Ben Kenigsberg

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.

Johannsson’s stark, uncompromising passion project is always striking to the eye even in moments when the narrative lulls.

If Happy Hour doesn’t quite deliver all it promises, that may only be because it promises quite a lot.

the connections drawn in Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation are sufficiently instructive that watching and listening to these writers is also, in a way, like hearing one author in stereo.

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.)

Judicious editing helps to maintain the illusion of two actors, though the quick-speaking Wasikowska, as the twins’ flighty, mercurial object of desire, in some ways has the subtlest task—and often steals scenes from her co-star(s).

Fading Gigolo is not an entirely coherent film. It is, for the right and wrong reasons, a distinctive and memorable one.

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.

Ultimately, American Promise seems split between a personal perspective and a broader one. It’s a bold experiment that’s also a textbook case of filmmakers being too close to their material.

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

The scowling Pitt proves no match for the Tony-winning Arianda, whose brassy, thick-accented positivity could probably cut down the gangsters as mercilessly as any gun. While the pair is robbing the mob, she’s stealing the movie.

The movie maintains a relentless grip all the same. Unlike the junior kingpins who bear witness to the film’s big blaze, audiences won’t watch in a passive state.

All of McKay’s movies improve on repeat viewings, as they become familiar and meme worthy. If Anchorman 2 seems hit-and-miss now, there’s a significant chance that it will get funnier over the long haul.

Rush, in other words, is a foursquare sportsmanship movie, offering little in the way of surprises but plenty of earnest, satisfying thrills.

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.

After establishing a jaunty tone with its candy-colored, Saul Bass–style opening credits, the film racks up a high strain-to-laugh ratio; there’s a sense Almodóvar can’t quite keep track of all his gags.

The Raid 2 takes a substantially different tack from that of its 2011 predecessor, adding a convoluted plot and only intermittently attending to the sort of acrobatic ass-kicking for which the original became a global smash.

Despite its modest proportions and chilling finale, Sal is foremost an affectionate tribute, conjuring ample warmth out of relatively little.

As history, The Butler’s parade of famous moments and figures is superficial to the point of trivialization, reducing years of turmoil to glib sound bites. But in its square, melodramatic way, the movie has a serious point to make.

The most counterintuitive enviro-doc of the year, Pandora’s Promise makes the case that nuclear power may be the closest thing Earth has to a sustainable, realistic supply of energy.

"Life Is Beautiful" may or may not have set a benchmark for tackiness in Holocaust cinema, but The Book Thief offers a hypothetical way in which the former might have been worse: At least it wasn’t narrated by Death.

The movie goes beyond alarmism with solutions that on the surface would seem to find common ground between environmental advocacy and unfettered capitalism.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" retread told from a postoccupation vantage point, this adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s YA romance novel unfolds in a dystopian future when alien parasites have nearly won the battle for Earth.

It’s not clear that the director quite found what he was looking for.

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

The Aristocrats is a veritable talent show itself, albeit one that feels inescapably slight. To rejigger another ancient joke: The food at this place isn't terrible. But the portions are really small.

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

Each narrative fissure further thwarts meaning. The most you can ask from a movie as nullifying as this one is that it offer wit and visual panache, which it does.

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

There are times when you wish Belkin wouldn’t cut away so quickly and would allow answers to tough questions (or Wallace’s own words) to play in full.

To its credit, The Opera House, directed by Susan Froemke, only sometimes plays like a fund-raising tool.

There are no real answers for anyone in The Last Mountain. If Terrill never finds a clear narrative or emotional through line for this account, it’s not entirely a surprise. The material resists attempts at uplift.

Mr. Nossiter’s main point is that traditional farming methods have become revolutionary in a country that, we’re told, has grown progressively less agrarian. Mr. Nossiter champions that activism in this mellow, unfocused film.

As enjoyable as their writing can be, the filmmaking around them — aerial shots, time lapse photography, cuts to the couple looking engrossed — is less inspired than their project.

This “Call of the Wild,” however defanged and updated, doesn’t lack for exciting canine brawls or tense rescues from frozen waters. It also doesn’t lack for an almost soothing corniness.

This proudly derivative genre exercise will not be to every taste (or stomach), but the director, Can Evrenol, shows a certain knack for tension and for framing viscera in wide screen, even if his cutting is sometimes too quick.

Spoor is sensationally atmospheric. . . . The structure, though, seems counterproductively, even confusingly, elliptical, and the timing of flashbacks muddles the point of view. This is a whodunit that plays tricks with the “who.”

The Maid’s Room has much to recommend, including the versatile Mr. Camp (“Tamara Drewe,” “Compliance”) in a Machiavellian role. But it doesn’t marshal its twists toward a convincing or satisfying conclusion.

When it’s showing its sensitive side, the film, scripted by David McKenna (“American History X”) and directed by Nick Sarkisov, unexpectedly shines.

The Second Mother goes soft toward the end, defusing its conflicts too easily and inconsequentially.

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.

The movie is primarily an act of bearing witness that does not ask to be judged on conventional filmmaking terms.

The movie, directed by Karey Kirkpatrick, has just enough wit and visual invention to get by. (The “Bad Santa” team of John Requa and Glenn Ficarra are among those credited with the story.) But for all the hints of darkness around its edges, the film is ultimately like its heroes: cuddly, cute and harmless.

This affectionate documentary is more of a bonbon for longtime fans than an entryway for a broader audience.

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.

The past-present parallelism is provocative, but it also seems faintly superficial — a way of eliding distinctions and streamlining history.

As absorbing as The Legend of Swee’ Pea is, it might have been even better if May had pulled back the curtain more on his off-camera interactions with his subject

Amid the overheated, sometimes amateurish histrionics — Mr. Nizzari shoots a lengthy father-son blowout in a single, theatrical take — Grand Slammed contains inklings of a serious point about immobility in America.

If the bigger picture of In the Earth doesn’t appear fully realized — this is a movie not just of the moment, but perhaps rushed to meet it — it would be difficult, this year, for at least some of its atmosphere of isolation-induced madness not to inspire a chill.

Story Ave is marred by late revelations that appear designed, in a studio-notes sort of way, to clarify motivations. What’s unspoken — and what’s seen — does enough.

This isn’t a groundbreaking documentary, but it does pay its subjects the ultimate courtesy, treating them as officials have not: as fully rounded human beings.

A family portrait that plunges into what will strike many viewers as T.M.I. territory, the documentary 306 Hollywood makes for morbid, at times insufferable viewing. But its solipsism is part of its message.

The pace is too rapid for any nonexpert to absorb or glean the significance of all the details, which Périot generally leaves unexplained. But this documentary is fitfully thought-provoking, and particularly good at illustrating political fault lines of the time.

As these things go, Mortal Engines offers a fair amount of fun.

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.

Like democracy itself, the movie assumes such a broad mandate and has such noble intentions that indicating its shortcomings seems almost beside the point.

Trying to get a read on the film — while admiring its palette and off-kilter character details (Lubicchi has an odd vampire overbite) — keeps “Poupelle” fun for a while. But the film ultimately shies away from its most disturbing ideas, falling back on a comforting sentimentality.

Though filled with valuable details, the documentary has the misfortune of arriving after countless other appraisals.

While the recordings are wall-to-wall, this somewhat busy documentary rarely accords time for simply listening.

As filmmaking, The Conductor takes a fairly standard approach. The most engaging portions involve music-making itself.

Spiral is best in smaller-bore moments, showing how everyday lives are affected by prejudice.

The chemistry makes the movie’s pleasures easy to surrender to, albeit fleetingly.

For all its visual and sonic pleasures — see it in a theater with a good subwoofer — All These Sleepless Nights feels simple-minded in its commitment to drift above all else.

The individual stories have moments of power, but 16 Bars feels abbreviated. It only sometimes transcends its role as an awareness tool and reveals the texture and detail that long-term documentary filming can produce.

The Paris Opera feels at once sprawling and insufficiently patient.

While Derham banks on the surprise factor of seeing taxidermists acting as stealth conservationists, the film leaves the impression that she could have scalpel-dug into deeper layers.

If the self-consciousness can be charming, it also prevents The American Side from becoming fully its own film.

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.

Free Chol Soo Lee is somewhat dry and, as criminal-justice documentaries go, sadly familiar when it strays from Lee’s unique and grim perspective, which includes details of his struggles with prison life and depression.

The sheer derangement of its plot and a bizarre casting gambit make it more interesting than standard straight-to-streaming schlock.

The film is sharp at illustrating how Sara is never totally safe, and how survival requires improvising again and again.

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.

Only a mountain couldn’t be moved by True Mothers — but like Asato’s parentage, the sources of that effect are complex. From one angle, True Mothers is sensitive and layered. From another, the tricks it plays with perspective constitute an all-too-calculated ploy for tears.

The Cage Fighter is not riveting from moment to moment, but Mr. Unay allows the movie’s themes to click into place beautifully toward the end.

At a time when the current president routinely dismisses the accuracy of reporting, Shock and Awe feels more timely than it might have. It also captures an aspect of journalism not often portrayed: the fear of being wrong when the conclusions of your reporting break from those of your competitors.

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.

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.

"Southwest of Salem” proceeds with what have become sobering tropes for true-crime documentaries: a defendant saying she didn’t realize she needed a lawyer; outsiders explaining how they grew convinced of a miscarriage of justice.

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.

The director, Wes Ball, knows how to move his camera around a futuristic medical compound, and the filmmaking brio — especially the sights of Earth’s last city, shot in Cape Town — mitigates the eye rolls prompted by the plot.

If this documentary celebrates a crackpot, Mr. Friedkin is his match. The director’s blabbermouth tendencies and wry manner make him an enjoyable M.C.

While the animation gives the documentary some distinction, the narrative can’t entirely shake the sense that this momentous but brief episode is scaled more for a short than a feature.

Depending on your POV, it's either the ne plus ultra of Hollywood calculation or a comedy simply intent on pushing its crassness to the point of surrealism.

The subject matter makes The Tainted Veil much more visually interesting than many issue-oriented documentaries, though the thriller-like score goes too far in trying to counter dryness.

These fond recollections of derring-do hail from a different era, and the movie’s one-sided view of history is bound to start arguments. The film is best appreciated as a straightforward testimonial: old war buddies’ hurrah against anti-Semitism.

In Uncle Frank, the writer-director Alan Ball (“True Blood”) combines several overworked genres — the coming-of-age picture, the road-trip odyssey, the angst-filled family-reunion movie — and mostly steers clear of the obvious pitfalls.

The film is generous with action and twists, even if some don’t track. For January, a month Hollywood reserves for dogs, this is an admirably weird movie.

Pleasant even without reaching much of a destination, Transamerica leaves the basic impression that it's not as self-satisfied as it could have been.

The landscape and painstakingly trained wolves are the true stars.

From a dramatic standpoint, the movie can be unconvincing... From a formal standpoint, though, the movie impresses, maintaining a sense of anxiety through tight shots and a sound design that favors overlapping voices and constant clatter.

Mostly The One and Only Ivan consists of fairly standard Disney lessons, about the hardships of losing parents (real and surrogate) and how difficult it is to embrace change.

In its first half-hour, the documentary The Jump brings a bracing immediacy to a 50-year-old Cold War incident.

If this installment lays on the moral (all families are freaky in their own ways) a bit thick, it has just enough wit and weirdness to honor its source material.

The thesis of On the President’s Orders isn’t terribly original, but in a needlessly roundabout way, it makes its case that these killings are not the work of isolated individuals, but the product of a top-down culture that stems from Duterte's assent.

The film is a brightly rendered, sentimental ode to adolescence that hits all the right emotional buttons, even as it risks being forgotten itself.

Whether it’s the scene-setting blast of Donovan (“Zodiac”), the low-height Steadicam work (“The Shining”), the red-suffused hallways (David Lynch) or “Night of the Living Dead” playing at a drive-in, the movie takes from the best.