Ben Kenigsberg

The diffuse filmmaking style muffles the story’s power.

There’s little in “Underrated” that comes across as spontaneous. That may be because Nicks didn’t discover much that feels fresh. Or it may be that the project, like Curry today, doesn’t have anything to prove.

Because one of this Netflix documentary’s producers is Avant’s daughter, Nicole A. Avant, and both she and her husband, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s head of content, appear as talking heads, this overlong love-in sometimes plays like an illustrated conflict of interest. But the anecdotes are gold.

The relentless contrast of banality with horror seems to be Wheatley’s signature move, and like his "Kill List" (2011), Sightseers can claim a sizable fan base, especially in its native U.K. But the humor here, ironically, doesn’t travel well.

Half of a Yellow Sun, adapted from the 2006 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, emerges on screen as a well-acted, finely wrought epic that nevertheless struggles to balance the requirements of melodrama with its drive to capture a historical moment.

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.

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

Mr. Collins doesn’t shed light on what makes his subject tick, and the arty shards never cohere.

The movie unfolds impressionistically. To call it a portrait of collective resilience is accurate, but that description shortchanges its richness on both human and historical scales.

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.

It is likely to leave viewers shaken, and it is always comprehensible, even in sequences that illustrate what the pilots saw in the cockpit.

Those looking to learn the basic outlines of the life of the singer Chavela Vargas could do worse than watch Chavela, but this plodding documentary from Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi rarely transcends simple biography

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

While it’s heartening in one sense to see this youthful, offbeat take on two men’s determination to stay eternally fresh, there’s something about the ease with which the characters reorder their lives that makes Land Ho! seem both a little slight and a little precious.

If, like its characters, Thank You for Your Service sometimes struggles to balance staying strong with wearing its heart on its sleeve, it makes an emotional plea in a direct, effective way.

Just because Nobody Speak has a timely message doesn’t make it an ideal messenger.

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.

In a summer movie landscape with Spider-Man, a simian army waging further battle for the planet and Charlize Theron as a sexy Cold War-era superspy, it says something that one of the most compelling characters is Al Gore.

A road movie of sorts, it steers clear of melodrama or sentimentality, but it also never risks hitting anything.

What’s missing from the movie, for all its technical skill, is simply inspiration — that extra touch of wit or imagination that might elevate it from a pleasant diversion to a rare sighting.

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.

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.

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.

Framed by scenes of weeping, the narrative does not entirely pull itself into a satisfying arc, but the film nevertheless unfolds with dexterity and suspense.

Often has the feel of a film-school exercise in which the object is to wring maximum suspense from rudimentary tools.

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).

This is a love story for the time, not for the ages.

The combination of “Streetwise” and “Tiny” belongs on a short list with “Boyhood,” the “Up” documentaries and “Hoop Dreams” as exemplars of time-capsule filmmaking.

The film largely lacks the urgency its subject demands. It’s an extended news segment in the form of a feature film.

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.

The surfeit of subplots muddles the message.

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 Divine Order effectively illustrates how peer pressure can influence the political process. Collective silence, whether it’s from women unwilling to publicly press for their rights or men afraid to voice agreement with their wives for fear of looking weak around co-workers, proves more of an obstacle than any opponent. That message gives Ms. Volpe’s lark a timely edge.

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

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 movie pulls the rug out from under the audience several times, but in the end there is not much underneath.

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.

Even if this minor coda plays to an increasingly closed circle of admirers, it gives the trilogy a pleasing, moving symmetry.

In the case of The China Hustle, a documentary may simply be the wrong delivery mechanism for a byzantine exposé that cries out for detailed news reporting.

Those who want to see Armstrong sweat may leave disappointed. Calm and seemingly well rehearsed in interviews, Armstrong shrugs off years of public statements without ever seeming truly remorseful.

With a barrage of title-card identifications, 6 Days can feel closer to a re-enactment than a thriller. To the extent that the movie has a political angle, it’s perhaps gratuitously jingoistic.

Invention is committed to finding its own wavelength.

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.”

[A] low-key, engaging comedy.

The lack of energy suggests the film might as well have been constructed from outtakes.

If the paranoia level could probably withstand a slight reduction, much of the movie feels utterly credible.

Imagine a Kaurismaki with less humor and a slower pace, and you’ll have a sense of how singular yet insubstantial In the Aisles ultimately appears.

"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.

For anyone who has heard audio of Bundy, Kirby’s impersonation will sound chillingly close to the real killer’s deadened, yet at times disturbingly raffish, cadence. Wood is persuasive, too, although Kit Lesser’s script writes the character as a cliché.

It’s more a grief triangle than a love triangle, and a late revelation alters its symmetry, erasing hard-won sympathy for one character.

[A] dryly funny, enigmatic new work.

The movie could stand to demystify how some of its most terrifying early shots were filmed. (Later on, we’re told Leclerc agreed to carry a small camera himself to shoot part of a conquest in Patagonia.) But it does capture its subject’s philosophy.

The Final Member boasts a stranger-than-fiction subject so odd and funny it almost couldn’t miss. But Bekhor and Math make the film much more than a limp gag.

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

For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, Worth is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly.

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

Happy Face dares to be distinctive, and that’s something, even if the behavior — particularly Stan’s — isn’t always convincing.

The sound effects are emphatic enough to call attention to themselves, and serve as a tacit, admirable acknowledgment that this material has been shaped. Even so, some of the clatter distracts from the purity of these great images.

[A] taut and commanding primer.

Sherlock Gnomes offers more variety than its predecessor. Although still laced with glib pop culture references (wow, a skinny latte) and scored with Elton John tunes in a way that plays like a concession to adults, it has occasional fun ideas, such as rendering the inner workings of Holmes’s mind in hand-drawn black and white.

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.

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.

The documentary stirs up most of its sporadic excitement in the surfing footage, of which there is plenty. The imagery, especially the aerial shots, gives a sense of Mr. Hamilton’s precision and how close he comes to wiping out.

For more than an hour, schmaltzmeister Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle) directs as if on assignment for Miramax.

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.

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.

The movie captures a moment when the lines separating anonymity, fame, and notoriety are finer than ever. And as Watson’s social climber prattles on to reporters about what a great “learning lesson” her criminal experience has been, it’s easy to see another star in the making.

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.

The Great Museum, in comparison, feels like a cursory guided tour.

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 droll, shape-shifting Two Shots Fired, the newest movie from the Argentine filmmaker Martín Rejtman (the subject of a current retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center), accomplishes the strange feat of constantly thwarting expectations without ever varying its tone or moving the needle of excitement.

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

As the full picture comes into focus, the narrative can tend toward the trite. The chief pleasure of the movie is the 35-millimeter cinematography of Jean Louis Vialard.

Time hasn’t made it more than a cryptic curiosity. Dialogue is sparse, and it takes some time for the threesome’s dynamic to come into focus, to the extent that it ever does.

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.

“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.

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.

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

Some tragedies defy conventional representation. Unlike the play it documents, this documentary shows few signs of thinking outside the box.

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.

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.

The Price of Free is interested in spreading the word about Satyarthi’s work, both in India and globally, and in getting consumers to approach what they buy with a critical eye, so as not to support child labor. That’s an important message, and it’s not essential to watch the movie to receive it.

You never quite buy Todd and Rory as flesh-and-blood people who could have conversations that don’t sound rehearsed.

The movie withholds a crucial bit of back story in early scenes only to drop it like an anvil later on. Since the revelation is known to the characters the whole time, the decision to deploy it as a surprise is cheap and shameless — a blatant foul in a movie otherwise filled with smoothly executed plays.

Despite an oddball taste for wide-angle lenses, the director, Gonzalo López-Gallego, can sustain a solid slow burn. Still, neither McShane nor the scenery can take the rust off the basic scenario.

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.

They Call Us Monsters doesn’t shy from the consequences of the violence the prisoners were accused of (we meet a paralyzed victim of a shooting), even as it suggests that the system...proceeds almost mechanically.

Said to be intended as a reflection on shifts in Turkish history and identity, it is too diffuse and withholding to add up to a cogent result.

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.

Whatever reservations it prompts, the film is innovative, original, and queasily effective.

It’s both a credit to, and a shortcoming of, the movie that it suggests an illustrated bibliography. It makes you want to stop watching and, instead, read or reread all of the pieces mentioned.

In what probably qualifies as both an accomplishment and a shortcoming, the movie makes you want to read Babel’s writing instead.

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

As family entertainment, it’s fine.

While the oafish men come off poorly, the treatment of women as nothing more than schemers and monstrous Martha Stewart clones seems woefully past its expiration date.

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

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

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