Browse Movies : Magnolia Pictures : Documentary : B

Blackfish tells the story of Tilikum, a performing killer whale that killed several people while in captivity. Along the way, director-producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles shocking footage and emotional interviews to explore the creature’s extraordinary nature, the species’ cruel treatment in captivity, the lives and losses of the trainers and the pressures brought to bear by the mulit-billion dollar sea-park industry.

Joan Jett is so much more than “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” It’s true, she became mega-famous from the number-one hit, and that fame intensified with the music video’s endless play on MTV. But that staple of popularity can’t properly define a musician. Jett put her hard work in long before the fame, ripping it up onstage as the backbone of the hard-rock legends The Runaways, influencing many musicians—both her cohort of punk rockers and generations of younger bands—with her no-bullshit style. Bad Reputation gives you a wild ride as Jett and her close friends tell you how it really was in the burgeoning ’70s punk scene, and their interviews are laced with amazing archival footage.

Bitterbrush follows Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, range riders who are spending their last summer herding cattle in remote Idaho. Totally off the grid with only their dogs as companions, Hollyn and Colie brave inclement weather and perilous work conditions while pondering their futures. A portrait of friendship, life transitions, and the work of two skilled young women in the isolated and beautiful landscape of the American West, Bitterbrush is an intimate portrayal of a way of life rarely seen on film.

Follows the influential 1970s band Big Star. The band was formed in 1971 in Memphis by former Box Tops lead singer Alex Chilton and Chris Bell. Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel filled out the original lineup. While the band never achieved mainstream success, it became a big influence on the likes of REM, the Flaming Lips and more.

An unprecedented look into the life of conceptual artist and sculptor Chris Burden. He had himself shot, confined to a locker for five days, and was crucified on the back of a VW bug, only to reinvent himself as the creator of truly mesmerizing installations and sculptures, all in the name of art.

From first rehearsal to world premiere, BALLET 422 takes us backstage at New York City Ballet as Justin Peck, a young up-and-coming choreographer, crafts a new work. With unprecedented access to an elite world, BALLET 422 illuminates the process behind the creation of a single ballet.

This documentary traces the life of poet and author Charles Bukowski, a writer whose works were often full of despair, debauchery, and dirty language. It focuses more on Bukowski the real man than on the myth he created and cultivated. Acknowledged as an unsentimental and often brutal writer who lived his life as if it were a novel, Bukowski is revealed here to be both human and humane — an artist greater than the sum of his experiences.