Daniel Fienberg

The Alabama Solution is difficult to watch, and impossible to watch without escalating anger. There isn’t easy catharsis or an easy non-Alabama solution, but it’s impossible to deny that something better must be done.

Minding the Gap starts out as one story, suggesting one set of character arcs, and then flows in unexpected directions and underlines new sets of themes, without ever feeling haphazard or ill-considered.

Half visceral, first-hand treatment of this particular war and half existential meditation on the ephemeral nature of modern warfare in general, 2000 Meters to Andriivka is perhaps less instantly harrowing than 20 Days in Mariupol. But its haunting impact may go further toward reshaping viewer perceptions of the ongoing conflict.

I don't think Apollo 11 should be anybody's first or only exposure to the moon landing and its greatest strength is in recognizing that. Its perspective and immediacy are impressive on their own and the documentary takes a worthwhile and distinctive place within the wider storytelling of this important event.

It’s an aggressive glossing-over of a career that is worthy of both reverence and introspection/interrogation/investigation. Entertaining, funny and light on its feet to a fault, Lorne offers only the first.

Portrait of a city? Portrait of a pair of heroic brothers? Portrait of humanity on the brink of COVID? In this tiny marvel of a documentary, it’s a little and a lot all at once.

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.

What Gideon's Army does is make a respectful case on the behalf of a profession that too often gets maligned.

That nobody becomes a realized character with an emotional arc is just a place American Factory falls a little flat.

What's most remarkable is how the primitive video footage balances the aspects of Jened that were unique — you've never seen a baseball game or swimming instruction like this — with moments that are hilarious and universal.

Don’t sell Songs of Earth short, mind you, as an exclusively visual experience. Its sound design and score are every bit as immersive, and that may hold the actual key to best experiencing Olin’s film.

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.

An astonishing real-life geopolitical thriller with a very run-of-the-mill historical explainer grafted to it like a remora, Madeleine Gavin’s documentary Beyond Utopia is so packed with high-stakes tension and nail-biting set-pieces that it’s fairly easy, and probably even ideal, to ignore its clunky structuring and expositional choices.

There's more to Fred Rogers than any 93-minute documentary can contain, and it was easy for me not to lament what Neville wasn't doing and just to embrace what Rogers was.

Presented with no narrative and limited structure, Ascension is a collection of breathtaking images and revelatory vignettes that position China as a simultaneously alien and completely universal cultural and industrial landscape, never spelling out which direction points toward progress.

Accompanied by a dreamy soundtrack and philosophically flowery narration by Miranda July, it’s a doomed love story on every level, a gorgeous collage of a film in which romance, scientific inquiry and death do a 93-minute dance.

Predators isn’t a documentary about closing the door on the To Catch a Predator legacy, but on seeing what shades of gray we can discover now that the door is ready to be reopened.

It’s not a love letter to a Michigan town, but it’s a love letter to overcoming adversity with the help of family, of business, of identity.

If 107 minutes is maybe insufficient for something as important and layered as Sesame Street, that likely won't keep viewers from being satisfied.

I got bogged down frequently in the familiarity and intentional messiness of the story that Veiel and producer Sandra Maischberger chose to tell, while at the same time wondering what sense a wholly unaware viewer would be able to make of this woman and the long shadow she still casts.

Folktales is an easily embraceable coming-of-age documentary that makes up for what it lacks in depth with its surplus of wise, vaguely anthropomorphized canine companions.

This is an incredibly charismatic man with a finely honed sense of his public image, but Roher is also able to capture how prickly he is.

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.

I doubt any movie, especially any documentary, will make me laugh harder this year, and many of its emotional grace notes land fully. Even with my high expectations, The History of Concrete is a small triumph.

It’s a documentary about the fight, one that takes the necessity of the fight as a given. That’s amply inspiring

It’s a documentary of sterling musical moments and clever connections between culture and the city that all the principals here so clearly adore.

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.

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.