Everything Nonfiction

Documentaries

You are here: Home / Archives for Documentaries

By Leave a Comment

Review of The Last Dance

Review of the Netflix docuseries The Last Dance
Rating *****

You don’t have to be a basketball fan to enjoy this highly entertaining ten-episode docuseries. The plotline, established in the first episode, centers around whether or not the Chicago Bulls can win a third three-peat before the Chicago Bulls management disbands the winning team. Thus the title “The Last Dance.”

At the center of this dynasty is Michael Jordan. There is little doubt that the Chicago Bulls could not have won as many championships as they did without Michael Jordan. But it’s also true that Michael couldn’t have done what he did without a talented cast of supporting characters, including Scottie Pippen, Denis Rodman, Steve Kerr, John Paxon, and a host of other players that came and went.

The ten episodes cover eight years, starting with the signing of Michael Jordan. Between the conference and championship series, there is a dizzying amount of time-shifting flashbacks and individual player profiles. When this series first became available on ESPN, I passed because I couldn’t make sense of the structure. The filmmakers do a commendable job by using a timeline graphic. Once you accept the time-shifting structure, you can sit back and enjoy the anecdotes, profiles, and basketball highlights.

Every episode contained anecdotes from players, coaches, and management. One of my favorites involved an interaction between Michael Jordan and teammate Steve Kerr. There were just a few seconds left in a championship game. Everyone knew that Michael was going to get the ball. While sitting on the bench, Michael whispered to Steve Kerr and asked him if he was ready, the implication being that Michael was going to pass the ball to him. Steve Kerr’s reaction to this unexpected revelation was memorable.

Despite the confusing structure, the filmmakers deserve credit for putting together one of the best sports documentaries ever produced.

By Leave a Comment

Review of the Netflix docuseries Immigration Nation

Rating *****

Two sides of an equation

The six-part docuseries Immigration Nation is an unbiased examination of both sides of the immigration issue. Throughout the series, viewers meet a wide range of immigrants, border patrol agents, ICE agents, homeland security personnel, concerned citizens, and shady employers who participate and what is known as wage theft. Each episode focuses on a few specific issues: illegal border crossings, child separations, asylum seekers, sanctuary laws, deportations, DACA, wage theft, migrant deaths, veteran deportations, and the criminalization of human trafficking.

By looking at all sides of the immigration problem, viewers can make up their minds about the effectiveness of the current administration’s efforts. One thing that I didn’t see was evidence of immigrants taking jobs away from Americans. One example involves workers who move around the country seeking work in areas affected by storms and hurricanes. Someone has to repair roofs. Someone has to rebuild. Someone has to clean up streets from debris. In many cases, immigrants, including many who may have entered the country illegally, perform these jobs.

Unfortunately, there are a handful of companies that employ illegal workers and then refuse to pay them. Instead, they threaten to report workers to ICE when they demand pay. One company highlighted for wage theft was Winterfell Construction and the company’s owner Tommy Hamm. Tommy’s defense that it was his contractor’s responsibility to pay the workers is weak. Not only did he not take any steps to ensure that his contractors pay their workers, but he also threatened the workers and their representatives with lawsuits.

The singular goal among immigrants is for a better life for themselves and their families. The vast majority of them would be happy to enter the U.S. legally. But rather than make that a realistic goal, current immigration policy has shut down all legal paths. We treat immigrants as criminals. We deport people with no criminal records without regard to the impact on the family members remaining behind. What exists now is an immigrant community that lives in constant fear.

It is human nature to want to better one’s position in life. No one would willingly leave their own country if they weren’t escaping violence and poverty. Rather than spend billions of dollars on policies that are cruel and heartless, we should be granting more work visas. We should grant legal status to immigrant veterans. We should do what we can to improve living conditions in Central America. We are better than this.

By Leave a Comment

Review of the HBO docuseries I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

Rating ****

Joseph DeAngelo in a police sketch and a picture taken around the time of his early crimes

How to make a serial killer – that about sums up this intriguing six-part documentary series on HBO. The series centers around author Michelle McNamara’s writing and eventual publication of the book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which is about a serial rapist and murderer nicknamed the Golden State Killer.

Michelle died prematurely while working on the book. The cause of death was due to a lethal combination of prescription and over-the-counter medications. The film hints at the possibility that the book’s subject matter and the stress of publication deadlines may have contributed to her use of the drugs. As with the book, her husband, actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, fills in for his wife and sees that her work finds an audience.

I knew from headlines that investigators eventually caught the Golden State Killer and that it occurred after the book’s publication. I didn’t know that Michelle’s work played a role in that outcome.

Throughout this six-episode series, viewers learn how this individual progressed from breaking and entering to rape to murder. The mystery is who is this person, and what motivated him to commit these despicable crimes?

The final episode unravels the mystery. It goes without question that it takes a psychopathic mind to commit these types of crimes. But there are plenty of psychopaths wandering around causing mischief who don’t commit violent crimes. What flicked the switch with this guy?

The filmmakers don’t draw a definitive conclusion, but it seemed obvious to me. The man, Joeseph DeAngelo, was a former police officer. He lost his job after getting caught shoplifting. He also had a strong dislike for women, most likely the result of the breakup of an early relationship. My theory is that the combination of those two events, combined with a troubled childhood, set him on a course of revenge. His goal, in my mind, was to show that he was smarter than the police and women who ruined his life.

In the end, it’s the survivors who get the last word. Their stories are what’s important. The man behind those crimes will now spend his remaining years in a tiny cell with the memories of his victims haunting him night after night.

By Leave a Comment

Review of Showtime’s docuseries Outcry

Review of Outcry directed by Pat Kondelis Rating *****

When it comes to wrongful convictions, all it takes is the breakdown of just one step in the criminal justice system. A detective looking to close a case can coerce a false confession. A prosecutor can bring charges that the evidence doesn’t support. A jury can send a person to prison for twenty-five years without blinking an eye just because they would rather go home than debate the facts. The story told in Outcry touches on all of these themes and more.

It all starts with an accusation. A four-year-old boy accuses a teenager, Greg Kelley, of sexual assault. Greg is a high school football star with a full college scholarship awaiting his graduation. What follows is one misstep after another as Greg is soon arrested and put through the spin cycle of our broken criminal justice system.

The detective assigned the case doesn’t interview a single person in the household where the alleged assault occurred. He doesn’t even go to the house to verify the boy’s statement. The house where Greg was staying also ran an in-home daycare. The daycare owner recommended a lawyer to Greg’s mother, who then hired her to represent Greg. The lawyer, Patricia Cummings, does a less than competent job in defending her client. Since the documentary has aired, Patricia Cummings has gone on the defense and is threatening to sue the filmmakers. My take, based on the facts presented, especially the way she turned on her client when her reputation was on the line, point to ineffective counsel. One of Patricia’s defenders is Michael Morton. Michael Morton spent twenty-plus years in prison for a crime he did not commit. I have a lot of respect for Michael Morton. His book Getting Life is one of the best books ever written about a wrongful conviction. I’m sure he has a good reason to come to her defense. But if Patricia Cummings had done half the job as Greg’s second attorney, Keith Hampton, there would not have been a wrongful conviction.

The missteps by the lawyers, detectives, and prosecutors are not the only glaring failures. The series also touches on issues concerning sentencing disparities, the appeals process, and the inadequacies of our jury system.

I won’t give away the ending. But one of the saddest aspects of this story is that none of the people responsible were held accountable. No one lost their job. Instead, there were promotions and praise. The lead prosecutor, however, committed suicide. It’s not known what role this case had in that sad outcome.

Outcry is an emotional rollercoaster that will stay with you long after the last of this five-episode docuseries.

By Leave a Comment

Review of The Innocent Files

This Netflix documentary series takes an in-depth look at nine different wrongful convictions. The common theme in all of these wrongful convictions is Prosecutorial misconduct and eyewitness misidentifications.

If you are a juror and someone you deem as credible gets on the stand and points at a defendant and says with 100% certainty that he or she is responsible for the crime, it’s hard not to vote to convict. You may even be willing to overlook exculpatory evidence. Police and prosecutors certainly do.

Wrongful convictions happen for a host of reasons: false confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, poor defense lawyers, unethical detectives, faulty eyewitness testimony, questionable expert testimony. At the end of these breaks in the criminal justice system, there is a poor soul whose life is forever changed. The most frustrating part of it is that in the majority of cases, the unethical detective or prosecutor is seldomly held responsible. They go on with their careers. They get promotions. They retire. No one is held accountable for the lives destroyed.

Alfred Dewayne Brown

Each of the nine episodes tells a story of heartbreak and outrage. The story of Alfred Dewayne Brown in episode eight made me the angriest. The tactics used by Prosecutor Dan Rizzo were despicable. When faced with exculpatory evidence, what does Dan Rizzo do? He buries it. When Dan Rizzo needs an additional witness to strengthen his case, what does he do? He puts an innocent woman behind bars until that woman, Alfred’s girlfriend, changes her story, sealing Alfred’s fate.

The good news for each of the wrongfully convicted in this series is that they all eventually gain their freedom. Most receive compensation for their false imprisonment. Your faith is restored not by the release of the wrongfully convicted but by the reporters, lawyers, and individuals who put in the time and effort to uncover the truth.

By Leave a Comment

Review of How to Fix a Drug Scandal

Rating *****

Sonja Farak

This four-part Netflix docuseries tells the story of two crime lab technicians who, for different reasons, indirectly caused the dismissal of some 35,000 drug-related criminal cases in Massachusets. Some of the other topics covered include prosecutorial misconduct, sentencing disparity, and judicial incompetence.

The two lab technicians at the center of this story are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan. They worked at different labs. Both made poor decisions that tainted their work in the lab, resulting in their test results being unreliable. In Annie Dookhan’s case, she falsified test results to increase her output. In Sonja Farak’s case, she conducted a majority of her tests under the influence of the very drugs she was testing.

The real heroes are the defense lawyers who went above and beyond in their search for the truth. Lawyers Jared Olanoff, Matt Segal, and Luke Ryan show what good lawyers can accomplish when given the resources, which in this case were provided by the ACLU.

Of the thousands of drug cases that were affected by the drug lab scandal, the one that stood out for me was the case of Ronaldo Penate. Police arrested Ronaldo for buying a $20 bag of heroin from an undercover officer. His attorney was Luke Ryan. Luke tried to get the case thrown out because the person who did the drug testing in Ronaldo’s case was Sonja Farak, who at the time was under indictment for possible tampering of evidence. It should have been a no brainer. But the prosecuting attorney didn’t throw the case out. And when Ronaldo turned down a plea deal that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence, Luke had to go to trial without having Farak’s misdeeds presented to the jury. Ronaldo lost and received a seven-year prison sentence. Yet when Sonja ultimately pleaded guilty to her drug use, she received an eighteen-month sentence. Where is the fairness in those sentences?

The only issue I had with the series was the way the filmmakers and the lawyers painted those thirty-five thousand drug cases as wrongful convictions. It may be true that the majority of those cases depended on unreliable drug tests, but I’m also willing to bet that there were likely zero cases where an innocent person received a conviction due to a tainted drug test. A person released from jail or prison because of a technicality doesn’t suddenly become innocent. Sonja couldn’t have gotten high if the drugs weren’t real.

The series relies on reenactments, especially for Sonja Farak’s testimony. The actress who portrayed Sonja, Shannon O’Neill, deserves credit for her portrayal.