John Anderson

It is the library as an urgent idea, and the obligations that the institution’s leaders have embraced, that win Mr. Wiseman’s admiration and attention.

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

As a work of nonfiction, it deserves its own nomenclature. "Docu-poem" is too inelegant; "masterpiece" works, although it's been used before.

It’s unclear what if anything Mr. McQueen or his co-writer, Alastair Siddons, lifted from judicial transcripts, but the inherent boundaries of a courtroom help give more shape and momentum to the storytelling. The setting also allows the characters to stop telling each other things they’d never say.

It also happens to feature a pair of performances that eclipse all else around them.

Everyone is doomed in Mr. Diaz’s account of European colonialism and exploratory naval history—not just the primitive Filipinos and Indonesians but the Portuguese on the mission from their silent God. And their covetous king.

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.

There are not a lot of moments in documentary cinema that equal Citizenfour. Ms. Poitras was already at work on a film about government surveillance when Mr. Snowden presented himself, and she’s something of a lightning rod, too, one with little evident sympathy for Obama administration data mining.

How does it play? With the same verbal and musical fireworks as the stage version, and with the same emotional kick, which is rooted in the casting.

The film is terrific fare for kids. But the underpinnings of its fantastical story lie in tortured Irish history, English imperialism, and the use of religion to rationalize oppression; there’s a hum of yearning for a pre-Christian Hibernia of pagans, Druids and nature worship. Adults will be eager to see where it’s all going to go.

A film like About Endlessness invites comparisons not to other movies, but to other media. The Preludes of Chopin or Debussy, for instance, brilliant flashes that don’t need to go anywhere, but might. Or something like Baudelaire’s “Paris Spleen,” an intriguing whole composed of incongruous poetic fragments.

Like the film itself, Porter’s handful of devoted, charismatic attorneys do a righteous job of reminding people that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, and that the criminal justice system seems otherwise disposed.

Mr. Ostlund positions his troubled characters in an environment of polished ash and Scandinavian spotlessness, under which there are dark mutterings — the constant creak of tow cables and un-oiled metal.

"Witty and brisk" is not the name of a French breakfast cereal, but it does describe a certain brand of French film, the type that coquettishly flirts with comedy while sprinting in the direction of dry, sophisticated charm. Such is Haute Cuisine.

Museo is in part a caper film, a heist film, and while it leans on such classics as “Topkapi” and “Rififi” the robbery has its own signature and is done in a visual style that’s hypnotic.

One of the assets of Stranger Things is its air of mystery, and the actors give the indelible impression that they have much locked away inside.

The unlikely, bittersweet, bristling comedy Support the Girls is easily one of the best films of the year, and the most sympathetic to women, despite having been made by a man. How can this be? Luckily, Andrew Bujalski’s remarkable movie — with its killer performance by Regina Hall — is not just about women. It’s about men being idiots. And no one is arguing ownership of that narrative.

It wants to fly away, though in one sense it does show restraint: There’s enough going on in Rogue Agent to have fueled an eight-week PBS mystery series. Economy, in the world of fictionalized espionage, is quite decidedly a virtue.

It might have taken one actress to make a movie so reliant on others. It certainly took a director with a supreme confidence, not just in the talents of her performers but in the power of gesture.

Thoroughly entertaining, startling and highly erotic film.

The Square is journalism, but Noujaim’s agenda is greater than mere reportage.

Adult Beginners presents itself less as humor than as a study in Gen-X sociology and psychology. What happens when people raised in relative ease and who expect to live an even better life than their parents are left emotionally unequipped for reality? It might be touching. It might even be important. But it’s not exactly a lot of laughs.

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.

“Montage” is about expression. As such, it’s a more honest tribute to Mr. Cobain than any conventional documentary could pretend to be.

The depths of the characterizations are commensurate with the complexities of the men, making Malcolm the most resounding. Mr. Ben-Adir does him justice.

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.

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.

Of all the Josef von Sternberg-Marlene Dietrich films, this Oriental thriller may be the most sinfully pleasurable and amusing. [15 Sep 1991, p.6]

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.

There are a few charming moments between Ms. Lopez and Mr. Wilson that prove beyond doubt that their characters are too intelligent to be in this movie. And yet, here we are.

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

What we have from director Alex Holmes — a guy who knows a great cinematic story when he hears one — is a documentary with all the nervous-making energy of a first-rate drama; a cast of sailors who are both endearing and intelligent; and a delicately wrought suspense story.

Ultimately, Supercross is an example of how too much of anything will get annoying -- including VVRRRROOOOOOOMMM and flying bikes.

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.

Frances Ha also marks the rare instance in which an actress has the perfect role at the perfect time. Ms. Gerwig's work here is fragile, delicate, subject to bruising; something that could wither under too much attention. Perhaps Ms. Gerwig is the greatest actress alive. And maybe Frances Ha is just the ghost orchid of independent cinema.

Few viewers anywhere will be immune to the movie’s charms, or the performances, notably that of Mr. Sigurjonsson, who makes Gummi a slightly mournful, enormously lovable and quixotically heroic figure.

Much of the fun of Marjorie Prime is in figuring out where it’s going, and why. It would be shameful to reveal much more of the journey save to say that the people who make it do a splendid job.

That the film is online because of the Covid-19 pandemic might be considered a silver lining: Not only will more people be able to see it, but they can, and should, experience it through headphones. A big screen would be nice, too, given Ms. Rovner’s hallucinogenic way with pictures. But the sound, as she would probably agree, is paramount.

The problem for Mr. Krieger is that his film has been trying to dazzle us with all manner of sleight of hand and hokum and now undertakes the construction of a conventional romance. The movie starts spinning its wheels.

The situation is fascinating, and given an illuminating investigation here.

The characters are really minimalist masterpieces, sculpted, polished and uncompromisingly female.

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 attitude of Mr. Navalny and his colleagues is fearless, in a country governed by fear. Thrillers are rarely so inspiring.

Hold Your Fire is a bona-fide thriller, its elements in delicate balance.

Master of Light is a film not just about art and redemption but a character sorting out his life, and what he truly believes about art.

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

The otherworldliness of “Tina,” which exists for many minutes in a kind of vacuum created between the various silent images and the distanced voiceover, is transporting; the ambient score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans helps transform what might have been a series of mere tawdry recollections into a kind of prison memoir.

Likely to create considerable nervous tension among viewers who think they've seen this all before. They haven't.

It’s a gripping historical document, regardless of where one stands on the central argument.

As director Alison Ellwood shows in her briskly entertaining documentary—The Go-Go’s—the band’s members can explain away, with enormous charm, the naked ambition that made them the most successful “girl group” ever.

Kon's best work yet.

The film benefits enormously from having the luminous Rebecca Hall as its lead. It also gains an ominous gravity from the haunted, wounded and wobbly England in which it's set.

Director David Mackenzie's gripping, convincing and convincingly violent convict drama owes its authenticity largely to the experiences of ex-prison therapist Jonathan Asser, who wrote its screenplay. But the opening 10 minutes are a virtuosic example of virtually wordless filmmaking.

The emotional aspects of the story are treated with such a heavy hand, the supernatural aspects are so vague and uninvolving, and the group dynamic is so unconvincing that one can't quite imagine why anybody bothered.

As good as Rourke is, and as willingly as he throws himself on the figurative hand grenade, his performance constantly begs the question of whether the story would be worth telling without him. Marisa Tomei, as Cassidy the pole dancer, delivers a courageous performance, one nearly as ego-battering as Rourke's.

Containing as much forward motion as any film in recent memory, Good Time is as heartbreaking as it is exhilarating, and that’s no small thing.

People might have laughed at the old Jack Rebney, but they were laughing at themselves as well. And counting their blessings. Everyone has a cranky side. Unlike Mr. Rebney's, it isn't usually gawked at by 20 million people.

To lavish too much praise on Mr. Pitt’s performance would be to somehow suggest he isn’t already among the best actors on screen. He is. Between this film and the current “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he could and should be a double Oscar nominee next year. If he’s not, it doesn’t mean his performance in Ad Astra isn’t an epic one.

The film may not take quite as many chances with the documentary form as Armstrong took with the opening cadenza of “West End Blues” (recorded by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five in 1928) but it is a daring work, a worthy and affectionate statement about the most important single figure in American popular music, 20th Century Division.

With A Hidden Life and the story of Franz Jägerstätter, the director has found the ideal vehicle for his cosmic inquiries, and has created a film that is mournful, memorable and emotionally exhilarating.

The plot's a lot lighter than Vera, our engaging pachyderm, and Larger Than Life is basically a buddy/road movie--complete with animal comedy and interspecies bonding. For all the traveling, the movie doesn't go many places we haven't seen before. But Murray is careful not to step on Vera's toes. And she shows him the same courtesy. [01 Nov 1996, p.F14]

The material is often intimate, often heartbreaking.

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.

Even when it falters The Forty-Year-Old Version exudes confidence—the director has confidence in her lead actress, and vice versa; both trust the writer, whose more amusing lines are often contained in asides between characters discussing.

A lot of Lucky is philosophical mischief, some of it is tediously ruminative, and some moments achieve a loveliness that belies the film’s craggy desert terrain, the earthiness of its characters and even the landscape of Mr. Stanton’s body.

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.

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.

It’s a delicate and memorable performance by Mr. Jackman. Ms. Janney does the whole Long Island thing as well as anyone ever has. The most resonant character, though, might be Rachel, whom Ms. Viswanathan imbues with the indignation of youth—something the rest of the characters have long outgrown, but which the story was always going to need.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The deliriously talented Lake Bell wrote, produced, directed and stars in this peculiar bit of comedy magic, set amid the cutthroat world of Hollywood voiceover artists.

The Innocents features some superb kid-acting, which doesn’t just entertain and convince but embellishes the malevolent intelligence (call it sociopathy) at work in Mr. Vogt’s story.

Mr. Gaines occasionally loses confidence in his audience—the parallels that can be drawn between Gregory’s times and now are pretty obvious and don’t really need the punctuation. Most of the time, though, The One and Only Dick Gregory is a memorable portrait, of someone whose story deserves to be better remembered.

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

There’s a weariness to West of the Jordan River, both in the storytelling and the face of Amos Gitai.

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.

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.

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

Top Gun: Maverick is not a dislikable movie, by any means: The cast is charming, the military stuff is convincing, the action sequences are, as intended, pretty astounding: In the proper theater (I saw it in IMAX) it will be a physical experience, literally, one that may lead to armrests being shredded by white-knuckling audiences in cinemas all over the world. But it’s also a little depressing, because of where it says movies are going, what it says about the lack of creativity making its way on screen, and what a precarious balance movie theaters are in.

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.

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire is like a diamond -- clear, bright, but oh so hard.

Dorothy Lewis, the subject of director Alex Gibney’s collagist masterpiece Crazy, Not Insane, is out to demolish “the myth of pure evil.” As such, she may be among the most dangerous women in the world. She is certainly a “pioneer,” as one colleague calls her, adding that pioneers are often not treated very well.

While certainly a curiosity, We Met in Virtual Reality—a pandemic-inspired documentary filmed entirely within a social platform called VRChat—is also revelatory, if not entirely ennobling of the human condition.

“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.

Playing With Sharks has its visual thrills but also tells one good story after another, not only about making movies and flirting with death but about the nature of the fish and the steely character of the movie’s human subject.

Ms. Brown, who first came to our attention in “Stranger Things,” and for good reason, is surrounded by a cast that may have lost a bet.

Anderson, who makes as impressive a directing debut as has been seen in some time, creates a perfectly modulated mystery that doesn't even feel like one. It's a character play, and Hall, Reilly and Paltrow are so convincingly damaged they take on the properties of fine china.

“Yacht Rock” is the yacht rock of documentaries.

It’s hard to make a compelling movie about a character defined by indecision, Hamlet notwithstanding. Ms. Hittman, however, has done it.

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

Still, one needn’t be British to feel the epic loss and grief of 1917, thanks to some very committed performances, the intimacy achieved by the movie’s style and camera — the cinematographer is the celebrated Roger Deakins — and Mr. Mendes’s obvious devotion to what he’s doing.

Infectious and inspiring, despite one's best efforts to resist its charms.

It’s a story that doesn’t quite follow the money. The money is a maguffin, as per Hitchcock.

While much of The World Before Her speaks to global womanhood, other aspects are more specific to India, but that’s what gives the film much of its life and spark.

With a mood and setting worthy of a murder story by Jack London, this audience-friendly, atmospheric work could be remade as a thriller, although that’s really what it is already.

[A] moving and poetic documentary portrait.