Alan Scherstuhl

The performances are strong and the scenecraft absorbing.

As a music comedy, this is up there with Popstar, but with better-defined characters. It's thick with tales of brawls, breakups, stage-walkoffs, busted hotel rooms and astonishing rudeness.

Franz’s doc, unlike too many about jazz musicians, actually makes room for jazz music, capturing the clean-cut, restlessly inventive Frisell in live performance in a variety of ensembles.

Little here will surprise cineastes but much of it will charm them.

This isn't hard-times reportage or a deep-dive ethnography. It's a life-as-it's-lived picture, a chance to meet and loiter with the people in the places the interstates zip past.

This is a Macbeth to sink into and shrink from, not one to parse.

No matter her influences, Tamblyn has filmed for us something singular.

Alvarez proves adept at springing surprises in these moments, a skill that combines all the art and technique of moviemaking with the architecture of 3D level-planning and the carny showmanship of building a professional haunted house.

If you find other people worth your time and attention, Next Goal Wins will stir you.

Skipping across ages and genres, this cine-essay beguilement from Russian Ark director Alexander Sokurov considers the Louvre — and the miracle of the transmission of art and culture across its history.

It’s a relaxed study of greatness, of exquisite physical comedy, of how’d-he-do-that stuntwork, of a vigorous cinema artist who saw new and enduring possibilities for his medium.

Directors Shawn Rech and Brandon Kimber piece the story together via fresh interviews, vintage footage, and too many iffy reenactments and close-ups of news stories. But the matter here transcends the artlessness.

As a work of sustained, thoughtful inquiry, Eating Animals is a bust; as a reminder of what we should all be thinking about, though, it’s searing. After seeing it, pretending not to know is impossible.

Marczak has captured the specifics of these young folks as they reel through a city that’s been born again, but the film should stir something true in the chest of anyone who ever was lucky enough to run free in their youth, even if only for a night.

Final Portrait is, in the end, a cheer for craftsmanship.