Documented

As agenda-driven as Documented is, it also is a deeply engrossing self-portrait.

Advocacy filmmaking that also manages to succeed in pulling heartstrings.

The autobiography and the politics don’t always fit together perfectly. Vargas has been extremely successful in his profession by any standard, and that success can tend to push him into the foreground to such an extent that the collective issues he’s talking about get erased. Vargas is aware of this, and works against it to some degree.

Vargas lingers for long stretches over his personal story and his complicated relationship with his mother, still in the Philippines -- a place he dare not visit for fear of being unable to return. But his story is a vivid illustration of the pickle we're in.

Documented is obviously a bit of advocacy filmmaking, which is fine, but most of the time it's not compelling enough to reach beyond the converted.

His strategy is political — in a meaningful way — but not cinematic.

The film blurs lines between documentary, reality television and "Candid Camera," with Vargas instigating the proceedings.