As far as best premise (which is really all I can judge here), although the thought of seeing Brendan Gleeson in a short thriller (Six Shooter) is intriguing, I have to go with Kevin Pollack as a therapist who discovers he only has a short time to live and starts getting blunt with his patients in Our Time Is Up. Especially when you throw in Hurley.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club
God Sleeps in Rwanda
The Mushroom Club
A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin
Will Win: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Should Win: God Sleeps in Rwanda
The heavy subjects tend to lead here. Chernobyl. The Holocaust. Y'know, light fare. So the first two docs deal with starvation and genocide in Africa respectively, and the "mushroom" in The Mushroom Club describes a cloud. Africa is a bit more of a hot topic right now, I'm gonna go with God Sleeps in Rwanda, which deals a little more directly with the issue, since Carter is about a photojournalist.
As intriguing as all of these sound, I think the question posed by God Sleeps is the most compelling. What do you do when, practically overnight, your population becomes 70% female?
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Darwin’s Nightmare
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
March of the Penguins
Murderball
Street Fight
Will Win: March of the Penguins
Should Win: Murderball
More often than not, critical buzz tends to lead here. Box office doesn't hurt, either. Since this is the second-highest grossing doc in history, it's already got the Academy's attention. And as far as critical acclaim goes, the only film with more clout (far more clout, as it turns out) is the inexplicably ineligible Grizzly Man.
Don't get me wrong. March is a decent flick. It joins a group of superb animal docs that came out last year, including Grizzly and The Wild Parakeets of Telegraph Hill (which would make an awesome double feature of unhealthy/healthy obsessions with nature). But Murderball surpasses these with its unsentimental yet moving presentation. Yes, it's the hip, MTV-style one in the group, but in this case it works.
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