Reviled by the band when it came out and widely thought of as miserable, the film – restored to its original format – actually offers light and insightful moments The most surprising thing about the reissue of Let It Be is that it commences with footage shot not in 1969 but last year: an interview between Peter Jackson and the film’s director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. If nothing else, this suggests that Lindsay-Hogg is a good sport, given that Jackson’s eight-hour 2021 docuseries The Beatles: Get Back substantially retold the version of events depicted in Lindsay-Hogg’s film about the Beatles’ 19 ..read more

The 1975 tour documentary Big Banana Feet captures a comic growing into his extraordinary talents – and adjusting to unprecedented fame In an age where our every selfie, photogenic breakfast and “thing I’m ashamed to admit” is preserved eternally online, it’s a shock to recall that actual art was once disposable – and prone to getting lost. Big Banana Feet, a documentary chronicling the Irish leg of Billy Connolly’s 1975 UK tour, was consigned more or less to oblivion when its distributor later went bust, and director Murray Grigor left his own personal copy with a friend in the US, never to b ..read more

Documentary captures in lurid detail the chaos as thousands of ticketless fans forced their way into Wembley stadium to watch England v Italy More than Bukayo Saka’s deciding penalty miss, the final of Euro 2020 between England and Italy will be remembered primarily for the chaos seen around Wembley stadium before and during the game. Thousands of ticketless fans forced their way – or “jibbed” – into the ground, in the process causing criminal damage and injury to stewards, other fans and themselves. It was one of the highest-profile scenes of crowd disorder since the bad old days of 80s hooli ..read more

The 5-16 June program includes Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest Kinds of Kindness, and a hairy family in Sasquatch Sunset Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email This year’s Sydney film festival program has just been announced and, as usual, it is bulging with treats from around the world. The event kicks off on 5 June with a screening of Paul Clarke’s documentary Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, and runs until 16 June at various venues across the city. Here are 10 films you might want to check out – in addition to three others on the program that I’ve written about previously: The Moogai, Every ..read more

Restored 1976 doc of Connolly’s tour of Ireland shows that, despite his bombastic stage presence, he is impeccably polite. But his naughtier material hasn’t aged well Here is a 70s time capsule as pungent as a brimming pub ashtray. Restored and rereleased, Big Banana Feet is the 1976 documentary about Billy Connolly’s live shows in Dublin and Belfast the year before, just after his appearance on the BBC’s Parkinson show made him a star virtually overnight, and allowed his legions of new fans to hear him live and unexpurgated. Billy and his hangdog entourage – all looking like a very downbeat v ..read more

Laurence Turcotte-Fraser’s wistful documentary follows resourceful porn star Tara Emory’s ‘entropic’ problem with clutter This documentary about a transgender porn star turns out to be a portrait of a divided self, but not quite how you’d expect. Two personalities vie inside Massachusetts-based adult performer Tara Emory: zeppelin-bosomed sci-fi sex kitten, and grease monkey/compulsive hoarder. Director Laurence Turcotte-Fraser’s intimate and ever-so-wistful study thankfully bypasses current trans-related bloodletting and even to a large degree questions of gender definition; instead this film ..read more

My husband, Alex Hooper, who has died aged 82 after a long illness, had an extraordinarily varied career, including as an archaeologist, film-maker, merchant seaman, teacher and gallery curator. In the late 1960s, while doing an MA in film studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, Alex became close friends with Peter Gibson of Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts, and the pair made a documentary about the blues musician John Mayall, The Turning Point (1969). Through going on tour with Mayall, and making the film, Alex hung out with musicians such as Fleetwood Mac, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones ..read more

Simon Chambers’ film about his late uncle David makes for candid and compelling viewing. Along with one of David’s former pupils, and a fan of his film, he talks care, contempt and infatuation ‘I’ve always liked the company of older people,” says Julian Clary, still smoothly beautiful at 64. “I like the fact they’ve lived a life they are often assumed not to have done.” He pauses. “What old people don’t know about recreational sex,” he continues, cadence familiar as a cuckoo, “you could write on the back of an incontinence pad.” There are plenty of those knocking about in Much Ado About Dying ..read more

Simon Chambers’ documentary is unsparing in capturing his theatrical relation’s endearing, sometimes desperate and often infuriating decline Films about film-makers and their kith and kin sometimes get dismissed as self-serving, self-indulgent or even – everyone’s favourite smear word these days – narcissistic. Director Simon Chambers’s wrenching film about his relationship with his aged uncle David is none of those things; I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dyin ..read more

The disarmingly candid film follows Vincent and his loved ones as they try to find ways to deal with a devastating prognosis When he was 24, film-maker Kit Vincent was diagnosed with a brain tumour; doctors said that he could expect to live four to eight years. This emotional, raw and quietly powerful documentary started out as a study of how his dad Lawrence came to terms with his son getting ill. The title is a giveaway that the finished article is not that film. At times, it feels like family therapy. Vincent hangs out with his parents, who divorced when he was a teenager. Time is running o ..read more