Nicolas Rapold

Whatever the facts, Mr. Gracia’s messily structured film works best as a document of fear in today’s Ukraine and as a kind of ghost story about the Soviet Union.

More often than not, Mr. Letterman uses his movie as a toy chest of characters more than as a medium, the muggy Mr. Black included.

Mr. Miike’s narrative model is essentially the Kool-Aid commercials of the 1980s: Periodically, somebody new bursts into the room or onto the street, and a fight or something bizarre takes place.

Roddy Bogawa’s Taken by Storm taps that intimate, thrilling ritual of another era: picking a record in a music store, beguiled by a mysterious album cover before the needle has even dropped.

Throughout, the filmmakers achieve the rare documentary feat of delving into a topic from multiple angles without slathering it in adulation.

There’s something woebegone about the film itself as it staggers along, ever in danger of tipping into the abyss inhabited by one of its subjects.

Mr. Barber can work up a fair sense of menace, but he seems to have directed most of the talented cast to speak their lines in a mannered fashion learned from other movies.

Too many scenes feel routine or clichéd, sometimes even those depicting extreme experiences.

A credit-sequence television clip of Mr. Warren and the real Ms. Smith with Oprah Winfrey makes the entire movie feel like the strangest book infomercial in memory.

Home From Home is imbued with the villagers’ attachment to the land, but while dutifully capturing the period, the film feels less layered than Mr. Reitz’s past work.

Rendering a miraculous premise dull, the film seems relatively uninterested in doing more than preaching to the choir.

If this isn’t the iPhone of documentaries, it gets its point across, and unlike Mr. Gibney’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” this movie has a harder target (albeit with its own devoted following).

What’s most curious is Mr. Labute’s kid-glove treatment of the scenario, forgoing real sexual gamesmanship, much less the opportunistic rug-pulling in past films. That baseline of sincerity is refreshing to a point, yet he’s written a fairly weak-tea story of conflicted self-discovery that would make for a mildly engaging evening on the stage.

The filmmakers pop their story’s bubble in a confusing finish, but it all ends up feeling like a mystery novel that simply never revealed the key clues.

Directing his first feature after some shorts, John Magary digs into his characters with fresh eyes and a sly sense of adventure.

Documentary masters like Mr. Leacock and Mr. Blank have long been drawn to filming other artists, even though the enigma of artistic endeavor may appear to elude portrayal on film. But in How to Smell a Rose, it’s just as important to feel the relationship between these two, with Mr. Leacock as something of a mentor.

Shot with available light, the suburban rambles are portrayed so naturally that it’s hard to believe they are scripted.

The crisscrossing pursuers and pesky police suggest a watered-down version of the treacheries in “City on Fire.” But the cluttered, unfolding dynamism of Mr. Lam’s action scenes remains resilient when gunplay or knife fights are thrust into street life.

The director Mark Neveldine deploys queasy lighting and a trembling score, but his best choice is to let Ms. Dudley stare at us. She conveys unnerving shifts in self-awareness and sinister intent with her eyes.

Mr. Toledano and Mr. Nakache, who wrote the scattered screenplay, have a well-honed touch for comic beats and a feel for workaday details. That comes in handy when their points about French identity miss the mark, or when the main characters share special moments without really acquiring depth.

Though Mr. Holdridge and Ms. Saasen feel genuine, they lack acting chops, and their screenplay’s self-consciousness about romantic clichés plays like a cliché itself.

Zarafa may not be the most groundbreaking feat of storytelling, but it does have a giraffe in a balloon.

Despite an appealing fondness for New York locations and habits, Mr. Buschel and his cinematographer, Ryan Samul, have embalmed their film in style. J. J.’s ostentatious speeches feel like a projection of self-conscious cleverness, and the film’s virtuoso lighting doesn’t always match up to the needs of a scene.

Despite the urgent subject matter and lyrical touches, it’s a film that needs further layers of complication and texture.

In truth, it’s less Manglehorn than Mr. Pacino that you warm up to in this film, as so many times before.

It’s a literally colorful and playful attempt to portray battlefields of artistic ambition and political struggle. But its dialogue and characters are also written as subtly as a radical manifesto.

The film’s initial naturalism is warped by overheated film technique and a dead-ending screenplay.

Unlike those in many art-house releases, this wilderness is not an abstract arena for playing out alienation but a living, breathing land with deep, abiding significance for Charlie and his fellow Aborigines cast adrift.

While the movie creates an intriguing emotional space in which characters at the end of their ropes can open up, there’s the distinct sense of a missed opportunity.

The Safdie brothers capture a density of activity as endemic to the city as it is to Harley’s daily hustle. By tapping into her routines, instead of framing her along solely tragic lines, the filmmakers fashion a diary of experience that’s all the more absorbing.

Perhaps it’s a hazard tied to a subject, seeds, which are all about potential, but Ms. McLeod’s film feels naggingly diffuse and insufficiently vivid in evoking diversity.

Mr. Téchiné ’s methodical storytelling covers more narrative ground than the drama requires, sapping the film’s energy.

This is a documentary fascinated with and fearful of cinema’s potency, but it’s also devoted to the idea of open discourse, a stance that underlines the urgency of thinking about film critically.

Mr. Borden, an acclaimed Canadian stage actor and playwright, turns in a slyly entertaining performance. But the relationship between Lake and Melvyn feels a bit more one-sided than perhaps was intended.

Mr. Chen, who teamed with Mr. Yen for the superior “Bodyguards and Assassins,” scatters references to Hong Kong martial arts classics. But while he has impressive fists of fury in both Mr. Yen and Mr. Wang, Kung Fu Killer lacks the brio and spice of its ancestors.

Ms. Bradley’s debut feature flutters along with inoffensive lyricism and a kindly eye, but it’s not enough to bring off a full-fledged portrayal that holds together.

As it dives into this infrequently depicted culture, Mr. Fraser’s film is caught shuttling uneasily between speeches and action.

A deeply silly drama of corrupted innocence.

The Forecaster has the distinct hermetic feel of a documentary that employs an echo chamber of people too close to the material.

The survey, pockmarked with sometimes dopey animations and music, feels scattered and less than the sum of Mr. Miller’s many parts. But it has its heart in the right movie-mad place.

Lost and Love (“Lost Orphan” in the original Chinese title) confronts serious problems but is too busy reaching for epic sweep and soaring moments to nail the fine detail of main characters’ fraught give-and-take.

Corny twists and exchanges ensue in the wobbly story, but, delightfully, Daniel Benmayor’s film shows love not just for stunts but for the dynamic surfaces of the city.

Mr. Erlingsson’s upbeat outlook suggests that generations of horses and men have coexisted and will continue to do so for centuries more.

Mr. Horvath’s procedural, increasingly dry documentary takes the “rush” out of “gold rush.”

The indomitable personality and talents of the serial prison escapee Mark DeFriest outshine the weaknesses of this documentary that bears his name.

Some of the deadpan moments and more fraught exchanges don’t really come off. But all in all, it’s one curious, and furious, escapade.

Mr. Levine spins a caper that wins you over more through tenacity than through originality.

Ms. Wilder, in her debut feature, riskily opts to leave much of the children’s educational activity fairly vague. Which gives it one more thing in common with school: You need to pay attention.

The director’s wide frame encompasses vast terrain from a middle vantage point, achieving views and noticing changes over time that a mere passer-by might not.

The gloriously scabrous ending to it all leaves the viewer wishing this talented writer had let it rip earlier.

While White Rabbit is not a lost cause, its difficult story of mistreatment and lashing out proves too much of a challenge to tell well.

In lingering over moody night streets and trembling faces, Ms. Josue has brought this film to the verge of becoming a tear-jerker. But, as epitomized in an extraordinary scene with a conflicted priest, it’s all part of a shared soul-searching that still continues.

The new film displays enough nutty writing and sheer brio to confirm the stamina of its enduring and skillfully voiced characters.

Partly thanks to Ms. Reed — as well as to Scott Bakula, as Wendy’s beleaguered boss, and minor players — the movie has its share of underplayed little scenes of realistic color.

It’s a job requirement for a show host like Mr. Uygur to project his personality and beliefs; this filmmaker doesn’t muster a healthy skepticism to match.

Slow-motion knockouts follow, with Mr. Statham as sure-fisted as ever, but the “Expendables” director Simon West can only summon dead air in between. Mr. Goldman’s slightly offbeat underworld is not very convincing, and Mr. Statham’s thick voice and inexpressive acting suggest brain fog rather than gritty blues.

Mr. German was just as stubborn in sticking to his personal vision (and revisions) as he was innovative in his storytelling, and he’s left behind a final opus that is hard to shake.

The wish fulfillment of time travel tends to be fun to watch, and the director, Dean Israelite, feeds on the friends’ giddy escapades for a while.

Mr. Avgerinos’s glossy, overripe take on high-flying, unscrupulous lenders — the wolves of Main Street — deteriorates into a hot mess of montages, trailer-ready one-liners and thudding drama.

Mr. Cohen, no stranger to delivering pulp product, employs visual clichés as if they were flash cards; no exposed thigh or made-you-jump reveal goes unexploited.

Mining deeper emotions from the fanciful premise doesn’t work out for the film, which gets tied down to a generic musical-contest subplot. It’s a workable comedy that’s sunk by its attempts to impersonate something else too.

Mr. Hart tells wild tales, Mr. Gad is humiliated, and most everyone else gets to dish out or receive abuse. But the laughs are not a sure thing.

As with his other features, brevity — in this case, 1 hour 10 minutes — has a way of making the film seem minor. It’s a little diffuse, but it suggests that Mr. Côté is trying out a sketch, with more experiments to come.

Despite the poverty of his collaborators, Mr. Andrews, who seems to live on sardines and rice, doesn’t feel like an exploiter. He calls his friends “beautiful eccentrics,” which aptly describes him, too.

Mr. Megaton’s direction of action sequences borders on atrocious. Ragged camerawork and editing ruin freeway car chases and hand-to-hand combat alike.

Ms. Leopold’s previous film, “Brownian Movement,” was a stringent, even off-putting study of a delicate-looking doctor who has secret trysts with various men, and her latest feature feels gentler, shot digitally and suffused with the gray shadows of old houses and dim twilights. But it’s just as concerned with the immediacy of desire.

Like his ill-fated hunting party, Mr. Denham’s plans for his thriller don’t turn out quite the way he’d hoped.

There’s a go-for-broke vigor to the way Mr. Amata cuts to the conflict in most scenes, but the heavy-handedness across the board imposes some significant limitations. Mr. Amata, though, pulls no punches with his ending.

Mr. Cheney’s movie, while teasing at times, does its celebrating and debunking in mild-mannered fashion, making points without seeming to try to score them.