Ben Kenigsberg

The real star of this Kiwi western is the setting. The lush forests and stark, black sand beaches, shot in locations near those used in “The Piano,” help make The Convert more than a message movie.

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

Whatever complexities might come across in the book don’t register in a film that has been fashioned, sometimes uneasily, into a sentimental father-daughter road movie.

Plausibility complaints always feel cheap, but Longing strains credulity well past the breaking point.

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

Korine achieves what he set out to do, which is locate a strange liminal zone between avant-garde filmmaking and searing viewers’ faces with a frying pan.

Pallenberg is finally in focus. But the picture is tough to look at.

This sluggish, self-serious job-gone-wrong movie could itself stand to be jolted to life.

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

What Scoop offers is the modest pleasure — to which any journalist is susceptible — of rooting for a reporting team to get a story.

The Truth vs. Alex Jones offers a lesson in just how vicious and pervasive conspiracy theories can become and a chilling portrait of how little they may trouble their purveyors.

"You Can Call Me Bill" is fundamentally a case of an actor presenting himself as he wants to be seen.

Gets points for originality but quickly succumbs to terminal self-amusement.

In trying to capture this almost stoic modesty, the film, directed by James Hawes, falls into a dramaturgical trap.

Space: The Longest Goodbye leaves open the question of whether anyone could get to the red planet with his or her sanity intact.

“As We Speak” makes a powerful case for the necessity of being free to make art, and for public awareness that art rarely qualifies as legal evidence.

This is a concept in search of a movie, and an academic exercise that doesn’t give observers much to work with.

In essence, Marmalade pretends to be more dunderheaded than it is, then acts as if it’s been smart all along, in a shift that takes it from insulting to incoherent.

The jarring switch to documentary gives Bushman its added charge.

Despite an oddball taste for wide-angle lenses, the director, Gonzalo López-Gallego, can sustain a solid slow burn. Still, neither McShane nor the scenery can take the rust off the basic scenario.

While the interviewees speak of Sherpa with sincerity and affection, “Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest” never locates a satisfying big-picture idea or formal approach that would make it more than a straightforward tribute.

The material is fundamentally gripping, and parts of it are tough to resist . . . But Society of the Snow is a perverse movie to watch the way most people will see it — on Netflix, in the comfort of their homes, with a refrigerator nearby.

The look of Freud’s Last Session could make one doubt the presence of a cinematographer.

The movie makes clear just how difficult it is for one person to take on a corporation that has vast resources, dexterity in countering evidence and — the film argues — unfairly easy access to regulators.

While some of the backstage material has an official feel (Batiste and Jaouad are listed among the many executive producers, along with Barack and Michelle Obama), the documentary does not shy from showing private moments.

The movie is overfamiliar and earnest, but you can’t accuse it of not being heartfelt.

“The Boy Who Lived” provides an unusual behind-the-scenes portrait of how life goes on after movies are made.

While the running time may be indulgent, the experience of feeling trapped in this world is difficult to shake.