Let’s get this out of the way, right up front: Tony Kaye’s epic documentary on abortion, Lake Of Fire (*****) is hard, hard, hard to watch. It runs over two and a half hours and is an utterly unflinching look at the abortion debate—including the depiction, twice, of the abortion procedure itself. It is also an incredibly accomplished documentary, even-handed and unbiased, beautifully shot and masterfully constructed.

In its (mostly) lack of bias, Kaye’s film has been compared favorably to the works of Michael Moore, but it did, in fact, remind me of Bowling For Columbine—not in its point of view, but in its stream-of-consciousness approach to examining a complicated issue for which there are no easy answers and understandable points of view on all sides. Make no mistake, there are plenty of foaming fanatics shooting off their mouths (and some cringe-worthy moments of blatant hypocrisy), but there are moments of astonishing humanity—particularly the extended closing sequence, following a young woman though the entire process. Lake of Fire is a difficult film, but it must be seen and digested.

Amir Bar-Lev’s My Kid Could Paint That (*****) is a considerably lighter undertaking for filmgoers (it runs about half as long and concerns the world of modern art), but it is no less riveting and thought-provoking. It tells the story of little Marla Olmstead, a four-year old girl who made national news when her paintings were taken up by modern art connoisseurs, who began paying thousands of dollars for her work. Alas, a profile on 60 Minutes espoused the theory that Marla was not the artist (or sole artist, at least) of her paintings, and the walls came tumbling down.

Director Bar-Lev was there throughout the entirety of the story, and his extensive access to the entire family gives a near-voyeur quality to much of the footage. As the filmmaker begins to have his own doubts about the story, the film generates genuine suspense and real pathos. My Kid Could Paint That is mesmerizing filmmaking.