Marina Abramović The Artist Is Present (2012)

This portrait of the avant-garde superstar Marina Abramović tells a fascinating tale, because it's about something bigger than one artist. It taps into the ways that the radical underground art world got seduced by the bourgeois passion for fame. Born in Yugoslavia, Abramović began as a shock-installation performance artist (her 12-year love affair with fellow exhibitionist Ulay is touching, and a bit like a Christopher Guest movie). The film charts her journey to museum-world icon, culminating in a show at MoMA that consisted of Abramović sitting in a chair, with one civilian after another invited to drink in her beatific gaze. We're given an intimate seat to this wildly democratic — and creepily messianic — spectacle. A-