Glenn Kenny

The movie’s tree-falling-in-the-forest-with-no-one-to-hear-it denouement is an apt but not entirely hopeless metaphor for the condition of its characters.

The movie asks a lot of the viewer, but to this viewer, it gave back more.

This tidy, thoughtful film gets at jazz’s joy and pain.

Ms. Covi and Mr. Frimmel’s Mister Universo is a disarming and humane picture, an unexpected delight.

Her Socialist Smile, written, directed and shot by John Gianvito, is a fascinating and challenging exploration of Keller’s political thought.

Schroeder’s approach is calm, almost detached, in keeping with his other work (although the choice of de Medeiros to speak for Buddhism, and with a nonspecific Asian-seeming accent at that, struck me as an avoidable misstep); this makes the bleakness of what he recounts (which is buttressed by an insinuatingly menacing score by Jorge Arriagada) that much more resonant.

The movie’s most moving sequence is near the end, when Mr. Jia discusses his father, who faced awful hardships during the Cultural Revolution.

The cast is appealingly natural, the cinematography subtly seductive, and the Colombian pop songs on the soundtrack establish a sinuous groove.

The intercutting between vintage footage of the Jones/Zane company and the student production, as well as footage from another contemporary production of the piece — shot with an onstage intimacy that recalls the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” — make for an unusually lively documentary experience.

Keep the Change is not a seamlessly crafted movie, but it’s awfully tenderhearted and thoroughly disarming. It deserves to be widely seen.

The movie’s depictions of landscapes both sere and fertile, and its all-but-palpable portrayals of isolation, have echoes of the best work of Werner Herzog and Lucrecia Martel. But de Righi and Zoppis here show more genuine affinity than affected influence; they’re moviemakers worth keeping an eye on.

The film’s generous views of spectacular works like Smithson’s monumental “Spiral Jetty” (the work projects into the Great Salt Lake in Utah) and Mr. Heizer’s “Double Negative” in Nevada (a huge trench bisected by a canyon) are best seen on the largest screen available.

Once the players are established, the movie falls into a sweet lather, rinse, repeat mode of scenes, alternating character intrigue and fighting.

The humor has a persistent goofy streak, but what sticks to the ribs is the poignant stuff.

Belladonna of Sadness is compulsively watchable, even at its most disturbing: The imagery is frequently graphic, and still, after over 40 years, it has the power to shock.

Bobbito Garcia, the author, basketball maven, sneaker obsessive, D.J. and all-around culture entrepreneur, is one of the most personable documentary subjects I’ve encountered in quite some time.

What’s striking in this movie, apart from an ostentatiously glitchy screen distortion that occurs whenever a denizen of the “dark web” appears on one of the screens within screens, is how credibly its extreme trolling plays.

With their scrupulous but unobtrusive attention to pertinent details, Mr. Younger, Mr. Teller and the rest of the cast make Bleed for This more than an inspiring version of Mr. Pazienza’s story; they make it a genuinely interesting one.

Taormina purposefully dresses his cast and designs their environment in a way that throws them into a sort of temporal never-never land. He achieves a number of other startling effects in this impressive movie, which sheds its naturalism slowly as it embraces a surrealism that’s both disquieting and poignant.

The movie convincingly posits that Fonda was, cinematically, the embodiment of America itself. Horwath has gathered a vast amount of archival material from film, television, radio and more to make his case.

One of the many things that White Riot, a documentary about RAR directed by Rubika Shah, brings home is that the world could still use more somethings against racism.

It’s not as poetic or immediately enjoyable as the first film. But it is tougher and more analytical, with real challenges embedded in its pleasures.

This material covers a good deal of the same ground as the 2016 documentary on Frank, “Don’t Blink.” Both films give a strong “lion in winter” sense and are moving in their treatments of the tragedies of Frank’s life. If you’ve seen “Don’t Blink,” you may ask whether you “need” to see this. I’d say yes. “More light,” as Goethe put it.

In part because of its political blind spots, Cuba and the Cameraman is captivating. (Whatever you think of Mr. Alpert’s perspective, it’s interesting.) But it’s mostly worth watching because of human stories like these.

Documentaries about film technology, at least those that aspire to reach some portion of a mainstream audience, have to make wonkiness ingratiating. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, a cogent and winning picture directed by Midge Costin, does this in a variety of ways.

“Do the Universe” knows it won’t change the world, or precincts outside it. But the abundance of not entirely cheap laughs that this movie — which is best watched over a plate of nachos — delivers is therapeutic.

The movie is a deft sort of dual narrative.

The movie balances amiable humor and standard believe-in-yourself bromides with better than average action sequences.