Docs ‘Sr.’ and ‘Good Night Oppy’ examine how people say goodbye

Everybody knows Mr. Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. Much fewer know the eclectic career of his father, director Robert Downey, or “Sr.” as the new Netflix documentary refers to him.

The elder Downey made some strange, low-budget satires beginning in the 1950s, and eventually included Jr. in several of them before the actor broke out into other major roles. Downey’s 1969 satire, “Putney Slope” would eventually be selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, and though nothing ever made much money, Downey influenced several revered filmmakers, including Paul Thomas Anderson, who installed Downey in small roles in “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia.”

The documentary “Sr.” spends maybe a third of its total runtime on preserving Downey’s legacy, and it’s an interesting, concise overview. However, the emotional pull of “Sr.” comes from the onscreen dynamic between Jr. and Sr., who decide to chronicle the process of creating the documentary. Since Sr. is a filmmaker himself, he wants his own cut, which skews away from the typical documentary format. As Sr. slowly succumbs to Parkinson’s Disease, however, the father-and-son confront their complicated past.

Downey Jr.’s history of drug addiction is well-known, though now the actor’s longtime sobriety aligns with his megastar status as the definitive face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sr. had his own drug problems too, right around some mighty formative years in his son’s life. There’s tension and hurt there, and director Chris Smith and his camera sit in the same room as the father and son begin to run out of time together.

“Sr.” isn’t the vanity project you might expect from an A-list star, especially as the doc abandons the talking heads and clips from old films in favor of chronicling the last days shared between two creative collaborators. The documentary needs to be finished, after all, and Sr., ever the director, knows an ending must come. The film becomes less about storytellers and more about sitting next to a dying loved one, searching for meaningful words to say before realizing how important it is just to sit there with them.

“Sr.” is now streaming on Netflix.

‘Good Night Oppy’

Feel free to pitch “Good Night Oppy” to family members as the real life “WALL-E.” Deploying archive footage alongside stunning, life-like animation, the Amazon documentary chronicles the adventures of the robotic, solar-powered NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which spent years exploring the surface of Mars. For Opportunity specifically, a 90 “sol” mission improbably stretched to 14 years, where the robot investigated ancient evidence of water on the red planet.

The movie, as well as all the scientists and engineers interviewed, humanize “Oppy” and care for him like a pet or a child (though millions of miles away). Whether that kind of sentimentality works on an audience member probably depends on if they’re the type to shed a tear at any point for “WALL-E” or, heck, even that poor, poor volleyball in “Cast Away.”

The magic of “Good Night Oppy,” despite the obviously incredible reenactments on Mars, is seeing how hundreds of dedicated NASA employees made this incredible journey possible. You don’t need to feel for Oppy so much as feel for the people trying to keep the robot safe from Martian dust storms, frigid winters, and pesky, wheel-breaking boulders. When they’re worried about losing their little rover that could, it’s hard not to feel connected.

“Good Night Oppy” is streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Tyler Wilson is film critic and member of the International Press Academy. He has been writing about movies since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at [email protected].