnerable
This three-part documentary is all about the quiet moments of reflection off court for the first Asian player to be ranked number 1 in the world.
- by Karl Quinn