Now that we live in the age of “doc-busters,” non-fiction films that become box office sensations, the idea of the documentary is a lot sexier than it once was. Though his knack for merchandising makes him the J-Lo of liberal populism, Michael Moore helped invent this moment; today, a movie like “Super Size Me” can scare McDonald’s into revising its menu and an ecological treatise like “An Inconvenient Truth” can provide a possible platform to relaunch Al Gore’s presidential ambition.

Now in its eighth season, the annual “Great Documentaries” series at the Museum of the Moving Image surveys a batch of hits selected by members of the New York Film Critics Circle. The 25 screenings, which begin Saturday, offer a kaleidoscopic view of the documentary form, from the unvarnished Direct Cinema of 1960s pioneers Frederick Wiseman (“Hospital”) and the Maysles Brothers (“Salesman”) to the extremely stylized work of Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line”), who dreads what he calls the “D word.” What’s interesting about the series, besides the occasion to hear critics (and sometimes the filmmakers) enthuse in person about these movies, is the way it alternates titles that occupy the docu-canon and more recent works that spiral off on their own tangents.

Mr. Morris has a soul mate in Terry Zwigoff, whose 1994 “Crumb” takes wonderful liberties in constructing a portrait of the artist as dysfunctional misanthrope. Underground cartoonist R. Crumb is celebrated as one of the great American cranks, whose craziness — and vividly vulgar art — is an oddly sane response to his warped upbringing. Mr. Crumb’s slump-shouldered rants make the champion kvetching of comedian Larry David seem weak and amateurish. The film imaginatively veers off documentary truism, steering the director’s course toward fictional variations such as 2001’s “Ghost World” and anticipates comic hybrids like 2003’s “American Splendor,” both strongly influenced by Mr. Crumb’s gnarly genius.

Equally as idiosyncratic, but in a sweeter, mellower way, Ross McElwee has quietly redefined the first-person diary form, narrating chapters from his own life that anatomize questions of family, regionalism, American ideals, and identity, often conflating intimately personal matters with larger social issues. “Bright Leaves” revisits the South of Mr. McElwee’s heritage and investigates his family’s unusual connection to North Carolina’s tobacco industry — and a forgotten B-movie potboiler. Mr. McElwee’s diffident, disarming manner makes for a lot of humor but can’t disguise his keen intelligence.

He’s an inheritor of the grandfather of one-man movie crews, D.A. Pennebaker. The latter’s 1970 “Original Cast Album — ‘Company'” is probably the best music documentary ever made, even better than Mr. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back,” which boasted an ego-crazed, fan-mobbed Bob Dylan. That’s because Elaine Stritch makes an even more fascinating subject than the famously inscrutable Mr. Dylan, stealing the show as cast members of the ill-fated Stephen Sondheim musical drive one another nuts during a never-ending recording session.

“Company” will screen as part of a music-themed weekend that also includes “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” Bert Stern’s dazzling concert film from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival; “X — The Unheard Music,” about the Los Angeles punk firebrands; “The Last Waltz,” Martin Scorsese’s grand farewell party to The Band; and “East Side Story,” which delves into the unlikely world of Eastern Bloc movie musicals — socialist realism a-go-go! These are all fine efforts, but none digs as far into the performer’s skin as “Company,” and all Mr. Pennebaker had to do was lurk with his camera.

A madly mediated assemblage that obsesses over media and paranoia, “The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear” is the formal opposite. Much as a YouTube spoof, it dices and splices existing news and film footage to synthesize a kind of meta-narrative. Its subject is the parallel history of Islamic fundamentalism and the American neoconservative movement, recast in the nervous shadow of the “war on terror.” At once satirical and didactic, this three-hour video fascinates, even when it manipulates. It’s vigorous and rude like a slashing political cartoon, and illustrates how the documentary is more vital than ever — even as it reaches for unapologetic subjectivity.

Through February 25 (35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, 718-784-0077).