A commendable, eye-and-mind-opening documentary bio-pic, Tiffany Bartok's LARGER THAN LIFE: THE KEVYN AUCOIN STORY

Considering how woeful are so many of the our current "fashion" documentaries from Manolo Blahnik's to Vivienne Westwood's -- who'd have thought that TrustMovies would suddenly be singing the praises of a bio-pic documentary about, of all things, a make-up artist? That's part of why he loves taking a chance on a new movie experience: You just never know.

As directed with finesse and welcome intuition by Tiffany Bartok (shown below), her documentary, LARGER THAN LIFE: THE KEVYN AUCOIN STORY, makes excellent

use of archival footage and interviews with the late Mr. Aucoin's family, friends, lovers, and an array of fashion and celebrity icons about as starry as you are likely to have seen together in any single film.

Even better, these icons actually say some intelligent, thoughtful, sometimes quite moving things about their Kevyn -- a fellow from Louisiana who was adopted very young to a kind and loving family, and who went looking, in his adult years, and was able to actually find his birth parents, only to lose them again because of their Christian fundamentalist attitude against gays and other outsiders. ("Don't judge us and then make Jesus the reason," he tells his birth mother in a letter.)

That Kevyn (above, left) was charismatic is clear, even in the archival photos and the info we get about his youth. "Different" and pretty clearly gay from the outset, he was bullied in school but survived and somehow prospered enough until he finally left Louisiana for points north and the career in fashion and specifically make-up that he had long desired.

Bartok's movie barrels along at a fast clip, full of information and smart interviews that fill in many of the gaps in Kevyn's life, loves and burgeoning career. What is particularly compelling about this bio-doc is how it manages to bring us a full-bodied, warts-and-all view of Aucoin -- without ever resorting to the gossipy, inherently shallow techniques of so many fashion docs. There is also none of that "Let's lavish on the praise" idiocy that ruins so many bio-pics. What we hear about Aucoin seems indeed praiseworthy, but what we see and hear also seems commensurate with his achievements.

It is clear that the interviewees here -- which include Isaac Mizrahi (shown above) and Kate Moss (two photos up) -- clearly loved Kevyn, for all his faults (having to control everything was but one of them) and this love comes through so strongly that the viewer is apt to feel it very nearly as much as those being interviewed.

Aucoin's great talent at and love for what he did best -- making others look their best (that's Naomi Campbell, above)-- also comes through. He set fashion trends in make-up for good, rather than for their junky worst, which would arrive with the "grunge" era and stick around far too long after that.

Other icons we see and hear from here include the likes of Cher (above, who appears to have been responsible for diagnosing a vital health problem of Kevyn's that had remained undetected for far too long), Isabella Rossellini (below), Tori Amos (who reminds us that, although Kevyn never let any of them down, they in the fashion industry definitely let him down in the end), and especially Paulina Porizkova (shown at bottom), who offers a number of most interesting observations about Aucoin's life and work.

Even when he cast off one lover for another, Kevyn did not leave the old one flat. (Often, it seems, his paramour served a second purpose -- business manager, say -- as well as love/sex interest.)

Never for a single one of its 102-minute running time is the documentary flat or uninteresting. Kevyn's personality, along with those of all the interviewees, carry it along with bounce and flair. The movie allows even those of us who don't follow or care about fashion to engage with it via the life and career, troubles, trauma and successes of this unusual and unusually gifted man.

Distributed via The Orchard, Larger than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story opens this Friday, June 29, in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center and then hits the Los Angeles area at various Laemmle theaters on Friday, July 20 and Monday, July 23. It will be available everywhere via digital and VOD beginning Tuesday, July 31.

Netflix streaming tip: Oliver Stone's THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is more than worth its twelve-hour running time

If you are familiar with certain "alternative" history books that cover the real story of the U.S.A. -- say, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States -- or peruse the pages of the progressive magazine, The Nation, much that you'll see and hear in the new documentary series, THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, will be familiar. But this does not mean that you won't be any less hooked by this excellent piece of sifting/judging/reporting of much that has happened down the decades, even as the U.S. public was being told the opposite.

Director and co-writer (with Matt Graham and Peter Kuznick) Oliver Stone, shown at right, has (or at least had) a reputation for outrage and in-your-face moviemaking that has been tamped down considerably here. This is all to the good, since Stone and his team are telling us things that many Americans will not want to hear or accept, and so his careful rendering and explaining (it's Stone's quiet, measured and easy-to-listen-to voice we mostly hear narrating), interspersed with those of many of the historical figures -- from the greatly-known (like Churchill, Stalin and Hitler) to the less-so but, it turns out, vitally important to know and understand, such as Roosevelt's Vice-President Henry Wallace (two photos below) and a certain popular and greatly-decorated soldier named Smedley Butler (shown just below: for more on Butler, click here), who served the U.S. in war after war but who finally took stock of his own career by saying that he had continually served the interests of the corporations and the powerful rather than those of the American people.

That the USA is still serving those interests, as much today as then, is a large part of the series' theme, and the filmmakers flesh this out with plenty of ammunition and panache. Much of the information presented us is verifiable, and when it is conjecture, it is backed up with enough history and reasoning to pass muster.

It is not a pretty picture of the USA as any kind of leader regarding democracy -- neither here at home nor worldwide. It has of course outraged the conservative right, but it should prove a near-perfect entry into the upcoming "reign" of Donald Trump. At the end of that reign, it will be interesting to see, if any of us still remain, how much of what we learned here was practiced all over again -- enriching the wealthy, corporate and powerful while leaving the rest of us further bereft.

Caveats: I could have done with much less interspersing of movie clips throughout. The series does not need these, and they merely call attention to their own "fictional" feel. Some of what we see, thanks to the organization of the series, is repetitive. And while it appears to end with a moving and rousing tenth chapter, there are actually two more -- eleven and twelve -- that are very much worth seeing, even if some of these final two hours, particularly the last, is initially quite repetitive. Yet there is so much important information to be gained here, too, that I was very glad I'd finished the entire twelve chapters.

Originally made for Showtime, with a few early chapters making their debut at The New York Film Festival a few years back, the entire series, running nearly twelve hours, is available now to stream on Netflix. It is worth every one of those hours.

TRUE NEW YORK: a short-film anthology about the Big Apple by Jeremy Workman and others

The forever step-child of the movie world, the "short film," is so generally neglected (and, yes, he admits it, by TrustMovies, too) that the collection of shorts that makes its home video debut this coming week is at least some cause for celebration. Titled TRUE NEW YORK and featuring five documentary tales of people and life in the Big Apple, the total movie is definitely worth a watch -- if a bit uneven in terms of interest and success. The five shorts have all won awards at various fests, however, so chances are you'll find something worthwhile.

One of the five directors, Jeremy Workman (shown at right), also produced this anthology. Back in 2014, Mr. Workman made the year's best documentary, so far as I am concerned: a little amazement called Magical Universe. (The doc is now available to stream on Netflix, so if you have not seen it, consider it a "must.") Workman's contribution to this anthology -- One Track Mind, the third film of the five -- has, at its center another obsessive character similar to the one found in Magical Universe: a fellow named Philip Ashforth Coppola (below) who has dedicated most of his life to his self-financed study of the New York Subway system, with special attention to much of the architecture, art and history found in every single one of the system's many stations.

How he has managed this and what has resulted takes up the 22 minutes of the film -- the shortest but also the best of the group. Coppola is a man who clearly loves the subway, but he also possesses a nice ironic sense of humor, even about himself and his work (watch him pretend to fall asleep, as he views himself being interviewed on TV!).

Workman is, as you'll be, too, charmed by, interested in, and impressed by the man and his task. And the filmmaker brings it all to fine life with the help of his camera, Coppola, and a few talking head interviews that bolster the case.

C-ROCK, the short that opens this film, takes us to a certain spot in the Bronx (the title rock) overlooking the Harlem River, off of which (anywhere from 30 to 110 feet up) jump boys and young men as a kind of rite-of-passage. This has been going on for generations (we meet at least three of these in the film), as the youngster tell us, between their many jumps, what it all means to them, while the oldsters relive their youth.

At 29 minutes, the film seems over-extended (all that jumping proves finally a bit tiresome), but I must admit that the place is impressive, and the idea of jumping -- while maybe a tad dangerous (the movie's end credits go out of their way to mention that no encouragement was provided the jumpers by the filmmaker, Jordan Roth) -- certainly makes a spectacular visual.

The second film of the five -- Taxi Garage (originally titled Drivers Wanted) by Joshua Z. Weinstein -- is the kind of movie that might give Donald Trump heart failure (gosh, could someone show it to him soon, please?), it's such a paean to what so many of us love about the wonderful diversity of New York City and its boroughs. From the humorous old Jewish guy -- kindly but street-smart to the max -- who runs the place to his hugely diverse cab drivers (mostly recent immigrants), everyone we meet here seems like the salt-of-the-earth and then some.

In heat and snowstorm we watch them at work and learn a little of their lives and their desires. Made four years ago, before the onset and co-opting of Uber, the movie will make you wonder if the NYC Taxi company remains in business. (I just now tried the phone number we so often see throughout this little movie -- 718-786-5811 -- and sure enough, the company seems to be up and running.

New York's Muslim community is given a look in the fourth short doc, A Son's Sacrifice by Yoni Brook, that details how and why a young man named Imran (above) decides to take over his aging father's halal slaughterhouse in Queens. We meet that father, and get a short glimpse of the mother, but mostly concentrate on the son.

The movie allows us to see some interesting prejudice from Muslims themselves (when they suspect someone is not a Muslim) and also view various slaughterhouse practices. By the time we finally arrive at exactly what the sacrifice in question will be, we've learned enough about these people and their work that we can better understand and appreciate just how great this sacrifice both is and -- after all that Imran has now learned and experienced -- maybe is not.

The final film of the five -- Black Cherokee by Sam Cullman and Benjamin Rosen -- is in some ways the most bizarre, as it shows us a father (Otis Houston, Sr., who is failing via Alzheimer's) and his caretaker son (Otis Houston, Jr., an artist and performance artist), shown above and below, who sells his wares on the streets.

In its short 23 minutes, the movie tackles everything from art and freedom to caretaking and providing for family. As odd and oddly appealing is the younger Houston, there is so much more we might like to learn about this man and his beliefs that I wish the movie has spent a little less time simply watching him and more time asking him some questions. But that perhaps was not the moviemakers' intentions.

More to the point, however, is another question: In a movie entitled True New York, how "true" is it if a full 50 per cent of the population has been left out? I am talking about New York women, whom we barely see in any of these films. (Workman does interview a couple of them for his film; we catch a glimpse of one lone female taxi driver; and Imran's mom makes an appearance cooking in the kitchen, whis his dad manages to insult a woman at the family's slaughterhouse.) Granted, each film here was made in its own time and for its own purpose, but I would think that, in choosing the films to be included here, at least one of these ought to have concentrated on a female. Or is it possible that no female filmmakers or female subjects of short films actually exist? So much for diversity. (The fellow shown above, now deceased, is one of the most interesting of all Taxi Garage's drivers.)

This five-part documentary anthology, from First Run Features and running 131 minutes, hits the street on DVD this coming Tuesday, November 15, for purchase and/or rental.

Vitaly Mansky's UNDER THE SUN attempts -- with great beauty -- to reveal North Korea...

...but as usual with documentaries about this most foreign of foreign countries (I wonder if even North Koreans find it pretty strange: probably not, as they appear to have been brainwashed into a kind of near-lobotomization by now), we get pretty much the same old thing. Yes, once again (as in last year's Songs From the North), the state and its minions control everything the documentary filmmaker sees, hears and shoots (they even write the goddamned script!), so that everything the viewer sees and hears in, UNDER THE SUN, the latest attempt to show us North Korea, is... pretense. And pretense -- especially when it is handled as obviously as it is in this "kingdom" -- soon becomes downright boring.

How can it not? And how can a filmmaker begin to tell the truth when the powers-that-be are looking over his shoulder and telling him what to do, 24/7? Well, there is the editing process, once you've left the country. So documentarian Vitaly Mansky (shown at right, and clearly suffering from a North Korean-induced migraine) seems to have confined some of that "fake" script to voice-over and then let his visuals tell a bit different story from what those in power might want. Also, in his finished film, he explains via supertitles that introduce some of the scenes, how the state consistently changed reality into whatever scenario it would rather have us see and hear.

The result of all this is more beautiful visually than we've seen before. The colors are often eye-popping, particularly in scenes such as one in what looks like a soy milk factory, and later at some sort of a group sing-along in which the women are attired in simply gorgeous, colorful costumes. Visually, the movie is much more stunning than the obviously lower-budgeted Songs From the North (hell, it's even more so than that of the much higher-budgeted Hollywood narrative comedy The Interview).

And the scenes Mr. Mansky managed to capture (I am guessing surreptitiously) of everyday North Koreans show a populace in which anything approaching normal behavior has been commandeered by the state. No wonder the people seem to walk around like zombies. (There's a scene in which one after another twosome or threesome poses in front of bright red flowers and murals of the "great leaders" that is hugely sad, as are other scenes in which Mansky's camera captures subway and escalator riders.  These visuals take us so far before repetition and boredom set in.

How many times must be watch the Korean "director" coach his subjects to do and say the scripted stuff,  smile more, and act more joyful before we get the point? A little of this goes a long way, and Under the Sun lasts 105 minutes, during which we even have to sit through some "reshoots."

And while we do get so fun and sadness out of the leading threesome (shown at left) that is forced to portray the "typical" family in the documentary, with a little girl who is particularly sweet and charming, seeing her and her parents in all these faked situations -- at school, joining a political children's group, working in a garment factory, listening to an old military man drone on, watching a dance class, in hospital, and performing in the would-be spectacular finale number -- everything here combines to tell us what we already know. Or at least think we know. And nothing we see or hear here is likely to disabuse us of these notions. (Also, the thought does arise: What happened to this family after the film was released at film festivals around the world, much to the displeasure of the North Korean government?)

So Under the Sun joins the collection of movies, books, news reports, and all else about North Korea that we already have. If there is a way to show the real thing, nobody's found it yet. Instead we get the pretense (and sidelong glances that indicate something more). Over and over again. I'm not sure what is left for us to learn from all this.

The documentary -- released via Icarus Films, in Korean with English subtitles -- opens this Wednesday, July 6, in its U.S. theatrical premiere for a one-week engagement at Film Forum in New York City. Elsewhere? Yes, and you can see all nine, currently-scheduled cities and theaters in which the film will screen by clicking here.

Mor Loushy's CENSORED VOICES: Can 48-year-old audio tapes become a visual experience?

The answer to that question in the headline above, if you had much doubt to begin with, is a resounding no. At least not as given us in the new documentary, CENSORED VOICES, by director/co-writer Mor Loushy (shown below). This does not makes the movie a failure, exactly, because those audio tapes -- of conversations recorded in 1967 between Israeli soldiers (just coming off their experience in the immediately historic Six Day War between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors) and future writer Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira -- prove too interesting and full of a very different sense of reality than the nation-building tale we've heard ever since Israel decisively won that war, in which five countries, aided by another nine, arrayed themselves against Israel with more than double the troops of that tiny country, and promptly went down to ignominious defeat.

As the Israeli nation cheered, the powers-that-be went to work immediately to begin the legend-building. The tapes that Oz and Shapira produced were quickly censored and only now, via this new documentary, are they being heard, at least fitfully and at last uncensored. But how do you take audio tapes and turn them into the kind of visual experience that moviegoers expect, if not demand? Ms Loushy's answer is to begin with a shot of the now elderly Mr. Oz and what looks like one of the tapes itself, then stick that tape into an old-fashioned player, and away we go. But what about the remaining visuals?

The filmmaker begins fairly quickly cutting back and forth between now and then, showing us -- without any identification -- old men whom we imagine may be the aged counterparts to the voices we hear on the tapes. This back and forth uses plenty of archival footage, too, which we very soon begin to realize is not necessarily connected to the actual voices we hear. This is unsettling to begin with and simply grows more so as the movie continues.

The archival footage is not uninteresting, and it seems to follow to some extent what is being told us via the tapes. But all specificity is missing. And the movie's sound design is such that we get ramped up by sounds that play upon cliché to produce the desired effect. For their part, the old men we see all look glum and concerned by what they are apparently hearing. But so what?  Around the halfway point I realized that I would have preferred simply hearing the translated tapes and dispensing with the visuals entirely.

What we hear is certainly worth our while, as these soldiers talk about how the events of the war left them, well, something less than feeling thrilled and victorious. Instead we hear of massacres and atrocities, and of the "other side" being treated, as one soldier points out, like victims of the WWII Holocaust. "Don't think about it; just kill everyone you see," one soldier recalls being told. To their credit, the soldiers do acknowledge that, had the other side been victorious, just as bad (and maybe worse) might have occurred.

Mixed feelings surface often here. "Perhaps the tragedy," notes one fellow,"is that I identified with the other side." And while, early on, we're told that these interviews "may not do the best service to what they call 'national morale,' we may do a small service to the truth," one does wonder if the small group of soldiers represented here can be made to actually stand for the entire Israeli army? As I recall, Mister Oz has been a peace-nik for quite some time now, as also, I suspect, has Mister Shapira. As am I, for that matter.

Along the way, one solider recalls the mother of another dead Israeli soldier crying out that the western wall is not worth even her dead son's fingernail. And finally, an American reporter for ABC News, in covering the largest of the Six Day War's refugee camps, notes that "The only thing growing here are seeds of revenge." Amen to that bit of prescience.

At this documentary's end, we finally see the names of these elderly men we've been viewing, and as the end credits roll, we are told, "The archival footage used in this documentary was collected from many sources. The people shown in the archival footage are not the same individuals speaking on, or described in, the audio tapes created in 1967." So:
Piece all those visuals together as you're able.

Censored Voices, from Music Box Films and running 87 minutes, opens this coming Friday, November 20, in both New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles on Friday, November 27 (at Laemmle's Royal), followed by a national roll-out.

Yael Reuveny's FAREWELL, HERR SCHWARZ: another strange and fascinating Holocaust tale

TrustMovies is beginning to think it's inevitable: the more Holocaust documentaries that appear, the better and more interesting they seem to become. This subject -- of the Nazi intent to destroy the world's Jewish population and its aftermath (it's that aftermath that has produced some of the finest of these docs) -- appears to be inexhaustible. Just when you think you've encountered the strangest of these true tales (take The Flat, for instance: see it, if you haven't yet; it's available to stream via the usual suspects), along comes another that surprises and seduces. Such a film is this week's opener, FAREWELL, HERR SCHWARZ.

As written, directed and narrated by Yael Reuveny (shown at left, who also appears throughout the documentary), the film tells of her family's experience during and after the Holocaust (mostly after) and spans three generations, beginning with her grandmother, Michla (shown below, pre-Holocaust, in the front row, second from left), who survived it, along with the grandmother's brother, Feiv'ke shown below, front row, at left), who did, too. In fact, early on the movie explains how Feiv'ke was a man who "died twice." If only it were that easy. Feiv'ke's story, which includes a kind of "identity" change that involves both name and history becomes one of those mysteries about us humans' ability to do some very odd things, while leaving all trace of reason or motive buried. And so Ms Reuveny's documentary becomes a search for answers, some of which are forthcoming while others remain shrouded.

Part of a good mystery lies in its unfolding, and so I must say little about what occurs here -- except to note that we meet quite a few members of the filmmaker's family, some of whom she knows quite well, others who prove a surprise.

What distinguishes Farewell, Herr Schwarz, besides its unfurling story, is the role Ms Reuveny plays in it all and how learning what she learns affects her. More than in most documentaries I can recall, we seem to be able to see here how the actual processing of information works: How the characters take in what they are learning and how they try to deal with it.

There are times here in which the camera simply watches and waits, as Reuveny struggles to understand events, motives and meaning. As we watch, we find ourselves trying to deal with all this, too.

This kind of processing is extremely important, I think, to families rocked by the Holocaust, the effects of which just keep unravelling from generation to generation. How each generation deals with that event -- whether by repression, shame, therapy, or even the embrace of Germany (one of Ms Reuveny's ways of dealing) -- proves something fraught and fascinating in itself.

We meet friends and relatives that take in the three generations, and they are all lively and interesting (one of the most enjoyable is the old woman friend of grandmother Michla (above) who has a number of thoughtful and sad things to tell us. Another new relative is a tall young German man (below) who proves as interested in Israel and Ms Reuveny is in Germany.

Another nice sidelight here is how certain folk discovered their Jewish roots and how they responded to this (Madeleine Albright could learn something). All in all, this small movie about one family and its continuing experience with the Holocaust is a quietly provocative experience.

The film -- from Kino Lorber and running 96 minutes -- opens this Friday, January 9, for a one-week run at New York City's Quad Cinema and on Saturday, January 10, for a two-day run at Manhattan's JCC on Manhattan's upper west side.