Daphne Howland

We’re privy to the students’ backgrounds and get a tiny glimpse into their futures, but the film skims a lot in favor of showcasing the ISEF gathering. Still, as in the spelling-bee doc, these are moving stories of nerdy children, kids who are pragmatic about the forward march of industry yet believe societies can, and must, find cleaner ways to advance.

It’s a brutal takedown of a practice now warping K-12 education and should embarrass every school that still requires them.

In an era when the propaganda machines of conflicts like Syria are imperiling photojournalists’ work all the more, Campbell’s homage to his friend is a thorough look at a straight shooter.

Kempner's film, which has an eat-your-vegetables quality, runs long and suffers from a lack of focus.... Still, it's inspiring how Rosenwald, who took full advantage of capitalism's potential, also shared, passionately and generously, his windfall.

It’s hard to know whether it’s intentional that The New Radical, Adam Bhala Lough’s slick documentary about “techno-anarchist” Cody Wilson, famous for developing a 3-D-printable plastic gun, presents its subject as a shallow pseudo-intellectual man-child.

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

If Catena has flaws, filmmaker Kenneth Carlson declines to feature them, perhaps because they’ve been friends since their Brown University days thirty years ago. Still, the doctor has earned the adulation, and a visit to a leper colony shows why.

Full of such bon mots, the documentary is the epitome of positive thinking, perhaps the closest thing America has to a state religion. Still, like social worker Wendy Lustbader’s book What’s Worth Knowing, which took a similar tack years ago, it’s an opportunity to connect with souls who’ve been around more than a few blocks.

The Judge is packed tight; it’s enlightening and suspenseful and paced for maximum enjoyment. In the end, it’s not just about Kholoud Al-Faqih, but you’ll be very glad to have met her.

Director Derek Doneen opens hearts wide with his documentary The Price of Free, his tale of enslaved children working in factories in India. But he’ll also crush many of those hearts with the revelation that viewers are among the villains activist Kailash Satyarthi is fighting.

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.

What the film does accomplish is making you think, especially about how universities are spending their ever-increasing tuition on top-notch campus amenities and their own disastrous loans, and how state governments and federal agencies are similarly passing off their education cuts onto the young people who they expect to one day run the economy and society.

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

While his obsessiveness seems neurotic, and watching this film is not always comfortable, it also seems to be all part of the process.

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.

The film fosters a very human connection to these pickers, whose eloquence comes from their plainspoken arguments, the austerity of their situation, and the modesty of their demands.

The doc never goes much deeper than the information and arguments on AI that can currently be found in the Sunday papers.

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.

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

Vargas lingers for long stretches over his personal story and his complicated relationship with his mother, still in the Philippines -- a place he dare not visit for fear of being unable to return. But his story is a vivid illustration of the pickle we're in.

Much of the film is beautiful — hot springs, the ocean’s depths, and deep space are photogenic — although Cheney preserves a few too many mundane “hello, how do you do”s, and the science isn’t deeply explained.

The possible hereditary nature of suicide in general and of the seven known Hemingway suicides in particular is lazily poked at; decades of research go unmentioned and unexplored.

Creadon unveils his story in a haphazard, backwards-unfolding way.

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.

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

Joe Berlinger's Hank: 5 Years From the Brink is more workaday and less transfixing than projects of his like "Brother's Keeper" or "Paradise Lost."

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 film is a jumble, with no sense of meaningful interaction.