Noticias

The story of the Negro baseball leagues has the hallmarks of a feel-good story: determination, inventiveness, and relentless optimism in the face of unyielding hatred. But while Sam Pollard’s mostly straightforward and celebratory documentary The League doesn’t skimp on those elements, he also introduces knottier emotions that allow the film, which is executive produced by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, to escape two-dimensionality.

Unlike many other manifestations of American racial prejudice, baseball in its early years was at least somewhat integrated. The historians here describe how late-19th-century baseball featured largely white teams with occasional Black players. In the film’s telling, this relative openness started coming to an end after an 1883 game where star white player and manager Adrian Constantine Anson, nicknamed “Pop” and “Cap,” refused to play an integrated team. When the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling provided legal justification for segregation, the practice became standardized across many American institutions,...

Though “Muhammad Ali” is debuting well after “The Last Dance,” it’s hard not to think of it as a sort of spiritual prequel to ESPN’s propulsive docuseries. “The Last Dance,” which detailed the rise of Michael Jordan as both a superstar athlete and unstoppable global brand, immediately became a sensation upon its April 2020 premiere. With Jordan on board as a subject, source and producer, “The Last Dance” told the story of a man, but also the story of the time and place in which he thrived. As an ever-charismatic Jordan gave his interviews from inside a seemingly palatial home, cigar and Scotch constantly at the ready, he made it easy to understand how he’d become such a colossal figure in sports and culture alike.

Co-directed by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, “Muhammad Ali” never mentions Jordan in its reconstruction of Ali’s career and impact on the world writ large,...