Bill Stamets

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.

Hannah Arendt takes seriously the life of the mind.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Resisting screen rules is Godard’s forte.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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]

The film is extremely rich in visual inventiveness and depth of feeling — with numerous sequences that could almost pass muster as individual shorts.

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.

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

[A] diverting documentary.