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Netflix has been focused on producing content about the opioid crisis for years, with multiple documentaries and now a movie starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. The streaming platform's data-driven strategy has led to the cancellation of some acclaimed shows and the renewal of others despite negative reviews. However, Netflix's efforts to tackle the opioid crisis through its shows and movies have fallen short compared to Hulu's Dopesick, which has received praise for its realism and portrayal of the issue.

A new Emily Blunt and Chris Evans movie reveals how Netflix has been obsessing over one topic for almost six years. It is evident that, in recent years, Netflix has adopted more of a data-driven strategy towards producing new shows and movies and renewing old ones. Owing to these recent changes in the streaming giant's content creation methods, many acclaimed shows have surprisingly been canceled after their first seasons,...

Exclusive: Elaine McMillion Sheldon, the filmmaker known thus far for her Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning work in the documentary space, is making her first move into narrative as the director of a film on Marry Harris Jones — the hallowed labor figure known to history as Mother Jones.

Jerry Bowles and David O’Malley penned the script for the project, with Lisa Saltzman set to produce.

An Irish-born American working at various points as a dressmaker and schoolteacher, Jones pivoted her focus to union and community organizing and activism after experiencing two major, personal tragedies: the death of her husband and four children from yellow fever in 1867 Memphis, and the destruction of her dress shop in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The impassioned figure would come to be known as “the most dangerous woman in America” while working to secure rights for mine workers and ban child labor.

Sheldon’s film on...

A poetic ode to the blue ridges of Central Appalachia, King Coal often evokes an IMAX educational film in its scope, space, and presence. The film explores the complex history of coal as a specter that looms over the region. The precious rock is celebrated throughout, the picture never veering off-course to engage in a discussion of contemporary politics. It’s instead built on West Virginia itself, a land still tied to mythology in some ways. “Who are we, without a king,” Lanie Marsh (the young star of the picture) asks.

Written and directed by West Virginia native Elaine McMillion Sheldon (who also narrates)––with additional writing by Shane Boris, Logan Hill, Iva Radivojevic, and Heather Hannah––King Coal is a departure from the filmmaker’s previous vérité documentaries Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys, which explore a darker side of her home state. The opioid crisis is a byproduct of...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Drexler Films releases the film in select theaters on Friday, August 11.

The Appalachian Mountains are beyond ancient. As director Elaine McMillion Sheldon points out in the voiceover narration of her new documentary “King Coal,” the New River is ironically named, given that it’s the second-oldest river in the world. There are rocks in those hills that were formed more than a billion years ago, and the coal nestled inside them is the residue of the Earth slowly digesting plants that lived long before the first Homo sapiens. But the stranglehold that “king coal” — a totemic name that Sheldon gives to coal mining as a business — has had over the region is only a few hundred years old.

Sheldon has made a career of documenting life in her native West Virginia, most notably in the Netflix documentary...

A total of 166 films have been submitted for consideration in the documentary feature category for the 91st Academy Awards.

Notable titles up for the gold include “Rbg,” “Three Identical Strangers,” “Free Solo” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” — which have performed strongly at the box office. Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” has grossed $22.6 million domestically.

Nine of the 10 titles named as finalists for the International Documentary Association’s top feature are on the list, including “Crime + Punishment,” “Dark Money,” “Free Solo,” “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” “Minding the Gap,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “The Silence of Others,” “United Skates” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences noted that several of the 166 films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying runs. A shortlist of 15 movies will be announced on Dec. 17.

Nominations...

A whopping 166 documentary features have been submitted to the academy for consideration at the 2019 Oscars. That is down by four from last year’s record 170 submissions. Among these contenders are all of the highest grossing documentaries of the year including “Free Solo,” “Rbg” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

To winnow the entries down to the 15 semi-finalists that will be announced on December 17, the academy is sending monthly packages of the newly eligible documentary feature screeners to all 400 or so members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. In late November, each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)

All of these ballots will be collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members will then be...

When it comes to social-issue documentaries, Netflix has the market cornered. In recent years, the streaming platform’s original documentaries and docuseries have tackled everything under the sun, from business and politics to drug abuse and public-health crises.

For Netflix’s newest installment, “Recovery Boys,” Academy Award–nominated director Elaine McMillion Sheldon (“Heroin(e)”) delivers a revealing look at the opioid epidemic through the lens of four young men struggling to move on after years of addiction. Available to stream now on Netflix, the film tracks the men, newly sober, as they undergo a traumatic recovery process at a farming-based rehabilitation center and the distressing years that follow.

Today, with all eyes on the opioid crisis, Sheldon’s documentary provides something rare and valuable: an intimate study of progress and pain that serves to humanize rather than alienate. Here are five more Netflix documentaries that take a deep dive into contemporary social issues,...

Washington — Renee Fleming, currently starring in the Broadway revival of “Carousel,” will perform one of the classics from the show, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” during PBS’s “A Capitol Fourth” on Wednesday night.

In the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, Fleming plays Nettie Fowler, and sings the song to comfort and console her cousin Julie, whose husband has just taken his own life.

But over the years, the song has become an American standard, often sung at major national events. “The words are about resiliency and hope,” Fleming tells Variety’s PopPolitics on SiriusXM, in a special Independence Day show.

Fleming also sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in 2002 at the event marking the first anniversary of 9/11 and later in 2009 at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

At the Capitol Fourth concert, she will be paying tribute to men and women in uniform.

The concert, hosted by John Stamos, also will feature the Beach Boys,...

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week […]

The post This Week In Trailers: The Children Act, Half the Picture, Heathers 30th Anniversary Restoration, Recovery Boys, Night Comes On appeared first on /Film.

"One week clean! Then a whole lifetime..." Netflix has released an official trailer for a documentary titled Recovery Boys, the latest from filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon. This just premiered at the Hot Docs festival last month, and will be available on Netflix at the end of this month. "In the heart of America's opioid epidemic, four men attempt to reinvent their lives and reenter society sober after years of drug abuse." The doc film is an "intimate look at the strength, brotherhood, and courage that it takes to overcome addiction and lays bare the internal conflict of recovery and the external hurdles of an unforgiving society." The opioid epidemic is a hot topic in American society right now, and these real stories are important because they actually provide a bit of hope and optimism in a world that doesn't seem to have much of that recently. This looks like it's worth watching.