Mark Feeney

Like Lyon balancing looking out and looking in “The Bikeriders,” Nichols balances the mythic and mundane in this version.

What's most vexing about Portrait of Wally is its lack of nuance.

A bit more internal tussle would have both better honored her spirit and made for a better documentary.

Sword of Trust has a dogged weirdness all its own, a singularity that extends to Maron having written the excellently jangly score. When was the last time you saw — or heard — a movie where the star composed the music? It’s just part of the its-own-world quality of Sword of Trust.

A date movie “Monkey Man” is not.

John Lewis: Good Trouble isn’t a great film, but it has a great subject — and excellent timing.

The idea behind Eugene Jarecki’s nonfiction film The King — you can’t really call it a documentary — is crazy-good inspired.

Combining as it does great admiration with an acknowledgment of flaws, “Sidney” is like Ethan Hawke’s recent HBO Max documentary about Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, “The Last Movie Stars.”

Nightmare Alley doesn’t lack for action. It’s just that the action feels mechanical, a going through the motions. It’s a sincere going through the motions. It’s a committed going through the motions. But it’s still a going through the motions. Worse than a dream that’s a nightmare is a dream that’s a form of sleepwalking.

The documentary is good on the gay aspect of 54, and disco generally. Schrager became highly successful as an impresario of boutique hotels. Still, when he talks about Studio 54 there’s a touch of wonder in the tough-guy growl.

What a waste of a superb actress. Buckley almost makes Men worth sitting through. Almost.

As directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Old Guard is assured and textureless: competence doing the work of inspiration. The movie is like an extended trailer for itself.

Vividly captures a period of movie history. It’s just that the period seems less vital -- sleepier, if you will -- than it once did.

The documentary variously consists of archival performance footage, home movies, photographs, pointlessly flashy graphics, and many, many talking heads.

So it’s no small tribute to Feldstein — who really is something — to say that she’s the very best thing in How to Build a Girl despite being so wildly miscast. Her performance is a tour de force, even if it’s too forceful for either its own good or that of the movie.

“The Fog of War” (2003), about McNamara, won Morris a best documentary feature Oscar. The Unknown Known takes its title from a favorite phrase of Rumsfeld. It also accurately describes its subject, whose smiling inscrutability makes him consistently fascinating and often maddening.

Julia, a brisk documentary survey of Julia Child’s life, is warmly admiring. This makes sense, as there’s lots to admire.

Haggis and Krauss’s desire to use the ward as a vehicle to tell a much larger and more complex story makes sense. Yet it ultimately takes away from the truly remarkable story they have to tell, a story that may actually be more complex than matters of government policy and public opinion.

Ed Harris, who voices Blade Ranger, the no-nonsense helicopter who heads the fire-and-rescue operation, doesn’t lay it on too strong. Julie Bowen, as Lil’ Dipper, an air tanker, does.

What makes Steve and Rob so funny is that they’re so human: petty, insecure, rivalrous, as well as charming and hilarious. Nothing’s more human than sadness, not even laughter, and laughter The Trip to Greece has to offer in plenty. What’s their next destination? Wherever it is, the important thing is that there be one.

Chicken With Plums has Iran in common with "Persepolis," but little else. Largely, though not entirely, live action, it's a fairly traditional story about thwarted love - a kind of fairy tale for grown-ups.

Moviemaking doesn’t come any tauter or with more velocity. But that confusion is a warning. It’s going to apply to the entire movie; and the longer “Tenet” lasts, the more of an issue confusion becomes.

Demonstrating a mastery of euphemism and understatement, Ringo recalls how the Byrds “introduced us to a hallucinogenic situation, and we had a really good time.” Consistently amiable, if a bit wandery, Echo in the Canyon provides a good time, too.

Hardy once again shows what quiet force and phenomenal range he has.

Moore shows newsreel footage of Hitler delivering a speech. Only it’s not Hitler’s voice we hear. It’s Trump’s. Get it? Sure you do, and as you do the documentary slips the surly bonds of sanity — even of agitprop — to enter a realm of its own polemical making. Words cannot do justice to such an editorial decision. Well, maybe five can: intellectually null and morally contemptible.

The Outfit would be a splendid thing if limited to Rylance’s voiceover and long lingering shots of him working with fabrics.

All the actors are very good, though Raiff, who’s in almost every scene, can get a little wearying with his combination of high energy and touch of winsomeness.

The moral weight of Hitler's Children is unmistakable. So is that weight's inertness.