■ Korengal
Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo was the signal documentary of America’s intervention in Afghanistan. With Korengal, the director revisits that same remote outpost, focusing this time on the recollections of soldiers who served there. The starkly beautiful surrounding mountains with rough, wooded terrain reminiscent of Colorado, allowed the Taliban to move like ghosts in a daily campaign of sniping and barrage. “Awesome fighters” one of the G.I.s described the enemy. He was lucky to get out alive.
■ Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video
This breathless documentary moves with the jump-cut speed of its subject matter, but its producers had the good sense to provide some context. Music videos didn’t begin with MTV’s 1981 debut but had a long prehistory, including Gene Kelly-Fred Astaire dance routines in Hollywood musicals, the musical visualizations of Fantasia, the “soundies” of the swing era, The Beatles’ promo film for “Paperback Writer” and the slow growth of rock band promo clips in the ’70s.
■ Fedora
Writer-director Billy Wilder revisited his classic satire of faded Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, with his 1978 film Fedora. Now, his generation of filmmakers are the ones he’s satirizing in this story of a bonkers, reclusive ex-movie star pursued by a bankrupt, once-successful producer (William Holden) hungry to make one last picture. Instead of a Hollywood mansion, the star inhabits a crumbling villa on Corfu. Wilder’s tart, rueful postcard from the edge co-stars Marthe Keller and José Ferrer.
