An existentially probing documentary with more layers than a twisty Hollywood thriller, at turns inspiring, challenging, sobering and finally devastating.

| Original Score: A | Feb 25, 2015

It develops into a study of obsession, hypocrisy, righteousness and self-doubt, questioning motive and then gob-smacking the audience with the wholly unexpected.

| Original Score: B | Jan 5, 2015

While initially a gentle interrogation of Christian dogma, The Overnighters expands to a larger investigation of altruism and its roots in private psychologies.

| Original Score: A | Jan 5, 2015

Moss lets his characters and their stories unfold, crafting a film from them intuitively through the right interview questions and the art of editing, but never placing a narrative on it that feels forced.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Full of ambush, surprise, illumination, it's a total corker. And Moss and his camera, somehow, are there every time a new bottle of truth is opened, with a gush, a pop or an explosion.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Moss uses images of drill towers or blistering flame as visual metaphors for other things transpiring on screen: the fracturing of a family, the heated fury that comes with a sense of betrayal.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2014

"The Overnighters" is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex. There is a clear conflict between the pastor and the town, but there's no good vs. evil.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 13, 2014

So much of "The Overnighters" tells all sorts of truths, and Moss earned the trust of his subjects, whatever they might think of the result.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 13, 2014

The movie might seem like just another liberal do-gooder profile, yet a shocker ending throws new and disturbing light on the situation, amplifying the Christian themes at the heart of the story.

| Nov 13, 2014

A sobering must-see, The Overnighters speaks to the eternal dilemma of doing the right thing in a community beset by suspicion and fear.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 6, 2014

Through patience, skill, discretion, and trust, Jesse Moss has taken a seemingly small town story and turned it into both a microcosm of today's most urgent issues and a portrait of a single suffering soul.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 6, 2014

Acute portraiture - and for a sobering depiction of an America in crisis that looks shockingly close to the desperation of the 1930s.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 2, 2014

A classic example of a documentary that discovers its subject in the process of its making.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 31, 2014

Moss has put the documentary together in painstaking fashion, somehow managing to be there, filming discreetly, at all the most intimate and climactic moments.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2014

It's one of those Steinbeck-style stories of migrants, poverty, desperation and hope, a heartbreaking picture of men who still believe they are living the American Dream in broken-down trailers doing grim, unhealthy jobs.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 31, 2014

It's the rare documentary in which truly unpredictable events unfold and no assumption is safe.

| Oct 31, 2014

Jesse Moss's tough, absorbing documentary could almost be a modern-day Grapes of Wrath, all about the US oil industry's fracking boom in North Dakota.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2014

Demands a rewatch, and is so stuffed with incident that someone should remake it into an overcooked, Americana melodrama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 30, 2014

An urgent portrait of compassion under fire.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 27, 2014

Long before this unexpected development, The Overnighters has established its credentials as a beautifully crafted, multi-layered piece of storytelling, and as an important snapshot of the new Great Depression.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2014