Milk, Gus Van Sant, 2008

Van Sant's recent experimental flourishes are markedly absent from this capable yet dully straight-laced biopic of San Francisco political firebrand Harvey Milk. While the director ably captures the period mood, he imparts little to none of his protagonitst's dramatic flare into the all too conventional picture.

Good Hair, Jeff Stilson, 2008

Chris Rock's familiar presence drives this serio-comic documentary on the black hair products industry, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2009. Amusing in some stretches, informative in others, the film is still something less than the sum of its parts, landing as limply as Rock's lazy closing platitude "its not what's on top of your head that counts, but what's inside it."

Two Lovers, James Gray, 2008

Gray's tale of a set of maladjusted Brooklynites is a sturdy but undernourished melodrama. Fantastic and believably naturalist in stretches, the film's final act is unfortunately undone by too familiar "she loves me, she loves me not" turnabouts and at least one criminally neglected plot strand.

Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris, 2008

Morris takes a decidedly micro view in his examination of the offenses at Abu Gharib, leaving the root cause mining to the inevitable Frontline piece. In doing so, he crafts a strikingly effective and unsettling portrait of a group of individuals mired in a veritable swamp of delusion, apathy, rationalization, and diffusion of responsibility (see also, the bystander effect).

Billy the Kid, Jennifer Venditti, 2007

While Venditti's documentary does a decent enough job at conveying the awkwardness and relative anguish of adolescence, any of her film's apparent revelations are necessarily compromised by the fundamental changes in social dynamism that the presence of a camera effects in the life of a supposed teenage loner-outcast-pariah.