Ben Kenigsberg

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.

Not as radically stylized as Polanki’s violent Macbeth, Tess is literature rendered in consummately classical terms.

While it’s heartbreaking that the movie never got made (son Brontis Jodorowsky, who would have played Paul Atreides, is particularly poignant imagining his alternate life as a superstar), Jodorowsky’s Dune posits that the raw materials nevertheless left an enduring mark on cinematic sci-fi, providing the basis for famous aspects of "Alien," "Star Wars," and "Contact."

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.

But if Meeting Gorbachev finds its subject mostly staying on a pro-peace, antinuclear message — and it’s a script that’s hard to argue with — Herzog shapes the film into a study in how world events often come down to quirks of character and circumstance.

Junction 48 is more than a mere crowd-pleaser, and it refuses easy catharsis, ending with a cliffhanger. But since this is a movie about deciding to act, maybe that’s the perfect note.

Hummingbirds is pretty tight filmmaking at less than 80 minutes, and the laid-back presentation makes the political commentary register strongly from the periphery.

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.

Hogtown plays like a find from a forgotten archive.

The jarring switch to documentary gives Bushman its added charge.

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.

In its feel for nocturnal light, this is one of the most refreshing New York independent features since Ramin Bahrani’s “Man Push Cart.” Both acoustically and dramatically, Mr. Mumin is a winning performer.

At its best, the movie is a vertiginous, head-slapping examination of the tangible, unpredictable consequences of making art.

Certainly, American Dharma offers no comfort to those disturbed by Bannon or harmed by the policies he has pressed for. But Morris wants to map how Bannon thinks. The movie he has made is less an act of muckraking than it is a psychological thriller, with Bannon its implacable villain.

Subtlety and aesthetic elegance — the jerky animation complements the blunt tone — are not among the film’s virtues. Tehran Taboo aims to expose systemic hypocrisy; in that respect, it is brisk and bracing.

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.

While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.

Mr. Schwarz falters with his ending, which feels overly tidy. Still, it’s not the destination; it’s the journey.

By the end of Good Night Oppy, Opportunity and Spirit have become no less lovable as characters than R2-D2 or Wall-E. It’s tough not to feel for their loss.

Because time erases or alters Mr. Goldsworthy’s sculptures, movies are the ideal medium to capture them.... The surprise of Leaning Into the Wind is that it’s just as concerned with how time has changed Mr. Goldsworthy.

[A] low-key, engaging comedy.

While the pieces don’t necessarily fit in obvious ways, that’s presumably the point — and part of what makes Friends and Strangers so singular.

Is Coup 53 trustworthy in every respect? Perhaps not. Both as a detective story and as a deep dive into a world event whose consequences linger, it is bracing, absorbing filmmaking.

Potently, Incitement depicts Amir as just one member of a self-reinforcing fringe.

Both halves feature breathtaking camera work.

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

Lacorazza’s deftness with actors, feel for the setting and aesthetic decisions — shooting in the snapshot-like 1.66-to-1 aspect ratio, or leaving the characters’ Spanish without subtitles — help the drama ring true.

While the pieces more or less fall into place, trying to solve the mysteries of Isabella may be missing the point.