Great documentaries you don’t want to miss

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 missed https://www.npr.org/2026/06/25/nx-s1-5868613/great-movies-you-may-have-missed Fun movies you may have missed https://www.npr.org/2026/05/12/nx-s1-5816384/fun-movies-you-may-have-missed Our favorite movies on Tubi https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5725410/our-favorite-movies-on-tubi Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support 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 http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://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 https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's Flex Path learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  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'd take a beat to highlight some new documentaries that are worth your time. I'm Glen Weldon, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're recommending some great documentaries you don't want to miss. Joining me is my co-host, Aisha Harris. Hey, Ayesha.

• 0:56Aisha Harris?

  Hey, Glenn. Excited to talk about these with you.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I know, this first one we're going to talk about is one you really love. You covered it for NPR.

• 1:03Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Tell me about it.

• 1:05Aisha Harris?

  So this is, yeah, 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 films before this in order for it to hit you, it does help, I think, because so much of his filmmaking is self-referential.

• 1:48Aisha Harris?

  I don't know how familiar you were with Ross McElwee. This is new to me, but I'm sure you'd come across his work before.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I was one of those people who saw Sherman's March, the film that he made his bones on back in the day when I was a young kid. I know his stuff.

• 2:01Aisha Harris?

  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 in 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 McElwee. 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.

• 2:46Aisha Harris?

  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 anymore than that. It's just a movie you 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,

• 3:29Aisha Harris?

  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?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it hits hard. You know, Ebert said a film is an empathy engine, and that's the key to a film like this. And you know, I joke on this 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.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  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 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, although there's a hell of a lot about grief, but also things like memory loss.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  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 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 worth it because you come out of it feeling like I've had a human enriching experience. And there's something to be said for that.

• 5:46Aisha Harris?

  Yes, I completely agree. And, you know, 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 you, if it moves you and you want to go back down that rabbit hole, go check out his other films, too.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:27Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Okay, once again, that's Remake 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's, it kind of feels like it's a successor to the Ross McElwee's of the world, by John Wilson. Talk to me about this one.

• 6:43Aisha Harris?

  Oh, man. Having already experienced John Wilson and going back and watching a Ross McElwee 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.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  A pulse pounding title.

• 7:05Aisha Harris?

  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 a lot 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 McElwee 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.

• 7:45Aisha Harris?

  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 have been 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.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you used 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-gazing, 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?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It's kind of like, 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 mention they're in a band and you know, now this movie's about the band that this person's in.

• 9:22Aisha Harris?

  Well, in part because apparently music documentaries are more lucrative than,

• 9:26Speaker 01

  There you go, right there.

• 9:27Aisha Harris?

  Or can be more lucrative. Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  And there is a section, Ayesha at a concrete convention where it kind of feels like he's mocking the people. I don't know.

• 9:34Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, it was feeling a little Sacha Baron Cohen-y.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 9:37Aisha Harris?

  Not that extreme, but like, yeah, I understand what you mean.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:55Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  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, navel gazy documentary at all. This has a big cultural subject. Talk to me about Black Zombie.

• 10:11Aisha Harris?

  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 fascinated. And I love a documentary that will teach me a lot of things about the world. So this is by Maya Anik 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, it's very, very timely. When you're thinking about all the fear mongering of Haitians and Haitian people

• 10:56Aisha Harris?

  who are in America by people like J.D. Vance and, you know, 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

• 11:37Aisha Harris?

  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 Bedward 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 is just really, really well done. And I, 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.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  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, and 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.

• 12:57Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  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 Zora Neale 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' very sensationalist take on voodoo, a 1929 book called The Magic Island. Hurston's 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

• 13:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:55Aisha Harris?

  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, like William C. Brooks, what they were doing with that work. But documentarianism is not a lucrative or specifically, 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.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  This message comes from AT&T. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0.00 with eligible trade-in. It has the ultimate pro camera system and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Connecting changes everything. Requires trade-in of $230 or more and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Leaf Filter. You need to clean your gutters before they become a bigger, more costly issue. So let the pros at Leaf Filter handle that for you. You'll get a free gutter inspection and a no obligation estimate, plus a lifetime warranty

• 15:52Speaker 03

  and no clog guarantee. Right now, you can get up to 35% off when you go to L E A F filter dot com slash NPR. Restrictions apply. See rep for warranty and promotion details.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  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, I want us to continue to respect each other. All right. Kick us off with the next film, The Oldest Person in the World.

• 16:23Aisha Harris?

  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. You know, 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

• 17:07Aisha Harris?

  these interesting people who are only interesting, and I don't mean to say this, like, 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 117 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 Belshazzar.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:36Aisha Harris?

  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

• 18:16Aisha Harris?

  a less sad movie than you would expect it to be, even though it's hovering around death so intensely and closely.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:38Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, You Had to Be There. It's Nick Davis's documentary about a 1972 Toronto production of the Steven 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 Shaffer, Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, 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.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:12Aisha Harris?

  It's not my jam. I don't know about you, Glenn. Are you?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 19:15Aisha Harris?

  Okay. So we're both here.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I think they're Jesus Christ Superstar people and they're Godspell people if you're going to do the Jesus musical thing. And I'm a Christ Superstar guy.

• 19:24Aisha Harris?

  Oh, I'm neither.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:25Aisha Harris?

  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 learn 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,

• 20:06Aisha Harris?

  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?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  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 and 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 primetime 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.

• 21:06Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  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, 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, is that, I guess, I guess it was finger on the pulse back then.

• 21:34Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  But it's 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. I thought that was really fair.

• 21:51Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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 couldn't 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 this kind of reunion. And I just wanted to be in that room as a fly on 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.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  It's just such a terrific film. It is exactly the opposite of some of the more difficult films. This is just a warm bath of nostalgia. Let's, let's own up to it.

• 22:45Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  It's a warm bath, and I wanted to soak in it.

• 22:48Aisha Harris?

  Agree. Here, here. Loved it.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  All right. So that is You Had to Be There. It is in select theaters now, then nationwide on Friday. Okay. All five of these films are worth your 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 gonna be a thing that everybody's gonna 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. Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here and helping me to document these documentaries.

• 23:25Aisha Harris?

  Oh, it was a pleasure. Thanks, Glenn.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Mike Katsof, Kaden Mills, and Lennon Sherburne, edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Komen 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 Glen Weldon. We'll see you all next time.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini. This message comes from Thumbtack. Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. That's why Thumbtack works. It matches people

• 24:27Speaker 03

  with top rated local pros with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.