Two wonderfully strange documentaries about the silver-haired set.
We know your watching time is limited. And the amount of things available to watch … is not. Looking for a movie? Nearly any movie ever made? It's probably streaming somewhere. That's a lot of movies. |
Below, we're suggesting two of them, the latest of our weekly double-feature recommendations. We think the movies will pair well — with each other and with you. |
Your weekly double feature: The twilight zone |
 | | Dennis Dean, who lives out of his van to gain proximity to the elderly women of the Villages, in a scene from "Some Kind of Heaven."Magnolia Pictures |
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'Some Kind of Heaven' and 'Gates of Heaven' |
The largest retirement community in the United States, with over 100,000 residents packed into a sprawling complex north of Orlando, Fla., the Villages has gotten attention in recent years as a political battleground-within-a-battleground, essential to Donald Trump's success in the state. Now streaming on Hulu, Lance Oppenheim's mesmerizing documentary "Some Kind of Heaven" (2021), co-produced by The New York Times, sets politics aside for offbeat portraiture, focusing on a handful of residents whose lives aren't entirely rejuvenated by this synthetic Fountain of Youth. |
Between gorgeous interstitial shots in which retirees dance, synchronized-swim and buzz around on go-karts, Oppenheim settles on subjects who are having trouble in paradise. There's a newly widowed woman who is uneasy about the Villages' singles scene; a couple whose marriage is fraught by the husband's increasingly erratic behavior; and most memorably, a nonresident who lives out of a van and spends his days trying to seduce wealthy older women. What binds the film together is the odd, often hilarious disconnect between the surface positivity of the Villages and the turbulence hidden within it. |
The comic tone and eye-catching style of Oppenheim's film, along with its interest in people near the end of their lives, owes a debt to Errol Morris's seminal debut feature, "Gates of Heaven" (1978), which is ostensibly about California pet cemeteries but is actually more about human quirks and frailties. Morris follows the bizarre story of two cemeteries — one the failed dream of a paraplegic who still reminiscences about his old collie, the other a more successful family-run business — but his interest drifts toward the personalities around these sites and their unusual and occasionally beautiful musings about life and death. And he reinvented the documentary form in the process. SCOTT TOBIAS |
A poignant new look at a Spike Lee classic |
Spike Lee's 1989 film "Do the Right Thing" has striking parallels to the trial of Derek Chauvin and the tragedy of George Floyd. It explores "what it means to be in a community that can also turn into a pressure cooker," Jenna Wortham said on her podcast with Wesley Morris, Still Processing. Listen now. |
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