Daniel M. Gold

In this time of mass displacement across the globe, it is a stark reminder of how traumatic the refugee experience often is.

It shares a side of Mr. Vedder his fans will enjoy: the baseball aficionado who fills out a scorecard and treats Wrigley sod as holy ground.

It powerfully insists on giving a voice to victims whose greatest challenge, apart from their symptoms, is surmounting a world of indifference.

In the end, The Wrong Light is an engrossing cautionary tale teaching one of philanthropy’s oldest lessons: Caveat emptor.

Less of a solemn pilgrimage than a folksy visit, this film is a chance to set a spell, watch longtime musicians play and boast and reflect about their lives on and off the road.

With a soft tone, respectful to opponents but insistent on the data, Food Evolution posits an inconvenient truth for organic boosters to swallow: In a world desperate for safe, sustainable food, G.M.O.s may well be a force for good.

It’s surprising there has never really been an extended cinematic exploration of the band. Long Strange Trip, ambitiously assembled and elegantly directed by Amir Bar-Lev, fills that void.

The Ataxian has moments of inspiration, beauty, even euphoria. But its lasting contribution is in making the world a little more familiar with this disease, and a little less lonely for the families struggling against it.

Directed slickly by Paul Dugdale, “Olé” is less a concert film or travelogue than a historical account — swiftly, smartly assembled, reflecting events only six months old.

An achingly poignant documentary.

As an overview of the issues, the history and the players, Starving the Beast makes a powerful survey course, a prerequisite for further studies.

Smartly directed by Jeremy Sims, this sweet-hearted film mostly manages to avoid triteness even as it casually packs an emotional punch.

What Class Divide does exceptionally well is capture the sense of change at warp speed.

Mr. Shirai nicely shuffles in the back stories of several workers, and his shots of sky, sea and early morning landscapes could fit amid Hokusai woodcuts.

As a tribute to NASA, A Space Program is rich in the core elements that have always propelled humanity’s flights of fancy: imagination and the right tools.

[A] well-paced and cogent seminar.

An essential amendment to the historical record, Censored Voices reminds us that no war is entirely virtuous and makes clear that, even at the time, the dangers of becoming an occupying force were evident.

Ms. Vreeland has paced her documentary well, a chapter to each era, with hundreds of beautiful images spanning decades of artists, galleries, parties, scenes. She also makes good use of interviews Guggenheim gave to a biographer a couple of years before her death in 1979.

Despite its oversights, the film — shot and scored beautifully — is an enthusiastic introduction to this delirious event and its peposo of passion, style and intrigue. As the Sienese like to say, the Palio is life.

This absorbing account is hardly definitive, but it teaches movement building without denying the high costs paid by true believers.

What lingers, though, are stirring vistas of the backcountry West, and admiration — for the Aggies’ achievement, Mr. Masters’s imagination and Mr. Baribeau’s skill in chronicling it all.

With its evocative landscapes and its non-narrative, cinéma vérité style, Western is a layered, atmospheric chronicle of living traditions like bullfights and rodeos, mariachi bands and Texas two-steps. Yet the film also records the tremors of change.

I was just at the right place at the right time,” Mr. Petrov says, a simple truth that becomes shocking when considering the alternative. For that alone, this account of a Cold War near miss deserves a wide audience.

Scattering history lessons and ambiguous imagery amid Ms. Yoo’s engagement with North Koreans, her film implicitly asks: What must they think of us?

Only a few scenes fail to draw laughs in a movie that’s unexpectedly smart and consistently amusing.

[A] rich and fascinating biography.

Mr. Gameau’s breezy blend of computer imagery, musical numbers, sketches and offbeat field trips makes the nutrition lessons easy to digest.

While affirming the dignity of its subjects, Mala Mala shows there’s little glamour attached to the pursuit of selfhood.

The filmmakers have skillfully laid out a complex and murky story of crime and justice that, more than 30 years on, continues to scandalize.

This film maintains its anxious themes throughout, which makes for some tedious stretches because the tension never breaks. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Gabriel is unexpectedly absorbing.

At slightly more than an hour, the film may not be definitive, and its chronology is a little fuzzy. Even so, Rubble Kings is a fascinating, valuable work of social, music and New York history, a celebration of a peaceful revolution by those who helped birth it.

As the film makes abundantly clear, if left untreated, contagions — of ignorance, fear and conflict — will spread wherever they can.

Know How is a robust, youthful call to be seen, heard and appreciated — to be a little less invisible.

Watching Elliot and his fellows stumble determinedly through shoots, pleasantly delusional about the movie’s prospects, is mildly amusing, a testament to indie film’s appeal for a certain hardy strain of dreamer. But the joke sours, and the documentary, filmed over two years, turns darker.

A fascinating account of off-the-books diplomacy in the 1980s, “Plot for Peace” is that rare documentary that both augments the historical record and is paced like a thriller.

This vivid and haunting essay steps away from the debate about illegal immigration.

A labor of love and respect.

As this smart and sympathetic profile shows, Dock Ellis didn’t need a no-hitter, stoned or otherwise, to define himself; he was his own best work.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball is an affectionate scrapbook of a documentary.

As travelogue, this is a persuasive introduction.

The Hornet’s Nest lets its soldiers do most of the talking. The action — the rapid fire of automatic weapons, the crack of a sniper’s shot, the medevac rescues — is vivid.

The movie’s grittiness — the director, Jim Taihuttu (“Rabat”), shoots Wolf in black and white — its intrigues, its graphic violence and Mr. Kenzari’s performance make for a worthy addition to the annals of gangster films, Interpol edition.

While the detached, deadpan tone and occasionally stilted acting might leave some viewers flat, there’s no doubting the fierce intelligence behind this admirable puzzle box of a movie.

The director Emilio Aragón wisely trains the camera on Mr. Duvall. A Night in Old Mexico is his baby, and he rocks it.

What elevates the film beyond a video scrapbook, though, are the glimpses of the routines and slow rhythms of the nursing home before and after this adventure.

If the film at times seems only a tender profile of a quiet and quirky individual, it is also a meditation of a private life at its end.

All the film’s segments are smartly assembled and gracefully paced.

Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird skillfully introduces this pleasant man with the demented visions and delves into how he got them.

The film’s primary mission is to destigmatize dyslexia, and it achieves that admirably, presenting technical material with a light touch and compassion.

Hôtel Normandy is a confection spun differently from the typical Hollywood rom-com.

The Rooftop is frenzied, funny and knowing, drenched in lavish, often surreal, imagery.

The vistas are spectacular, the waves fearsome, the filming often amazing.