Nick Allen

There's always something to ponder with this film, which gets stranger and more polarizing as it goes along.

The film is too ordinary to feel like it does her legacy complete artistic justice.

The Disciple is a great example of when filmmaking and acting styles complement each other, and it’s that bond that feels to be a significant part of what makes Tamhane’s film so special, so resonant.

There’s been nothing quite like Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham, an exhilarating testament to documentaries as a boundless form of art.

This is a movie that’s impressively, if not stubbornly understated, where life stories come from select bits of precise dialogue, with lovingly rendered characters put into a collection of scenes that simply allow us to live with them.

Covino’s film is an exhilarating anomaly, if not a wake-up call for the visual potential of heartfelt comedy.

Here is a cornucopia of aesthetics, not for all but definitely for some, that will remind you that not every type of film has been made yet.

Here is a film dedicated to recognizing our most common obstacles, its quiet storytelling largely accompanied by those feelings at the bottom of anyone’s gut: guilt, shame, defeat. Menashe is a gorgeous ode to everyone's inner screw-up.

Magid essentially casts herself as the lead of this documentary, which has a wild way of questioning ownership when it comes to an artist that so many people love.

Knock Down the House prevails with albeit straight-forward intentions: to amplify the women who are both mad as hell and doing something about it.

Chasing Ghosts has a great idea in showcasing as much of Traylor’s work as possible, and next to the creations of other Black artists, but its talking head presentation is fairly didactic.

Cane River offers American indie cinema a hero worth remembering, and a romantic with a vision beyond his years.

While the script has a problem sharing why it was excited to place conjoined twins in such a predicament, the Fontana sisters boast a special emotional eloquence.

This Netflix documentary will undoubtedly help more people understand how transgender people have seen themselves represented in Hollywood — it brings everyone together with its critical eye.

As storyteller, Gibney finds a constructive manner to mindfully engage our admittedly bizarre fixation with murder (which would be worthy of a separate doc) while encouraging a more humane way to approach some of society's most violent figures.

Diab effectively creates a monster of blind hatred, and then holds all of us as captors and witnesses to a hateful world tearing itself apart.

Writer/director Zach Cregger proves himself to be a bonafide jack-in-the-box horror filmmaker with "Barbarian," beginning with a nightmare that could happen to any of us—a double-booked Airbnb.

Wu takes an observational, matter of fact stance to these different lives and this overall enterprise, reminiscent of how Kyoko Miyake took us through the looking glass of Japan’s idol culture in “Tokyo Idols,” another doc on a similar sociological beat that would make for a great double feature or essay.

Though it has a tight course of events and is spiked with a few surprises, First Love is far more impressive for how it collides its many characters than what it ever feels for them.

For either newcomers or fans, the documentary’s cradle-to-grave, talking head approach too readily threatens to take the zip, romance, and funk out of a fascinating subject who would be nothing without those very elements.

While Tramps may be inspired and unusual, it’s hard to shake off the idea that Leon isn't just making the film he wants to see, he's riffing on himself.

It is a touching document of seemingly regular people who yearn to keep an artistic tradition alive.

Whether or not we get more rounds with this hand of fate, Talk to Me lingers as a striking and confident directorial debut from the Philippous, whose penchant for hyper-active YouTube fight and prank vids is mostly evident in this movie's emotional carnage.

Son of Monarchs, which is driven by mood as much as it is a metaphor that it can’t get enough of, embodies the equal ambition and shortcomings of a writer/director trying feel their way through science, while having as minimal a narrative as possible.

As a formal experimentation by an actor whose filmmaking talents are only the latest chapter in his Hollywood story, the documentary offers a touching reflection on Jonah Hill, The Star. Without specifically mentioning movie projects or other's names, he shares his sense of self during success, and how self-esteem remained elusive.

True to Lee’s reputation of playing with the chemistry of storytelling, Pass Over has the air of an experiment and the clarity of poetry, as inspired by the news and told by artistry beyond far beyond Lee’s. In the grand scheme of his filmography it’s one of his smaller projects, but it is by no means a minor work.

Slathered with a score that makes the sadness of each passage unmistakable, Pray Away narrows its purpose to be simply informative; it is too artistically flat to have the emotional peaks that would give its own otherwise vital message some dynamic, or make it more impactful beyond its very subject matter.