If you know just one name from the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting, it’s probably Charles Whitman, the deranged assailant who gunned down 49 people — killing 14 — in an hour and a half’s time. It’s one of the (many) unfortunate realities of these mass shooting-crazed days: We remember the villains, their horrific acts of violence, but know next to nothing of their victims.

Tower, Keith Maitland’s Indiegogo-funded documentary, admirably upends that narrative. Through a radical mix of archival footage, rotoscopic re-enactments and firsthand accounts, the Austin, Texas-based filmmaker chronicles the day’s events through the words of basically everyone but the shooter — people like Aleck Hernandez Jr. (Aldo Ordoñez), a teenage paperboy shot on his route; officers Houston McCoy (Blair Jackson, Varsity Blood) and Ramiro Martinez (Louie Arnette, #Slaughterhouse), who ultimately killed Whitman in a standoff; and Claire Wilson (Violett Beane, TV’s The Flash), an 18-year-old anthropology student who lost both her fiancé, Tom Eckman (Cole Bee Wilson) and her unborn baby.

Forgoing any examination of the massacre’s broader, macro-level impact, Tower instead recounts the poignant internal conflicts of its characters — like the powerless torment of bare skin on blistering pavement, or the cowardice one feels when realizing they lack the courage to help the wounded. All the while, intermittent gunshots ring out in the middle of the sound mix and double down on the unease — an effect that puts you squarely on campus and in the line of fire.

The animation, equal parts dazzling and distracting, doesn’t serve much purpose beyond the visual replication of what wasn’t captured on camera in ’66 (amazingly, though, a lot was). But even if these spritzes of eye candy seem garish next to the gritty historical footage, Maitland’s inventive approach to tragedy and storytelling make Tower essential to our understanding of what really goes on during the panic and chaos of mass shootings, and serves as a poignant reminder of the heroism we don’t often remember. It might not tell the whole story, but it tells the ones that needed to be heard. —Zach Hale

The day before the 1968 Republican National Convention, the ceiling of the ABC News studio stationed at the Miami Beach Convention Center collapsed, temporarily shambling the struggling network’s control room and set. Nobody knew it at the time — especially not ABC — but the resulting disarray proved to be a prophetic metaphor for the fractured fate of broadcast journalism. For better or worse, political punditry and slanted cable news commentary are 2015 America’s de facto information resources. And it all started with ABC’s televised debates between William Buckley and Gore Vidal, portrayed with appropriately crafty and captivating fashion in Best of Enemies.

The documentary depicts Buckley and Vidal’s contentiously off-the-cuff (and wildly entertaining) discourse through rare archival footage and interviews, many of which articulate the broader, far-reaching effects they had on today’s political climate. At the time, ABC was playing third fiddle to NBC and CBS, networks that had established their network news dominance through fact-based, down-the-center reporting — the standard in 1968. But by pitting Buckley and Vidal — who already detested one another prior to the debates — ABC subsequently surged in the ratings, with millions tuning in each night of the convention to watch the two pummel each other with personal jabs and snidely delivered one-liners. It was shockingly candid television unlike anything the American people had ever seen, and they couldn’t stop watching.

But Best of Enemies is most absorbing in its examination of the individuals themselves: their worldviews, motivations, weaknesses, differences, and ultimately their similarities. Buckley — a self-described conservative, Republican, Christian libertarian — founded the highly influential National Review, a publication renowned for its unabashedly conservative, Republican, Christian libertarian news. Vidal — a liberal, radical, forward-thinking sexual deviant — was a highbrow writer known for his uncommonly edgy novels and plays (including the notorious Myra Breckenridge), many of which were adapted for the silver screen. Despite their existence on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, Buckley and Vidal had one very important thing in common: a relentless affinity for their own pride and intellect.

As often happens in a battle of egos, their conviction turned to hate, with both even going so far as to believe, in their heart of hearts, that the other threatened not only the advancement of their ascribed political doctrine, but the fate of humanity as a whole. Naturally, their debates became less about issues or party platforms and more about pummeling their opponent, about winning, and eventually devolving into a battle of who can dig deepest under the other’s skin. This manifested in a television meltdown for the ages after Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” to which Buckley replied, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face.”

Moments like these carry consequences that need no explanation. And outside of their subtle use of editing to inject a leisurely buoyant tone, directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville know good and well to let the images and sound bites tell the story — until the end credits, when they needlessly tack on what the preceding 85 minutes had already explicitly implied. It’s an unfortunate “allow me to explain what you just watched” moment, overly simplistic in its insinuation that Buckley and Vidal, conservatives and liberals, Fox News and MSNBC are merely two sides of the same coin.

The prevailing theory that the truth always lies in the center should satisfy those who already ascribe to it, much like it would if it implied that the truth lies on the right or left. What is indisputable, however, is that the story of Buckley and Vidal is as historically relevant as it is fascinating. And for 85 minutes, Best of Enemies is the most compelling glimpse into one of history’s great rivalries that you’re likely to ever watch. That we can all agree on. —Zach Hale

Get it at Amazon.

For as long as they’ve been around, filmmakers have been making movies about the movies. From Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain to Federico Fellini’s 8½ nearly every corner of the moviemaking map has been covered through the years, and through a variety of stylistic lenses to boot. But The Wolfpack — director Crystal Moselle’s striking debut feature and winner of this year’s Grand Jury Prize for a documentary at Sundance — casts the power of cinema under a murky new light, focusing instead on how the movies themselves can mold us as emotional creatures, and telling an incredible story of her own in the process.

Moselle met the Angulo brothers — ranging from 11 to 18 years old at the time, with hair down to their backs and dressed as if they’d just left the Reservoir Dogs set — by chance encounter in Manhattan in 2010. A friendship then blossomed over a shared affinity for certain movies, and after sharing their unlikely, almost unbelievable backstory, the Angulos invited Moselle into their cramped Lower East Side apartment, where she would film her documentary.

At the time, Moselle was the family’s first guest in their nearly 20 years of residence in the neighborhood. And if that sounds strange, prepare to be stupefied: The brothers (and their younger sister) had only left the apartment a handful of times for the entirety of their lives, sometimes going an entire year without walking through the front door. Their literally sheltered childhoods were the wishes of their father, a Peruvian immigrant with a radical distrust of the American government and society as a whole, and their mother, a soft-spoken Midwesterner who was tragically convinced that shielding her children from the society’s hazards was for the best.

Because they had so little experience in the outside world, the Angulo brothers’ (named Bhagavan, Govinda, Mukunda, Narayana, Jagadisa and Krsna) only knowledge of it came through their massive DVD and VHS collections, which featured classics like Casablanca and contemporary standards like Pulp Fiction. To pass the time (of which they had a lot), the boys recreated entire scripts of their favorite films, then memorized the lines, built props and costumes from household materials, and reenacted scene by scene with remarkable detail — all from within the confines of their apartment. This was more than just an expression of a love for movies, though; it was how these kids lived, their way of experiencing the real world — or at least their perception of it — and assuaging their mounting curiosity.

But there’s a point at which a massive home video collection will no longer suffice. Through a series of candid, expertly shot interviews, Moselle documents their determination to flee, to experience the lives of which they had been robbed. Much of the documentary examines these grand-scale desires, but it also depicts more subtly meaningful life events, like walking barefoot on a sandy beach or going to a movie theater for the first time. It’s in these moments of understated significance are when The Wolfpack is at its most potent and captivating.

Questions will be raised about whether the Angulos’ story had been exaggerated for artistic license — a definite no-no in the documentary world — and how exactly Moselle was permitted such a degree of access to such a hermitic home. Others will critique the film’s focus on the group rather than examining the brothers as individuals (they all look strikingly similar to one another, and Moselle never really puts names to faces). But The Wolfpack, like many of cinema’s most revered achievements (many of which it references), serves as a reminder of the immense mental and emotional spectrum that the medium often explores, reaffirming the idea that it isn’t as much about the story, but who’s telling it and how it’s being told. —Zach Hale, Oxford Karma

Get it at Amazon.