They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Make that other man a woman — specifically, Down Under filmmaker Sari Braithwaite — and the treasure is [Censored], a documentary constructed solely of film footage once banned by the Australian Censorship Board and now culled from the Australian National Archives. Over the course of 63 minutes, excitement over her find not only fades, but flips, as she narrates each step of a crisis of conscience.

Making up the tarnished treasure are those excised portions from 1,991 movies between 1958 and 1971, organized from A to Z — er, Zed. The clips run the gamut of genre and budget, from melodrama to mondo, from cowboys to aliens. In this, her first feature — an outgrowth of her 2015 short, Smut Hounds — Braithwaite considers being confronted this “state-sanctioned spank bank” and wonders, “How do I tell a story with all these scraps?”

She more than makes do. The displaced frames find a home as she initially sets out to examine and decry her homeland’s history of censorship, grouping the cuts thematically and presenting them with a modicum of context. We get a montage of screen kisses — chaste to erotic, consensual to forced, hetero- to homosexual — and think little of it. Young men then brandish knives, and their serrated machismo strikes the viewer of silly, if nothing else.

Then come the slaps — hard, as men backhand wives, girlfriends, mistresses, whores, whomever. Not any one slap bothers on its own, but the cumulative effect of violence is jarring and uncomfortable. As a result, Braithwaite’s thesis comes into focus — and grows sharper with subsequent sequences concerning Peeping Toms, acts of striptease and the act of rape. (Incidentally, the most nerve-wracking scene of all isn’t among these: an extended and unflinchingly graphic childbirth, with more liquid-expelling orifices onscreen at once than your pick of David Cronenberg pictures.)

To acknowledge her point does not mean the audience is required to co-sign. Even those who disagree with her ultimate view can appreciate her journey for its inherent historical value; the documentary is inadvertently star-studded, featuring legends Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Dean Martin, Steve McQueen and Bob Dylan, who argues over broken glass. The directors represented are no slouch, either, as they include Agnes Varda, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard.

And yet, [Censored] ultimately works not because of them, but because of Braithwaite and her creative collaborators. Primary among them are two who work in tandem here: post-rock outfit The End, whose potent instrumental score helps fuel the considerable tension crafted by editor James Arneman. —Rod Lott

On one internet company’s rapid rise and speedier fall, the documentary Startup.com would be more fun if its subjects didn’t come off as such egotistical assholes.

Friends since their high school days, Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman decide to chase fortune by staking their claim in the lawlessness of the World Wide Web with a site called govWorks.com, a public-to-government facilitator — in other words, you could pay your parking tickets online. As many did in the dot-com boom, Herman and Tuzman start believing this idea will reap millions upon millions.

We watch their heads balloon as their head count balloons from under a dozen employees to more than 200, thanks to venture capital, all before even having a legitimate product. When their site finally goes live, mishaps not only follow, but march in time; their Gordon Gekko-level greed so clouds their judgment, they fail to recognize their massive shortcomings, not the least of which is not having a fucking clue what they’re doing. It’s rather amazing they allowed co-directors Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) to let cameras capture their abhorrent, self-fellating behavior.

After witnessing this pair of douchey hotheads do douchey hothead things — like Tuzman irreparably damaging their friendship by firing Herman via form letter — their downfall is the icing on Startup.com’s cake. To be honest, as engaging as the film is, I wanted to see even more failure, as we are told karma dictates. Real life eventually (read: in 2017) gave us what the movie could not, with Tuzman found guilty in federal court for schemes of widespread financial fraud. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

One can see why ’70s hotshot director Peter Bogdanovich chose to make a documentary feature on the legendary silent-film comedian Buster Keaton. The two share parallels across Hollywood’s classic three-act structure:
1. heralded as a genius for early successes
2. career collapse marred by personal tragedy
3. respect regained late in life

For Keaton, redemption arrived as an honorary Academy Award and international fêtes, while Bogdanovich has settled nicely into an elder-statesman role as a bona fide film historian, and The Great Buster: A Celebration his latest document, one of pure delight.

Bogdanovich narrates, interspersing clips of his subject with excerpted interviews from gushing admirers, including Mel Brooks, Bill Hader, Carl Reiner, Leonard Maltin and Dick Van Dyke. Among other participants, Jackass Johnny Knoxville comes off as more knowledgeable and insightful than Quentin Tarantino, and the only thing stranger than the head-scratching presence of Cybill Shepherd is the surreality of Werner Herzog’s, which I gladly take.

After one hour of sharing Keaton’s cradle-to-grave story, The Great Buster spends its final third more closely examining his 10-movie run made with zero studio interference and infinite creativity. The stunts and set pieces — still influential today, most notably in the work of Jackie Chan — flat-out amaze with their bravado and inventiveness. If the AIP Beach flicks of the 1960s didn’t exactly make the best use of Keaton among their crowded casts, at least he wasn’t being forgotten.

With his doc, Bogdanovich aims not only to ensure Keaton is remembered, but to restore luster. It’s a nobel pursuit, worth each and every perfect pratfall. —Rod Lott

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When the Santa Fe renegade art collective known as Meow Wolf opened the doors to its immersive funhouse in 2016, one of its key creatives worried that visitors might write the permanent installation off as “a bunch of fuckin’ masturbatory bullshit.” Obviously, the public did not, or the documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story wouldn’t exist to give that quote a lasting home.

Co-directed by Jilann Spitzmiller (Still Dreaming) and first-timer Morgan Capps, the doc essentially functions as a feature-length commercial for the group’s burgeoning empire, but also to audiences’ benefit as a warts-aplenty family portrait of an American Gen X/millennial success story. In other words, it’s not only a bunch of fuckin’ masturbatory bullshit.

In a proverbial nutshell, the film tracks how Meow Wolf evolved from several hipsters (all of whom my dad would roll his eyes at) partying in a shared hovel to the collaborative powerhouse they are today, with a little bit of luck, a lot of fundraising and a lot more of patron saint George R.R. Martin. Other than CEO Vince Kadlubek, you don’t get much of a rounded feel of the various founders and first-gen artists, which also sets up — perhaps unintentionally — a portent of animosity: Kadlubek speaks of his desire to turn Meow Wolf into a billion-dollar company, while others claim potentially fatal allergies to any Disney-fication. (Perhaps someday, Meow Wolf: Conclusion will tell that fractious tale.)

The Monkees-style shenanigans of the group early in the film grate like nails on a chalkboard. But once they start building the whacked-out abode for which they’ll always be known, Origin Story comes alive as an inspiring paean to the creative spirit … and the necessary evil of deep pockets. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Not terribly long ago, vinyl was considered a dead medium. Then hipsters discovered it and made it viable again. The same could happen (or at least should) to letterpress printing — that is, the near-lost art of pressing inked blocks of metal type onto paper. Created by Gutenberg (not Steve), this process — the Xerox of centuries long ago — may be archaic in these days of instant gratification, but it remains achingly beautiful.

So, too, initially, is Pressing On: The Letterpress Film, an indie documentary that serves as a clarion call for the technique’s continued life. Clearly letterpress fanatics themselves, first-time feature directors Erin Beckloff and Andrew P. Quinn do a fine job of conveying its enduring appeal, with an emphasis on its tactile pleasures, from selecting the type and slotting their blocks together like a puzzle to rolling out the finished product on a gloriously textured sheet of paper. The process can be slow and tedious, but so is cooking, with the end result of both satisfying multiple senses of the human body — in this case, touch, sight and, yes, smell.

With a history lesson and a mechanics tutorial, the doc covers the bases of backstory, but the emphasis is on the personalities and places (and even college programs) keeping letterpress alive, most notably Nashville’s famed Hatch Show Print. Lovingly told, Pressing On could be better organized and more concise; the main points are repeatedly hammer-struck, but Beckloff and Quinn are so kindhearted, I cannot imagine anyone wishing the film ill will.

I also cannot imagine anyone not already attracted to typography and design seeking it out. Like the proverbial pastor preaching to the choir, Pressing On is made — and Kickstarter-backed — by a passionate community speaking to a passionate community, with considerable overlap. Hopefully, its goodwill can engender a few more members. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.