The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (HBO Now)

Morgan Neville has made a career of documentaries about rock and roll musicians, peaking with his Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom, and while on the surface his new film might seem a little different, it covers a lot of the same territory. The Music of Strangers, which HBO aired last month, is the story of cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian musicians who play together in a melting pot of world music. They infuse their own cultures with each others’, taking non-Western instruments and using them in new and exciting ways. The film goes back to capture what brought them together in the first place, but focuses mostly on them now and spans the globe as we begin to understand where key members of the ensemble came from and what they bring to this new class of music they are creating.

Neville treats these classical musicians as if they were the rock stars he featured before; there is little difference in his mind between Yo Yo Ma and Keith Richards, or Galician bagpiper Cristina Pato and a soul singer like Darlene Love. When the Silk Road Ensemble is in concert, Neville sweeps around them quickly like he were capturing an arena rock concert. He gives us glimpses of them on tour buses and captures the tumultuous upbringings that were seemingly saved by music. In one memorable exchange, Yo Yo Ma explains his musical idea to the ensemble by comparing it to a horse’s fart — this world of classical music has the same playfulness that the Rolling Stones have backstage, but they also take their work just as seriously. When these musicians play, the film soars, and Neville reminds us just how magical a great musician is, regardless of their genre.

Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (Netflix)

Merrily We Roll Along, the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical that notoriously flopped on Broadway, has a special place in the musical theater world. It is something of a flawed classic, a show and score that people love while admitting that it doesn’t completely work. Lonny Price, who made his Broadway debut in the original production in 1981 along with a cast made up completely of teenagers and young adults, has now made a documentary showcasing the journey of the show and all of his compatriots who learned the hard way the pain of failure. Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened is a celebration of how the most exciting opportunity in your life can quickly become a disaster, and how long that pain can linger in people.

To a musical theater fanatic, the documentary paints a wonderful picture of the behind the scenes drama of the show, complete with bad creative decisions, casting issues, over-hyped anticipation, and a cast too young to be completely ready to deal with any of the attention. If the film doesn’t succeed in proving to you that Merrily is a forgotten classic, it certainly proves that the story behind the show is worth telling. It can’t quite support the full running time, though. Lonny Price is a first-time documentarian, and he stays a little too close to the story, chronicling one too many reunions, giving each of his friends a little too much of their story to tell, and assuming too much that we are already on his side and don’t need to be introduced to the show. I have no idea how this film would play to someone who doesn’t know every lyric of Merrily We Roll Along, or who doesn’t get excited about seeing Jim Walton pop up in a documentary, but to a Sondheim cultist it is a wonderful chestnut.