Though it’s always exciting to stare down a new year, and I’m already kicking a few potential resolutions around—eat less, rock more, that sort of thing—2007 isn’t quite over yet, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do as I’ve done in years past and list five of my favorite docs that saw release this year.
If you’re a fellow Doc-head, you’ve probably seen at least a couple of these already, but if you haven’t, I can’t recommend the following films enough (by the way it was too much of a Sophie’s Choice to rank them in any kind of order):

1. Billy the Kid—Though I first saw Jennifer Venditti’s film way back in March, it hasn’t really left my thoughts since then, It’s funny, it’s poignant and it’s got “cult classic” written all over it.
2. King of Kong—Seth Gordon’s doc about the bitter rivalry between two Donkey Kong-obsessed gamers took me back to “Hands on a Hard Body” territory and has one of the better twist endings in documentary history. It’s also got a fun soundtrack that even manages to re-use “Eye of the Tiger” and not have it feel like a cliché’.
3. Sicko—Though for a lot of folks the jury is still out as to whether Michael Moore is to be trusted, I found his latest film to be an entertaining and infuriating experience worth watching if only to bitterly debate it with friends, co-workers and loved ones.
4. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream—As both a fan of Tom Petty and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, there were lots of reasons to love this film. Also at almost four hours long, the pace of the movie doesn’t suffer one bit.
5. Joy Division/The Ballad of AJ Weberman—it was too tough a call to choose one or the other of these two, though they couldn’t be more different. “Joy Division” is a well-made document of arguably the defining band of the post-punk era and “The Ballad of AJ Weberman” is a profile of Weberman a self-professed Bob Dylanologist who also become a successful artist by fashioning works of art out of stolen trash. It’s a tough call, and you know what, I’m not going to make it.

Honorable Mentions
No End in Sight
Taxi to the Darkside
Kamp Katrina
Silver Jew
Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story
Helvetica