Ben Kenigsberg

Ghost Fleet hits its marks as advocacy, but editing might have put more emphasis on the individual men, added further detail about the illicit networks or tracked Tungpuchayakul’s journey in a more focused and suspenseful manner.

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.

Long stretches are not a personal reckoning but an overview; many details overlap with “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” from last year, although the clips here are at least as good. It is also more sympathetic to Cohn than either Cohn’s reputation or the familial animosity would suggest.

A winning cast helps sell that familiar premise — not just Reale and Young-White, who have definite chemistry and an easy-flowing banter, but also the brassy, scene-stealing Catherine Cohen.

It is globally minded filmmaking that is also comfortingly familiar.

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.

A Good American gets bogged down in details and personnel talk, but its subjects have an urgent narrative to tell.

It’s hard to argue with Bettis’s frazzled underplaying or Farnworth’s stellar airhead routine, an impressively sustained study in quick-witted dimwittedness.

Inspired by a 1997 "Voice" article on ex-members of the Satmar sect, Mendy is cast largely with Orthodox or former Orthodox actors, who are utterly credible with dialogue that necessarily teeters between the candid and the offensive.

Because Slumlord Millionaire has assembled a dynamic and engaging group of activists, it seems churlish to complain that it hasn’t found a way to make the material cinematic.

A drama from the Singaporean director Eric Khoo that also demonstrates the power of Instagrammable cuisine to spice up an otherwise straightforward, sentimental film.

Misha and the Wolves plays best on first viewing, with its surprises intact.

While the sights and sounds here are unique, the movie seems frustratingly torn about whether to buy the futurism and mysticism it’s selling.

At times, the film’s demand for teamwork precludes satisfying payoffs.

Uribe directs for sensory effect rather than context, which is minimal and parceled out as needed, and deals with the politics of the construction project glancingly, an approach that registers as alternately poetic and coy.

The leads’ chemistry nearly redeems this shopworn setup, and the movie is at its best when it simply chills out with them.

Informative, if not always as specific as it might have been.

This feel-good profile barely touches on the political and cultural ramifications of Emmanuel's work. Narration by Oprah increases the aura of a civics lesson.

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 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.

Lighthearted foray into the world of competitive eating.

The secret is poised somewhere between triteness and disarming simplicity.

A week is too short a time frame. A longer view might have left a deeper impression.

It’s more of a document than a documentary; calling it cinema seems like an error of categorization.

Artistic values aren’t really the point, which is to meet Ukrainians and to see different corners of the bombarded country, where residents, Lévy suggests, have in many cases become inured to the sight of a bombed office building or to the sound of warning sirens.

Farming is a mystery movie in which the author investigates himself — and doesn’t fully share the answers.

Incorporating his typically arduous, slow-paced style, Mr. Wang doesn’t make things easy for viewers.

If the filmmakers succeed in wringing drama from decisions that have already come down, their efforts at character development are hit-and-miss.