RECOMMENDED

Koji Masutani’s “Virtual JFK (Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived)” is an intriguing array of counterfactual arguments, taking up in documentary form the argument that Kennedy’s prior decisions indicated that his course in the Vietnam War would have been as disastrous as anyone else’s. Drawing on Harvard historian Niall Ferguson’s notion of “virtual history,” Masutani examines six episodes when Kennedy’s decision-making process was demonstrated and essentially ventures the question, “Does it matter who the president is when it comes to war?” With John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara and co-producer-historian James G. Blight. The memorable takeaway? Footage of Kennedy engaging in pitched battle at news conferences and remaining cool and cogent. 82m. BetaSP. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

One of the most startling books I’ve read this year is Naomi Wolf’s “The End of America,” an engaged, furious polemic about the similarity of authoritarian impulses in this country after 9/11 to those of fascist regimes like in Italy and Germany before and during World War II. Even more startling than Wolf’s conviction in prose is her spirit in person: when I introduced her at a Q&A last month at Doc/Fest in Sheffield, England, it took only one question for her to extend what the audience had raptly watched on screen to fill the entire allotted time as she articulately elaborated and footnoted her concerns. Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s documentary, coming after “The Devil Came On Horseback” and “The Trials of Daryl Hunt,” sounds small, essentially following Wolf on a national tour to talk about the book and the issues facing a fearful, readily swayed country. The ideas are big. The fear is large. The film, being distributed on campuses and cinematheques before an Inauguration-timed DVD and online release, is a patriot’s articulate cry. 75m. BetaSP. (Ray Pride)

“The End of America” opens Friday at Facets

RECOMMENDED

Thomas Pynchon’s got a new novel coming in a few months, and it’s announced as another period-set piece. Seemingly a matter less of needing the long view than not wanting to be tripped up by the niceties and crudities of the blackly absurd historical moment of the twenty-first century, it’s another sign of his daunting intelligence. Different forms of intelligence are on display in Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’ “Full Battle Rattle,” which describes a reportedly billion-dollar sim city in the Mojave Desert where situations on the ground in Iraq are reproduced, creating not just a setting for training but a kind of theater where Army battalions enact the conditions they’ll face on the ground over there. That’s the strange intelligence of the situation; the filmmakers’ intelligence lies in their understatement, letting the surreal setting largely speak for itself. Philosophical conundrums and concerns remain mostly off-screen. Still, the film’s final revelation makes clear the terrible implications of what we’ve just witnessed. 85m. BetaSP. (Ray Pride)

“Full Battle Rattle” opens Friday at Facets.

Dell Williams

RECOMMENDED

Awfully nice for a movie to start with “orgasm” in the title and move on toward dancing vibrators. A documentary history of the incarnations and uses of the vibrator since its nineteenth-century electromagnetic origins, Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori’s seven-year project, “Passion & Power: The Technology of Orgasm,” does not lack for unlikely mirth. Noted pioneer sexologist Betty Dodson is among the frank figures on display; she’s long insured that the politics of self-pleasure are not neglected and Slick and Omori follow in her bold footsteps. Interviewees include Eve’s Garden founder Dell Williams, performance artist Reno and historian Rachel Maines, whose research began when she found, to her surprise, advertisements in women’s magazines of the early part of the century. Open secrets ensue. 72m. DigiBeta. (Ray Pride) Siskel Film Center

RECOMMENDED

It’s sad to contemplate why so many films about injustice toward children are being made, but Kurt Kuenne’s troubling, driven, heart-wrenching “Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father” is masterful. Its power has stunned many, for better and for worse, such as in this angry, anguished observation from New York magazine critic David Edelstein: “Among the most enraging [documentaries on this subject] I’ve ever seen, and while it’s fine and heartfelt and I commend it to those of you with strong constitutions, it is the film that has finally broken me.” Some might have that reaction. “Dear Zachary” is an investigation of a murder, collated over many years, of a childhood friend of the director, a doctor named Andrew Bagby. Along the way he discovers there’s a son, born to Bagby’s emotionally disturbed killer, and Kuenne sets out to assemble memories of the father he will never know. The real-life narrative complications grow, and with Kuenne’s exemplary yet brutally fast-paced editing, break the heart. 95m. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

Stefan Forbes’ “Boogey Man: The Story of Lee Atwater” is the most seasonal of attractions, dealing with the amoral life and painful, slow death of the political advisor who developed much of the Republican style of campaigning, and was a mentor to Karl Rove. It’s almost possible to believe that such a loathsome man existed, but Forbes does fine work in capturing his life and legacy. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

“What Remains of Us” (Ce qu’il reste de nous, 2004, Canada), a documentary shot between 1996 and 2004 without the knowledge of Chinese authorities by François Prévost and Hugo Latulippe, captures the responses of Tibetans to a videotape message sent by Dalai Lama, who had not spoken directly to his people since the 1950 Chinese invasion by the armies of Mao Tse-Tung. A touchy matter, a touching film. As the final credit reads: “May all living beings be free of suffering. Buddha.” 77m. BetaSP. (Ray Pride) 

RECOMMENDED

A granddaughter’s loving mash-note to the era of her grandfather, Kristi Jacobsen’s “Toots” is also a sweet celebration of a saloon that helped define an era in Manhattan nightlife. Glorious archival footage mingles with remembrances by articulate barflies of the time, such as Mike Wallace, Gay Talese, Walter Cronkite, Nick Pileggi, Joe Garagiola, Yogi Berra and long-sober Pete Hamill. “Toots” talks the talk, walks the walk, and lives it, too: “a simpler time, not a more innocent time.” 85m. 35mm. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

Film critic-turned-filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire happens upon a blindingly obvious visual metaphor for family upheavals when a North Carolina plantation house is relocated as a strip mall nears. “Moving Midway,” the journey of that house and Cheshire’s discoveries about his family, is light on the visual legerdemain but rich in the talking and listening skills of the South. His earnest, cordial style is affecting throughout: the layers of family history uprooted by the move produce unexpected currents, especially the discovery of African-American descendants of their original owner’s previously unrevealed liaison with a slave. “Moving Midway” is eye-widening, eye-opening and fine. 98m. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

Matt Wolf’s lovingly orchestrated “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell” memorializes the life of a little-known Iowa-born musician who was transformed in the Manhattan of the 1970s and 1980s. Far from hagiography, Wolf captures the oddity of a musical genius who fit right into the big city: “He had to be the funkiest white boy I’ve ever met,” one figure says approvingly; admiring admirer Alan Ginsburg burbled he made “Buddhist bubblegum.” Everyone agreed: a fascinating man made lasting, strange music that still holds power. 70m. (Ray Pride)