Chris Barsanti

Path of Blood is more an immediate experience, and as such succeeds in unexpected ways. The human normality of what it shows is nearly more sickening than the carnage itself.

The further Love Me develops its scenario, the less plausible it becomes, even by lovelorn sci-fi standards.

McCabe stands apart not just for the impressive technical virtuosity of his filmmaking or his unblinking focus on the tragedy of the Congo, but for his refusal to chalk it up to generalized Third World chaos. Things happen for a reason, this devoutly humane but studious documentary argues, and until those reasons are dealt with, they will continue.

Chris Smith’s documentary about the 2017 Fyre Festival implosion resists the urge to revel in cheap social media schadenfreude.

Despite hanging back at times too much for its own good, Mayor remains a fascinating portrait of what city politics look like under extreme conditions.

Adding to the fraught complexities of economic insecurity and environmental devastation, When Lambs Become Lions wraps its story in a sweep of broodingly gorgeous imagery.

In its refusal to bend to unrealistic notions of escape, Joy is a bravely dark movie.

This flashy legal melodrama is fitfully stirring but too flabby to deliver the walloping blow that it needs.

Sharply argued, indignantly one-sided and stylistically monotonous The Bleeding Edge sometimes seems closer to angry PSA than documentary. But that may not be a distinction that matters.

Where “Becoming Cousteau” frustrates at times is its thin treatment of Cousteau’s work. The films and shows are represented with plentiful footage but not truly discussed or differentiated. It’s an odd choice, given Cousteau’s cinematic obsession.

Excepting a strangely off-key final scene, A Gray State is a compelling, highly dramatic piece of documentary filmmaking.

The film’s concession to the fungible nature of presented reality comes across not as indecisive but courageous.

The film misses an opportunity to delve particularly deeply into the keenly relevant issues of inequality and social disconnection that so animate its protagonist.

Like the fraught relationship between its two musician characters, the film never finds the right groove.

It draws on the giddily rules-trampling pre-war mood as Chicago. But while its protagonists are as driven by a desire for fame and money as the amoral starlets of the Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse musical, the film has more than grinning cynicism at its core.

John Maggio’s documentary is workmanlike in presentation but scintillating in its content.

Spaceship Earth is a highly watchable document from a curious cultural convergence in which avant-garde “Star Trek” utopianism met the glare of the mainstream.

Gibney’s movie points fingers not just at the people it argues carried out the killing, but the highly-placed figures who covered up for them.

The film presents a world that too often feels as if it’s a product of the present day.

The action choreography is as brutal as you expect, though the repetition in style from the first two films makes the effect less surprising.

Even though The Public ultimately doesn’t come together as a dramatic piece, particularly in the hammy climax, it does take some impressive chances. Just making a story about the invisible homeless is a brave move to start—audiences tend not to like stories about intractable issues, after all.

By the Time It Gets Dark jumps at first into an examination of Thailand’s repressed history of political violence and dictatorial control. But that initial pencil sketch of a thesis is soon shuffled away in favor of several other less-interesting story threads which add up to much less than the sum of their parts.

The film is a resonant depiction of the gaping holes left by Jeff Buckley’s untimely death.

Doueiri wrestles with the complexities of history and morality without ignoring the humanity of the individuals caught in this frightening maelstrom of a story.

The movie does not stint on Belushi’s destructive, self-sabotaging, and cruel habits.

Without Margo Martindale, the film would be a sharp and tightly constructed nautical noir. With her, it becomes a memorable one.

Werner Herzog’s documentary is a rare example of the arch ironist’s capacity to be awed not by nature but by man.

The story of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which opened the spigots of campaign cash, has been told before. But Reed weaves it into a larger narrative in which it is simply one of the steps in the unraveling of modern campaign-finance laws.