Ben Kenigsberg

If Starless Dreams inspires conflicted feelings in viewers, it may be by design. It’s hard not to want to flee, and it’s hard to look away.

Without denying that these women face discrimination in reaching their goal, the movie shows how its subjects are able to find ways to combine strict observance and progress.

School Life is a loving portrait, primarily, of the inspirational educator couple, who command the respect of their students and always seem to know what a particular child needs to hear.

Mostly, the documentary is a fond portrait of how one man nurtured his artistic temperament and risked being misunderstood — sometimes by his own family.

The documentary Company Town, by Natalie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian, feels fueled by pure desperation; even the rudimentary qualities of the filmmaking (cheap-looking camera work, poorly punctuated title cards) somehow add to its urgency, as if the movie needed to get its message out by any means necessary.

Arctic has the courage to avoid obvious payoffs.

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.

While Levinson is not working from his own history as in “Diner” or “Avalon,” The Survivor, partly because of its subject matter and postwar milieu, feels of a piece with those overtly personal films. Whatever its flaws, it’s powerful.

The film is perhaps overly repetitive in emphasizing Shula’s inability to escape exploitation, but the story is put across with formal confidence and real originality.

“Desperate Souls” convincingly argues that there’s no other time at which Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) could have become enduring movie characters, let alone have the tenderness between them depicted so subtly.

Kusama — Infinity, while conventionally structured, provides ample, illuminating access to an artist’s way of thinking and working.

"Seahorse” is the sort of documentary that gains its interest less from its technique than from its subject, and from the fact that the filmmaker was present at the right time. Articulate, reflective and unhesitant about getting personal, McConnell makes for a complicated character study.

Working with a shrewdly limited setting, Mouaness skillfully gives the film a near-real-time feel, conveying a sense that the war is approaching through small-scale details like radio broadcasts, Wissam’s observation that pigeons have flown unusually close to the school and the volume and frequency of aerial noise.

Salt in My Soul is extremely painful to watch, especially as it shows the roller coaster of Smith’s recurring hospitalizations. But it does paint a vivid portrait of who she was and what she believed.

The decision to focus on the series’s comic relief has resulted in the loosest and perhaps funniest film of the brand.

Peter Jackson has taken a mass of World War I archival clips from Britain’s Imperial War Museum and fashioned it into a brisk, absorbing and moving experience.

It’s less interested in rendering a verdict on the morality of abortion than it is in tracing the increasing politicization of the issue.

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 unwise remarks at a dinner can cast a pall over a longstanding relationship, then a great ending can redeem and even force reconsideration of an otherwise middling film.

Although the narrative contains echoes of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” — and perhaps “Casino,” in that much of it is structured as a flashback from an assassination attempt — “Gangs” lacks the poetry and character interest of those films.

The Tenth Man, a modest charmer from Argentina, breathes considerable life into the rather trite scenario of a man discovering his religious roots, in part because it seems genuinely curious about the community in which it’s set.

Both leads are excellent together, and the movie is good at showing how Anna and Ben push each other’s buttons.

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.

Oklahoma City suggests that conspiracy theories today have consequences for tomorrow — a message with terrifying implications in an age of fake news.

[A] dryly funny, enigmatic new work.

The film is limited by its central metaphor, but it is never less than absorbing or original.

A tad overdetermined in its studied, snowballing ambiguities, No Date, No Signature is dramatized with an acute sense of the role of class in Iranian society, and is unfussily well directed, creating visual parallels between the two men.

Slay the Dragon is not short on outrage, and just because some of this material is not new doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating.

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.

The exuberant staging and Ms. Balan’s sly performance are the show here.

The film is earnest, formulaic and sentimental. But, like Humpty, it has enough charm to wear down defenses.

The Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (“A Moment of Innocence,” “Kandahar”) is not known for his kineticism, but The President — which he has suggested is his comment on the Arab Spring — has surprising urgency and sweep.

The film isn’t perfect — Mr. Chon’s wild camera motions seem more undisciplined than electric — but it does find an angle on the riots that hasn’t been seen much onscreen.

Invention is committed to finding its own wavelength.

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.”

Even those resistant to easy nostalgia will find plenty to think about.

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.

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.

Narcissister’s background in stagecraft, movement and rhythm serves her well as a filmmaker: Far from a conventional autobiography, Narcissister Organ Player always offers something to catch your eye or ear.

While starchy in presentation, Exposing Muybridge makes clear that its subject’s images still have a lot to show us.

A contemplative tone, a zigzagging narrative, superb widescreen black-and-white cinematography and an infusion of dry humor make it feel genuinely fresh.

Director Kirby Dick (Derrida) shapes the movie in such a way as to leave everyone flummoxed.

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

So what does this long-gestating, obviously affectionate, obviously politically simpatico account of Nancy Pelosi’s career, including her rise to and tenures as the first female House speaker, have to offer? For a start, it provides an unusual opportunity to watch Pelosi negotiate legislation and rally votes.

It’s a brisk and energetic primer for those who don’t know his movies or are ready to watch them again. And it doubles as a history of the chanbara (sword fighting) genre, providing an opportunity to sample clips from seldom-seen or partially lost silent films.

Mr. Ostlund’s 2004 debut, begins as a free-floating portrait of mischief and compulsion — a cousin to Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” that comments obliquely on fascism and violence.

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.

This sentimental film takes things one step at a time.

Drawing on an amazing video stockpile from the 1980s and ’90s, Whirlybird is an editing feat.

The Image You Missed is less compelling as an act of personal therapy than it is as filmed film criticism, but even if it doesn’t fully cohere, Foreman’s family stake helps keep it original.

To a degree, Womack’s audacious career path has been shoehorned into a conventional profile format.

As goosed as the drama gets...the uplift feels earned, or at least tough to resist.

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.

This overlong (nearly four hours) but sporadically extraordinary portrait of a forgotten corner of society may be tough going even for fans of forbidding cinema.

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.

Lost in Paris grows a bit tiresome at feature length, but it’s a winning divertissement.

Swim Team mostly aims to educate and inspire; on those counts, it succeeds.

Gravel, in his appearances, comes across as avuncular, eager to share ideas but even more eager to encourage young acolytes.

The film carries a trace of the sweep of a great screen epic along with the straightforward, explanatory qualities of mass-audience TV, and is never less than absorbing.

While Marcus Hinchey’s screenplay is occasionally too blunt, Come Sunday accords sympathetic moments to all its characters — a strategy that gives this chronicle of religious convictions a conviction of its own.

If not revelatory, You Don’t Nomi is likely to persuade viewers that “Showgirls” is more than a “bare-butted bore,” as Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times 25 years ago.

A strong nonprofessional cast and a use of long takes enhance the sense of immersion in a truly organic production.

While The Most Dangerous Year can be intensely personal — Knowlton speaks of the pain she felt watching visitors to a strawberry festival sign the petition for the anti-transgender ballot measure — it is primarily an informational documentary, not a film with artistic pretensions. But it makes its case effectively.

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

Vessel becomes a film not just about abortion but also about activism. It raises provocative questions about the power of laws to police information in an increasingly globalized world.

The movie has a surfeit of the sudden reversals and interlocking loyalties that can make for an absorbing time killer.

The movie, directed by Charlie Minn, is unbearable to watch, yet its centering of first-person testimony — supplemented with floor plans of the building and phone footage from that day — makes the massacre immediate in a way that sometimes gets lost in news coverage or political debates.

An austere, demanding sit, Sin — a Russian-Italian coproduction with Italian dialogue — nevertheless has a stubborn integrity in exploring the competing forces of patronage and creative inspiration that Michelangelo confronted in the 16th century.

The contemporary in-jokes are kept to a minimum (O.K., Tigger says “let’s bounce”), and the movie as a whole feels pleasingly old-fashioned.

Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, directed by James Jones, does not extensively explore the history of its components. It’s less concerned with the tapes themselves than with the act of bearing witness.

It is a good primer, well illustrated.

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

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.

As a relationship movie, not just for the pair but those around them, Four Good Days is more complex than its outward trappings and preachier scenes — like an anguished Molly addressing a high school class — suggest.

It elevates voices who sounded early alarms about the virus and whose warnings were lost in a din of complacency, incompetence and political calculation. Not all of these interviewees or their messages have broken through to the public consciousness.

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.

Not all the misdirection is elegant, but the film’s tenderness flowers in a lovely, unexpected final shot.

At an hour and a half, the often-inspiring documentary Far From the Tree plays like a companion piece to or a preview for Andrew Solomon’s best-selling 2012 book, which, with notes, runs more than 1,000 pages.

Most of Kubrick’s 13 features have been analyzed exhaustively already, and Kubrick by Kubrick doesn’t offer much that will surprise even mild obsessives. Still, it is interesting to hear Kubrick express ideas that run counter to conventional wisdom.

I Am Everything is content to be a thorough, energetic, largely chronological appraisal, more interested in saluting a musical legend who shook things up than in shaking up conventions itself.

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.

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.

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.

American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel doesn’t break ground cinematically, but it is eye-opening in other ways.

Professionally comfortable with improvising, the D.J.s make for affable company, and it’s amusing to watch radio from behind the scenes. But a tinge of melancholy also hovers over the movie.

While honesty dictates that this movie, directed by Banmei Takahashi, be classified first and foremost as erotica, it is erotica that finds room for real sweetness and intellectual pretensions along with its kink.

Though it might seem generic in some respects, Rebuilding Paradise resonates with the moment.

“As We Speak” makes a powerful case for the necessity of being free to make art, and for public awareness that art rarely qualifies as legal evidence.

Whether In the Last Days of the City ultimately comes together as a feature is open to debate, but this is a film of beauty and skill.

While it lacks the richness of some of Ozu’s masterworks, “The Japanese Dog” steers clear of sentimentality — an impressive feat, given that the title somewhat preciously refers to a toy dog. The movie depicts a hopeful side of Romania, peeking through even Costache’s lonely world.

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.

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.

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

There is no mystery about who wins the movie’s final bout, but it is never less than thrilling to watch Yen’s fluttering limbs in action.

Although the film uses a conventional format, it makes an urgent argument: that a new wave of voter suppression has threatened the rights that Lewis labored to secure.

Bell is embodied, in a commanding and versatile performance, by Nicole Kidman, who supplies a gravitas and emotional complexity worthy of the woman she plays.

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

Like “Our House” (2018), Burns’s underseen feature debut, Come True is superior throwback horror marred mainly by familiarity and, in this case, an ending that feels like a tease.