Ben Kenigsberg

Looking for rational behavior, especially in a crucial flashback, is pointless. To the extent that Two Pianos coheres, it is in a way that might be described as musical.

Li, carrying a camera she has inherited, appears to search for inspiration in her surroundings, too. Whatever elusive quality she is seeking, Miyake has found something like it. His film gently balances tidiness and looseness, connection and alienation and artifice and the natural world.

Saleh’s tangled plotting has more verve than his pacing or visual sense. But the movie’s portrait of collaboration can’t help but induce a shudder.

The re-enactment approach may not be as novel as it once was, but it’s still a heady, creative way to excavate layers of buried history in a location that has more than its share.

The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson is the latest product off the crime documentary assembly line to raise the question of why it exists and what it ever hoped to achieve.

A case in which a production designer and prosthetics team showed up for work but the screenwriters might as well have crowdsourced their ideas from fanboys.

The dynamics are rarely simply drawn, and if the film’s default mode is miniseries-expository, there are a few striking stylistic flourishes.

It’s invigorating to watch these interactions, even if similar filmmaking methods have been used before.

He can’t be irreverent about his impending death forever, but it’s oddly uplifting to see him so committed to trying — while encouraging every viewer to get a colonoscopy.

Like lovingly warmed leftovers, it has its satisfactions: a charismatic cast, evocative Los Angeles location work, the sort of granular details on diamond couriering and insurance valuation that might give impressionable viewers ideas.

It’s a striking, mature debut.

Directed by Brad Anderson, Worldbreaker is committed above all to shortchanging its themes, along with excitement and visual interest, a showy Steadicam shot notwithstanding.

Give Bhala Lough credit: His film simultaneously illustrates the deficiencies of generative A.I. and the dangers of investing in it emotionally, while remaining annoying and self-amused in a distinctly human way.

When Dead Man’s Wire ends with footage of the real Kiritsis and Hall, it is hard not to conclude that a much crazier, livelier film could have been made.

The third segment, “Sister Brother,” is so lovely it prompts reconsideration of the first two.

As wrenching as The Voice of Hind Rajab is, there is something uneasy-making about turning a child’s harrowing cries for help into a pretext for metacinematic flourishes. Hind’s story does not need that kind of intellectualized gimmickry, in which recordings of authentic terror serve as proof of the staging’s verisimilitude.

We don’t need to hear about Herbert’s party years after his first marriage faltered. But he still had a cool idea, and his explanations of printing technology and color chemistry are almost enough to carry the film.

The movie favors an unflashy presentation that allows its themes to emerge organically. But the interlocking structure, which owes more to the early work of Alejandro González Iñárritu than “Rashomon,” undermines sustained tension, and the dramatic architecture is slightly wobbly.

This crowd-pleasing documentary, directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss (“Boys State” and “Girls State”), caters to multiple niches of moviegoer who enjoy rooting for the underdog. Even archivally minded cinephiles — the kind who get nostalgia pangs from watching long-shelved VHS tapes played anew — will find an itch scratched.

Question the film and you’re a chump, it implies. But anyone who sits through its nearly two hours of unprovable claims is a chump of a different sort.

Debts to Luis Buñuel and David Lynch are obvious, but The Things You Kill has its own way of getting inside its protagonist’s head space — and yours.

Some of what Mandelup captures is the result of sharp observation, and some of it is incredible chance.

Evidently, as this muddled movie tells it, the climactic lesson of the Nuremberg trials was that America had a friend, too.

The film leaves the impression that, sadly, comedy may be one of the only paths to peace left in the region.

At least two ideas running through “Nothing Is Lost,” which is streaming on Apple TV, and which takes its title from a line in a play that Anne wrote, give it a complexity that usually eludes profile-of-an-artist documentaries.

A movie that’s a little too eager to be liked. But it’s also tough to resist.

There is no single takeaway from Olsson’s film, which — apart from the musical score’s intermittent mood-setting — presents the footage straightforwardly, inviting viewers to reflect on what is in and out of frame. It’s great TV and an excellent documentary.

Part of the accomplishment of Feinartz’s film, which at times comes across as too deferential, is that it fitfully succeeds in cracking his shell.

It would be easy to dismiss the movie’s perspective as limited and jingoistic, but “The Road Between Us” never pretends to offer more than an in-the-moment chronicle of a violent clash. The bigger problem is that its slickness cheapens the most harrowing recollections.

It’s an open question as to whom the film insults the most: the principals (Marion gullibly believes that Abel does his own stunts; Abel is so spoiled he can’t perform basic household tasks); the public (depicted as clamoring for brainless celebrity gossip); or you, the viewer, from whom so little has been demanded.

As David Osit’s probing, troubling documentary Predators demonstrates, the sociological implications of the show were (and are) anything but simple, beginning with what the series’ popularity suggests about the viewers who watched it.

The Baltimorons aims for bittersweet rather than wacky. Didi is lonely; Cliff struggles with sobriety. And while the film has clear affection for its Baltimore locations (it’s dedicated to the workers killed when the Key Bridge collapsed in 2024), considerably less thought has gone into creating convincing situations for those backdrops.

Always intriguing, Stranger Eyes proves stronger on concept than coherence. Perhaps the loose ends are Yeo’s way of suggesting that a film director, too, lacks omniscience.

Covino and Marvin continue to forge a distinct comic sensibility — and, what’s rarer these days, they know how to make the camera work for the humor. Their knack for sight gags and staging in depth would shame the makers of the recent “Naked

Compared with “Eddington,” this summer’s other tongue-in-cheek neo-western, the movie, ostensibly set in South Dakota, is less aggressive in its efforts to appear topical; it may not even have much on its mind beyond clever plot construction. But watching its pieces snap into place is more fun.

A children’s film that fares better with its nimble special effects than its clunky dramatics.

This isn’t so much a film about geopolitics or even history as it is about two lovers torn between passion and obligation.

Life After doesn’t equivocate; neither does it offer easy answers. It tackles a thorny topic in a challenging way, with the tenderness, complexity and — notwithstanding Davenport’s earlier wish — the personal perspective it deserves.

The philosophical window dressing — would you rather your loved one live a better life if it meant living without you? — doesn’t play to Vigalondo’s strengths.

The observations range from the incisive to the grandiose, and at nearly three hours, Videoheaven could stand a tighter edit.

By turns heartfelt and, especially in the ghost tête-à-têtes, irksome, the movie is helped substantially by its cast, especially Cranston, who brings a welcome sincerity to a quixotic, potentially cloying character.

Panh powerfully interweaves real footage of starvation and mass death — sometimes projecting it behind the characters or matching it to Paul’s eyeline. He also brings back the main conceit of “The Missing Picture,” which used clay figurines to depict certain events.

Because Slumlord Millionaire has assembled a dynamic and engaging group of activists, it seems churlish to complain that it hasn’t found a way to make the material cinematic.

This fans-only documentary gets bogged down with dull asides.

Some deviations are inevitable, but the expository dialogue — and the convention of having Russian characters speak English, with British accents — are distractions. Even so, Politkovskaya’s bravery, and Peake’s commitment to honoring it, is enough.

Invention is committed to finding its own wavelength.

The events, and the mind games, appear to have been goosed for dramatic interest. . . But it is still fun to watch Michael and CBS compete for the upper hand.

The film’s unusual backdrop, unresolved subplots and dream-sequence fakeouts are ultimately all distractions from a story that doesn’t make much sense.

Magazine Dreams bludgeons viewers to show off its sensitivity.

Whoever Opus is supposed to be sending up, its aim is a bit wide of the mark. But even if the movie’s only real goal is to frighten, it bets far too much on its eventual twists.

In short, Seven Veils offers plenty to think about. But fans who mourn that Egoyan’s dramatic instincts have slipped in recent years won’t quite be getting a return to form.

The storytelling economy (small cast, one main location) is welcome, but none of the four characters is the sharpest tool in the shed, and whatever insights Hodierne intends on the cutthroat world of crypto remain elusive.

The theft that inspired the movie has been called one of the biggest in Denmark’s history. It deserved a sleeker film.

In its form, Notes on Displacement mirrors the terrifying, dangerous journey it chronicles.

At 83 minutes, Love Hurts falls somewhere between making a virtue of brevity and wheezing its way to the finish line.

In this screen adaptation, written and directed by Peter Hastings, jokes fly with the bouncy randomness of Dog Man’s favorite tennis ball, and there are so many that a fair number of them would land even if they weren’t pretty good.

In the closing scene, Saada, relying on a fierce bit of acting by Fabian, finds a way to pose the question directly to the audience of what Rose’s life should look like. The answer is clear.

Back in Action has a better cast than its (often mawkish) writing earns. Mostly, the familiarity takes its toll.

The much-in-vogue hybrid mode proves more cryptic than edifying this time around.

This too-chummy documentary, promoted on Johnson’s website, offers the more familiar reverse sensation of having 90 minutes of your life taken from you. By the time it’s over, you will be older, a progression that if anything the movie feels like it hastens.

Vermiglio is so devoted to evoking a time and place that much of its subtlety does not become apparent until a second viewing. It is a rich, enveloping film that asks viewers to approach it as if tiptoeing through the snow.

Less a self-contained movie than a pilot for a show that already exists. The quality of the acting can only improve.

Beyond the videos, the movie takes a thorough, methodical approach to laying out the case against Netanyahu, even if few of its arguments are new.

The movie is more effective as a grim, involving cop thriller than it is as an ostensible statement on the Order’s reverberations in the present.

Watching the band in the Plaza Hotel and fans in the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols, you can’t help but get swept up in a 60-year-old fervor.

It isn’t fair to say that “Spellbound” lacks musical or visual invention. Zegler can belt out a song, and the evil storm that transmogrified the royals is pleasingly lo-fi. (It looks like a scribble-scrabble twister.) But the magic feels distinctly, almost insultingly poached.

This is his third overall feature with Huppert, who adds drollery and an air of mystery. And there is just enough intrigue this time — one motif involves the difficulty of translating a work by Yoon Dong-ju, a Korean poet who died in 1945 after being imprisoned in Japan — to suggest hidden depths.

The documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes is an official portrait that nevertheless offers some insights into how one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and irreplaceable star personas evolved.

"Miller’s Point” is a Christmas movie more invested in atmosphere, and the qualities of wintry light, than in holiday cheer — and that somehow makes it all the more warm.

The director hasn’t found a rhythm or pace to lend momentum to this exploration of disparate material.

Your Monster, while falling short of the Critic’s Pick status that Jacob vociferously covets for his show, has its charms, namely the backstage intrigue, onstage songs by the Lazours (of the current Off Broadway musical “We Live in Cairo”), and a disarming lead in Barrera.

Union is as interested in intra-union disputes as it is in the fight writ large. But the external obstacles are clear as well.

If Separated is likely too straightforward — too much of a conventional issue documentary — to be remembered as one of Morris’s richest films, it is not as if the director has abandoned his sense of profound absurdity.

While Jetter and Wickham’s political fight is not resolved as of the end of the movie, the thread in which Jetter works to raise money for the new van she needs to commute affordably to her job has a crowd-pleasing finish.

To the extent the film has appeal, it is of the tabloid variety.

Lacorazza’s deftness with actors, feel for the setting and aesthetic decisions — shooting in the snapshot-like 1.66-to-1 aspect ratio, or leaving the characters’ Spanish without subtitles — help the drama ring true.

Visually, The Critic is polished enough, despite some splashes of apparent digital lacquer. But Marber hasn’t supplied an incontrovertible motive to bind Nina to Jimmy. And there is something arguably troubling about the way McKellen’s character has been conceived.

The look is drab, the action is barely coherent.

As a drama, Mountains, whose characters move fluidly between English and Haitian Creole, is too low-key to leave much of an impression. But as a portrait of intergenerational tensions in an immigrant family, it is poignant, and it captures an area of Miami that is rarely seen onscreen.

The gimmick is that The Union, in addition to being an action film, is also a sort of comedy of remarriage for Roxanne and Mike, except that the screenwriters, Joe Barton and David Guggenheim, haven’t brought much in the way of levity to the relationship. Nor have they applied much ingenuity to the big set pieces.

The movie, written by Neil Forsyth, was surely intended as a tribute, but it plays more like an effort to reduce Beckett to easily comprehensible terms — the sort of terms he most likely would have resisted.

A lovely ending makes up for the filmmakers’ giving this triangle one blunt side.

The filmmaker has a gift for disorientation — a chilling cut connects a scene of a pregnancy ultrasound to Ma Zhe flipping through slides of murder evidence — that partly compensates for the muddiness of the plot.

The frustration of Hollywoodgate is that it could only ever feel incomplete.

The real star of this Kiwi western is the setting. The lush forests and stark, black sand beaches, shot in locations near those used in “The Piano,” help make The Convert more than a message movie.

Hummingbirds is pretty tight filmmaking at less than 80 minutes, and the laid-back presentation makes the political commentary register strongly from the periphery.

Whatever complexities might come across in the book don’t register in a film that has been fashioned, sometimes uneasily, into a sentimental father-daughter road movie.

Plausibility complaints always feel cheap, but Longing strains credulity well past the breaking point.

Mortensen’s ambitions may be old-fashioned, but they’re grand ambitions, and he has realized them in a handsome passion project.

Korine achieves what he set out to do, which is locate a strange liminal zone between avant-garde filmmaking and searing viewers’ faces with a frying pan.

Pallenberg is finally in focus. But the picture is tough to look at.

This sluggish, self-serious job-gone-wrong movie could itself stand to be jolted to life.

You might devour less after watching Food, Inc. 2, and what you eat will probably be healthier.

What Scoop offers is the modest pleasure — to which any journalist is susceptible — of rooting for a reporting team to get a story.

The Truth vs. Alex Jones offers a lesson in just how vicious and pervasive conspiracy theories can become and a chilling portrait of how little they may trouble their purveyors.

"You Can Call Me Bill" is fundamentally a case of an actor presenting himself as he wants to be seen.

Gets points for originality but quickly succumbs to terminal self-amusement.

In trying to capture this almost stoic modesty, the film, directed by James Hawes, falls into a dramaturgical trap.