Ben Kenigsberg

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.