Ticket 2 Ride

Documentaries have become my favorite film genre. It wasn’t always that way, but I dig truth and understanding. Documentaries can be quite entertaining and fun, however they often search a subject for clues, to explain the sometimes unexplainable. Here are several documentaries I found on the streaming platforms we subscribe to. It used to be that documentaries sometimes ran in art house theaters, occasionally found their way onto PBS, and usually went to die in a film vault. It’s nice to see the streamers embrace, and often fund documentaries. These I recommend.

Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (2025) Netflix – We know how the how the story ends, although we don’t know the results of the Coast Guard investigation, yet the documentary shows in much detail, the recklessness at work by OceanGate that led to the disaster. Interviews, testimony of current and former employees, investigative reports, and video from the OceanGate and other sources show the corners cut, concerns by several of their own engineers, ignoring their own tests, and refusal to have third parties inspect their submersible before use.

This is a sad story for many reasons. Greed and ego cost lives, five in this case, and families forever asking why?

The Greatest Night in Pop (2024) Netflix – The story behind the song “We Are the World” from conception to the night of recording the vocals. Director Bao Nguyen takes us through Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson composing the song, Quincy Jones getting the backing track recorded and the studio set up for all of the vocalists. Manager Ken Kragen deserves a lot of credit for the logistical coordination and moving the process to get the song ready for distribution.
Thankfully, Ritchie and Jones were around to lend their memories of the recording and behind the scenes work to make this happen.

The plan was to record the vocals the night of the American Music Awards, when many stars would already be in L.A. Everything was held in secrecy, and there was no second chance to all the vocal parts recorded. The cameras capture the excitement, nervousness and even some egos at play. Bob Geldof, who had staged a similar fundraising event (Band Aid), talked to the group of stars about the significance of what was happening and the difference the song could make. Keeping it all together during the long night of recording was a masterful bit of leadership from Jones. The fashion and hairstyles of 1985 are interesting to see again. It’s fun to look back, this event was really a “feel-good” story. The song generated $80M for humanitarian aid. At the end of the session, tired but happy singers are seen asking their vocal colleagues for autographs.

The Quilters (2025) Netflix – Prisoners in a Missouri maximum security prison spend their weekdays making quits that are donated to children in foster care. The documentary is only 30 minutes long, but it tells an intriguing story. Director Jennifer McShane found an unusual group of men at South Central Correctional Center south of St. Louis.

Netflix describes the film “From design to completion, the men reveal their struggles, triumphs, and sense of pride in creating something beautiful in this windowless, sacred space deep within the prison walls.” The prisoners are open about why they are in prison and discuss taking responsibility for being there. They aren’t looking for sympathy, they just wish they to talk to their younger selves and steer them away from the behavior that deeply hurt other families.

Being part of the quilting group is earned by good behavior on the inside. Even a simple violation of rules terminates being a part of the group, as one prisoner found out. The film ends with some of the quilts being delivered to the children, something the prisoners had never seen before. “They were sobbing … It kind of hadn’t totally hit me how hard it would hit them,” McShane said in an interview with Deadline. “They’ve never seen one of their quilts on the outside being used by one of these kids. So, it was very powerful for them.”

Pee-wee as Himself (2025) HBO – Director, Matt Wolf; producer, Emma Tillinger Koskoff; executive producers, Matt Wolf, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Ronald Bronstein, Eli Bush, Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, Paul Reubens, Candace Tomarken, and Kyle Martin. Based on 40 hours of interviews with Paul Reubens. The Pee-wee and Paul Ruebens story, warts and all. The documentary traces the origins of the Pee-Wee Herman character and creator Paul Reubens’ life. For as successful as Pee-Wee became, Reubens was equally vilified as a pervert and a pedophile. The film is fascinating as Reubens invents this character, who he distances from himself, and it’s the legal issues in his personal life that taint the Pee-Wee image.
Reubens, who had secretly battled cancer, died before the film was completed, but who battled the film director over control the story the final edit would show. Reubens wanted the film to clearly show that the charges in two cases were untrue and led to misperceptions about his character.

My Mom Jayne (2025) HBO – Director Mariska Hargitay; produced by Hargitay and Trishaw Adlesic. “This movie is a labor of love and longing. It’s a search for the mother I never knew, an integration of a part of myself I’d never owned, and a reclaiming of my mother’s story and my own truth,” Hargitay said. She was only three when her mother and two others were killed in a car crash, while Hargitay was wedged under a car seat and not immediately found.

Margitay distanced herself from a mother she didn’t much remember, but the busty, dumb blonde image she struggled to understand.  “When I would hear that fake voice, it used to just flip me out, Hargitay told Vanity Fair. “I’d think, Why is she talking like that? That’s not real.”

There are surprises in the documentary: for us and for Hargitay. Did you know that Mansfield spoke several other languages, and was quite proficient play both the violin and piano? I didn’t. What Hargitay discovers is quite personal and significant. While there is sadness in the Jayne Mansfield story, it’s a journey that presented her family a different perspective, and maybe a tighter bond.