Gleason (Amazon Prime)

I do not follow football, and the name Steve Gleason meant nothing to me heading into Gleason. The documentary opens with a short recap of Gleason’s career, including the blocked punt that made him a legend in New Orleans, but football is not what Gleason is about. Instead, it focuses on Gleason’s life post-career, as he starts to raise a family while also battling ALS. The film is full of frank footage as Gleason’s football player body quickly deteriorates, following Gleason and his family every step of the way. His wife, who finds out she’s pregnant two weeks after Gleason’s diagnosis, is at first an unwilling participant, but we watch her slowly start to understand the power of this project. It brings to light so much pain in such a personal way.

The film doesn’t hold back as we watch everything in the Gleasons’ lives: Gleason’s video journals to his unborn son; his struggling to control his own bladder; his growing reliance on family and friends; his desire to help the cause of ALS research and reach out to others in his circumstance; his debates about his faith with his father; and his periodic return trips to the New Orleans Saints, each one with more help needed to get him to the field to greet his fans. Gleason the film is a document of a disease, giving us a detailed look at each physically debilitating step of the process, and Gleason the man is an unwaveringly honest subject, giving us a look at each emotionally debilitating step of the process.

Cameraperson (Amazon Prime)

Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson is a documentary collage that spans Johnson’s career as a cinematographer for documentary film. It spans the globe, jumping from place to place, time to time, and moment to moment with no context except a simple title telling you where we are now. It becomes a hypnotic, almost stream of consciousness, tour through the last few decades of global affairs and cinematic lessons. The film doesn’t care if we are lost or tossed in the middle of something; Johnson smartly lets the moments in time speak for themselves and lets us fill in the blanks. If we are suddenly in a car somewhere in the Middle East, the tension of the camera and the voices in the background telling us not to stop are all we need to feel the danger of Johnson’s job. If we are thrown to the Midwest, staring at a seemingly unchanging backdrop of power lines and cornfields, we understand the solemnity of Johnson’s job, even if her sneeze jiggles the camera. If we are dropping into Bosnia and forced to watch a toddler play with an ax bigger than he is, we understand the tug-of-war between capturing realism and wanting to step in that is a crucial center of Johnson’s job. The entire film says more about filmmaking than most films can by not saying anything, but showing us filmmaking at its best.

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (HBONow)

HBO pushed the air date of Bright Lights up several months after the passing of both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. The mother-daughter movie star team, whose just-to-the-sane-side-of-Grey Gardens relationship is the focus of the documentary, were given a lot of tributes in the past month but this might be the most touching of all of them. It allows us to see them as people, dealing with insecurities galore and picking up the pieces of their rocky past, and also as performers, shining both on stage and with fans. The film certainly plays differently now than it did when HBO first picked it up, with Fisher in the middle of a resurgence of popularity due to the new Star Wars films, but that is good. It is to the film’s benefit. Knowing what is going to happen to the film’s stars only a few months later deepens every moment they have on screen together, only to be topped off by the two of them reciting lyrics to “There’s No Business Like Show Business” at the end. Fisher and Reynolds stole every extra bow better than anyone else, and Bright Lights reminds of that at every step of the way.