Ben Kenigsberg

Even seasoned defenders of cryptic formalism may find it amorphous. The characters are never named, the camera work is static, and little that’s conceptually interesting materializes.

Ingrid Goes West comes close to saying something sharp about how social media promotes envy and the illusion of connectivity, but when a comedy chooses such an obvious target, it should have the courtesy to aim from an oblique angle.

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.

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

To ponder the colonial implications of a French director exoticizing a Congolese man whose family eats rats for meals is to realize that a movie can be heartwarming and heartless at once.

The observations range from the incisive to the grandiose, and at nearly three hours, Videoheaven could stand a tighter edit.

The entire film unfolds in a recognizable register of ominous hesitation; the results are a bit schematic but nevertheless hit on something real.

Although Ms. Rohrwacher captures Mark’s uncertain, shifting physicality, the movie doesn’t always succeed in getting inside the character’s head.

La Bare takes its title from the club it chronicles, a male strip joint in Dallas. The name proves unfortunately apt for a rambling, superficial documentary that straddles the line between exposé and infomercial.

Mr. Chan’s skill with actors — particularly with Ms. Mei and Mr. Pang’s persuasive, easygoing banter — compensates for the story’s limitations.

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 upsetting documentary offers plenty to chew on.

While it is generally engaging to learn about the influences of the screenwriter Dan O’Bannon or the artistic process of H.R. Giger (who designed the alien), the documentary is at its least fawning when it focuses on technique.

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.

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.

Saleh’s tangled plotting has more verve than his pacing or visual sense. But the movie’s portrait of collaboration can’t help but induce a shudder.

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

A grim social-realist drama from New Zealand that labors to twist its narrative into a redemptive arc, The Justice of Bunny King has an unsteady tone to match its ungainly title.

The film necessarily lacks the thoroughness and interrogative qualities of Piketty’s written approach. More than the cutaways to Gordon Gekko and the Simpsons, it tends to be the economist’s own observations that satisfy the true wonk itch.

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.

Bugs, an entertaining and eye-opening documentary from Andreas Johnsen, will send moviegoers out with a feeling of culinary adventurousness, eager to sample well-prepared escamoles (ant larvae) or termite queen with mango.

Of Fathers and Sons is ultimately more impressive for its access than it is revealing of drives or beliefs. If Derki’s goal was to capture what causes ideology to spread, he and his camera look without seeing.

You might devour less after watching Food, Inc. 2, and what you eat will probably be healthier.

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.

The film is accessible and often hypnotic on an intuitive level.

While "Room 237" sought evidence for its most outlandish conceits, The Nightmare declines to delve. As the testimonies grow repetitive, the strategy suggests willful ignorance.

Mortensen’s ambitions may be old-fashioned, but they’re grand ambitions, and he has realized them in a handsome passion project.

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