Ben Kenigsberg

Is “What Lies Upstream” persuasive in all respects? No. Will it make you think twice about what’s gone unnoticed in your tap water? Absolutely.

The Wife pulls off the not inconsiderable feat of spinning a fundamentally literary premise into an intelligent screen drama that unfolds with real juice and suspense.

Despite its surface-level placidity, the Israeli feature Working Woman unfolds like a psychological thriller — a procedural that, as it tightens its grip, captures how workplace sexual harassment slowly takes over one woman’s life.

It’s Jackman, whose smile appears increasingly wolfish as the film goes on (and as Frank’s face grows taut with cosmetic surgery), who ultimately owns Bad Education. It’s a plum part, sure, but also a deeply unsympathetic one — a chance for the actor to channel his charisma toward dark, mischievous ends.

While Sami Blood can sometimes seem didactic, Ms. Kernell, who has Sami heritage, richly conveys a sense of the time and place, with elegant shots that glide through the Nordic wilderness.

Both halves feature breathtaking camera work.

Like its narrative, this gripping film rarely veers in the expected directions — and is never easy to pin down.

An energetic, ingratiating dramatization of the GameStop stock craze of 2021.

Hotel by the River is — surprisingly, from the standpoint of a skeptic — one of Hong’s most unexpectedly poignant works, self-reflexive in a way that feels searching rather than rote.

At its best, the movie is a vertiginous, head-slapping examination of the tangible, unpredictable consequences of making art.

The result is simultaneously elusive and concrete: abstract cinema that packs a punch.

[A] brisk, prismatic and richly psychodramatic family portrait.

While it’s heartbreaking that the movie never got made (son Brontis Jodorowsky, who would have played Paul Atreides, is particularly poignant imagining his alternate life as a superstar), Jodorowsky’s Dune posits that the raw materials nevertheless left an enduring mark on cinematic sci-fi, providing the basis for famous aspects of "Alien," "Star Wars," and "Contact."

Mostly, the movie, directed by Zeljko Mirkovic, consists of a barely organized series of interviews with notable Serbs and Serbian-Americans, and name-checks of others.

A swift primer that favors breadth over depth, the movie saves some hopeful notes for the end.

Schimberg’s film is odd, darkly funny and — when it means to be — a little frightening.

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.

Die-hard Elvis fans will no doubt call some of the characterization in Priscilla slander, but part of the achievement here is that Elvis is not simply a monster. Fame has merely given him the superpower of not having to pay attention to anyone else.

In a sense, it’s less a documentary for posterity than an urgent broadcast. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth hearing.

Through interviews with Israeli politicians, and Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, West of the Jordan River gives voice to peace-seeking residents on both sides of the conflict.

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.

While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.

As a chronicle of how San Francisco has changed over the years — and as a salute to the city’s role as a back lot for masters like Erich von Stroheim and Howard Hawks — The Green Fog is a wonder of excavation and urban history. What it says about Hitchcock is more ambiguous.

It uses animation to depict a conflict in fresh dimensions.

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

Hello Dankness belongs to a venerable underground-film tradition of treating refracted entertainment as a mirror for society. No fan of Ken Jacobs’s “Star Spangled to Death,” Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” or Joe Dante’s “The Movie Orgy” could help but smile.

Unlikely as it may seem, though, Blue Jasmine finds Allen charting bona fide new territory.

Dr. Lewis is an engaging interview subject whose clarity and upbeat demeanor contrast strikingly with the macabre material. Her writings are read as voice-overs by Laura Dern. Dr. Lewis has also kept an excellent archive.

Short of walking with Green, a film is an ideal way to share in his knowledge. And after watching The World Before Your Feet, it’s difficult to look at the city the same way.

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.

As a documentary, One of Us is a small act of portraiture, but each portrait captures the pain of having a life upended.

On limited terms — capturing the physicality of mountain climbing within the ethereal medium of animation — The Summit of the Gods is distinctive.

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

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.

It is exhausting and exhilarating, cheap looking and slick, a documentary for Maradona fans but also for many others besides.

Adapting research that is, by now, hardly breaking news, Forbes has some solid strategies for making the material cinematic.

The creative process is notoriously difficult to capture on camera, but by the end of this documentary, you will feel as if you not only understand Mr. Sakamoto intellectually, but also share a sense of the excitement he feels when discovering just the right match of sounds.

Whatever charms the filmmakers envisioned are nowhere apparent in these 83 cringe-worthy minutes.

The movie operates on two basic levels. One is philosophical, as the camera watches two men who are themselves looking through viewfinders experience the sensations of a place where humans rarely disrupt the natural order.

If some of the plot seems familiar, the intelligence with which Mr. Clarke dissects the flaws of Britain’s “borstal” system is not. [15 Jun 2017]

The back-and-forths of the character’s decisions feel real, and Mr. Dickinson’s laconic blankness (you would never guess the actor was British) helps to give the character’s existential crisis a charge. Ms. Hittman is also assured enough to know it can’t be easily resolved.

The Case Against 8 functions as a valuable record of the nuts-and-bolts conference room side of advocacy — an aspect of civil rights work not often seen on screen.

Those Who Remained leaves much unsaid about their pasts, sometimes at the risk of seeming coy (the word “Jewish” is never spoken). But Hajduk and Szoke are strong performers.

The Human Factor presents a cogent and involving view of the Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, mainly from 1991 until the end of Bill Clinton’s first term, told through the recollections of United States negotiators charged with brokering a peace.

The most charged implication of Hitler’s Hollywood is that artistry enabled the Third Reich.

Close observation can illuminate contradictions, and Lombroso, semi-edifyingly, catches his subjects in moments of opportunism or hypocrisy, even if those aren’t much of a trade for spending 90 minutes in this company.

This is a Christmas movie in which magic exists largely on the periphery, and that is just the right mix of chilly and sweet.

Powerful material doesn’t automatically yield a timeless or artistic documentary, and for better or worse, Trapped is an op-ed aimed squarely at the present moment in an enduring national conversation.

This history has surely been well-covered elsewhere, but The League recounts it movingly.

Despite flashes of droll humor, the film builds up an undercurrent of suspense, with the prospect of violence always near. Kolirin (the movie version of “The Band’s Visit”) orchestrates the proceedings with confidence and significant subtlety, never letting political diagnoses overwhelm character.

The idea that a charlatan might offer more solace than a real priest is a trite concept, but it’s one that Corpus Christi portrays with conviction. The movie rests on the shoulders of Bielenia — or rather, in his eyes, which photograph as a chilling gray.

Cousins’s assessments offer plenty to argue with, but it’s possible to enjoy “A New Generation” without agreeing that “Booksmart” “extends the world of film comedy,” as he claims, or that a shot in “It Follows” merits comparison to the camerawork in Michael Snow’s landmark experimental film “La Région Centrale.”

Ms. Maurery has great fun with the character, a tricky part because Maria nearly always maintains a kindhearted veneer, even at her most venal.

The main interest lies with Ferencz himself, who comes across as thoughtful, principled and engaging in a film that, in keeping with his demeanor, is a modest profile rather than a sprawling portrait.

If, at barely more than an hour, the movie initially seems slight, its inconsequentiality might be better viewed as polemical.

The film is both a generous primer on the band, which grew out of the punk movement in Leeds, England, in 1977, and a celebration of its longevity.

Potently, Incitement depicts Amir as just one member of a self-reinforcing fringe.

Muckraking documentaries often conclude with declined-to-comment disclaimers, but David Keene, a former N.R.A. president, is here. Toward the end, he chillingly cautions anyone who thinks the N.R.A. might disappear.

At the time of a fervent national debate on race and justice, part of what is impressive about 3 ½ Minutes is the cool temperature at which it is often served.

Provocative as the film is, it doesn’t fully reconcile Tsemel’s contradictions, if such a thing were even possible or desirable.

Although the odds of implementing all these ideas might seem steep, “2040” is a rare climate documentary with an optimistic message.

The plot twists are so spot on that a screenwriter might have rejected them.

While “The Apollo” itself might have taken a more inventive approach, it derives its power from the artistry it captures.

Haguel builds this brief but densely structured film in an interestingly modular, rhythmic way, thanks to a percussive score by Zoe Polanski and occasional, abrupt cuts to black following key scenes.

Because time erases or alters Mr. Goldsworthy’s sculptures, movies are the ideal medium to capture them.... The surprise of Leaning Into the Wind is that it’s just as concerned with how time has changed Mr. Goldsworthy.

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

Alayan’s light directorial touch can make the storytelling seem overly straightforward. But his tight control over the proceedings becomes clear in a closing shot that elegantly encapsulates the film’s complexities.

As a polemic, Dirty Wars is provocative and productively depressing, raising doubts about the effectiveness of military missions that have the potential to create ideological enemies, as well as the degree to which elected officials can—or are willing to—place checks on secret ops. (Obama gets no more points than Bush in any of the matters discussed.)

A high school send-up more gleefully incorrect than "Heathers" and considerably less articulate than "Election," Pretty Persuasion is a hand grenade lobbed at no place in particular.

The ideological charge leveled for decades at this strain of filmmaking is that such eye-catching tableaus romanticize poverty, but prettified squalor has become sadly familiar in global documentary filmmaking. In Machines, even at barely more than an hour, the style leads to diminishing returns.

Life’s a Breeze is ultimately about as cutting and memorable as its title.

A natural ham, Grammer only amplifies what is grandiose and bogus in this material.

Berger has more tools at his disposal than Milestone did with the challenges of the early sound era, yet those advantages somehow make this update less impressive: The magnification in scale and dexterity lends itself to showing off. Still, the movie aims to pummel you with ceaseless brutality, and it’s hard not to be rattled by that.

Ambitious, heady and distinctive, if easier to admire in theory than engage with moment to moment, A Cop Movie has a conceptual strangeness that’s difficult to overstate.

The Lunchbox ultimately registers as a too-hesitant portrayal of hesitancy, and its pleasures are largely incidental.

Although the film has long, engaging stretches, there is something slightly unsatisfying about the whole.

The vividness of the realization — with a sound design that emphasizes every chew and tick of the clock — makes the movie continually engrossing.

This collaboration between Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami — who wrote, directed and star together — exhibits their fairly irresistible comic chemistry, even if the conceit of the movie wears a bit thin.

The Meaning of Hitler takes a multifaceted, often counterintuitive approach to examining the underpinnings of fascism.

Wry and illuminating.

If Red Penguins doesn’t always strike a satisfying balance between the glib and the grim, the broader topic — the commercialization of hockey — affords it a novel lens on Russia’s economic transition.

The adventure plot in the Brazilian feature Tito and the Birds, directed by Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar, and André Catoto, is no great shakes — it wouldn’t be out of place on a Saturday-morning cartoon — but visually, the movie leaves room for the viewer to synthesize, and to dream.

Squaring the Circle is slick and enjoyable enough, but it is also, like the company it chronicles, something of a boutique item, and the reminiscences grow faintly monotonous after a while.

This is all fascinating for art-history buffs, and while a documentary is the ideal vehicle for illustrating Jenison’s process, Tim’s Vermeer plays more like an extended PBS special than it does a movie.

The harms conversion therapy causes, and the tactics it uses, aren’t news at this point, and Pray Away is more interesting when it focuses on how most of its subjects eventually embraced gay and bisexual identities despite having formerly been so public in their homophobia. Some shifts weren’t long ago.

Riegel has said that Ruth’s story was inspired by her own challenges leaving the area. Even the medium — Super 16-millimeter film, in the era of digital — adds to the ambience of rusting, abandoned machinery.

Cold Case Hammarskjold is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on. Even a full acceptance of its assertions doesn’t do much to illuminate Hammarskjold’s death.

While some of the backstage material has an official feel (Batiste and Jaouad are listed among the many executive producers, along with Barack and Michelle Obama), the documentary does not shy from showing private moments.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is at its best when it functions as a kind of roughed-up caper movie; it has a degree of suspense and efficiency that are becoming all too rare in the mainstream.

Basically, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? amounts to two men having a mellow discussion about the nature of ideas; it’s formally limited, yet wide-ranging in its material and ambitions. Call it a case of cognitive dissonance.

While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.

Watching Path of Blood is frequently a queasy experience, and given the bewildering array of names and complications, not always an illuminating one. But it commands attention as an object lesson in the banality of evil.

It is possible to admire Mr. Kalman and Ms. Horn’s ambition and at the same time have no idea what they were trying to achieve.

Not all the material is equally striking, but the film has an original and at times disarming approach to bearing witness.

There is much to admire here, but the sheer scope of the subject matter might be even better served by the capaciousness of a mini-series.

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.

The real achievement here is in going beyond the buzzwords of newscasts and talking points to convey a sense of what’s happening on the ground — and to give it a sense of urgency.