A meaty buffet of current documentary filmmaking like MOMA's annual retro is as ripe a place as any to examine what's gone drearily wrong and, occasionally, poetically right with the form since the salad days of vérité. On one hand, nonfiction film has become the (mostly) profit-free realm of activists who possess outsize hearts but little cinematic sense. You can't blame audiences for shrugging over contemporary docs' graceless video work, sentimental single-instrument scores, tepid tales of hardship, dull interviews, and reliance on ethnicity's payload to carry the ball home. Perfectly... More >>>