Anticipation and frenzy emanates from every frame in Amy Seimetz's debut, leaving the audience with bated breath. A more compelling and original mystery hasn’t hit the screen in years.

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This film accomplishes what many music docs strive for and frequently fail to achieve—namely, it reaches beyond the immediate fans and touches anyone who is willing to watch and, especially, listen.

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That Without can manage to be so loosely constructed, but at the same time so precise with its details, while still connecting on such a direct emotional level with its audience, is a stunning accomplishment.

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As daring as it is endearing, Terri butts heads with the clichés that have plagued high school movies for generations, and Jacobs manages to tell a story that will resonate with viewers without resorting to cloying truisms.

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With Putty Hill, Porterfield has made good on all the promises of Hamilton, creating a film that is at once more redolent and reticent, but that also takes his narrative experimentation another step forward.

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This dark comedy about spousal problems unfolds largely in a single, claustrophobic house like a snowbound Eyes Wide Shut, but instead of freaky masks and orgies there are holiday sweaters and group backgammon games.

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Stunningly sculpted in high-contrast black-and-white celluloid, Pedro Costa’s Ne Change Rien is one of the few documentaries that can rightfully claim to actually be about music.

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Strange Powers is at its most successful when showing the band as a work-in-progress: refined live performances, intimate and quirky on-stage banter (including a precious clip of Stephin exchanging shirts with an audience member), and especially the living room rehearsals that reveal the deceptive simplicity of Merritt’s pop songwriting.

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Memphis-based filmmaker Kentucker Audley’s second film of 2010 (the other is Holy Land) is an exquisitely crafted, intimate slice-of-life glance into the stagnant world of Jake (played by Jake Rabinbach), a Memphis-based musician whose band and personal relationship seem to be suffering the same static fate.

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