Daphne Howland

Unfortunately, the doc is devoid of any real context, including how work such as Bell’s helped lead to the quagmire that has unsettled the region for decades.

The Incomparable Rose Hartman is a gorgeously shot, sharply edited portrait of photographer Hartman.

Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia is a superbly balanced picture of Cambodia then and now, a nation in a sort of stupor of post traumatic stress syndrome, denial and survivor's' guilt.

Unlike in so many films, here the actors’ portrayals of psychiatric patients’ conditions — and their humanity — ring true.

It's enjoyable spending some time with dreamy Vivek and Shveta (Melanie Kannokada, also known as Melanie Chandra), who are lovely together despite their clumsy communication.

The situation is heartbreaking and frustrating. But the film is so persuasive that it could help finally tank Herbalife's shares and validate Ackman's gamble — possibly preventing thousands of others.

The film's a little choppy as Theroux takes side trips to interview other former Scientologists, but it comes together as a chilling look at America's most famous 20th-century homegrown religion.

Rosenstein makes this a suspenseful legal yarn and an essential history lesson.

The movie is slow, quiet, and infuriating, as Binney and his small group are undermined by Gen. Michael Hayden's NSA and inept private contractors.

Desert flowers can be hard to spot, but are often distinctly beautiful, and The Bad Kids has them in focus.

It's the closest most of us will get to spending time with fellow humans who have extraordinary perspectives on ordinary things — and ordinary perspectives, too.

The doc is gorgeously filmed, well edited, and works in close-up, but the result is more voyeuristic than revealing, except to show that desolation is among those things that cannot be seen or touched.

Ree makes things easy for people who don't play chess, deftly pacing Carlsen's triumphs and failures and milking the suspense as "the Mozart of chess" employs his intuition to win, in an age when many players depend on computers to hone their skills.

All Governments Lie is worthy testimony that many journalists are in it for the truth.

Demonstrating an egregious contempt for science, Biebert and his subjects attack the call for research into the effects of electronic cigarettes as nothing more than shilling for tax collectors and Big Pharma.

The film is a riveting feat of editing considering the material, the legalistic conundrums, and the profusion of detail.

This film is valuable on account of its singular vantage point, and not just because of the firsthand description of the jihadist group’s brutality, which is unsurprising.

Palast slices through all the B.S., and while he may be over-the-top in his presentation, keep in mind, he’s got just the facts, ma’am.

It's a wonder of photography, animation, and sound, and it's a testament to its editors that the many interviews with activists and scientists are compelling and informative, sometimes even poetic.

The gutting of America's public universities is, as Steve Mims says in his documentary Starving the Beast, "one of the nation's most important and least understood fights." His film goes far in correcting that, thanks not just to his thorough research, but also a strong narrative and compelling cinematography.

Making a Killing feels oddly static, like any fact-dense sermon to the choir.

These are stories crafted with care, with glimpses of the filmmaking process — a chance to see the camera operators and director themselves at times in awe of the fortitude they're witnessing.

Despite the complexities, though, it's enjoyable, thanks to the crew's substantial expertise.

This well-researched investigation is loaded with credible facts and has a workaday, broadcast-newsmagazine feel.

Footage of the now-wealthy Smiths being deposed is damning, the brothers' legal jiujitsu is appalling, and the stories of deaths are heartbreaking.

In her provocative documentary Drone, Tonje Hessen Schei shows how, actually, the U.S. and its military-industrial complex treat war like a video game.

It's almost unbelievable how much people talk, in Slovick's two hours, without saying very much at all.

Shah Bob may be languid, interrupted by Rockford-style freeze-frames, but it's also intimate and captivating, and it calls to mind indie films from before Sundance made them mostly another Hollywood commodity.