Bill Stamets

This moving, Oscar-nominated documentary is an odyssey of a tragic observer.

Algren admirer Kurt Vonnegut, a novelist and a Long Island neighbor, called the Chicago exile ”the loneliest man I ever knew.” Caplan and Mueller invite viewers to befriend this contrary figure.

Michael Caplan’s Algren is a beguiling appreciation of the novelist, reporter and essayist.

[Kirby Dick's] new documentary enrages, yet makes its case in an even-tempered manner.

Hogtown is the most original film made in Chicago about Chicago to date.

Resisting screen rules is Godard’s forte.

The masterful script deals with telling words.

Servillo charms in his dual turn, then takes it up a notch when one brother shows off his childhood knack for impersonating his look-alike.

A paean to creative impulses, this work channels the vision of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

This thoughtful film is designed with taste. Music is minimal. Cuing a little Nine Inch Nails at the end, Poitras enables “citizenfour” to commit an act of reverse surveillance on the NSA.

Level Five (1996) is a poetic if occasionally opaque film essay on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

This understated documentary, though, has no agenda to shame any one family or agency.

Writer-director Hiroyuki Okiura, however, does not match the high expectations for story and design set by other Japanese animators.

Puenzo’s initial premise is more promising, though, than her sensational tone.

Filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller unfortunately adopts the format of prime-time docu-tainment.

In the introspective The Last Sentence Swedish director Jan Troell invokes ’50’s and ’60’s Swedish cinema: masterly black-and-white cinematography, philosophical angst, a lifeless marriage and loved ones visiting from the afterlife.

A disquieting film about testing faith.

Instead of venturing outside Outpost Restrepo, we hear what the soldiers feel about their 15-month deployment.

Supermensch sells the impression that its subject is a genuinely good guy.

Despite our narrow angle on Nepal, Manakamana peers into lives at close range.

Snappy graphics channel the info flow like a sugar rush. Scary music cues are overused. Narrator Katie Couric wisely stays offscreen. That keeps Fed Up from feeling like an Oprah special.

Ida reaches spiritual depth through affecting performances rendered in sublime black-and-white compositions.

Lovingly detailed with animated and archival imagery, For No Good Reason shares the fine-grain layered style of its subject.

Focusing on Rumsfeld’s 2001-06 stint at the Pentagon, Morris scrutinizes his rhetoric and rationale for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan. Tactics and costs take a back seat to semantics.

Jim Jarmusch stocks his latest low-key indie with more than his usual characters in low-velocity drift. The Akron-born auteur infuses the title couple of Only Lovers Left Alive with his taste for culture, if not cuisine.

Gripping and at times agonizing.

[A] diverting documentary.

This late adulthood lark is a treat.

The Missing Picture is a wrenching yet tender memoir by Rithy Panh about life and death in the time of Pol Pot.

Non-narrative films can be opaque in deep ways. Visitors slips into pseudo-profundity. That said, I’d see it again.

May errs in styling this human interest saga.

Murmelstein answers his accusers in The Last of the Unjust. Over a compelling three hours and 38 minutes.

We get a parable of individualism and its perils for a turn-of-the-20th century woman, one proclaimed by a critic of her time “a revolt against nature: a woman genius.”

Like Father, Like Son is always wise about the quandary faced by the two fathers and the two mothers.

Director Philipp Kadelbach crafts a war drama cued to the ethics of the characters.

Tornatore’s ideas about art, trust and intimacy are curious, even if they do not quite click.

The Past is an understated study of two marriages in transition.

At Berkeley earns credit for documenting a distinctly articulate community.

Slocombe may not carve up his kin for Cold Turkey, but he serves a wry repast.

Dhoom:3 entertains as a spectacle of chases, bank capers, magic acts and song-and-dance numbers.

Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony is one more bravo for the iconic masterpiece.

This buddy/road film builds tension with its missing person quest in a border-crossing underworld.

A diverting tutorial with this takeaway: “Let’s be puzzled about what seems obvious.”

Bastards is both visceral and visual.

A Touch of Sin is humanist critique of the country’s turn to capitalism.

Observant with mannered edits, Jem Cohen’s modest story delivers a character sketch and a traveler’s essay.

Set in England, the dystopic “Brazil” and “28 Days Later” both ended with pastoral idylls for adult couples. How I Live Now offers adolescents a lovely vision of holistic healing in the same countryside.

This saga of romance works with an unromantic style.

The ethical considerations of these physicians and their patients is the focus, not the pro-lifers and their death threats.

Stylistically, this saga of survival never aims for urban neo-realism. Yet, as sentimental humanism, it shows laudable taste in dodging the usual indulgent touches and turns when lost kids find their way.

A family implodes with a biting commentary on patriarchy.

A naturalist comic of inarticulate manners, writer-director Andrew Bujalski attempts the ensemble styles of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest to peer into a micro-culture in Computer Chess.

[An] informing if not inflaming documentary.

The true strength of Spurlock’s documentary is how he showcases the behind-the-scenes, off-stage personalities of the One Direction boys.

The elegant style of the fighting sequences does more than display camera and kung fu technique — this style also shows fighters living with honor.

You’re Next benefits from skilled script-keepers.

[A] stunning “documentary of the imagination."

Hannah Arendt takes seriously the life of the mind.

The Attack is not just about an incident targeting Israelis. This is also the story of not knowing Palestinians.

Dispiriting as Blackfish is at times, it offers beautiful advocacy for orca freedom. Anecdotes and data indicate these mammals are highly sensitive and social. Treating them as we do for our entertainment and profit is unconscionable.

Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva re-creates a youthful road trip with a head trip at the end in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, more character sketch than psychedelic sojourn.

In his press notes, Winterbottom adds: “We didn’t make the moral too obvious, or too heavy-handed.” And they don’t. But the bottom line is unmistakable.

A sublime meditation on solitude.

Kleine could have used Gregory’s lifelong trajectory to tell a larger story of the international avant-garde theater scene. Instead there is overmuch fuss about his coterie of dear companions.

[This] timely documentary is less persuasive about translating logic into political and economic reality.

Spectacle matters more than story for Reygadas, who wants to create a world onscreen instead of developing characters or critiquing society.

Kim deals with an ancient suspicion of money that predates Marx, MasterCard and Madoff.

Morales trafficks in familiar formulas of an everyman in a bind with evil men. What sets Graceland apart are the conflicted values of its characters.

The first-rate Italian comedy Reality — which fakes Pope Benedict appearing in St. Peter’s Square — likens consecration to elevating an “everyman” to pop celebrity.

Panic about pop culture is not new. Yet Antiviral finds a novel angle of attack.

Catherine Keener is wonderfully weird as a vicious vice president of human relations, and Nicky Katt is brilliant as an actor playing Hitler in a stage play.

Key action points are edited with finesse, but the denouement, with its dutiful hail of gunfire, is heartless and mechanical.

Director Tarsem (The Cell) reworks the 1981 Bulgarian film "Yo Ho Ho" for this stylish fantasy.

But Girl 6 isn't what we'd expect from Spike Lee: after exhorting his fans to wake up in his early efforts, he now tempts them to hang up.

Antoon injects an occasional note of rancor, but the more radical point here is showing how freely Baghdad residents now speak in public on politics and how widely their views range. [12 Nov 2005, p.35]

This is vicarious cinema at its best.

Screenwriter Kate Boutilier provides plenty of sharp patter, and Paul Simon contributed the catchy song "Father and Daughter."

As a director, Singleton shares with Furious a didactic streak. Singleton is no demagogue, but his fast-action style tends to erase the nuances of interracial dynamics.

A poet imprisoned during the Islamic Revolution is released 27 years later. Camera focus, reflections and water droplets are sublimely designed to articulate what his liberty will let him see. [04 Oct 2012, p.4]

Poetic Turkish tale. Nuri Bilge Ceylan shot this entrancing black-and-white story in his hometown, from a story written by his sister and with a cast of friends and relatives. [20 Oct 1998, p.37]

Greene delivers a wrenching performance, and like "Smoke Signals," the film ends with a cathartic, triumphant flourish.