Michael Moore

Flint, Michigan is both the origin point and the recurring subject. Michael Moore was born there in 1954, and his debut documentary Roger & Me in 1989 turned the collapse of the local car industry into a comic pursuit: a filmmaker with a camera crew asking, over and over, for an interview he is never going to get. The film established the method he has used ever since, in which he is the main character, the ambush is the structure, and archive footage is cut for comic timing rather than for evidence.

That method took documentaries into multiplexes and made him the most argued-about figure in the form. Bowling for Columbine is the most formally inventive of the films, Fahrenheit 9/11 the angriest and the biggest, Sicko the one where the anger is best aimed, because health insurance is a subject where ordinary people can testify and Moore can stay out of the frame for minutes at a time. His awards include an Academy Award for documentary feature, a Palme d'Or, a Cesar for best foreign film and an Emmy.

His weakness is the same as his strength: a Moore film is always arguing, so it thins out whenever the subject cannot carry the volume. Where to Invade Next is the clearest example, a tour of other countries' better policies that plays like a lecture with jokes. He has also worked in fiction and television, turning up as a bit player in the satire Canadian Bacon and as Walter in Lucky Numbers, hosting The Awful Truth, and writing the memoir Here Comes Trouble.