
"THE TILLMAN STORY" - Remember when Pat Tillman, ex-NFL star, died in Afghanistan bravely protecting his Army Ranger unit from Taliban fire? Yeah, didn't happen. This well-paced documentary pieces together how his grieving family themselves pieced together how Tillman's death by bungled "friendly fire" was badly mismanaged by the US government in hopes of scoring a public relations coup off of the handsome, charismatic Tillman. While not the most outrageous government cover-up of all time by any stretch, it's hard not to sympathize with his immediate family, a rough-hewn, curse-a-lot bunch who lived only a few miles from my boyhood home in San Jose. Tillman's wife was even visited by military officials during her grieving in hopes of overriding Tillman's explicit wish to not have a big-deal, press-heavy military funeral in case he died. Another head-shaking chapter from a very strange recent era of warmaking. B+
"JOAN RIVERS - A PIECE OF WORK" - Joan Rivers, likable. Who knew? This "revealing documentary" follows the plastic surgery disaster herself as she hustles and sells her talents like the true Type-A personality she is. Nothing much happens, except you get to experience what it's like to have been a "something" years after mainstream audiences have stopped caring. Rivers doesn't like that. She's got the gays in her pocket, sure, as well as anyone who loves bitchy comedy with a raw, raunch-filled mean streak. She's also got a lot more self-awareness and character than I ever imagined, and she's pretty unflinchingly vulnerable in what I found to be a very enjoyable look at her seventysomething world. A-