Seamless: A documentary about three of the finalists for the Vogue/Council of Fashion Designers new designer award. It was interesting following three designers in the real world (I am a Project Runway fan, and I found it fascinating how tough the reality is for them, but ultimately, I found the documentary unsatisfying. I wanted more on the designers, on who they were and where they came on. The shooting of the film was rough (technically) and I just didn't love the film (of course, the folks who one were the most arrogant, and not the one I wanted, so maybe that influenced my feelings about the film).

Young@Heart: Oh my. I had read on my friend Alisa's Twitter that she sobbed through the Coldplay song in this documentary about a chorus of older folk. I secretly mocked her, thinking, "Yeah, a Coldplay song. Silly pregnancy hormones." Well, I can tell you that I'm definitely, absolutely not pregnant and this movie made me so weepy and the Coldplay song just about put me over the edge. The trailers show a bunch of old people singing rock songs (the Ramones, the Zombies, Sonic Youth), and yes, there is that element and it's fabulous, but the documentary also touches on some of their lives and illnesses and the ending concert feels like an absolute triumph. I'd put this on one of my top documentary lists, absolutely!

For the Bible Tells Me So: An interesting, but one-sided, documentary about evangelical Christians and homosexuality. Fundamentalist families with gay children are interviewed, and this part of the documentary is very moving and insightful. However, the arguments against the biblical injunctions against homosexuality 1) would have been more powerful had they actually interviewed someone with an opposing belief (rather than just show clips of rants) and then argued against that and 2) don't stand up to scrutiny when traditional Judaism is considered, and I was hoping for arguments strong enough to stand up to all religions (part of the argument is, "Well, 'man shall not lie with man' is just one in a long list of commands, such as 'don't mix linens,' 'don't eat swine,' and 'don't cut the corners of your field,' which Christians completely ignore." The fault of this argument, of course, being that Orthodox Jews do follow all these other laws). There was also a rather incongruous part in the middle that is a cartoon discussing why people are gay. However, if you're interested in the subject matter, it's worth the watch.

The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania: This quirky documentary about a beauty pageant in a coal town was surprisingly upbeat. This was not your "these girls are freaks" beauty story. The girls in here were genuine and likable and the background info on the coal town was really interesting. Enjoyable.

Wordplay : A nice little documentary about crossword puzzle doers. I enjoyed the heart of this film, but there was a lot of celebrity commentary that I just didn't care about. I wish it had been more like Spellbound and just concentrated on the stories of the players, who didn't need commentary from Jon Stewart or Bill Clinton to make their lives more interesting. A solid film that could have been so much more...

The Up Series, Vol. 1 (Seven Up and Seven Plus Seven: I've been meaning to watch this for quite some time and I found it interesting, although the second one more so (it's a series of films, done at seven year intervals, chronicling the lives of a group of kids from different socio-economic classes in Britain, beginning in 1969, based on the idea of the quote, "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." ). I'm eager to see more, to discover where the kids end up.

Jesus Camp: I a sucker for those documentaries, and this one was fascinating albeit horrifying, about the Evangelical Christians are indoctrinating their kids (although I'm sure you could substitue any religion in here). A couple of slow points when they were concentrating on the kids' pastor--the kids were the really interesting ones--but overall a solid documentary.