Alissa Wilkinson

Kennedy sticks largely to conventional documentary techniques for Queen of Chess, which is not a bad thing: It’s a good story, well told, and Polgar makes for an interesting subject.

Maybe telling the whole story doesn’t mean living happily ever after, but at least it can mean being a little wiser.

The landscape in which this family makes its domestic life is wild and lovely, and Palmason signals the changing of the seasons by showing us all of its beauty: the snow and ice, the sunshine and greenery, beautiful skies, placid water. The weather can be both delightful and harsh, warm and chilly, and that’s mirrored in the characters.

The writer and director Simón Mesa Soto skewers with knowing precision a kind of devotion to the creative life — without much of the creating — that renders one useless in the real world. The allure of the image of the tortured artist can be so enticing that it obscures the actual art.

What does work about H Is for Hawk (aside from Mabel, whose presence is enough to recommend the film) is its refusal to make grief facile or tidy, or to proclaim that healing must look the same for everyone.

Though Seeds is a lyrical portrait of a way of life, it also harbors an urgency that’s very much of our moment.

DaCosta’s talents as a director are a terrific, confident match for this material.

Because of the ensemble structure, each tale is interrupted by another, so “Young Mothers” lacks some of the suspense that powers many of the Dardennes’ other films. Yet that slower pace allows a tenderness to develop, and the tension between the girls’ youth and newfound maternal instincts to emerge.

This is what The Plague does best: Its storytelling inhabits a world so heated and confusing to its characters — that is, burgeoning adolescence — that it’s sometimes unclear whether things are actually happening or just in Ben’s head.

That it may not be to everyone’s taste, or to yours, feels almost besides the point. When an artist takes a swing this colossal and stays true to their vision in every way, the resulting work deserves respect, and is always worth seeing.

If you’re an aficionado of ’70s cinema, there’s probably not much new here. The films covered are certainly a murderer’s row of masterpieces, but they’re familiar to cinephiles. Yet despite its lack of depth, there’s value to Breakdown: 1975 as an introduction to an era, particularly for younger people or newer movie lovers who might relish learning about the films of the time and the ways they weave into history.

Borrowing on certain familiar erotic thriller tropes — let’s all point and stare at the cray-cray lady — it does some back flips and corkscrews appropriate for our time and lands with a cathartic smack.

Ella McCay is a bizarre movie that would have worked better if it went all-in as an homage to another era. Since we won’t get to see that version, you’ll just have to buckle up and enjoy the very strange ride.

It’s clear that the movie has a point of view; what’s most interesting, though, is the raw materials it employs.

Inevitably, the results do not quite cohere narratively or tonally. But the film still has a strange, old-fashioned charm. You can’t really imagine anyone other than Clooney playing Jay, but Sandler is equally good; he brings a pathos to Ron, a man who has perhaps loved not wisely but too well.

Some scenes are remarkably intimate — Nikola in his house on a stormy night drying off the stork, who falls asleep on his shoulder — and some are sweeping, which makes it an amazing portrait of a place on many scales.

What really makes Wake Up Dead Man work is that Father Jud and Benoit Blanc are two peas in a pod, when it comes right down to brass tacks.

Buckley’s performance is ferocious and astounding, starting off strong and somehow picking up power as the movie goes along.

The truth is that Shackleton isn’t settling for one mode; he’s working in a bunch of them at once, mixing affection and critique. Just like any true fan would.

It’s hard to imagine anyone but Edgerton in this role. Though he’s a prolific actor, he’s still underestimated; he’s at his most superb when his manner is gentle, and he’s capable of doing so much with so little.

Nonfiction films often grapple with mortality and the meaning of existence, and usually those center on grief. This one wraps its arms around the full range of feeling that follows a terminal diagnosis: fear, love, desire, anger, wonder, hope, despair, even joy.

It’s all jocular and surface-level, but it’s also not trying to be anything more than old-fashioned blockbuster entertainment — neither overly serious nor, on occasion, allergic to a bit of sentimentality.

Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk is not just a document of a life and a hope extinguished. It is also the best way to hear from Hassouna. And it’s a film about crossing borders; we get to see just a little of what she saw.

Submerged in Grace’s overheated, claustrophobic, tedious, maddening reality, we are drowning, just like her. It is full-body immersion cinema.

Of course, you could argue that any documentary tells its story as much with what it omits as with what it includes. But by letting the news footage, speech clips and documents “speak,” the transformation of the rhetoric is undeniable, as are some of the causes. The tale is not flattering, but it is illuminating.

Ballad of a Small Player contains a great story, but it’s bogged down by its trappings. Perhaps it just got a little too greedy.

Lo’s construction of each person’s story grants them dignity and compassion. And their agreement at the end speaks volumes about what they saw in the film, too.

Really, though, the reason to watch Bugonia is its leads.