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]