New York Doll (12A)

For an all-too-brief moment in the early 1970s, the stack-heeled and sequinned New York Dolls were rock'n'roll's Next Big Thing, until alcohol and heroin brought the Dolls' house crashing down.

Their posthumous influence can't be overstated, but the band members' themselves reaped few rewards. By 2004, only three of them were still alive, and their bassist, Arthur "Killer" Kane, was working as a clerk alongside unwitting Mormons in a Los Angeles library. He wasn't happy about it. "For 30 years," he grouses, "I've been ignored, living in obscurity and being told I'm a loser." This tremendously moving, bittersweet documentary recounts how he reunited with his surviving bandmates for Morrissey's Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall in 2004.

Rock fans will laugh and cry.