True crime, amazing twins, the story of a triumphant yet tragic giant of the fashion world, and one just for funsies — grab some popcorn and settle in with these four documentaries for July.
"THE STAIRCASE": This docuseries is fascinating on several levels, the first of which is it tracks the 2001 real-life, high-profile case involving novelist Michael Peterson and the death of his wife Kathleen. Also piquing viewers' interest is the fly-on-the-wall perspective the series gives from the investigation to the exhaustive pretrial preparation by both sides, to the final verdict and beyond, and all with the real-life players in the case. After its initial eight episodes aired in 2004, the series resurfaced with two episodes in 2013, and three episodes in 2018, both involving Michael Peterson's appeals. (Max and Netflix)
"THE 50 WORST FILMS EVER MADE": From 2004 comes this 90-minute film countdown of what it terms "the worst of the worst." You may not have heard of all the titles, but the people at the helm of these cinematic disasters can be surprising. Take No. 40, "Howard the Duck." With a $37 million budget in 1986, it netted under $1 million at the box office. The executive producer? George Lucas ("Star Wars," hello!) And at No. 1: "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? The title pretty much seals it for us. (Prime Video)
"THE ACCIDENTAL TWINS": "It's the kind of experiment that scientists dream about but could never do ethically," an interviewee states in the beginning of this nearly 90-minute Spanish-language film. In 1988, two sets of identical male twins, born around the same time at a Columbian hospital, are accidentally switched, with each family bringing home one of their own babies and one belonging to the other set. Viewers follow along as the four, now grown, eventually discover the truth when one of them, Jorge Bernal, is told by a colleague and friend that she has seen his "twin" working in a butcher shop. The puzzle pieces come together in a compelling, touching fashion. (Netflix)
"McQUEEN": With a background in tailoring, Brit Alexander McQueen went on to study fashion, spent five years at haute couture house Givenchy and founded his own eponymous label in 1992. This rags-to-riches story, alas, ends sadly, with McQueen dying at 40 in his native England in 2010. (Apple TV+, Tubi)