John Anderson

It will prove a literally breathtaking adventure, depending on one’s phobias about heights, water and psychopaths. But it is an ordeal saga, a predator thriller with horror-film accents—and a considerable amount of violence and pain for the character played by the ageless Ms. Theron, who may be giving the most athletically demanding performance of her action-movie career.

The tale doesn’t need any artificial twists. They occur naturally. There’s character development. Foreshadowing.

“The Logo” is directed by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, who is too much of a presence in his own movie. It’s his first documentary. It may be the first one he’s seen. Documentarians usually hide themselves unless they have something to add, which he doesn’t.

While Ms. Gillespie can’t solve the mystery of why exactly her subject did what he did, she has created a novel kind of crime film, one aided in no small way by what seems to be the complete flight recording from Russell’s mad act. And a group of loved ones willing to listen to it.

Ms. Zenovich possesses the interviewer’s most valuable skill, knowing when to shut up.

“1000 Women” is briskly entertaining and wildly informative as a clip show, insightful in its academic analysis, and the structure of the film enables a tidy organization of an often messy bunch of films.

While essentially a disaster film, the visually alarming and nerve-racking “Fukushima” is also a cross-cultural psychodrama, about an industry, and perhaps a society, having a meltdown all its own.

In a deliberately raggedy film, we find a raggedy man.

Like Sun Ra’s music, the motion picture is deliberately fractured, the virtues to be found in the departures from the expected, the familiar, the comfortable.

Director Rory Kennedy strives to make Ms. Polgár’s story—that of the greatest female player in the game—a validation of women in chess, without paying much attention to their continued under-representation, post-Polgár, in international competition. What she does come close to validating, however hesitantly, are the unorthodox educational theories of Judit’s father, László.

The Rip is a sturdily entertaining, hyper-kinetic avalanche of action propelled by equal parts bullets and f-bombs.

Influencers both dwells in and demolishes an online, text-happy, selfie-saturated world, one that thrives on misinformation and FOMO-mongering and drives CW more than a little crazy. Watching poseurs brought down is fun, though. So is Ms. Naud.

As naturally and insistently buoyant as Mr. Strassner is, Ms. Larsen is a marvel.

There is an implicit story within—about the ancients building with marble for eternity and us moderns building with concrete for a virtual moment. But it isn’t just beauty Mr. Kossakovsky is concerned with here. It is how humans view their world and, more importantly, themselves. And their place in the universe. And their disposable landscape.

“Reflection” is a highly playful exercise in its kaleidoscopic approach, though “kaleidoscopic” is about as useful as “surreal” in describing the film’s effect or philosophy.

The film acknowledges the bones of Johnson’s story—a very thin narrative in terms of things actually happening, though the things that happen are enormous. The execution is nevertheless lush, sometimes startlingly beautiful, and painterly and evocative of Johnson’s elegiac theme about a bygone America. The Old World is never old until it’s gone, but in Train Dreams one feels it passing.

Musically, the film is best viewed and heard as an artifact.

Is this movie better seen in a theater than at home on Netflix? Yes, no and what can one say? Watch it anyway.

Mr. Davenport, who makes films “about disability” according to his website, also makes them from the perspective of the disabled—he has cerebral palsy and often uses a wheelchair. Like many people who find themselves on the anti- side of the assisted-suicide issue, he takes the concept to what seem very logical conclusions—with an assist from Canada.

There is no reason to adapt an existing work without doing something new, and Ms. DaCosta does plenty, though much of the updating shows how truly groundbreaking Ibsen was. And how little ground is left to break.

The filmmakers may have refashioned the book to make it a vehicle for Mr. Murphy, and done so successfully. But they were right about the POV: Witnessing the turmoil of these very troubled youths through the frustrations of their teachers makes for more convincing drama than would a delinquent’s-eye view of the same situation.

All horror film is metaphorical. But to qualify for the genre itself—and satisfy the base demands of the base—a movie is required to both accelerate toward lunacy and entertain a certain amount of mayhem. “Bring Her Back” contains enough gore to swamp a blood bank. But it also features a performance by Sally Hawkins that may be the best of the year, or even her career.

The Vietnam echoes are everywhere. The vocabulary is mere embellishment

It’s difficult to describe the astonishing beauty of “Porcelain War” without trivializing everything and everyone involved.

Both the underlying story and the dramatic re-creations possess an urgency that eludes so much televised—and sensationalized—nonfiction.

Hell of a Summer, as written and directed by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, manages to mine some fresh mirth out of the mayhem while lampooning a format’s classic conceits.

It’s easy to smile at The Thursday Murder Club, with its veteran performers chewing the scenery and still having the teeth to do it. Does that sound ageist? It might, if the charms of this lighthearted, star-studded confection weren’t all about its main characters being advanced in years and still as sharp as an insulin injection.

There are a few speedbumps of illogic along the gnarled route of Night Always Comes, but they can’t negate the pace of the storytelling, Mr. García’s gymnastic shooting, or the sense of there being no bottom to the well of darkness explored by Mr. Caron.

May end up being the surprise delight of summer ’25.

Director Mark Monroe’s nearly two-hour Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is the most exhaustive exploration thus far.

“Disaster Is My Muse” differs from other “American Masters” programs by having a subject who is alive, well, loves his wife, Françoise (who appears frequently and to great effect), and about whom there is a more than generous amount of documentation (as in drawings) and footage.

There are many more questions in “CHAOS” than hard answers, but one thing is clear, namely the hypnotic quality of Mr. Morris’s filmmaking, enhanced to no small end by the dread in Paul Leonard-Morgan’s score and even in the demo recordings by Manson of his songs (which might have been sung by someone like Johnny Mathis, weirdly enough).

Yes, there’s a sermon of sorts at the center of “A Different Man.” But the message arrives post-movie, thanks to a narrative that is consistently compelling in its novelty, and twin performances—by Messrs. Stan and Pearson—that really do get under the skin.

Ms. Wilson may put a viewer off balance with a lack of concrete detail, but it is a seduction technique that works, to satisfying effect.

Cheerfully horrifying.

Vandross regularly produces sounds that seem superhuman, and does so with no visible strain. It is also no work at all enjoying a movie so full of affection for its subject and his music.

Despite the “improvements” to the animation technique, there remains a purity to Wallace & Gromit. In fact, the most endearing aspects of the series are its links to silent comedy. And dogs, naturally. And penguins.

With Taron Egerton as its hero and Jason Bateman as its villain, it is a perfectly serviceable two hours of action and angst

If you happen to need a good cry, you can’t go wrong with Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, a documentary about decent people, bewildering misfortune and how bad luck can have a ripple effect—especially if you are lucky enough to have people who love you. If you don’t want to cry, you probably will.

“Yacht Rock” is the yacht rock of documentaries.

What Mr. Farrow does in his very concise, urgent documentary is track how governments and worse are using, abusing and will continue to employ technology by which they can pickpocket your personal data.

Ms. McKenzie is terrific and carries much of the film, and director Taylor (“Sex Education”) seizes every opportunity to adorn it with period flavor, portraying Manchester and a Manchester hospital as they were 50 years ago.

By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.

The storytelling is first-rate, snowballing along from one outrage to the next.

Woman of the Hour may be sensational, in the tabloid sense, but it is angry, too, and full of questions.

The Last of the Sea Women is, like its subjects, beautiful and charming.

For the mangy, flea-bitten TV reviewer, there would be no quicker route to ignominy than trashing a show about dogs. Fortunately, even cat ladies will like Inside the Mind of a Dog, which has an abundance of furry charm and retrieves a kennel’s worth of information from those sniffing around the cutting edge of canine science.

Documentarian Nanette Burstein has a wealth of photographic material at her disposal, much of it breathtakingly lovely, and she uses it gracefully and in the noble cause of forward motion.

Mr. Kauffman is interested in pure storytelling, the rise and fall of his various characters, which covers at least the last 10 years; he has created a beautiful film in terms of its aesthetics and affection for the machinery and people. But he is also telling a cautionary tale about the cluttering of space, and the pursuit not just of profit but power.

Hardcore horror fans will get their dose of mayhem from Humane, though in its modest, tidily organized fashion the film might also get under the skin.

We are set up to dislike her, but we do not. We like her very much, despite, or thanks to, the potent sense of diva that lingers in the air.

Among the ironic lessons of MoviePass, MovieCrash is that the people who used the service the most helped ruin it, though it wasn’t really their fault—it was a great deal. One that seemed too good to be true. And was.

Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans.

Unfrosted is a bonbon, a truffle, a trifle and a distraction from dispiriting news and disappointing drama upon which one can gorge as if it were a package of Fig Newtons. No, too healthy: Honey Smacks.

The aesthetics of Mr. Wiseman’s visual storytelling have seldom been so prominent or important as in “Menus-Plaisirs.”

The acting is first-rate, a disquieting pas de deux written by Indianna Bell and directed by her and Josiah Allen, who edited the piece.

The main attraction, so to speak, of “Road House” is ne’er-do-wells getting their comeuppance, to put it as gently as possible. The amount and degree of fighting defy most rules of physics, respiration and orthopedics. But it is a fantasy, mostly, which is a blessing.

Ricky Stanicky is, per the Farrelly aesthetic, eager to offend, gleefully vulgar and takes every joke too far.

A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein, his life after Hitler and his sense of “responsibility, not to say guilt” about his theories and how they played into the destruction that, lest one forget, ended World War II.

For a movie with such a nose for nuttiness, its human element is genuine and warm.

The length of his film is an essential element in Mr. Bayona’s message about desperation and hope and, dare one say it, the resilience of the spirit. The soiled, ailing, sunburned husks of men who emerge from the mountains are heroes, though they look every bit like ghosts.

There’s not a lot of mystery to Bye Bye Barry, unless you count the puzzle posed by a person like William Sanders, who is spoken of by his son in nothing but admiring and affectionate terms and must have inspired something in a child so devoted to being the best at what he did.

Mr. Domingo is a force of nature in this film, delivering a complex, highly sympathetic portrayal, but he also determines what the movie actually is, while preventing it from going awry.

Much of what makes “The Boy Who Lived” special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry.

The audio recordings left by the first lady were clearly intended for posterity, and as such are discreet and politic but always revelatory, even by omission: LBJ’s legendary philandering, for instance, is never mentioned.

It is the understated, matter-of-fact tone of the story that sucks us in, and the two central performances that help make this effort by Ms. Moss such a singular addition to the monster catalog.

Watching Mr. Brooks’s career roll out in a compressed form is quite a treat, though Mr. Reiner seems to race toward the finish to include everything that he needs to get in.

The seductive visual rhythms of “Mr. Chow” are the result of Ms. Tsien’s editing (with Anita H.M. Yu and Eugene Yi), accessorized to no small degree by the magical animation of Rohan Patrick McDonald.

Based on the Le Carré memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel allows Mr. Morris to exercise his extraordinary gift for making the interview format irresistibly cinematic, and feels like a collaboration of kindred spirits.

The writing sometimes collapses into overkill, but sometimes it is precisely on point.

The film is better couch fare than most of what we will see at any time of year.

As directed by Menhaj Huda (“The Flash” TV series), Heist 88 is tidy, economical, forward-moving and not out to expand anyone’s visual vocabulary.

You can hear many an echo emanating from The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, sometimes to the point of cacophony. But there’s music here, too, and it is more than a requiem.

In exploring the issues that were and are involved, the film goes far deeper, as it were, than the seagoing Cold War caper thriller it naturally wants to be.

Writer-director Alejandra Márquez Abella never makes the slightest suggestion that José isn’t going to get where he’s going, but neither does she make A Million Miles Away into any kind of ethnic agitprop.

He may not be the most charismatic news anchor in the history of TV but Mr. Kumar has nerve, arguing with bellicose callers, singing to them while they rant (and promise to kill him) and sometimes getting them to sing along. As captured by Mr. Shukla, he also works tirelessly on behalf of something that you suspect wouldn’t be quite so despised if it weren’t also the truth.

The lack of oversight revealed in BS High is appalling—Ben Ferree, a former investigator for the Ohio High School Athletic Association, is one of the film’s biggest assets, a somewhat removed, detail-oriented observer who debunks Mr. Johnson’s claims at every turn.

What Mr. Mungiu puts together, in tandem with the ornate private lives of several main characters, is an anatomy of race hatred.

There are clashes of philosophy and practical action that need sorting out, and After the Bite treats both sides with respect.

While there seems to be a glut of b-ball documentaries right now, “Underrated” is, much like its subject, a highly graceful, even artistic entry into a muscle-bound medium.

One of the more charming aspects of The Jewel Thief is how little animosity is shown him by members of law enforcement, whom he frequently humiliated but who can’t help but harbor respect for someone so good at what he did.

While inseparable from Ukraine and its echoes, the film argues quietly but convincingly that its story is not specific to its time and place, necessarily, but is rather about how traumatized children everywhere might respond, react and/or rebel.

It is in part biographical, with the young-hunk-makes-good tale of the film world and a parade of clips from the movies that he made. But the documentary’s main concern is Hudson as the ultimate closeted homosexual, the CinemaScope version of a tale gay men had been forced to live out for generations, or risk scandal, blackmail and even criminal prosecution.

Being appalled by people who get their comeuppance is always entertaining, and American Pain fills that bill, though the misbehavior Mr. Foster chronicles is so shameless that viewers might start to lose their bearings.

As in much modern horror, humor resides just under the surface of “Brooklyn 45,” except when it erupts like a punctured artery; the cast has to walk a fine line, though they do behave as people might under extraordinary and extraordinarily unnerving circumstances.

In addition to the disco rhythms, glitzy fashions and alarming hairstyles, Love to Love You, Donna Summer might strike a nostalgic nerve with how natural, funny and forthcoming its subject is.

Ms. Kim strives to remain true to her subject’s sensibilities—her imagistic narrative amounts to energetic homage—and this includes not romanticizing his life.

The pace is nonstop, the humor abundant, the devotion of Mr. Fox’s wife, actress Tracy Pollan, is made plain, and there’s no small amount of nostalgia in store for people who know and love the Fox filmography. But the heart and soul of the film are the face-to-face interviews, which are far less delicate than one might expect. And all the deeper for it.

What God’s Time affords us, as few Hollywood movies do anymore, are performances that rely on sustained craft and emotion, an ability to mesmerize the camera and justify why it isn’t cutting away.

If you believe that the much-loved, much-banned Judy Blume has corrupted several decades of impressionable youth, Judy Blume Forever is probably not the film for you—it’s a salute, celebration and round of applause all rolled into one.

The results leave one thinking of the film’s subject as too delicate for punk, too vulnerable for the Rat Pack, and happy to be the kind of singular phenomenon worthy of Scorsese-ian scrutiny.

It’s the definition of guilty pleasure.

With enough suspense, action and violence for crime-thriller fans and enough Idris Elba for Idris Elba fans, Luther: The Fallen Sun needn’t have a message as well. But here it is: Tell Alexa to get out of your house. And take Siri with her.

The Strays, the feature-film debut of British writer-director Nathaniel Martello-White, is an engrossing, disturbing and even novel work, though its principal influences hang around like Hamlet’s father.

We can all see where this is going. In fact, if it didn’t go there we’d feel cheated, even though the route—as navigated by writer-director Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote “The Devil Wears Prada” and co-created “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”—is as roundabout as the performances and casting are straightforward.

Wildcat is not a fairy tale. The rigors endured by Mr. Turner’s principal sidekick, an ocelot named Keanu (the actor should be pleased), seem very basic compared to the human subject’s process of rehabilitation. But it does reconcile its realities with the elusive nature of happiness, which for both men and cats can mean what’s within their grasp.

As directed by Celia Aniskovich and Jennifer Brea, Call Me Miss Cleo is an affectionate portrait of a fringe character who was more a tool than a beneficiary of PRN’s seamy efforts.

The performers—not just the miraculous Ms. Pugh but Ms. Cassidy; her mother, Elaine Cassidy (who plays Anna’s mother); and Tom Burke, as the journalist-love interest Will Byrne—give memorably complex portrayals in a tale where elements theological, maternal, political and pictorial are transformed alchemically into narrative gold.