Before Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, there was Boris Becker. Affectionately known as “Boom Boom” for his fast and accurate serve and volleying technique, the West Germany-born Becker was one of the best tennis players of his generation. Now Apple TV+ has a new doc about his life and career, “Boom! Boom! The World Vs. Boris Becker,” covering Becker’s legendary Wimbledon victories and more recent controversies.

Continue reading ‘Boom! Boom! The World Vs. Boris Becker’ Trailer: New Apple TV+ Doc Covers The Career Of Legendary Tennis Pro In April at The Playlist.

Director Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”) is known for his versatility; romantic and coming-of-age films, animation, studio films, personal projects, etc., but it looks like he’ll be getting into the business of social documentary filmmaking next. While he’s promoting his upcoming animated Netflix film, “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” (read our review), which obviously further evinces his adaptability, Linklater revealed to The Hollywood Reporter podcast, Awards Chatter, a new project titled “Letter From Huntsville” for HBO.

Continue reading Richard Linklater Says He’s Part Of A 3-Part “Texas Ills” Doc With Alex Gibney Coming To HBO This Summer at The Playlist.

Continuing a narrative that he first explored in his Oscar-winning “Taxi to the Dark Side,” and the fictionalized series “The Looming Tower,” Alex Gibney’s newest documentary, “The Forever Prisoner,” is a stunning work of righteous indignation, centralizing the torture of Abu Zubaydah at the hands of the CIA. Historicizing Zubaydah, and deconstructing the myth that he was a high ranking member of al Qaeda, before showcasing his eventual imprisonment and torture, Gibney’s film is occasionally too wonkish for its own good, but, more often, it’s an infuriating dive into the ways that CIA surpassed any moral and ethical lines, all in the name of ‘freedom.’

READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2022

Named the ‘forever prisoner’ because of his limbo status at Guantanamo Bay, Zubaydah is essentially an absence within his own film, existing both as the central subject, but also a peripheral one because of Gibney’s inability to interview him.

Continue reading ‘The Forever Prisoner’ Is A Wonkish Dive Into The Torture Of Abu Zubaydah [Review] at The Playlist.

You wouldn’t be crazy to associate filmmaker Alex Gibney with documentaries. Over his decades-long career, a vast majority of his work has been in non-fiction filmmaking. However, that’s not all he’s done, as even recently, he’s directed episodes of TV series such as “Billions” and “The Looming Tower.” And for his next project, the director is tackling another narrative feature, “Two Wolves,” and he’s already found two amazing actors to lead the cast.

Continue reading ‘Two Wolves’: Viggo Mortensen & Caleb Landry Jones To Star In Alex Gibney’s Vietnam War Film at The Playlist.

Over the past decade, the spike in opioid abuse is startling and scary. It’s a problem that has plagued countless people and caused so many deaths. And it’s the subject of the new two-part HBO documentary, “The Crime of the Century.”

READ MORE: ‘Crazy, Not Insane’: Alex Gibney’s Latest Is An Unenlightening Look Into Serial Killers’ Psyches [DOC NYC Review]

As seen in the teaser for Alex Gibney’s latest project, “The Crime of the Century” tells the story of how massive pharmaceutical companies pushed opioids on doctors and encouraged them to write ridiculous prescriptions for the drugs that would then hook patients, leading to addiction and death.

Continue reading ‘The Crime Of The Century’ Teaser: Alex Gibney Spotlights Big Pharma’s Role In The Opioid Epidemic at The Playlist.

Tiger Woods is an athlete on the level of Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Babe Ruth, or Kobe Bryant. These are names that just about everyone on the planet knows, even if they’re not fans of sports. And in the case of Tiger Woods, that sort of fame led to one of the most shocking falls from grace and comebacks in sports history, which is documented in the new doc, “Tiger.”

READ MORE: ‘Death To 2020’ Trailer: ‘Black Mirror’ Creator Tackles Our Terrible Year With The Help Of An All-Star Cast

As seen in the trailer for “Tiger,” the two-part documentary starts at the very beginning, when the young boy’s father seemingly does everything in his power to make sure his son, Tiger, is a world-class golfer from the age of 1.

Continue reading ‘Tiger’ Trailer: Alex Gibney-Produced Doc Tackles The Rise & Fall Of Tiger Woods at The Playlist.

Near the start of Alex Gibney’s documentary “Crazy, Not Insane,” his subject asks the kind of essential question that feels so unanswerable that it is brought up not nearly as often as it should be. Thinking about the nature of evil and recalling her childhood interest in the Nuremberg Trials, she asks very plainly, “How come I don’t kill?” Everyone gets angry. But not everyone commits bloody murder.

Continue reading ‘Crazy, Not Insane’: Alex Gibney’s Latest Is An Unenlightening Look Into Serial Killers’ Psyches [DOC NYC Review] at The Playlist.

Given that it lays out in unsparing terms the extent of a staggering American failure that ranks up there with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, “Totally Under Control” is a surprisingly calm piece of work. A damning account of how the greatest technological, scientific, and military power on the planet laid down and allowed a pandemic to march right over it, the documentary is filled with eyewitnesses to the clown show who still don’t appear able to process what they saw.

Continue reading ‘Totally Under Control’: Alex Gibney’s Viciously On-Point Doc Shows How Trump’s Admin Utterly Blew The COVID Response [Review] at The Playlist.

Absolutely no in the world of documentaries moves as fast as Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney. Known for award-winning docs like “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” (his CV is outrageously long) Gibney already unveiled “Agents Of Chaos” this fall, on September 23 on HBO, a timely and revealing look at Russia’s interference into the 2016 election.

Continue reading ‘Totally Under Control’ Trailer: Alex Gibney’s New Documentary Is A Damning Look At Trump’s Botched COVID-19 Response at The Playlist.

“Let’s put the word ‘collusion’ aside for a moment… and let’s instead use the word ‘seduction.’” – Timothy Snyder, Professor of History, Yale University; Author, “The Road to Unfreedom.” This sentiment of seduction is key to “Agents of Chaos” a new two-part documentary from Academy Award winner Alex Gibney. The doc is immediately timely and features revelations confirmed by the recently-released Senate Intelligence Report.

READ MORE: ‘The Comey Rule’ Trailer: Trump’s Corruption Gets The Spotlight In Billy Ray’s Upcoming Showtime Series

The trailer promises previously unseen footage that goes inside Russian troll farms, as well as interviews with the lead prosecutor of the Mueller Investigation, Andrew Weissmann, who asks “Are we doing everything we can to make sure Americans will decide who is running this country?” in the trailer.

Continue reading ‘Agents Of Chaos’ Trailer: Alex Gibney Looks At Russian Interference With U.S. Elections at The Playlist.

Face it, you’re done with “Tiger King,” and you’re desperately looking for your next Netflix true-crime bingewatch. Well, never one to disappoint, the streaming platform has the next docuseries ready to go this month, but “The Innocence Files” probably isn’t going to inspire as many memes as Joe Exotic.

READ MORE: ‘Tiger King’: A Redneck ‘Game Of Thrones’ Set In The World Of Exotic Animals [Review]

As seen in the trailer, “The Innocence Files” is a much more serious affair than “Tiger King” and focuses on the story of The Innocence Project and eight cases that the organization helped fight.

Continue reading ‘The Innocence Files’ Trailer: Netflix Follows Up ‘Tiger King’ With A Series Focused On The Wrongfully Convicted at The Playlist.

In our newfound cultural fascination with scammers, Elizabeth Holmes is this spring’s belle of the ball. She’s the subject of a mega-popular crime podcast, Jennifer Lawrence is set to portray her on the big screen, and two competing documentaries about her and her failed startup, Theranos, debut this month. HBO‘s offering, “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” by “Going Clear” documentarian Alex Gibney, is a straightforward but entertaining tale that will keep both newcomers and Holmes enthusiasts enthralled.

Continue reading ‘The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley’: Tackles Scammer Elizabeth Holmes & Her Fraudulent Theranos Company at The Playlist.

Get ready to get very, very paranoid. Just in case you’d begun to regard your laptop or the mobile device on which you’re reading these words as a benign contraption whose primary covert function is the ability to snap quickly to a spreadsheet when the boss walks by, here comes Alex Gibney, on prime Gibney form, to shatter that cozy illusion and make your world feel a lot less safe. His new film “Zero Days” may ostensibly be an investigation of the 2010 malware worm known as Stuxnet, but over its swift-moving 116-minute runtime, Gibney does a much broader and more important job: relating the rather airless, abstract concepts of cyber-terrorism and internet espionage to their real-world consequences.

Continue reading Alex Gibney’s ‘Zero Days’ Will Make You Paranoid [Review] at The Playlist.

“Going Clear: Scientology and the Process of Belief” is one of the more powerful documentaries on the subject of Scientology to see a major release in years, though we all know the film’s release didn’t lack for controversy. Alex Gibney, the film’s director, is a good documentarian in that he has a keen nose for bullshit and a willingness to peer into corners of our world that most would turn a blind eye towards.

Continue reading Watch: New Trailer For Alex Gibney’s Cyberwar Documentary ‘Zero Days’ at The Playlist.

Continue reading Alex Gibney To Make Narrative Feature Film Debut With Scott Z. Burns Penned ‘The Action’ at The Playlist.

Watch: A Virus Launches A Global War In Trailer For Alex Gibney's 'Zero Days'

Continue reading Watch: A Virus Launches A Global War In Trailer For Alex Gibney’s ‘Zero Days’ at The Playlist.

Berlin Review: Alex Gibney's Chilling Cyber-Espionage Documentary 'Zero Days'

Continue reading Berlin Review: Alex Gibney’s Chilling Cyber-Espionage Documentary ‘Zero Days’ at The Playlist.

Continue reading Watch: Netflix Trailers For David Lynch Produced ‘My Beautiful Broken Brain’ & Alex Gibney’s ‘Cooked’ at The Playlist.

Continue reading Watch: 58-Minute Documentary Director Roundtable With Alex Gibney, Michael Moore, Amy Berg, Liz Garbus And More at The Playlist.

Steven Soderbergh, Paul Haggis, Louis C.K., Jill Soloway, Sofia Coppola & More Score 2016 TV & Doc DGA Nominations

Continue reading Steven Soderbergh, Paul Haggis, Louis C.K., Jill Soloway, Sofia Coppola & More Score 2016 TV & Doc DGA Nominations at The Playlist.

Continue reading Jeff Nichols’ ‘Midnight Special,’ Colin Firth’s ‘Genius’ & New Film By Alex Gibney Added To The 2016 Berlin Film Festival at The Playlist.

Continue reading Watch: Trailer for Alex Gibney’s ‘Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine’ Explores The Man Behind The Myth at The Playlist.

Review: Alex Gibney's 4-Hour Documentary 'Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All'

Continue reading Review: Alex Gibney’s 4-Hour Documentary ‘Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All’ at The Playlist.

Watch: Trailer For Alex Gibney's Scientology Doc 'Going Clear' Takes You Into The Prison Of Belief

Continue reading Watch: Trailer For Alex Gibney’s Scientology Doc ‘Going Clear’ Takes You Into The Prison Of Belief at The Playlist.

Sundance Review: Alex Gibney's Incendiary Doc 'Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief'

Continue reading Sundance Review: Alex Gibney’s Incendiary Doc ‘Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief’ at The Playlist.