Martin Tsai

The documentary A Small Section of the World is straight-up corporate propaganda. But its uplifting, powerful, well-meaning message might be enough to win over even some skeptics.

Director Bernardo Ruiz never manages to weave the multiple narratives into a complex but cohesive big picture.

It's little more than an artsy but hollow Lifetime cable movie.

It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.

Experimentalism isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but the form, content, visuals, and motifs of There There aren’t inspired or interesting enough to warrant serious mental engagement.

Ngoc and Faunce certainly make fascinating subjects, and the film persuasively argues to give them the benefit of the doubt. But one can't help but think that in the hands of a shrewder filmmaker like Errol Morris, this stranger-than-fiction account would have been absolutely riveting.

The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.

It's excusable for a sheltered novice filmmaker to be out of touch like this, but not for a veteran.

The screenplay by Lane Shadgett and director Trevor White relies far too much on telling rather than showing.

The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.

While the cast and crew's competence well exceed what anyone would expect from this breed of B movies, they cannot compensate for the flawed internal logic in the screenplay.

The film is certainly interesting, despite the fact that it's a glorified promotional video for Muniz's installations.

Even for a movie obsessed from the outset with its destination, Don’t Make Me Go mostly takes a road to nowhere.

Northmen: A Viking Saga uses a relatively smaller scale to its advantage.

When it becomes apparent that the seemingly linear narrative is in fact woven with several parallel story lines, one might even be inclined to excuse the plot's too many convenient coincidences.

One Candle, Two Candles proves worthwhile at least as a cultural curio.

Pablo Larraín's Maria is a one-note exploration of another public figure that just makes the same points over and over again.

One would almost be inclined to give Morgan a pass for interviewing some of his executive producers as expert sources. A bigger disappointment is the missed opportunity to address the significant retailer markups that could have gone toward improving sweatshop conditions instead of profit margins.

Unfortunately, each main character serves as an avatar emblematic of a societal symptom instead of a real person in whose shoes we can stand. As a result, their trajectories are didactic and predictable.

Fredric Dannen's reportage, which appeared in a 1992 issue of the New Yorker and serves as the film's basis, contains lurid details that leap off the page in a cinematic way. The "Dragons" script by Michael Di Jiacomo and co-director Andrew Loo preserves many, but few register on-screen.

Otherwise fairly routine, the film draws fear from ancient mythology and historical grudges in a way more reminiscent of Japanese horror than its American contemporaries. Had Ojeda delved into that a bit more, he could have really set the film apart.

Until we’re a bit further removed from the current wave of anti-Asian hate crimes, Shim’s film underplays the potential nuance that might come from a proper exploration of that idea, instead reinforcing the idea that nonwhite language, imagery, and faces are to be feared—worst of all, to the people bearing them.

Sheep in the Box gestures toward grief, artificial consciousness, and emotional dependency without ever probing the psychic or societal consequences of any of them.

Some instances of impiousness work better than others.

On The Count Of Three is not didactic, and thank goodness the filmmakers at least have the good sense to recognize that preachiness helps no one and solves nothing. But the film dumbs down a complex and taboo topic by placing blame squarely on bogeymen like bullies and abusers.

The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.

This journey into "Martha Marcy May Marlene" territory is never as tense and gripping as it should be, the incidents and most of the performances too tamped-down to spark a much-needed sense of animating friction.

Even if you agree with the film’s political lean, it’s hard to overlook the unorthodoxy. Common Ground smacks of propaganda masquerading as documentary. If such can qualify as documentary, then so should reality TV.