I’m a sucker for sweetly bitter and starry eyed romances and fantasies, respectively. Combine the two, and you had me at first sight. "La La Land" has swept up a ton of nominations at this year's Academy Awards and is on track to win almost as many, including Best Picture. Personally my picks for year-end favorites tend to lean toward the unnoticed and obscure, but this musical ode to Hollywood and young love has me considering the nearness of its victory, not to mention the appropriateness of its success in times like these.

For 2016, a most politically tumultuous and depressing year, documentaries on race relations, representation and how these have defined America ruled the landscape, scoring three nominations in the documentary Oscar field. These films are great in their own right – transformative even – and will no doubt lead to a fiery acceptance speech. But ultimately, this year, race relations feel like a category all to itself. "O.J.: Made in America," "The 13th" and "I Am Not Your Negro" deserve documentary AND best picture recognition, honestly. The importance of this triple punch of movies cannot be overstated, and, no offense to "La La Land," but a happy go lucky story where two caucasians live and love for wish fulfillment isn’t necessarily totally relatable or comparable to the reality of everyday Americans.

In the ESPN epic documentary (over seven hours long) centering on the tale of O.J. Simpson, we get a story equally tragic from personal to national levels. Using the gift of hindsight and separation, the film is able to put into grand context how O.J.’s rise and fall was more than just about one man, but rather it encompassed the country as a whole. It’s a considerable powder keg, just how many connections and suggestions are made, thread-like, to the “crime of the century.” Exploitation, revelation, expecting the unexpected and expecting the all-too-expected occur and reoccur throughout "Made in America," almost like clockwork. Filmmaker Ezra Edelman knows us so well and it’s scary how accurate the reflection is. It is the story of America.

Ava Duvernay, not to be outdone, delivered for Netflix the incendiary "13th," about the amendment to the constitution that transferred labels from “slave” to “prisoner,” as the argument in the movie goes. And a powerful argument it is, wrangling together interviews with the best minds and activists, along with rhythmic title card graphics, to make the case for jail reform and, beyond that, a basic understanding of each other as human beings. Of course, the industrial complex surrounding our prison system is vast and uncaring to views like this, so "13th" ends on a rallying like cry to action and change. With so much wrong right now, can we take off the blinders and see things as they really are? This is the story of America.

Perhaps the most profound, intellectually insightful and biting of the three race docs nominated, "I Am Not Your Negro," strongly makes my case for moving past this category and into the top spot. Similar to the ambition of David Cronenberg’s "Naked Lunch," Raoul Peck looks to structure incomplete notes and personal letters from author James Baldwin – narrated by Samuel L. Jackson – into a living testament of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Same and bloody. Baldwin’s prose is so articulate and eloquent that I began to shed tears merely five minutes in. It’s as if his voice, memory and history were brought back to life in order to remind us where we came from, where we’re at and where we’re going. The film defines the meaning of Baldwin’s words during his time, and redefines them for us today. Terrifyingly on point and striking in its courage to implicate and identify so loudly what is wrong and why. This is America. Welcome.

More so than Nate Parker’s "The Birth of a Nation" (I plan on watching Charles Burnett’s version of that story soon), the above films have painted the very portrait of the U.S. that we need to see, upfront and close. I fear, however, that they will be soon forgotten or left behind in the dust of "La La Land’s" potential massive win. Unless, of course, "Moonlight" takes home the gold. That is a reprieve we need for sure.

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