Opening with the thoughts of how an undeniably awful fascist leader was once thought a clown, Netflix’s new documentary, Five Came Back, feels immediately timely in today’s political climate. It’s not about the guy you’re thinking, though.
Premiering March 31, Five Came Back is instead about legendary directors Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler. The doc sees modern directors Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass, and Lawrence Kasdan getting pretty hagiographical in describing how their old-time counterparts endangered themselves to, admirably, stoke the flames of the war effort against Hitler. Meryl Streep narrates. It’s presumably just her saying, “Look, so I wasn’t on the front lines, but my Golden Globes speech was pretty fucking solid, alright?”
