Alan Scherstuhl

[A] tender, humane, gently probing film.

Cuba and the Cameraman distills thousands of hours of footage into 113 lively, whirlwind minutes, covering big news events — the Mariel Boatlift; a Castro visit to the United Nations; the Communist leader’s death in 2016 — but also always taking the time to capture the everyday drift of life.

Garner erupts and expectorates with winning zeal.

[A] heartbreaking doc.

An article, a book, and now a film, Talese’s fascination with Foos’s voyeurism still hasn’t resulted in anything like rigorous journalism. The movie, though, at least lets us be the witnesses to something unsettling rather than just asking us to take some dude’s word for it. That means these cameramen are journalists.

The camerawork in Allen’s customary long takes is fluid, even arresting, but Winslet’s performance would benefit from the kind of editing these long takes don’t allow. Rather than loose, the ensemble often seems underrehearsed, and too many of Winslet’s lines have little impact.

The movie — based on Les Standiford’s novel — is pleasantly simpleminded, often assembled from parts of other movies.

Yes, Coco thrills with its of-the-moment visual invention, but its core elements — dead relatives, family photos, the power of loving memory — couldn’t be more timeless. When Pixar made me cry this time, it wasn’t just for the characters on the screen. It was for the people I remember, and the ones I hope will remember me.

Wright’s film is fleet but not especially thoughtful, wholly convincing in its production design, and in one crucial sense something rare: Here’s a war movie about rhetoric rather than battle scenes.

The drama is mostly interior, and Washington’s quiet performance tends to reveal the jittery surface rather than the tortured soul. Neither it nor the script is incisive enough to make Israel’s abandonment of his principles fascinating.

What Gustafson has achieved is certainly artful, and sometimes, through montage and smart camerawork, suggests correspondences between these century-crossing assignations that the stage show could not. But even at its best, this Hello Again struck me as an uncertain, even ancillary work.

Intent to Destroy sometimes plays like a DVD extra that might have accompanied The Promise, but it does have value of its own in its interviews with historians, philosophers, and filmmakers and its vintage photos and footage.

Art itself should seek a restraining order against anyone who insists, “Here is the one thing that Mother! means!”

LBJ slips from an examination of a sometimes admirable leader into a hagiographic daydream, a fantasy of a father figure to save us all. That’s a matter of Reiner’s politics, of course, but even more so a matter of his instincts as a popular filmmaker: He’s offering us an American presidency to escape to.

This minute-by-minute rundown is priceless history, alive with the anxious textures of American life right then, a film that in twenty years will reward attentive viewing. It’s also, for many of us alive in the now, probably too much too soon, the tearing open of wounds that only are just starting to scab over.

Friends, family, and reporters offer invaluable insight in interviews, making this the somewhat rare documentary that’s actually as illuminating as good print reporting on the same case.

In his debut feature, Lee has crafted a mature love story centered on an immature man facing the fear of even admitting that he needs love at all. It’s a film to prize.

Gomis’s handheld cameras work to keep up with the actors, who seem to move with rare freedom, but he also stages some exquisite and complex flourishes.

It’s not always effective drama, but as an example for thousands of struggling American families, it’s a serious breakthrough.

The filmmakers observe rather than interview or investigate, and much of the film is footage of actual church-sanctioned exorcisms.

Huezo’s approach situates us right there beside Miriam — it’s as if a new acquaintance is unburdening herself to trek south together.

The film lives up to its own characters’ thesis: that disability need not define a person — or even the film about that person.

You’re right not to trust a film critic who calls a movie “stunning.” But let me say this about Human Flow, the epic new documentary surveying the scope of the global refugee crisis, from Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei: It stunned me, in the truest sense of the word.

Even in this glossy pulp fictionalization, Marshall is filled above all else with truths that still demand telling.

Wilson’s film, a quiet wonder, emphasizes the courage it takes to choose the hard work of living.

Lynch has crafted an almost proudly minor work, a hangout movie whose reason for being is Stanton’s presence.

Despite some frightening (and effective) scenes of slippery slopes and aggravated wildlife, the film’s heart lies in watching these characters discover in themselves and each other the will to press on.

Curiously drab and airless, tinted to a distracting bluish miasma that suggests an advertisement for antidepressants, Peter Landesman’s Mark Felt is the wrong movie at the right time.