Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Amazon Prime)

The Abacus bank is not one of the mega-banks that was deemed Too Big to Fail in the mortgage crises of 2008; the family-run bank at the center of Steve James’ remarkable new documentary is instead Small Enough to Jail, in the words of one expert interviewed in the film, which means that prosecutors could go after it and try to shut it down. The bank, and the family at the heart of both the company and the film, was caught up in a five-year legal battle after it was found that many lenders in the bank were falsifying documents in an attempt to garner loans for immigrant customers with no credit scores or reliable income. It is a story filled with sparkling characters and memorable images — one moment where the prosecution handcuffs all the players together like a chain gang to lead them into the courtroom has to be one of the indelible cinematic moments of the year.

It is also a story that could feel dense in anyone else’s hands, though. James delves deep into the story, bringing in major players from all sides and giving them all time to lay out the story. While it becomes clear by the end of the film where its sympathies lie, that doesn’t mean that it can’t honor everyone’s opinions and weigh them equally. James is too much of an assured hand to let the film skew in any one direction. The film is clear and complete while never being confusing. It is one of the most entertaining and easy-to-follow films about the financial crisis to yet come out, and reminds us what a great documentarian can do with a wonderful story.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Including a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (Netflix)

Is it possible for a behind the scenes documentary of a movie to be better than the movie itself? Or at least dig a little deeper. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond makes a strong case for that. Taking behind the scenes footage of the making of Man on the Moon, the 1999 film starring Jim Carrey as legendary comedian Andy Kaufman, and mixing it with Carrey’s musings on life, comedy, and Kaufman, the documentary takes an solid biopic and extends it much further. Jim & Andy gets to the root of Andy Kaufman (and by association, Jim Carrey) better than Man on the Moon ever did.

Much of this is because it is completely frank about the toll of comedy, and the toll a comedian like Kaufman can take on the world around him. Carrey portrayed Kaufman by becoming him, answering on set only as Andy (or Tony, if he were shooting a scene as Kaufman’s alter ego Tony Clifton), creating havoc on the soundstage, and even at one point getting in a shouting match with the actor playing his father as they let out years of Kaufman family baggage. At one point, Carrey even suggests to director Milos Forman that they fire Andy and Tony and get Jim Carrey to play them. It is a bizarre scenario that gets more and more bizarre as the film goes on. You get a true semblance through it all, however, of how Andy worked. As people who knew Andy play along or get fed up with the charade, we see what was underneath the veneer of the bizarre. Carrey torments wrestler Jerry Lawler on set, where they were recreating the famous feud Lawler had with Kaufman, but Lawler tells the camera that Andy was always nice to him behind the scenes. Carrey seems to be overlooking the real human underneath the charade by making the charade reality. The rest of the film may be doing the same thing, but the charade ultimately teaches us something about the reality behind it.

Voyeur (Netflix)

Aggravating and enthralling, Myles Kane and Josh Koury’s Voyeur is one of the most bizarre stories to appear in a documentary this year. It follows Gay Talese, the legendary reporter, along a 30-year journey in which he befriends and eventually documents a motel owner who builds a false attic to spy on his guests. He watches them have sex, fight with each other, deal drugs, and even lays traps to judge their honesty. At one point, he may or may not witness a murder. The story plays out like one of the great crime podcasts we have gotten recently, laying out a creepy incident and then layering on new evidence until we don’t know what is reality anymore. To say any more is to give too much of the story away: just know that it is a captivating story that will leave more questions at the end than any sort of conclusion.