Godfrey Cheshire

What comes across as genuine in the film, and might also help explain its origins, is its air of melancholy and loneliness.

Though the film’s lachrymose gist is conveyed with subtlety and insight into the rigors of loneliness and mortality, it is lachrymose nonetheless. Fans of “Eleanor Rigby,” in any case, should not miss it.

In the annals of historical biopics, Jonathan Teplitzsky’s Churchill stands out as a uniquely awful and tedious caricature of a fascinating subject.

Petroni, in any case, is a skilled storyteller with a strong visual sense.

The Confessions might remind viewers of films ranging from “The Name of the Rose” to Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth.” But Roberto Andó’s film disappointingly ends up being too flat-footed script-wise to deliver on either its dramatic or thematic promises.

Having such a small number of characters, like the limitations caused by budgetary constraints, might sound like a recipe for creative claustrophobia, but Gentry turns these givens to his advantage, almost as if using Synchronicity to articulate a less-is-more filmmaking philosophy.

Its narrative and visual approach almost suggests a compendium of the clichés one should avoid in a film like this.

The film misses the chance to offer an original artistic or sociopolitical take on the 1969 riots that sparked the U.S. gay rights movement.

These are all cartoon figures out of Frank Capra’s most feverish populist nightmares.

A drama in which belief is reduced to well-meaning but inert treacle.

The result is another vacuous melodrama/thriller that doesn’t lay a glove on the era’s historical complexities.

The result is a film that feels less like a lecture than a provocative X-ray of current American political realities.

Boonyawatana provides a confident and distinctive vision of his own in this, his debut feature. While his spiraling from one genre to another may produce a final lack of coherence, it’s a nervy, purposeful strategy that keeps clichés at bay while engaging viewer interest throughout.

Talking with the residents of these different worlds, and contrasting their different lives, is where the film’s heart and greatest insights reside.

It is also something decidedly novel: a wildly original art-house comedy.

A brave, revelatory, and beautifully realized film, it is easily one of the year’s best and most important documentaries.

[A] well-intentioned but only partly satisfying film.