Ben Kenigsberg

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

Time hasn’t made it more than a cryptic curiosity. Dialogue is sparse, and it takes some time for the threesome’s dynamic to come into focus, to the extent that it ever does.

The thesis of On the President’s Orders isn’t terribly original, but in a needlessly roundabout way, it makes its case that these killings are not the work of isolated individuals, but the product of a top-down culture that stems from Duterte's assent.

It seems best to view Serendipity as one component of a much bigger project (a book on Nourry’s work with the same title was published in 2017) — a body of work in which life and art are inseparable.

Entering theaters at a timely moment, The Cave is a frightening immersion in life under siege in Syria that, as difficult as it often is to watch, can’t come close to replicating how harrowing it must have been to film.

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 this installment lays on the moral (all families are freaky in their own ways) a bit thick, it has just enough wit and weirdness to honor its source material.

The movie is primarily an act of bearing witness that does not ask to be judged on conventional filmmaking terms.

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.

Akin may deserve credit for not flinching from the grotesque; other serial-killer-adjacent entertainments, like “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Zodiac” or “Mindhunter,” tend to concentrate on the cerebral mechanics of crime solving. But sordid details, undermined by snickers, aren’t in themselves illuminating.

Documentaries about innovative figures don’t always offer correspondingly innovative filmmaking. But even coloring within the lines of conventional biographical storytelling, Jim Allison: Breakthrough provides an accessible introduction to James P. Allison.

As a work of cinema, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch can seem a bit torn in its approach, caught between a desire to spread a message to mainstream viewers and more cryptic, artistic aims. At times, more information would be preferable; in other scenes, images speak volumes without words. But as advocacy, the movie is potent and frequently terrifying.

Olive weaves these stories together with fluidity and purpose, but the ideas of Always in Season sometimes crowd one another out.

It is exhausting and exhilarating, cheap looking and slick, a documentary for Maradona fans but also for many others besides.

If evacuating cinema means engaging with the medium’s properties in only the silliest ways — mismatching subtitles with images and voices with speakers — Price certainly does that.

It uses animation to depict a conflict in fresh dimensions.

Schimberg’s film is odd, darkly funny and — when it means to be — a little frightening.

A close-range film about distance, the short, poignant documentary “I’m Leaving Now” unfolds like a character study.

The movie looks and sounds great, but greatness and depth elude it.

"Heading Home” is not a movie with much interest in geopolitics. It roots, roots, roots for its home team — and does little more.

More of a raspberry than a reboot, The Banana Splits Movie, available to buy (and later to rent) on multiple digital platforms, is far less crazy than it wants to be and far more soporific than a synopsis would suggest.

A computer-animated feature of bright hues, hectic action and only occasional charm.

The Miracle of the Little Prince seems to have been made from the supposition that too many discussions of grammar or syntax might bore viewers. Even so, the platitudes are worse. A stronger movie might have dug more deeply into the languages it wishes to save.

A “Grey Gardens” for Generation Z, Jawline underscores the contrast between Austyn’s optimism and his drab surroundings.

The film may be maddening as a character study, and it could damage an ionizer with its air of self-importance, but its experiments in form and tone are highly original.

"The Fugitive,” to which “Angel” owes perhaps even its rooftop finale, is a template against which this movie inevitably falls short.

Cold Case Hammarskjold is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on. Even a full acceptance of its assertions doesn’t do much to illuminate Hammarskjold’s death.

The movie unfolds impressionistically. To call it a portrait of collective resilience is accurate, but that description shortchanges its richness on both human and historical scales.