Via Truefilm, a new doc news site by Jim Feeley, running from January 5 to February 28, this Critics Choice series at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens is comprised of some seriously fantastic docs! “For the 8th Annual [New York Film Critics Circle] series, critics have selected nonfiction films that are as notable for their cinematic artistry as for their subject matter. Each film will be introduced by the critic who chose it.”

We’ve missed a couple of greats already: In the Year of the Pig, Winter Soldier, Hospital and Crumb. But there are many still to come, many I’ve seen and a few I haven’t. I’m going to try to get to:

Our Brand Is Crisis (Rachel Boynton) February 11, 6:00 PM
It’s hard to know whether to marvel or weep when James Carville goes into his Bill Clinton-meets-Looney Tunes act in Rachel Boynton’s knockout documentary. As a high-priced consultant to the 2002 Bolivian presidential candidate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, Carville gives a dazzling demonstration of how a politician should field an “oddball crap question” and steer it back to the campaign’s message…Boynton has extraordinary access—bewildering access, given the damning nature of what she gets. – David Edelstein, New York

Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye) February 18, 5:00 PM
A major event at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Tony Kaye’s staggering documentary on abortion in America is the definitive statement on the subject. In production for more than sixteen years and financed by the director, the film represents an enormous act of social conscience, spanning from the historical to the heartbreakingly personal. In its stark cinematography and ominous orchestral scoring, it bears a strong resemblance to Kaye’s American History X. But his accommodation of troubling details (including many harrowing shots of the procedure itself) and eye-opening new interviews—one with “Jane Roe,” now an evangelical convert—reveal an investigatory spirit worthy of the best journalism. Due for release in 2007 from THINKfilm, the film will be presented in the same work-in-progress cut that stunned Toronto audiences. – Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York