Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 11 June

We’ve had a good week with doc­u­ment­ar­ies (and the Doc Edge fest­iv­al pre­views haven’t even star­ted yet). The first two reviews are for every­one and the second two are for paid sub­scribers only. You know what to do.

If all you know about foot­ball man­ager Ange Postecoglou was his recent Premier League career – lit­er­ally court­ing tri­umph and dis­aster at the same time – you might be sur­prised at the pho­to­graph of him smil­ing in the above mont­age. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

He’s smil­ing in the film Ange & the Boss: Puskás in Australia because he’s remem­ber­ing his play­ing career in the fledgling years of Australian pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball and spe­cific­ally being coached by one of the greatest play­ers ever to play the game. Hungarian Ferenc Puskás was a legend of the world game in the 50s and 60s, fam­ously lead­ing his nation­al team to a 6–3 humi­li­ation of England in 1953 – the first time England had ever been beaten at home.

He went on to a career at Real Madrid and then became a coach, guid­ing Greek club Panathainaikos to their first and only European Cup Final in 1971. Maybe that Greek con­nec­tion is how he ended up in Melbourne in 1989, coach­ing semi-professional South Melbourne Hellas in the National Soccer League. Puskás liked a drink and loved a feed but over­whelm­ingly loved foot­ball and des­pite an age­ing frame and a rotund physique, the foot­age shows that he still had some skills.

The foot­ball stor­ies are lovely but the film is really a social his­tory of Australia’s eth­ic migrant com­munit­ies – their rival­ries and their con­nect­ive tis­sue. It’s a labour of love for co-directors Cam Fink, Rob Heath and Tony Wilson and – like Ange – we smiled from begin­ning to end.

Jumping to the top of a crowded list of great U2 films, Bono: Stories of Surrender does some­thing remark­able by hav­ing some­thing new to say about a rock star we have been hear­ing from for about 45 years. There are three things that make this film stand out. Firstly it is inspired by Bono’s excel­lent auto­bi­o­graphy (Surrender) which came out just before Christmas in 2023. Secondly it is based on a solo Broadway show that Bono did to sup­port that book (and to fill time while his band­mates were deal­ing with their own stuff). Thirdly, it is dir­ec­ted by (Wellington-born) Andrew Dominik, known for the fea­tures Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and for the great Nick Cave docos One More Time With Feeling and This Much I Know to Be True.

Actually, there’s a fourth factor and that’s Bono him­self. He knows how ridicu­lous he is but keeps on going, search­ing for mean­ing, mak­ing con­nec­tions, find­ing the love, regard­less of how he is per­ceived. Despite all of the celebrity trap­pings and the mostly-unchecked ego, there’s an authen­t­ic per­son in there. The scale of the one-man show puts him in a new light, too. Watching a per­former who is used to crowds in the hun­dreds of thou­sands – and the cut­ting edge of all the tech­no­lo­gic­al trap­pings – mov­ing his own fur­niture around a mostly bare stage is hum­bling, as a story about a 65-year-old man, only just begin­ning to under­stand and appre­ci­ate his late fath­er, should be.

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

A much more tra­di­tion­al celebrity bio­graphy, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story reminds us that one of the icon­ic super­stars of the 1970s is still with us. (Arrested Development fans will already know this.)

A smart move by dir­ect­or Bruce David Klein is to break the story into themed chapters rather than run purely chro­no­lo­gic­ally. That emphas­ises how import­ant her friends and ment­ors were (sup­port­ing her abund­ant nat­ur­al tal­ent). Kay Thompson, Fred Ebb, fash­ion design­er Halston and Charles Aznavour are among the great friends and loves of her life who are no longer with us, while Michael Feinstein, Joel Grey, Ben Vereen and George Hamilton are the ones appear­ing who are still with us. Top of that list should be Mia Farrow, who first met Liza at Grade School, and who steals every anec­dote with some sharp observations.

The film also serves to remind us of how gaudy, taw­dry and smoky the 1970s were.

Lastly, a non-showbiz story, one that I recom­men­ded on RNZ Nights a week or so ago. In 1988, the world’s only uni­ver­sity for the deaf, Gallaudet in Washington D.C. were so incensed by the appoint­ment of yet anoth­er hear­ing per­son as their school’s pres­id­ent (equi­val­ent of Vice-Chancellor here), that they pro­tested by shut­ting the entire cam­pus down until their demands were met.

There’s so much in Deaf President Now! that strikes you as “that couldn’t hap­pen today”. We are now much more attuned to the needs and voices of people with dis­ab­il­it­ies in our com­munit­ies – not per­fect by any means but not as hope­less as it was then – but at the same time stu­dents in the U.S. are not giv­en lee­way for that kind of protest any longer. Shutting down an entire col­lege for a week would be intol­er­able if not unthink­able today.

The film is co-directed by super-experienced Davis Guggenheim (hear­ing) and first-timer Nyle DiMarco (deaf, and a former win­ner of America’s Next Top Model) and their choice to have act­ors voice the signed first-person wit­nesses to the affair rather than sub­title them works well. Hearing people like myself can’t read emo­tion in sign lan­guage the way we can with oth­er spoken lan­guages and – believe me – there is plenty of emo­tion there to be discovered.