The Institute is a doc about the Jejune Institute, an underground organization that involved its members in elaborate alternate reality games throughout the city of San Francisco/ The institute's games included scavenger hunts, puzzles and more. In 2008, Octavio Coleman, Esq founded it and to this day it still remains a mystery as to what it fundamentally represents unless you've actually experienced it before it closed down in 2011. The Jejune Institute isn't a cult per se, yet it seems like one based on the way the interviews with the members explain it. Perhaps it's more like Scientology. Director Spencer McCall doesn't reach any solid conclusions about the institute nor does he give you any convincing answers for that matter, but he does, at first, pique your curiosity and make you wonder whether or not The Institute is a real documentary or, as Christopher Guest would put it, merely a "documentary." It could have been a lot more illuminating with sharper interviews and more investigations about the institute itself. Apart from being slickly edited and initially intriguing, The Institute lacks something that's a requirement for the vast majority of documentaries: revealing insights about its subject matter. At a running time of 1 hour and 31 minutes, it opens via Argo Pictures at Cinema Village. At the IFC Center, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird opens through 6th Avenue Productions. Unlike the doc reviewed above, this one does leave you feeling intellectually rewarded by the time the end credits role because you learn a lot about Gahan Wilson in only 85 minutes. Director Steven-Charles Jaffe provides you with information about Gahan Wilson's life as well as his rise-to-fame as a cartoonist who inspired many brilliant minds of today including Guillermo del Toro. His cartoons were dark, funny and twisted with more attention to detail on the evil characters, i.e. monsters, in his cartoons than the good ones. Jaffe wisely explores a very loaded and interesting question: Where does Gahan Wilson's darkness come from? The interviews with Wilson himself make for very illuminating, intimate and witty doc that humanizes this amazingly talented artist. You also learn, among other facts, how he met his wife, novelist Nancy Winters, how hard it was for her to find a smart man in America, and how to correctly pronounce his first name (no, that won't be spoiled here!). Concurrently, though, the doc doesn't go overboard with its praise or human elements, and it doesn't feel dry or boring, even for those previously unfamiliar with Wilson. Interviews with those whom he inspired, i.e. del Toro, Lewis Black, Stephen Colbert and more, are woven in quite smoothly with the well-chosen musical score and help to further enrich your understanding of what makes Wilson so iconic. Those feats are a testament to the skills of the director as well as his collaboration with editor Mindy Elliott.