Glenn Kenny

As a music industry story, Kenny G’s rise, engineered by the mogul Clive Davis but at times bucked by the artist himself, is fascinating.

Damon is superb in the kind of role he excels at: a man of integrity who gets steered off the path and is subsequently righted. Lest all of this sound heavy, I should assure you that Ford v Ferrari is exactly as fun, maybe even more fun, than its well-put-together trailer makes it out to be.

Almodóvar has created a dense, audacious film in which layers of cinematic artifice lovingly camouflage (at least for a while) its characters’ dark, damaged heart.

Today, Duritz is a reflective figure. The documentary, directed by Amy Scott, will pull you back from any “pity the poor celebrity” eye-rolling with its revelation of his struggles with mental illness, which he endured, undiagnosed, during the ups and downs of early fame.

Performed with absolute commitment by its cast (Justin Salinger and Ella Smith play the younger versions of the title characters), Ray & Liz is a quietly harrowing movie. Billingham risks tedium, though, in withholding anything like an inner life for any of its characters until the movie’s very end.

A documentary that serves a vital function. Ricky Gervais notwithstanding, this disease is no joke, and it’s not going to be addressed as the scourge that it is until a larger portion of the population gets that. This movie should help.

The mostly low-key mode of Nowhere Special is the right one. Norton is spectacular, but little Lamont delivers one of those uncanny performances that doesn’t seem like acting, and makes you feel for the kid almost as much as his onscreen parent does.

The Sparks Brothers, an energetic documentary directed by Edgar Wright, explains their appeal in part by emphasizing how it cannot be explained.

Coup 53 is worth seeing, but its general effect on this viewer was to seek out more books, rather than movies, on the subject. Which I suppose is something.

Mr. Trengove shoots the film in intimate wide-screen, getting in close to the performers as their characters tamp down explosive feelings, often letting the spectacular landscapes behind them break down into soft-focus abstractions. His direction is perfectly judged up to and including the shudder-inducing ending.

The movie reminded me of what Peter Bogdanovich said of Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: that it "is not a young man’s movie; it has the wisdom and poetic perceptions of an artist knowingly nearing the end of his life and career." The wisdom and poetry here are just as real and just as thoroughly felt.

Upon taking in the gorgeousness — and it is really something; the production design of this movie, by Luca Tranchino, is exceptional (as is Daniel Aranyó’s cinematography, which shines when he’s shooting in the natural world) —Lillie observes, “It’s like being inside God’s thoughts.”

Ira Sachs is one of American cinema’s most reliable crafters of human-scaled cinematic dramas. That description doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, so I should assure you that Passages is some kind of time at the movies—a briskly-moving, turbulent, emphatically sexy, deliberately exasperating love triangle in crazy times.

Gleason is incredibly frank about Gleason’s physical suffering and the toll his terrifyingly implacable physical deterioration takes on his marriage.

This documentary, directed by Jeffrey Wolf, is a plain, sincere, nourishing account of the artist.

The film, directed by Roland Vranik from a script by Mr. Vranik and Ivan Szabo, is a careful, compassionate and beautifully acted character drama with a social conscience.

The result is a story that’s hair-raisingly watchable and frequently moving, regardless of what you believe you might already know of Wilson’s life.

The film’s images entangle us with the characters, which makes its indeterminate ending a little more disappointing than it might have been. But this post-cataclysm habitat is worth paying a visit anyway.

Wiseman himself is also the last person who’d call his films “objective,” because they’re not. It’s more that their point of view is multi-faceted, sophisticated, connoting a point of view that’s deeply felt but not on-the-nose obvious.

A very unusual and rare kind of movie: one that is good in spite of itself. Which isn’t to say that the movie’s director and co-producer Tony Stone doesn’t make some provocative, interesting choices.

The result is a kind of very faux documentary style, which, along with the subject matter, has suggested to some the influence of the BBC television series "The Office." Von Trier says he's never seen an episode, and I believe him.

As is customary in Mr. Baumbach’s pictures, the acting is spectacular.

The measured ordinariness of its first section has been a sly setup for a poetic film that handles narrative as a kind of scarf dance.

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.

This is an essential film, but it is also a terribly dispiriting one.

This tense and upsetting film has more psychological depth and empathy than the comparable sensationalist fare of its time, and shudder-inducing cinematic style to spare. Private Property qualifies as a genuine rediscovery.

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.

The measured tone with which the movie presents its ostensible revelations is more than half the fun; nothing that comes up is ever played as a twist; the aforementioned opening scene shows Munch’s hand deliberately.