Michael Rechtshaffen

With the colorful Allison — he’d fit right into one of KFC’s revolving Colonel spots — and narrator Woody Harrelson at his disposal, Haney could have easily done without all the glossy dramatic recreations and frequent shout-outs to Bristol-Myers Squibb, which occasionally create the undesirable effect of a corporate promo video.

The impact of hearing Danny Glover’s calm voice reading published invitations to lynching parties remains chillingly undiminished.

Esrick’s Cracked Up affectingly peels back the years of protective layers trapping the trauma, revealing a man who has found a semblance of peace after a lifetime of battling demons.

[A] lethargic, hallucinatory mish-mash with matching dialogue that has all the zing of a Wikipedia entry.

A gorgeous tone poem that both deepens and personalizes the audio recording, creating a satisfying emotional arc that isn’t as apparent in the collection of 13 fully-orchestrated country-tinged songs.

A killer concept falls frustratingly short of the finish line in Empathy, Inc., a dark morality tale that ambitiously casts contemporary technology in a throwback visual setting.

The documentary can’t help but feel like a promo piece despite providing some insightful backstage glimpses into its subject’s well-publicized life.

Although, structurally speaking, the production follows a safely familiar path, it doesn’t require a lot of fancy footwork when you’ve got an enthusiastic on-camera fan base including Bruce Springsteen, Scorsese, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal and Van Morrison, a terrific storytelling arc, a treasure trove of archival footage and, naturally, those iconic songs.

It’s hard to imagine a true-life underdog tale more engaging than Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel, a winning David vs. Goliath baseball documentary that covers all the crowd-pleasing bases.

A solidly assembled documentary portrait.

Grafting familiar Disney and DreamWorks tropes onto a tapestry of traditional Chinese legend and lore (the plot is loosely based on a Ming Dynasty-era shenmo novel), the adventure entertains with a title character who could be the spawn of Chucky and Stitch, from “Lilo & Stitch.”

The film is content to sluggishly go through its preordained paces without bothering to take any compelling detours.

While it may not put a fresh spin on the sports documentary format, “Loopers” gives the bag-carrying faithful a well-earned moment in the sun.

As Gamal, himself raised in a leper colony, knowingly navigates the uncomfortable glares he encounters along the way, Yomeddine (Arabic for “judgment day”) takes an affecting path toward belonging and acceptance.

As the legal proceedings progress, Carracedo and Bahar wisely keep their probing camera trained on the passionate faces of their subjects, allowing their stirring testimonies to take the spotlight.

It isn’t that the sequel, directed by the returning Chris Renaud and again boosted by an energetic voice cast, doesn’t deliver on the genially amusing, if disposable, fluff — it’s just that the shtick-heavy storytelling proves even more undernourished than it was for the first outing.

Far more than simply “The Longest Yard” with hoops, the remarkable Q Ball serves as a potent illustration of the redemptive powers of team camaraderie.

Carmine Street Guitars is a leisurely Sunday stroll of a documentary.

It turns out Pokemon Detective Pikachu isn’t half bad.

As informational as it is inspirational, Patrick Creadon’s Hesburgh is a thoroughly engaging documentary chronicle of the life and turbulent times of longtime Notre Dame president Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, whose tenure coincided with a particularly pivotal stretch of American history.

While not exactly uncharted documentary territory, the Iraq conflict is thought-provokingly portrayed in “Mosul,” an up-close-and-personal examination of recent events that puts a human face on a land that remains vulnerable as a result of clashing ideologies.

As long as he maintains his focus on the notoriously private Land and the painstaking efforts of Impossible Project’s chief technology officer and Polaroid vet Stephen Herchen to recapture lightning in an SX-70, Baptist delivers something reasonably compelling. Unfortunately the bulk of the overly artsy production is preoccupied with the exploits of others.

A moving testament to the boundary-shattering language of music.

While director Penny Lane (not a pseudonym) energetically goes about shattering our preconceived notions at every intriguing turn, the film is at its most potent tracing society’s history of “satanic panic,” from the Salem Witch Trials to the rise of the evangelical lobby on the shoulders of the Red Scare to the 1980s when Dungeons & Dragons was viewed as a demonic gateway game.

Even more than those acclaimed lion, chimp and bear films that have preceded it, Penguins proves especially delightful — a coming-of-age story outfitted with an engaging anthropomorphic overlay that can make you forget you’re watching an intimately filmed documentary instead of an animated adventure.

In Disney’s hands, William eschews freak show theatrics for something much weightier.

Director Seet’s gorgeously filmed production proves to resonate as much today as it did 40-plus years ago.

Perhaps he was too distracted by wearing so many hats (Dara also performs the self-penned Once-style ditties on the twee soundtrack), but both he and Lancaster didn’t bother to imbue their sketchy characters with sufficient likability.