Better This World

Directed by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega

Let the birthers, tea partiers, and Republicans worry about Obama’s birth certificate. They’ll completely miss stories more likely to rile the passions of the average American. Like The Tillman Story, Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega’s riveting documentary Better This World chronicles another tale of solid, red-blooded American families getting absolutely fucked by a government interested in protecting its image of itself as being in the absolute right in the War on Terror. At the 2008 GOP convention in Minneapolis, early twentysomething West Texas friends and anti-Iraq War DIY activists Brad Crowder and David McKay get arrested for illegally possessing Molotov cocktails and are soon targeted as conspirators to commit terrorism. What Better uncovers is how Crowder and McKay were targeted, which involves an FBI informant who organizes social justice activism, and a federal prosecutor team that isn’t going to lose. A heinous display of domestic “justice.” (BM)

The Dish and the Spoon

Directed by Alison Bagnall

Some will likely balk at The Dish and the Spoon’s quirky circumstances and sparse dialogue, but, at heart, the film is a potent drama. Indie queen Greta Gerwig stars as Rose, a spurned wife with a faulty equilibrium who finds a marooned English boy (Olly Alexander) in a Delaware beach town. The runaways begin a romance that would pale if not for its palpable tenderness, despite the predictability. Rose and her Tim Burton-looking new friend shack up in her parents’ summer cottage while she formulaically harasses her husband’s mistress. The boy serves as a conduit for her anger, offering his own insecurities to levy hers, a relationship both actors play coyly. Though the plot is sometimes hard to digest, the whimsical Dish is a rarity: a well-acted low-budget indie that does justice to an old cliché. (JF)

Domaine

Directed by Patric Chiha; hosted by John Waters

So deceptively simple and unshowy. Iconic French star Béatrice Dalle plays Nadia, a formidable middle-aging mathematician with a sense of style, an independent streak, and a purposeful stride. Isaïe Sultan plays Pierre, her bright-eyed teenage nephew, with whom she has a peculiarly close relationship. As writer/director Patric Chiha’s story unfolds, you wonder which fairly predictable path it will follow from there. It then surprises you slightly, and then slightly again, and then slightly, continuously, all the way to the jaw-dropping but perfectly fitting conclusion. A low-key marvel you’ll still be thinking about weeks later. (LG)

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone

Directed by Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler

This portrait of Los Angeles’ punk/funk/soul/rock/kitchen-sink band Fishbone does an ever better job than James Spooner’s Afro-Punk at articulating how segregated the business side of the music industry is. Directors Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler place the late 1970s origins of Fishbone by a ragtag group of black teens in the larger socioeconomic context of Los Angeles’ African-American creative cauldron, and then checks in on this anything-goes sextet as its live shows set LA punks’ hair on fire during the 1980s. What follows is what happens when a seminal force meets an unmovable marketplace—too black for rock/punk/metal, too punk for “urban music,” too genuinely weird to fit anywhere at all, really, Fishbone never achieved the commercial success of the bands, interviewed in the movie, it inspired (Primus, No Doubt, Red Hot Chili Peppers). Sunshine captures the moving story of a group of friends facing the hard facts of how to keep a youthful dream alive while trying to be fathers, husbands, and, in general, grown-ass men. (BM)

Freaks in Love

Directed by David Koslowski and Skizz Cyzyk

Erstwhile Baltimorean David Koslowski (of Liquor Bike) and Skizz Cyzyk (of a kabillion Baltimore bands) have created an exhaustive documentary celebrating the 25 years (and counting) lifespan of the band Alice Donut, so if you know from Donut, you will enjoy this, and you will get sucked into this film even if you ain’t never heard of no Alice Donut and even also-still if you kinda do not enjoy the Alice Donut sound, which we will leave to the filmmakers and subjects to describe and classify, which they do, and it helps. You will also come to understand how much the amazingly normal human beings who call themselves Donuts do not give a fig about trends or popularity (although the filmmakers show some magazine-chart-topping moments), which also means they do not care much about money, and you’ll see what that attitude has earned them. Yeah. Spoiler Alert. (JM)

If a Tree Falls

Directed by Marshall Curry

The Earth Liberation Front made headlines in the early 2000s with a string of fires purportedly aimed at sabotaging the timber industry. This documentary profiles Daniel McGowan, a pudgy, middle-aged white guy arrested in 2005 with 13 others. “It’s horrible to be called a terrorist,” he says, adding that no one was hurt by what he did, “and I’m facing life plus 325 years.” Two perfect anecdotes sum McGowan up. His sister says he obsessively peeled the labels off all the cans in her pantry and threw them into the recycling bin. “Now I don’t know what’s in any of the cans,” she says. Toward the end there’s another one as he prepares to enter federal prison. McGowan is trying to peel an antacid out of its package and tells his wife, “No, I got it, I got to be independent,” before giving up and handing it over to her to do. The look on his face makes the movie. (EE)

Last Days Here

Directed by Don Argott and Demian Fenton