Bird by Bird with Annie

If there were no Anne Lamott, some publisher's marketing whiz kid would have to invent her. A recovering addict and alcoholic, a single mother (see her Operating Instructions), a born-again Christian (ditto, Traveling Mercies), and a liberal feminist, she pretty much covers every demographic in the New York Times bestseller list. Plus, as is abundantly demonstrated by Freida Lee Mock's sparkling if too-brief documentary Bird by Bird with Annie, she's also self-depreciating and very funny.

A casual glimpse of the author at readings, workshops, and church services and at play with her young son, Bird hardly suggests the monumentality of Mock's Oscar-winning Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. The writer's traumatic past (she does mention that she spent every night from age 19 to 32 wasted) gets shrugged off, and Lamott never seems genuinely piqued except when spotting a typo in her new book or recalling a run-in with a slow McDonald's employee. Her vision, though clear, doesn't come across as especially strong: the film's title, which it shares with yet another bestseller, refers to her father's advice to her brother to take a school ornithological project "bird by bird." Funny and soothing, the movie is also fly-by-night. At the Museum of Fine Arts.

-- Peter Keough