Daniel Fienberg

I found A House Made of Splinters to be more heartbreaking than hopeful, but I admired the moments of beauty that Wilmont delivers in a film that isn’t quite consistent enough in its storytelling approach.

Wanting more is a criticism, but it’s a luxury criticism. This documentary builds a world you want to explore further.

It’s still beautiful to look at, but I most enjoyed Wild Life as a complicated procedural about land use (don’t expect to see that blurbed on a poster any time soon).

Although I think there are gaps that DiMarco and Guggenheim could have filled in, the documentary is elevated by its exceptional quartet of central heroes and by its effort to tailor the storytelling and aesthetic approach to the unique aspects of this movement.

There’s so much potency in Heineman’s snapshot of sadness, disappointment and resignation, that I frequently and ultimately found myself wishing it could be the full tapestry that a six-part miniseries might have allowed.

Marty, Life Is Short is, as much as anything, a documentary about not being defined by failure or tragedy.

The Taliban wanted a 90-minute commercial and Nash’at wanted 90 minutes of truth, and what they both got was a portrait of the complicated cost of access — more vital in its universal applicability to documentary filmmaking than its immediacy as a documentary.

Last year waylaid many plans and subverted many intentions. Homeroom is one impressive response to that adversity.

Even though the doc’s storytelling has an approach to twistiness that I’m finding increasingly irritating every time it’s used, the sheer volume of visceral responses produced by The Deepest Breath is hard to deny.

A documentary that starts out odd and ends up oddly sweet.

The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel is highly entertaining, full of ridiculously fun early footage of the band and its predecessors, and deeply emotional, with Flea succeeding in making me tear up on multiple occasions. As a film about Hillel Slovak, it’s a bit less successful.

While it’s occasionally stuck in very rote biographical details and frequently limited by a race to theaters and TV that doesn’t necessarily align with any real ending to the documentary’s story, Fauci has an actual structural focus that’s smartly considered and interesting, even if it left me with myriad questions.

Few documentary subgenres have been more burgeoning in the past couple of years than the sports doc, with Yogi Berra and Willie Mays getting very solid standalone films. If you’re a devotee, you can add Clemente to the ranks of the good ones.

It’s a good story and Bahrani has made a good film, albeit one with a tremendous closing twist that I felt pointed to what could instead have been a great film.

There's enough good, previously unseen stuff in Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell to make it an easy recommendation, though seeing and hearing stuff you haven't seen before isn't the same as learning a lot of things you didn't know before. It's captivating because Biggie was captivating, without being enlightening.

Especially in the first hour, it’s a richly satisfying tribute to an unimpeachable cinematic legend who, one could easily argue, has become even more beloved than the iconic directors he collaborated with or the movie stars whose legends his themes and cues helped burnish.

By the end of Sly, the star proves to be a good enough explainer of his legacy that the documentary finds effective insight and poignancy — despite however much he’s an overly protective custodian of that legacy, and however hesitant Zimny is to shake him off of his preferred course.

Nelson’s newest film ... may be his most important yet. ... That’s why it’s hard to criticize Nelson when there are gaps in his storytelling.

I’m much more comfortable with Roadrunner as a portrait of an evolving, complicated, tragic TV personality, and as one of the best behind-the-scenes glimpses of a TV show (or shows) I’ve ever seen, than I am with it as an attempt to make sense of a man who, for whatever reason, no longer wanted to continue living.

Even if you’re not necessarily a fan and Perry’s control feels suffocating at times, that doesn’t stop Maxine’s Baby from being a frequently fascinating look at a unique figure.

A neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.

By the time the mainstream world came to embrace MoviePass, we all already knew it was doomed, and I wish the documentary had illustrated what the alternative might have been.

Its topic is unquestionably a crucial issue for our age and its approach to that topic both has journalistic rigor and represents a thoroughly admirable depiction of journalistic rigor at a moment at which we put too little value on such things.

Over 96 minutes, you’ll be horrified and saddened. You’ll probably also want more information on a lot of the broadly sketched details, because this project is an overview and not an in-depth thesis. It’s limited, but it’s convincing.

Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s Daughters targets viewers squarely and simultaneously in the head and the heart, succeeding much more effectively at the latter, presumably with the hope that the former will follow.

All of the friends and acolytes singing Brooks’ praises are great, but it’s possible that Defending My Life would have been more satisfying had it just been Brooks, Reiner and some fantastic clips. As it is, the doc might leave you yearning for additional depth.

It isn’t polished and it isn’t focused, and at times there’s a rawness to its emotional exposure that left me feeling a little uncomfortable. But in those respects, it’s a wholly reasonable expression of the sort of grief that, even 14 years later, defies understanding.

Zenovich does a better job of acknowledging contradictions in complicated human behavior than reckoning with what those contradictions mean. Her documentaries are particularly flimsy when it comes to linking difficult men with bigger institutional failures. Still, there are worthwhile conversations that I’m Chevy Chase might allow viewers to have.