Best of Enemies (Netflix)

It goes without saying that the Buckley/Vidal debates of 1968, which are the subject of Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s documentary Best of Enemies, have gone largely forgotten today. This is shocking because the debates, as this film so gracefully argues, were a major turning point in American political rhetoric. This was a time when intellectuals were famous, and they would go on camera and discuss complexly for the American public. Through these 10 nightly debates during the 1968 conventions, where conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal renaissance man Gore Vidal faced off to discuss and criticize, America was enraptured with an intellectual debate in a way that we don’t find anymore, least of all of mainstream TV news. Near the end of the debates, Buckley cracks and goes after Vidal in a personal way, using shocking language and changing the way TV in America was structured.

Morgan Neville (who is having a great year, between this and his Keith Richards documentary) and Robert Gordon balance the context and the content of the debates perfectly. We understand the landscape behind the debates, whether politically, culturally or economically (one talking head gets the film’s best line when he explains that ABC at the time “would be in fourth place, but there were only three networks”). We understand the motivation of both Buckley and Vidal, what would lead them to participate in the way that they do. We see enough of the debates to understand what is being said, but the film isn’t merely showing us these long forgotten relics. It is showing us what it meant to America, how these debates turned TV from something intelligent and intellectual to name-calling and empty rhetoric. By the time Neville and Gordon get to the climax of Debate 9, and which the film emphasizes with a perfect balance of restraint and flair, we understand what is truly at stake for everyone involved and for America watching.

Matthew Shepard Is a Friend of Mine (Netflix)

A lot has been written and said about the murder of Matthew Shepard over the past two decades, but watching Michele Josue’s debut documentary Matthew Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, you realize that not a lot has been written or told about Matthew Shepard himself. The most famous document of his murder, The Laramie Project, wisely did not include Matthew as a character, and instead focused more on the people his murder affected. Josue now gives us one of our first glimpses into who Matthew Shepard was and what he meant to those who knew him. Like the title suggests, Josue was a high school friend of Shepard, and she populates the film with other childhood friends, mentors, peers and family members. It brings the unfortunate martyr to life in a new way, from his childhood in Wyoming to time spent in Saudi Arabia, boarding school in Switzerland and ultimately his choice to return to the Western states for college. As the film gets closer to the grisly murder that defined Matthew Shepard, it feels more ordinary. The details have been told before, usually in more interesting ways that this film, although Josue trying to come to terms with the murder with the help of a local priest shocks the film right back into new territory. When it is painting a portrait of Matthew Shepard, and letting his humanity and loss wash over those who knew him as a person and loved him for who he was, it is a lovely tribute and a new aspect to a story we all sadly know too well.

Interviews with My Lai Veterans (Internet Archive)

When legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler passed away last weekend, many of the obituaries highlighted his work on the 1970 Best Documentary Short winner Interviews with My Lai Veterans. The Joseph Strick documentary is a frightening, first-hand retelling of the Vietnam War massacre only two years after those events. Strick frames the entire film in close-up, letting five of the U.S. troops on the ground tell their stories with no set-up, music or elaboration. It is merely horror told in blunt, sometimes emotionless, detail. Each of the five soldiers played a different role, and each has a slightly different take on what happened, but it all fits together into a stark reminder of the horrors of war and the toll it does or doesn’t take on those who witness it. It may not land as brutally today as it did in 1970, when the news was more fresh and less familiar, but it is still a difficult, if brief, viewing experience that reminds you that documentary films don’t need a lot of tools to make an impact.