Pop Culture Happy Hour - Great documentaries you don’t want to miss

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

We talk a lot about movies and TV shows, but new documentary films sometimes can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. So today we’re highlighting some new documentaries that are worth your time and you don’t want to miss – including Remake, The History of Concrete, Black Zombie, The Oldest Person in the World, and You Had to Be There.Looking for more films that might have flown under your radar? Check out these episodes:Great movies you may have missedFun movies you may have missedOur favorite movies on TubiConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you up to date on the latest in pop culture. And here's a little transitive property for you. You stay up to date on pop culture by staying up to date on the show. And the way you stay up to date on the show is by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. Thank you. We talk a lot about movies on this show, but new documentary films, for whatever reason, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. So we figured we take a beat to highlight some new documentaries that are worth your time. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour,

we're recommending some great documentaries you don't want to miss. Joining me as my co-host, Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Hey, Glenn. Excited to talk about these with you. Yeah, and I know this first one we're going to talk about is one you really love. You covered it for NPR. Yeah.

Tell me about it. So this is probably one of my favorite movies of the year, to be honest. And it is remake directed by the very legendary filmmaker, documentarian Ross McElwee. It's his first feature in 15 years. It's about McElwee sort of trying to get a new project off the ground. This time it's a remake of one of his previous documentaries, like a fictional remake. But while he's trying to work on that, he's also reckoning with the dissolution of his marriage and his son, Adrian's drug addiction.

I do think it's a little important to have a little bit of context. While you don't have to have seen Ross McElwee's phones before this in order for it to hit you, it does help, I think, because so much of his. filmmaking is self-referential. I don't know how familiar you were with Ross McElwell. This is new to me, but I'm sure you'd come across his work before. Oh, I was one of those people who saw Sherman's March, the film they made his bones on back of the day when I was a young kid. I know his stuff. Yeah, I did a whole binge on him before seeing remake because I was like, I have not seen any of his films. So let's do this. And what I realized while watching some of his films was like, before Mark Cohen and Rent, before Lonely Girl 15. And you know, the countless,

present day in the life, like content creators who are inviting you to get ready with them or whatever. There was Ross McAlee. Starting in the 70s, he produced films that were very self-conscious, self-referential, Sherman's March, as you mentioned, is sort of this would-be Civil War doc that actually ends up being about the pressure he is, himself is facing to find someone and settle down. It's really about him, and he's constantly in all of his films, sort of using footage that he's used in other films, and there's a through line. And so remake is sort of like born out of the success of Sherman's March. The movie he's trying to remake that a filmmaker is trying to remake is Sherman's March.

And he sells the rights to a producer. But then while he's documenting the process, his rocky relationship with his son, Adrian, is kind of coming to the forefront. And this was filmed over several years. His son passed away in 2016. But you can tell that this is a movie that's been many years in the making. And it really hits you. I don't even really know how to describe it any more than that. It's just a movie kind of need to sit with and really let it wash over you. I think anyone who's experienced someone who has

struggled with addiction, whether it's a family member or someone close to you, it's one of those movies that is just as self-conscious as it is, it also opens it up to all these questions that I think a lot of people, regardless of who you are, will be able to connect to. And it just, it hits hard. What did you think of this? Yeah, it hits hard. You know, Ebert said in the film is an empathy engine, and that's the key to a film like this. And you know, I joke on the show all the time when it comes time to talk about the Oscar nominated documentaries, for example, that they are all bummers. And that's just, you know, libness is my operating system. I can't get past it. But that's the way I kind of deal with wrenching very difficult subjects like this one. And I don't think anybody, any listener has any illusions that going into a film about the loss of a son is going to be a laugh riot. So you could ask yourself, why put yourself through it? You do that for films like this one. where the filmmaker is, as you mentioned, he's the subject. He is so willing to flay himself before us.

And he's not projecting coolness or intelligence or even craft per se. He's just, he's so willing to have his friend Charlene, who was one of the standout characters, people from Sherman's March, just rake him over the coals for his indecisiveness and his overthinking. And, you know, if it sometimes seems like his affinity, for having people call him out. It can come off a bit pathological. I'm no therapist.

What do I know? But there is such a worth to a film like this one because what he's doing in those moments is articulating really vividly some very difficult truths. There's a lot in this film about loss, not just grief, though there's a hell of a lot about grief, but also things like memory loss.

We meet Charlene again and she's experiencing memory loss. Loss of intimacy, as you say, having to do with his marriage. He's wrestling with that sense. stuff, forcing us to wrestle with it, and it works because of the connection he makes with us, this empathy that we feel for him. Not a laugh, riot, but I mean, and also not a film to watch while doing your laundry, because he's doing some really smart things, setting up parallel shots, you know, between filming his kid as a young kid, filming his kid as an adult, sometimes

his kid is filming him. It makes demands on you, this film, I will say, but those demands are really worthy because you come out of it feeling like I've had a human enriching experience and there's something to be said for that. Yes, I completely agree. And like I said, you don't have to have seen those other films that he's made over the years to appreciate it. But if you did want to go down that rabbit hole, I was at least able to watch a lot of his films through Canopy. So you can check that out. It'll depend on your local library and what they've licensed out.

But I was able to watch a bunch of them through Canopy. And I highly recommend it if you enjoy remake is a weird way to say. But if it moves you and you want to go back down that rabbit hole, go check out his other films too. Yeah, and it definitely will move you. And certainly there's enough clips from Sherman's March and some of his other films that you will get a sense. But I agree, if you can do it, you should check out his stuff.

And you will want to if this is your first McElwee film. Yeah. Okay, once again, that's remaked by Ross McElwee. It is in theaters. It's also airing on PBS and streaming on PBS.org and on the PBS app. Okay, next up is a film that kind of feels like it's a successor to the Ross McElwee of the world by John Wilson. Talk to me about this one. Oh, man.

Having already experienced John Wilson and going back and watching a Ross McElwie movie, I was like, oh, wow, John Wilson is basically his spiritual successor. There's a lot of similar filmmaking styles here. And so John Wilson has a new feature called The History of Concrete. And, you know, yeah. A pulse-pounding title. I know, I know. Admittedly, I think he says as much. This is the most boring subject you could ever possibly think of.

But this is John Wilson. He's got to make it at least a little. bit. It's not just about concrete, of course. Like, that's not the only thing. Basically, he's setting out to make a documentary about the ubiquity of concrete. And then it turns into, like, our crumbling infrastructure. It ends up being about a lot of other things, too. Not all of them are tightly connected, but it's self-referential, again, in the same way that, like, McElwie is. And you've got him, John Wilson talking about the financial realities of filmmaking, meeting quirky weirdos and, like, all those things. I feel like the less said about

this the better, like, or at least like, it goes in so many windy ways that, like, you don't expect. I enjoyed this. I do think it's kind of just, if you liked how to with John Wilson, his TV series, it's basically that just stretched out longer. Does it all go together and does it sometimes feel like he's stuffing things in and could it spend just like a tight 30 minutes and would it have been better? I think so, but I still think there's enough charm here and enough interesting people and

figures that he's talking to that I was not unhappy that I saw this movie. Like, I think it's definitely worth checking it out if you're a John Wilson fan. Yeah, and I use the good word charm there, because you're either on board with this or you're not. And I certainly was. I enjoyed this a lot. I kept imagining, however, my very conservative silent generation father watching this alongside me, and he would not be done with it because it's, this is like if McElwee was a millennial, right? My father would call this self-indulgent and navel gazi, especially in the fact that he's making a documentary about how difficult it is to make a documentary. But that is the bit. And you have to be on board with that premise. There is an aimless quality that I think in something like

McElwee's work comes off as kind of searching and trying to articulate something. And here, I got the sense that sometimes it's kind of pointing a camera at something and going, well, what about this? Is this anything? Is this a thing? Is this a thing? The movie. And, you know, he keeps coming back to concrete, certainly. But you can tell his heart isn't in it. He would much rather talk about whatever comes up in the conversations he has with these weirdos that he talks to. He talks to somebody for three minutes. And at the end, they mentioned they're in a band. And you know, now this movie's about the band. Yeah. This person's in. Well, in part because apparently music documentaries are more lucrative than.

There you go. Right there. Or can be more lucrative. Yeah. And there is a section. Aisha at a concrete convention where it kind of feels like he's mocking the people. I don't know. Yeah. It was feeling a little Sasha Bering Coheny. Not that extreme, but like, yeah, I understand what you mean. But I did enjoy this. I did love how to with John Wilson. This is, as you say, more of the same. So if you've watched John Wilson before, you're going to get more John Wilson here. And that's, I think we've set people up. Yes. For what this film is. That is the history of concrete. It is in theaters now. All right. Next up is not a self-referential naval gasey documentary at all. This has a big cultural subject. Talk to me about black zombie. Yes. So Black Zombie is a movie about a subject that I can't say I've thought too much about, but after seeing this film, I was just very fascinating. And I love a documentary that will teach me a lot of things about the world. So this is by Maya Annique Bedward. And basically Bedward is interrogating the etymology and evolution of zombie culture and examining how, like many things in our culture, its roots are in slavery and colonialism. In this case, as those things pertain to the people of Haiti. And so I feel like this is a type of movie, especially coming in this time right now, it's very, very timely when you're thinking about all the fearmongering of Haitians and Haitian people who are in America by people like J.D. Vance and other conservatives and deportations of Haitians from the U.S. at a time when Haiti is in crisis mode with regards to gang violence and security concerns.

So it feels very, very timely. and yet it's taking this history and it's taking this history of a word that has been completely like divested from the original origins of the word. And so when we think of zombies, we often think of, you know, walking dead. We think of Night of the Living Dead.

And this movie engages with those subjects. But what Bedward is doing is saying, no, actually, like, zombies came from Haiti and it was meant to represent not necessarily flesh eaters, but the oppression and colonialism and slavery and how, like, I'm not going to explain it fully correctly, but basically how being a zombie meant something completely different. And the way Bedford is able to sort of just connect all of these dots

and interrogate the ways that zombie has evolved and changed and bring it back to its original origins, I think it's just really, really well done. And I learned so much. Like, I've seen all those, you know, zombie movies and shows, but to think about where it actually came from, It's both depressing, but also I like the connection. I like to be able to have those roots put back where they should be.

Absolutely. This is a fascinating film. I mean, and its take is really, really smart. It's the zombie phenomenon as the story of America with its roots, as you say, in the exploitation of black labor, that gets transformed by Hollywood into a metaphor for both voracious consumerism, what's more American than that, and also this idea that they're coming for us. There's this great horde of people coming for us to take something away from us. I do love the fact that it takes time a nice chunk of screen time to kind of spend time with the dignity of this religion, the beauty of the religion, because it's fighting against a current of decades of portrayals in media.

Yeah. It also functions as a very cursory, I will admit, very cursory, but kind of stealth history of Haiti. I did keep waiting, though, for some mention of Zerunil Hurston's book, Tell My Horse, which was the exact opposite of a book that gets a lot of screen time in this film, William C. Brooks's very sensationalist take on voodoo, a 1929 book called The Magic Island. Hurstins was a very clear-eyed anthropological look at both Jamaican and Haitian spiritual practices, much more responsible, much more empathetic. I would have thought that this book that came out to push against this. narrative that Hollywood was adopting and starting to make films like white zombie and things like that, that this was an important pushback. I would have thought it would have merited a mention, but I mean, I get it. It doesn't fit the narrative. And I'm not saying it was quashed

or anything like that. I'm just saying you've only got an hour and a half to tell your story. You'd have to throw in a lot of context around it. I understand that would kind of grind the movie to a halt. But I was just surprised it wasn't in there. Yeah, you would think it would have at least gotten a mention, even if the main focus is to critique the sort of white gaze that many of these people, like William Seabrook, what they were doing with that work. But documentarianism is not a lucrative or, like, especially, we're not throwing a ton of money at documentaries, except for the very, very few who are in that top echelon. And so who knows why it's not there, but I think that's good context.

And now I want to go check that book out. So thank you, Glenn. Oh, it's great. Again, that's Black Zombie. It's a terrific film. It's in theaters now. After the break, we've got documentaries about aging gracefully and Canadian comedy. They are two different movies, to be clear.

Welcome back. And Real Talk, if you're not following Pop Culture Happy Hour yet, how are we even casual friends? How are we to take one another seriously? Click that follow button right now because I enjoy our visits with each other, and I want us to continue to respect each other. All right, kick us off with the next film, the oldest person in the world. Yes. So it's all there right in the title. This is directed by Sam Green, and essentially he set out to meet the oldest person in the world at any given time.

Like a lot of these projects, I'm sure, this took several years to document. We follow him as he's going through over several years, trying to meet the oldest person in the world. And so while he's doing this, he's also reckoning with his own mortality and the birth of his son throughout the filming and what that means. So this is one of those movies. It's like it's about living, but it's also about death and it's also about mortality. It's not like the conclusion surprised me once I got to the end of it. But I enjoyed meeting these interesting people who are only interesting, and I don't mean to say this. But they are interesting to the public because they are old and because they're their oldest person.

I'm sure they've lived rich lives and full lives. And one of the people we meet, Violet Moss Brown, who died at 116. 17 years old, in 2017, she was from Jamaica. There's a moment, it's probably my favorite moment of the movie, where she recites from memory, Lord Byron's vision of Belchazar. She learned it as a child. Like, she's deeply into her hundreds. And when she's reciting it, it's just this moment. Like, she has so much clarity. You're surprised that she can remember these things. And then, you know, you contrast this with some of the other people that he interviews all of them women, by the way.

Like, some of them have no sort of, like, you actually can't tell if they're still all there. And so it's interesting to see the range of people who are, like, make it to be the oldest person in the world or close to the oldest person in the world and what that is. And I think the contrast with, like, dealing with his own, you know, issues is a nice touch. It's a less sad movie than you would expect it to be,

even though it's hovering around death. so intensely and closely. Okay, that is the oldest person in the world, which you can find in theaters now. We are going to close on Not a Bummer, a film that is totally my jam. It's called You Had to Be There. Talk to me about it.

Yeah, you had to be there. It's Nick Davis's documentary about a 1972 Toronto production of the Stephen Schwartz musical, Godspell, which became this incubator, for some of the most beloved comedians of the last 50-plus years. Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Paul Schaefer, Victor Garber, Gilder Radnor, Andrea Martin. Like, it goes on and on and on. And this is by far probably the happiest movie on our list.

I found it very fun. I can't say that I've ever been a godspell fan. It's not my jam. I don't know about you, Glenn. Are you? No, no. Okay. So we're both here.

I think they're Jesus Christ Superstar people and there are Godspell people if you're going to do the Jesus musical thing. and I'm a Christ Superstar guy. Oh, I'm neither. Okay. I mean, yes, it's about Godspell, but it's more about the comedy scene in Toronto in that time. And so because it was about that, I was totally on board with this and I thought it was fun to see it. But the tricky thing about this documentary is that there's almost no footage that exists of this production.

And so right from the top, actually, we learned that Martin Short illegally recorded a bunch of it, the audio only, not video. So, like, we get to hear some things, but we have to rely a lot on just animation, which this is another thing where it's like your mileage may vary when it comes to, like, quirky animations in a documentary. Like, how do they serve the purpose? But I think the subject matter, it works. It's just fun to hear all these people sort of recount the process and see the sort of like ups and downs of what it means to be a working actor.

It's like not everyone got cast right away. This is delightful, I feel like. Glenn, what did you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, these are some of my favorite comedians of all time, and just to see them as children, as infants, as comedic infants, coming together for the first time to see SNL and SCTV in a bunch of other things in a hugely important way. And what's fun is that they spend some time telling us something they don't necessarily need to, but still it's important to be pointed out, that what we'll call the second city generation, which was also like the SNL generation, the first, you know, not ready for prime time players generation. was so much cooler and more hip than the kind of mainstream comedy of the time,

which was Bob Hope and Dean Martin. There was their style of comedy. The Second City comedy was a reaction to that kind of stale, unhip approach to jokes. And yet, the film also tries to spend some time telling us that Godspell was the coolest thing on skates back then because it was part of like the counterculture. And every clip or every like snippet we hear or see from this musical

is the cringiest cringiest crum. Corniest most cheeseball thing. You know, we hear, like, at one point, Eugene Levy, like, as part of his character, he does a groucho riff. And it's like, well, that's, I guess, I guess it was finger on the pulse back then. Yeah. But still, these are some of my favorite comedians. We spend the first hour on that production.

And then we follow everyone's careers afterwards, including, and I thought this was really good, including a lot of folks who did not become huge international comedy legends. I thought that was really nice. said, I thought that was really fair. Yeah. But I will say because I'd been conditioned to think that this was about that one production, when I see that we have half an hour to go and we're not talking about that production anymore, we're just talking about obscures.

I'm like, what are we going to do? And then I realized, I kind of slapped myself. And I said, Glenn, this is Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas and Marty Short and the people you love just talking about their lives. I could spend half an hour just dealing with that an hour and a half. Or, you know, this wonderful thing happens at the end where there's a party where there's There's this kind of reunion. And I just wanted to be in that room as a fly in the wall, just kind of soaking this in.

There's so much warmth and memory and just genuine comedic talent in that room connecting once again after so many years. It's just such a terrific film. It is exactly the opposite of some of the more difficult film. This is just a warm bath of nostalgia. Let's own up to it. Absolutely. It's a warm bath and I wanted to soak in it. Agree.

Here, hear. Loved it. All right. So that is, you had to be there. It is in select theaters now, the nationwide on Friday. Okay. All five of these films are worth you time. You might have to seek them out. You might have to find them on streaming when they come out there. Certainly, these are the five films we have seen that we want to tell you about. We haven't seen that Nathan Fielder Elizabeth Holmes documentary yet. I'm sure it's going to be a thing that everybody's going to be talking about when it comes out. But these are five films that we really loved and we think you should see. That brings us to the end of our show. Harris. Thank you so much for being here and helping me to document these documentaries. It was a pleasure. Thanks, Glenn. This episode was produced by Mike Katz, Caden Mills, and Lenin Sherburn, edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Holocam and Provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. And if you are not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Gwen Weldon.

We'll see you all next time.