Paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey wanted to study chimpanzees in the wild in order to better understand the life of early man. He chose his pretty English secretary Jane Goodall for the project, in part because she had “a mind unbiased by scientific thinking,” and thank the stars he did, because she proved to be a brilliant researcher who could nonetheless say that the “stars seemed to have played their part” in the fact that she wound up living her childhood dream. That Africa was where she was “meant to be.” That the world she documented was a great mystery, full of both awesome beauty and brutal evil. In short, she was both scientist and poet, mechanically meticulous in her observation but charmingly, thoroughly human in her expression. Goodall’s African mission began in 1957, but the stars seem to have struck again in 2014 with the discovery of over 100 hours of misplaced footage shot by her eventual husband: wildlife photographer Hugo van Lawick. Writer-director Brett Morgen makes the most of both the find and his still-living subject: image and story alike are packed with rich color and affecting detail. Even the film’s meandering byways are wondrous to behold. (2017) — Matthew Lickona