Gimme Shelter (1970)

The Rolling Stones had an excellent 1969 with “Let it Bleed” and a tour that brought in Ike and Tina Turner, but all that good will and good weed and good sex flamed out at the FUBAR free concert at Altamont in San Francisco. Thousands of drugged-out hippies clashed with drugged-out Hell’s Angels, who the Stones foolishly paid for security, and wild mayhem ensued. Murders, too. Doc-maker brothers Albert and David Maysles and their crew literally *filmed* a man being stabbed to death, the mayhem so wild, they didn’t know it at the time. The Stones – Jagger, Richards, etc. – don’t say much, but they don’t have to. A “fan” punched Jagger in the face before he ever got on stage. Members of Jefferson Airplane were attacked by Angles, too drugged out to realize the warm-up band on stage belonged on the stage. The entire film is vibes raw, from early-69 studio recordings to the Stones fleeing the stage, terrified. A

Life Itself (2014) and Dead Poets Society (1989)

Watching “Dead Poets Society” –- the Peter Weir-directed classic with Robin Williams as a liberal teacher at a strict conservative boy’s school -- and “Life Itself” – a documentary about Roger Ebert’s impact on film and family -- back to back is crushing, and ironic. 

These films are oddly, wildly, surprisingly linked. Both men were and remain major film-world touchstones in my life, Williams as performer and Ebert as critic and writer. They died far too soon, Williams from suicide after a life of depression, addiction, and finally disease, and Ebert after a long, public and astoundingly courageous battle cancer. 

Also note this: Ebert hated “Dead Poets,” and I had no idea until I Googled his review after “Dead” was watched, before “Life” was viewed. 

I wondered what made a guy tick who would hate that film, and then learned just that as “Life” –- directed by Steve James –- lays out not just Ebert’s bio details, but his way of thinking, what he wanted from a film, or life, or finally love at age 50 when he married. And, damn it, to hear Ebert’s words spoken aloud, and his one film, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” detailed to the extreme, the man was a poet, genius, demanding, argumentative, and cold, too.

Especially to fellow critic and TV partner, Gene Siskel, another man taken too soon. I digress because I still wrap my head around these two films seen so close together. (Pure timing, but what timing.) “Society” – in my book -- is a classic not from my youth when it came out, but even now. 

(I know current college students who are fans, teary eyed as they talk about it.) 

Williams is John Keaton, a 40-ish English teacher who arrives at his New England alma mater prep high school, taking over for one of the ancient teachers who has died. All of the teachers are ancient, guardians of the white master class that was once American capitalism. This is the 1950s. Keating insists his students destroy the intro of their poetry textbooks, and not to learn poetry, but to experience it, live it. 

Keating further proclaims the glory of Carpe Diem -– Seize the Day -– to his charges. His energy of course rattles the boys -– among them Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Josh Charles –- and they take that energy to every waking decision, bucking their strict unloving parents obsessed with tradition, money, and name. 

None of these boys had ever *thought* to question their elders. Now they are. One to a tragic end. But is that Keating’s fault? Weir certainly stacks the deck: Keating is a saint, yes, a flat angelic saint, even if we as the audience love him and boo the cruel, unsparing fathers (Kurtwood Smith among them). 

So, yes, “Poets” may be simple -– Ebert hated its simple approach –- but need every coming of age story be complicated? It’s a simply tale, beautifully told. I love the students sneaking out in winter and the finale that once left the viewer bursting with pride, but now carries a devastating coda: Out inspirations, our captains, all die, some of them because life’s hardships can even overwhelm them. How do we carry on? 

As with Keating’s roar to seize the day and break free, Ebert went by his own instinct and his own drum and could never be pinned down. This is the man who famously trashed Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” in the face of universal praise. Respect had to be paid. Debate was out. Ebert was a master of argument. “Life” is based on the short-story memoir by Ebert. 

Here’s the thing about “Life Itself” – it’s no lightweight love letter about a film critic served up to please like-minded film critics and fanatics. Geeks such as myself. 

Early on Ebert -– in a hospital bed and clearly weeks away from succumbing –- acknowledges he is dying to the camera, alone, and then later before his wife, Chazz, who refuses to believe this “scene” played out live in a hospital room, cameras on. She insists Roger can fight on. He knows he cannot. 

That’s one of the beautiful, shocking emotionally scalding punches in this movie, Ebert upfront says this is *his* film and though he won’t live to see it, he will tell it as he sees fit. He shuts James down. James complies. 

The hospital scenes are grueling, Ebert’s brief return home a clash of wills as he refuses to attempt stairs, and his last typed public words –- “I can’t” –- are heartbreaking. Those are words he seemed never to utter before, a fat kid from suburban Illinois who was no arm chair critic, but a man who loved film, and got into the business, and helped champion the likes of Scorsese, and as the “Raging Bull” director tells, once dissuaded him from suicide with a phone call. 

More so, “Life” is about Ebert’s finding of familial love, marrying into a large family of children and grandchildren, and seeing Roger out of the theater and walking a grade schooler around London, wow, that’s life. Perfect.

Dead: A- Life: A

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

“A Hard Day’s Night” has ultra-young Beatles Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Harrison lampooning their own skyrocketing stardom in a “documentary” film that pops as if it were made yesterday. Not 40 years ago. It’s f’n brilliant, with whole chunks that must have bypassed ignorant censors of the day. “No, we’re just really good friends,” Starr insisting to multiple reporters, is a highlight. The question is never heard. It’s a celebration and satire of Beatlemania, never critical of the screaming fans, with Richard Lester’s camera following the guys as they trot around London doing all sorts of light mayhem. These guys loved each other and their fans, and the camera loves them. They are also truly funny, enjoying a joke or sight gag, at their own expense the better. When Lester films through camera viewfinders and monitors, capturing the Beatles in screen on screen, it seems the birth of all meta-humor and (relevant) MTV. Forty and it pops like new. Who else could do this but the Beatles? Lennon’s hallway banter. Harrison’s job interview. Ringo’s arrest. Paul’s grandpop. Unparalleled fun. A 

A Liar’s Autobiography (2012)

I love the hell out of Monty Python, the shows, the movies. I can’t get enough, even on repeat viewings. A wildly animated F.U. to the whole biopic genre, “A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” wants to be the M.P. version of the group’s founding member and leader’s life story, but it’s a pile of random tid-bits that don’t say much. Crazy fact: I learned more trivia about Chapman’s life and comedy impact in the “Making of…” documentary on this film than the film itself. That’s sounds like a Python satirical sketch. (Skip the movie! Watch the extras!) “Liar’s” never boring and much of the animation stuns – dig the section that represents Chapman kicking booze -- but there’s so little context I never got a hook on the man. A scene big on Python gore has toddler Chapman looking at the bodies of soldiers killed in a WWII plane crash. Why? Did he recall this a haunting memory? Who can tell when we’re told it’s fake? A letdown from a film I expected much from. C+

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (2013)

Timing can make or break a film. The documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks” is superior in every way to “Fifth Estate,” the overcooked dramatization of anarchist/hacker “journalist” Julian Assange. I saw the fictional film before this, a reversal of their respective cinema rollouts. This is akin to fresh air. Director/writer Alex Gibney compiles deft footage of an uncooperative Assange and his empire of nerds to portray a group of rebels out to crash all-powerful, secret-obsessed corporations and governments. But with fame comes power, and corruption. Assange falls to paranoia and his own secrets, damn the costs. As well, we see painful chat-room quotes from Private Bradley/Chelsea Manning, whose story also figures heavily here. His tale is a film onto itself, a true whistleblower hero to Assange’s loud bullhorn. As talking heads, U.S. spy chiefs and military honchos alternately damn and dismiss Assange and Manning as blips on the NSA’s endless, all-powerful eye of Sauron. Gibney lets us decide who is more trustworthy, even if there are no “good guys,” and he -- thankfully -– does not need hyperbolic lines or fake CGI desk-burning to let us know this is not history, but a new, never-to-end struggle of truth. A-

Twenty Feet from Stardom (2013)

“Twenty Feet from Stardom” is a music lover’s dream. If you have ever rocked to the Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, or Sting, you know their songs – “Gimme Shelter” and “Young Americans” are two – infect the soul as much from the backup chorus as the lead singers. “Twenty” is the story of those background voices. For me, the faces and names of Darlene Love, Judith Hill, and Merry Clayton have glimmers of faint recognition. But their voices -– “Rape! Murder! It’s just a shout away!” from “Shelter” -- vibe in me forever. These women never reached fame or riches, one even takes to cleaning houses. Their careers were sidelined by sabotage or bad luck, or by choice. Each woman recalls memories, and they and eat together, and their talents are praised by the likes of smitten men Mick Jagger and Gordon Sumner, and director Morgan Neville shows these ladies in a divine light. Too much so. The hedonism of rock n’ roll is vaguely referenced, but never explored. These women stood close to stardom, but also madness. Oddly, those stories are left off stage. A-

Frances Ha and Stories We Tell (both 2013)

Two recent art-house hit films came my way that focus on women, with females in partial control (directing, producing, writing) behind the camera. Films about women by women are too rare. I wish they would flood cinemas as do superhero flicks. Imagine having to choose which female-directed film you will see this weekend. Enough dreaming, onward…

Greta Gerwig co-wrote and is in every scene of “Frances Ha,” a black-and-white comedy/drama/ love letter to French films about a New Yorker facing a gasping dance career, the looming age of 30, and an emotional bounce after her BFF and roommate moves on to live with a fiancé. Directed and co-written by Gerwig’s real-life squeeze, Noah Baumbach, famous for “Squid and the Whale,” one expects quirks and awkward laughs with the drama, and we are served: Frances is a conversation assassin at social gatherings, and at one point -– deep in debt -– foolishly decides to jet to Paris for two days, only to take sleeping pills for jet lag and snooze trough half the trip. That’s truly hilarious, and I laughed heartily. The simple story rocks and soothes as it follows Frances getting on her feet again, but feels equally forced when the screenplay tosses in coincidences and run-ins, especially at a party I won’t even delve into. Frances (the “Ha” part you’ll learn at the end) is all the more wonderful for having no super powers. No matter how dire she needs them. B

“Stories We Tell” is –- halfway through the year -– my favorite film of 2013. Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley (“The Sweet Hereafter”) turns her eyes and camera on her own family as she asks the question we all do, “Where do I come from?” The answers are surprising and I will not divulge one moment of this gem, for watching “Stories” blind, with no knowledge of what is to come, is flat out the best time I’ve had at the movies this year. The film really is Polley speaking to her parents, siblings, and family friends, and about her own birth and her dead-from-cancer mother. With great assist from her father, Michael, a former actor who serves as narrator, Polley pulls back family stories like a series of curtains, each one leading to a new revelation or truth, entire histories of joys, mistakes, hurts, happy or foggy memories. It’s a reminder that our greatest stories are not -– and here Polley turns the cameras on herself and her editors -– found in cinemas or novels, but at the dinner table, across from parents, siblings, and friends. An exceptional watch that will even make you want to re-visit home. A

Dirty Wars (2013)

“Dirty Wars” will enrage any American with a soul. It’s a grueling and honest Come to Jesus documentary on the U.S. military’s expanding War on Terror, with no bounds, boundaries, or accountability. Journalist Jeremy Scahill is our sole guide as he leaves U.S.-approved field reporting and ventures into rural Afghan homes to investigate raids by the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. During one such hit, nearly an entire family is killed, including women, a child, and a police chief. The distraught relatives have video footage of troops carving bullets out of the dying victims. Our leaders shrug, so what? Scahill asks why, digs deep, finds informants and threats, hits brick walls, and finds more war horror -– the assassination of a teenager -– and a direct line to the White House. Once the promised hope of liberals, Obama has outpaced Bush in secrecy and a body county unknowable and unexplainable. “Dirty” is a stellar work of journalism, and yet double-edged: Overly dramatic footage of Scahill typing in the dark of his apartment whiffs of Hollywood drama. But how else to tell this story? We need Scahill’s ego and hunger, because we’ll get the truth no other way. A-

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Alien-abduction thriller/faux documentary flick “The Fourth Kind” plays on conspiracy paranoia for horror scares and mocking hilarity, dishing out a triple-dog daring opener as actress Milla Jovovich – swirling camera and crazy lights galore -– looks dead at the camera and announces she is actress Milla Jovovich, and this is a movie. She plays “real-life” young widow and psychiatrist Abigail Tyler, who has a series of patients haunted by creepy owls. Except the owls –- “Twin Peaks” reference! –- are not what they seem. Director Olatunde Osunsanm -– who also plays himself –- rides his clever gimmick hard, showing the “real” Tyler as played by Charlotte Milchard and videotape footage “she” filmed during patient interviews, cutting it with the actors re-creating the events with Hollywood gusto. It’s all outlandish, but isn’t every UFO kidnap story? And Osansanm knows it. Alas, he derails the film with a blowhard sheriff (Will Patton spit-spewing) threatening arrest and charges against our heroine with no reason whatsoever, and even in a film built on illogic, it suffocates the “is this real?” joke pitch to death, so not even Alex Jones would buy in. Shame, too. What comes before is out of this world. B-

Detropia (2012)

No matter one’s politics, everyone knows the American economy started tanking in 2007 and crashed in 2008, and has yet to really recover. The documentary “Detropia” is about, of course, Detroit, and its past glory crushed by a collapsed auto industry hit hard by economic woes, international competition, and its own greedy execs who would rather pay foreigners pennies per day. Directors Heidi Ewing, a native of the city, and Rachel Grady, from the East Coast, talk to union reps, a retiree running a dying restaurant, and a video blogger among a few others helpless to save their homes. The city’s broke and every cure is bad and –- in the idea of creating massive farms -- lunatic. Ewing and Grady offer no answers or judgments, nor do they talk to big wigs or CEOs, but they do show some ironies -– including an opera house that plays to the rich, while the jobless suffer outside. One man sings in an abandoned train station that must have buzzed with a few hundred thousand people every day. It’s certain things will never be the same in Detroit or in America. Grady said she wanted subliminal. That’s cool. But it’s also fleeting. B+

Bernie (2012)

The greatest indicator the rhythm is off in “Bernie,” a dark comedy about a real-life murder that rocked a Texas town 15 years ago, comes when a playground set is seized during a criminal investigation. The audience, in unison, let out a heartfelt, “awww” as two young girls watched their backyard kingdom be torn down by police. Outside of laughter at the people and hijinks on screen, it was the only other sign of human emotion I heard or felt. 

That’s how thin “Bernie” is. The film. Not the man. Bernie Tiede, is quite thick in the belly, as played by Jack Black, and as seen in real-life photos and video during the closing credits. 

Tiede was an assistant funeral home director during the 1990s in tiny Carthage, Texas, (even the name is ironic). Clearly gay in his every manner, Tiede became a local celebrity, a mascot if you will, to the good ol’ GOP-voting Christian folk there. Not just for his artistry of making the dead look good, but in his endless dedication to church, the local theater, baseball clubs, and his undying loyalty to the town’s widows. He even came to befriend the town’s one Ms. Scrooge (Shirley MacLaine), a vile control freak badger, set off her leash after the death of her wealthy husband. This is where the thrust of the film kicks in. She became Tiede’s Sugar Momma, he her Errand Boy. Things got ugly, and Tiede shot her. Four times. The town stood strong: Behind Bernie. Old lady? Fuggedaboudit.

Shocking? Yes. But Richard Linklater, directing and co-writing, would rather laugh at the wild audacity of it all, and edits in interviews with real-life locals to the mix, showing the town as mentally lost as Tiede is in the “movie” portion. The tone is so broadly farcical nothing sticks. With Black’s eternal wink-wink personality and mincing gay lisp, I never grasped whether or not trapped-in the-closet Tiede was sincere and full of love, or playing people, full of rage, or some place between. Wearing a mask if you will, to go all Batman here. 

Person after person in those interviews dismiss Tiede as “queer,” or insists “he can’t be gay,” he’s too nice and decent. Surely he heard that awful talk, surely it hurt, and made him mad. Or did it? Did he bury his pain. We don’t know. As portrayed, Tiede has all the depth of Ziggy, to bring up another roundish guy. 

More so, there’s a strong, unpleasant whiff that Linklater, a Texan himself, is pulling a nasty fast-one on those interviewees, inviting them friendly-like to talk on camera and then editing their words to appear as rubes and hicks, or borderline senile. Were these people misled? I'd sure as hell would think, “Yes.”

“Fargo,” a far more dark comic tale of murder, had infinitely more emotion, and it’s fictional. The comparison is silly, that film is so sickly brilliant, and brilliant, but I shall not digress. In this tale, an old lady died, for real, and we get nothing. There’s no sense of loss here, mixed in with the comedy. Any sense of irony is lost. MacLaine, dropping a racist tirade as the old lady, makes it all too easy. Too neat. Ehhh.

Matthew McConaughey -- God bless him, is he becoming a character actor now, no more rom-coms? -- lifts the film as high as he can as a self-righteous, but right nonetheless, ADA who is dismayed at the turn of events. Yes, he’s also spinning comedy gold, but he’s also the only one asking, how would you react? Bernie, or the lady? C+

Bully (2012)

“Bully” is a brutal documentary look at five stories of youths bullied, beaten, and taunted by peers, and ignored by clueless or uncaring adults. It brings anger and tears, especially for a guy who was himself heckled. Three stories (a lesbian, a boy with cognitive/emotive issues, and a poor girl pushed to violence) are told in present tense; two in past tense as the tormented committed suicide rather than live miserable. Director Lee Hirsch takes inside schools, on buses, and into the homes of its subjects. He shows an 11-year-old’s casket, and a broken father whisper, “We need to tuck him in one last time,” to his wife as they follow behind it. Brutal. Its strength lays in damning school administrators who dismiss the concerns of parents and youths, opting to say “just get along,” outright lie, or change the subject and talk about their new grand baby. But, hate to pick, it’s not a full-rounded film: Every story is set in rural America, no cities whatsoever, and Hirsch never confronts the bullies. Why not? Last thought: It’s a crime the MPPA bullied “Bully” with an R-rating, when “Hunger Games” got a PG-13. Senseless. B+

Pina (2011)

Ignorance truly is bliss. I knew nothing of the documentary film “Pina,” or Pina Bausch, the avant-garde choreographer and subject of this brilliant movie/eulogy, when I entered the theater. What a wonderful education. Bausch was a German-born contemporary dance performer/ instructor/artist/feminist/chain-smoker who died weeks after agreeing to let director Wim Wenders (you know him, right?) make a 3D documentary of her work. She died and then the film died, but her dancers/followers/disciples resurrected the latter to honor the former. An Easter miracle. This is one of the films of 2011, documentary category and overall, shot in glorious big-screen 3D, which I sadly missed out on. 

Wenders starts his film on stages and dance studios within literal film frames, and then takes us out onto the streets, industrial parks, public swimming pools, EL trains, parks, and mountains of Pina’s home country, her dancers, young and old, performing works that touch on love, nature, water, and violence, the movement onscreen and the music so new and thrilling to these naïve eyes and ears, so energetic and beautiful, I was spell bound. He skips the boring this-than-that-happened of most bio-docs and lets Pina’s art speak for her as we watch men and women contort their bodies in unspeakable ways, out of tribute, love and joy. 

The best/most disturbing sequence has a pack of men picking/ jabbing/clutching a woman, it’s harrowing to behold, but amazing: Pina showing how sexist, condescending men openly treat women as a meat product or a car, an object to be bought. No heart. And yet Pina’s heart still beats damn strong. A must watch and listen. A

Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011)

“Being Elmo.” A movie about Elmo? Not quite. But the man whose hand, voice and soul inhibits the wildly popular “Sesame Street” character worshipped, revered and awed by college-age youth and under, down to preschool. Kevin Clash is his name, and this feel-good documentary tells the tale of the African-American Muppeteer, the first to work for Jim Henson, from shit-poor upbringing to Oprah’s couch fame. Director Constance Marks goes for uplifting, as light as “Street,” and as cuddly as Elmo himself. She eschews hurt and pain: Clash’s childhood years of being bullied is glossed over, he is divorced before we even realize he’s married, and his daughter is back in good grace before we see her all-too-apparent unhappiness. Softball? Yes. But Clash is (portrayed as) such a kind human being, and shy – he becomes alive only through Elmo or his other puppet creations – it’s impossible to resist. When he interacts with a child whose dying wish is to meet Elmo, it’s a heart breaker, you can see the responsibility wash over Clash. Makes a guy want to hug Elmo. B+

Senna (2011)

I am ignorant of racing, especially Formula One. But “Senna,” an ESPN-produced documentary of the famed Brazilian race car driver Aryton Senna is a whooper, a heartbreaking, nail-biting tale of a man who committed and gave up his life to a sport he loved. It’s also a damnation of the vampire-like capitalists that run the sports as a business, putting profit, ticket sales and media attention above the safety of its athletes. Using home movies, TV clips, and interviews with family, friends, former rivals, and journalists, director Asif Kapadia and his crew of editors re-create the life of man who was kindly, arrogant, deeply religious, a playboy, deeply vindictive, funny, and blunt. More so, this is about a son of Brazil lifting the hopes of a desperately divided nation with every turn of the wheel. And when Senna makes his final turn in racing, and in life, the scene gut-punches with the dreadful knowledge that life can end in an instant. A-

Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011)

Is there a better hero for “Page One: Inside the New York Times” than David Carr? He is the guy every young journalist – myself included – has met and envied. His voice cracks like a car compactor chocking on a tank, and his body says north of 80, but he’s maybe 50. He has burned years and brain cells on booze and drugs, and yet come back fighting. Their real drug, though, was and is getting the big story. The quote. Nailing the Big Bad Wolf. I was an addict. Shit, that man is cool.

Carr is the “New York Times,” according to Andrew Rossi, director of this documentary. If Carr can rise from the ashes, then the “Times” can. And the paper has seen its share of ash. The Jayson Blair scandal. Management upheavals. Advertising and revenue wilting as the economy falters. The real kick in the balls: A vastly changing media landscape courtesy of the Internet, 15, 20 years young and far more powerful than the centuries-old printing press. All the news in the world one click away. No more wait for home delivery or newsstand runs. How is The Gray Lady (and the entire newspaper industry) going to get back fighting again? The answer is, of course, the Internet.

Rossi follows more “Times” staffers than Carr, including a war reporter who can file stories from a fox hole, and the new media kids on the block who spit out Tweets like reporters of old sucked down cigarettes. It isn’t easy. A longtime obituary writer is laid off, and anyone who has worked in news will cry for her. I did.

There’s something ironic about the title “Page One.” Having worked at newspapers, I well know the plans – sometimes weeks ahead – of what goes on the front. What is the “face” of the day? Sad death reports. Angry piss at corrupt bureaucrats? Happy features on three-legged dogs? The very idea of such is going away as websites change out the headlines hourly. For the better? No one knows. “Page One” touts meaningful investigative journalism, and shits on an upstart website that treats shocking poverty and war as some ironic gag. Is this what we want? Are we as a nation more interested in the Kardashians than the economy? If that’s the future, we are doomed.

“Page One” isn’t perfect. The ending – where the “Times” wins several Pulitzers in a major staff announcement – is a fumbled climax to a race I didn’t know was occurring. Another sticker: We see a heap of talking guy heads, all as white as me. That is not the modern “New York Times,” or modern journalism, or modern America. Still, a must see for anyone with ink running through his or her veins, and who fondly recalls the rumble of a massive printing press starting up as a magical childhood memory. Every newsroom scenes rock, Rossi film nails the banter and slams, and the editor who calls the liar, “liar.” B+

Buck (2011)

“Buck” follows the man behind “The Horse Whisperer,” the 1995 book and 1998 Robert Redford film about a kind cowboy who tames a wild horse and therefore saves its owner, a wounded girl. The real Horse Whisperer is Dan “Buck” Brannaman, a former rodeo child star who found solace and salvation in horses after a life of hellish abuse. We follow family, horse owners, trailers and farms, but director Cindy Meehl makes it clear, this is about anyone’s life, even Philly boy, and taps into raising children, holding a marriage together, and reaching out to others. It’s not all sweetness. Just as the film turns Buck into a Zen Jedi Magic Man, he meets a troubled horse he cannot save, one that – in a jolt of shocking violence – nearly rips a man’s face off. The gush of blood is real. Buck is heartbroken. I could have saved him, he says. Old film of the dad with Buck is an unsettling peak at child abuse, the old man’s claws dug into the boy’s wee shoulder. A jolt to anyone who knows what that means. Maybe Buck is a Zen Jedi Magic Man. A-

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

In a summer of superheroes run amok, “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is pure nirvana for anyone with an appreciation for art and history, and a chance to sit in a theater and be “wowed” to the back of your soul. Director Werner Herzog (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”) is back in documentary mode here, talking heads and all. The Chauvet Cave is real, located in southern France uncomfortably close to nuclear plant and highways. Inside its walls are hundreds of images of animals and mass hunts, drawn by hand nearly 40,000 years ago, then taken over by bears (scratch marks on the walls) and then a second artist. It laid undisturbed for much of human history until discovered – almost stumbled upon – in 1994. Herzog also serves as narrator, interviewer and lighting tech, as access to the cave is limited. For long stretches, Herzog –cool voice – keeps his pie hole shut, and just lets his cameras glide over the artwork – etchings of bears and horses and rams, telling their own story. I got goose bumps. A

Restrepo and Wasteland (both 2010)

Documentaries are fast becoming the sole way to open the eyes of filmgoers to the world not just around us, but on the other side of the planet.

“Restrepo” perfectly fits the bill. Directed with journalistic just-the-facts terseness by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, it follows a U.S. Army combat unit in Afghanistan’s infamous Korengal Valley. With boots fresh on the ground, the unit’s most popular member is killed: Juan Restrepo, a Columbian native who made the United States his home. The surviving men dedicate themselves afterward to his honor.

Filmed on location with follow-up interviews later, the viewer is shown every aspect of these men’s existence: Days of boredom, and then sudden, constant attacks by snipers. The stress is immense: Who can you trust? What happens when you frack an enemy hideout and kill a child? This is riveting, heart-breaking and heroic material, about American men putting their lives on the line, half a world away. The interviews pack devastating emotional punch. A late-in-the-film gun battle is nearly too much to bear, and thankfully, nothing too graphic is shown. This is a must-watch for any and all adult Americans, no matter the political stripe, and lands high on my favorites films of 2010. It’s simply just unshakable. Shockingly, Hetherington was killed in combat in 2011, filming in Libya. A

There is no violence in “Wasteland,” unless you count the economic destitution that can suck the breath out of a viewer. This documentary follows modern artist Vik Muniz – he does wild stuff with a camera – as he spearheads a project involving dozens of people who (barely) make a living by scavenging recyclable material from mountains of fetid garbage at a massive landfill in Rio de Janeiro. Muniz’s idea: Form large, intricate images with found trash, and photograph the image as art. The subjects are the scavengers themselves: A young mother, an elderly man and a young father attempting to form a union for his fellow scavengers, to protect their rights and lives. The scavengers suffer from diseases and fungi, and have seen dead bodies thrown in the trash, but they are glad for any employment. (Heartbreaking.)

Muniz, a Brazilian, knows he is walking a fine line: Exploiting the workers, or lifting them up. A couple scenes (Muniz and his wife argue) feel a bit stilted (reenacted?) for the camera, and the subtitles fly by too fast, but these are small complaints against a story that, like the best of art., should be shared with all. A-

Bouncing Cats (2010)

The documentary “Bouncing Cats” is not making it into every cinema in the nation, but it should. The film follows Breakdance Project Uganda, brainchild of Abraham “Abramz” Tekya, a man who grew up in the African nation that long has been drowning in a bloodbath of British rule, war and godless rulers such as Amin and Kony. The concept seems almost trite: How will hip hop dance moves help thousands of children who know nothing but poverty, violence and illiteracy. Director/writer Nabil Elderkin tells his tale well, and admits that, no, just dancing won’t help lift these youth to happiness. They need more. Many celebrities appear: Richard “Crazy Legs” Colon is the Bronx kid-made-man who – in a scene desperately needed -- openly sobs at the immense suffering around him. Encompassing shocking violence and utter joy, this doc will stick with you despite the not subliminal Red Bull (funder of the film) ads. B+