written by Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Reality doesn’t bite. Well, okay, at times it does. A number of our choices for the best documentaries of the year capture turbulent realities, ominous politics, and, on occasion, stark tragedy. That’s one of the missions of nonfiction film: to put us in touch with dark things that are too often hidden away. But our list casts a wider net than that. It includes tales of hope and daring, of fighting back, of art and inspiration, of the heroism of ordinary people…and extraordinary people. What the best documentaries of 2024 add up to is nothing less than a feast of reality.

Martha

R.J. Cutler’s terrific film taps into everything we love, and don’t, about Martha Stewart. It takes us through her rise and fall and rise, a transfixing saga enhanced by Cutler’s ongoing meditation on The Meaning of Martha. The film captures how Stewart’s penetration into American culture seems, in hindsight, as inevitable as it was unlikely. It traces how she started off as a model, then became a New York stockbroker, then moved with her publishing-magnate husband to Westport, Conn., where they bought a fixer-upper, Turkey Hill Farm, whose fixing up, by Martha (she hand-painted the entire house while listening to the Watergate hearings), became the prototype for her brand of obsessively tasteful “perfection.” The movie shows us that Stewart had a vision, which turned her into the first self-made woman billionaire in America. Yet what she created and marketed was the idea of a high-powered homemaker for women who no longer wanted to be homemakers. She showed you all the good things you could aspire to, but she helped establish the aspirational culture of the 21st century as a certain unattainable proxy dream thing. In a way, she put a turkey in a puff pastry so you didn’t have to.

Featuring Cinematography from Bill Winters

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Bill Winters

The Best Documentaries of 2024, Featuring work from Bill Winters, Cinematographer

Bill Winters Biography