Ben Kenigsberg

The individual stories are powerful, as are the visual comparisons between present-day and historical locations. A few animated sequences effectively evoke the evanescence of memory.

In Maryam Touzani’s Adam, certain stylistic choices — a muted palette, the absence of a melodramatic score, hand-held camerawork — help temper sentimentality with verisimilitude.

The movie itself, directed by Herb Stratford, is so dull and unimaginative in its presentation — talking heads, an overused score that might as well have been downloaded from a free database — that it makes for an unfortunate match of subject matter and form.

[A] sobering, sprawling documentary.

The film is well-paced but often strains credulity.

For better or worse, Grou has a knack for staging brutality, and for having his movie rock out to a Joy Division track or two.

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.

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

Last year, “Palm Springs” proved that the time-loop conceit from “Groundhog Day” still had some laughs in it. The Map of Tiny Perfect Things shows it’s a perfectly fine pretext for teenage treacle.

Waterston and Kirby are both superb at creating characters whose attraction must be shown to grow by degrees, without overt admission. Affleck and Abbott, too, navigate a tricky dynamic, playing men who perhaps lack an understanding of their own compassion or brutishness.

Accepted on its terms, the film does a reasonably absorbing job of dramatizing how Zellner’s convictions strengthened, pulling him away from the security of inaction.

Whether anyone else, including Escher, would have done a more engaging job is debatable, but this movie, directed by Robin Lutz, offers an only intermittently satisfying look at his interests and methods. Don’t call it art; Escher felt his output hovered between art and mathematics.

Topical in broad strokes yet frustratingly allergic to particulars

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.

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 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.

Oppenheim resists easy misanthropy, showing unexpected empathy for people who have cocooned themselves from the outside world, only to confront its headaches anyway.

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

The portraits are moving and informative. . . . As an aesthetic endeavor, though, The Reason I Jump is questionable, regardless of how much sensitivity the filmmakers took in their approach.

While My Rembrandt poses heady questions about the difference between acquisitiveness and appreciation, it mostly plays like a straight art-world documentary that itself would have benefited from a more vertiginous, obsessive approach.

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

Its main virtues are a wild story and a stealth sense of outrage. It argues that these so-called assassins became political pawns and had to face the courts without witnesses who might have aided their defense.

Mehta’s elaborate long takes contribute to the general sense of tumult, but the film never fully shakes the sense of stating the obvious.

The movie clearly intends to send a serious message about how draconian immigration policies tear families apart. But a hard-hitting drama would be preferable to this strenuously wacky bromance.

A disarming subject, Hadid comes across as a cleareyed, forthright leader. But Mayor also stands out because Osit has thought it through in cinematic terms: He knows when to dwell on a striking image (such as Hadid examining a painting of Jerusalem on his global travels) and when to let a counterintuitive soundtrack selection play through.

Instant death lurks around every corner, and the movie doesn’t shy from killing off major characters. But it does play like an odd match of form and content: a story of single-minded humanitarianism framed as a relentless action spectacular.

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.

Paradoxically, the movie’s energy ebbs as the proceedings turn more antic.