Nicolas Rapold

It’s like a gently distressed company film blown up to feature length.

Bilbo may fully learn a sense of friendship and duty, and have quite a story to tell, but somewhere along the way, Mr. Jackson loses much of the magic.

It’s a cornball odd-couple comedy: Prim older woman meets a brassy young gay man. Still, it’s extraordinary just watching the peerless Ms. Rowlands wring the most out of the repartee in this adaptation of a play by Richard Alfieri.

The tech-gadget-heavy plotting is so preposterously weak that it’s hard to look past the cheap laughs or half-baked direction.

The film is too sincere an expression of admiration for this poet’s work to feel pretentious, but it’s like a music video for the poems, often literal in its biographical readings.

Mr. Skjoldbjaerg, who also tapped Norwegian history with his bank robbery re-enactment “Nokas,” doesn’t convey a creeping atmosphere of moral rot so much as an irksome glumness.

The energy here feels more like that of a lecture than of a film; it’s an analytical tonic that’s potent to the point of bitter.

This sly documentary rises above its speculative hook by shifting to show the very human, and very mortal, sides of these would-be warriors of eternity.

The extremes of Antarctica: A Year on Ice might seem routine to fans of nature documentaries, but the photographer and director Anthony Powell produces some dazzling imagery in his droll study of isolation way, way down under.

The sense of an invisible world being revealed is more potent than the film’s fairly standard portrayal of closeted life.

When a final shot takes us outdoors to the real world, it’s possible to wonder whether a certain spontaneity, or a different kind of energy, has been missing from Mr. Saura’s immaculately vibrant film.

Mr. Serra has said his film portrays the eclipse of Enlightenment rationality by the violent forces of Romanticism. It’s a tidy overarching conceit, but the film’s lived-in feel does make for one vivid way of imagining shifts in thought.

The dark comedy (punctuated by the catchphrase “Toodle-oo”) doesn’t always come off, and the filmmaking is more off-kilter than necessary, with capricious camerawork and pacing.

Mr. Kurosawa expertly modulates an uncanny flow of energies between shame and grief, between venal urges and high-minded moral demands. The women’s travails suggest something that’s part curse, part mythic cycle of guilt and part kaleidoscopic dread.

The setup’s clichés grow harder to ignore, despite a welcome mischievous streak and some bucolic imagery.

Butter on the Latch thrives on its casually true snapshots of confusion and connection.

Motorbikes careening round corners just millimeters off the track still quicken the pulse, but “The Next Chapter” also demonstrates the padding that documentaries in general have picked up in recent years.

Goofball antics and a terrific, raucous finale can’t make up for the essential slackness of its repetitive comedy and punk chest thumping.

Roberto Andò's Viva la Libertà wobbles between being wispily suggestive of finer existential meaning and generational commentary, and being basically a handsomely dressed-up “Dave” for post-Berlusconi Italy.

Warsaw Uprising is marred by a fictional audio drama among three characters (two cameraman brothers and an American airman) who provide an unnecessary, distracting and at times amateurish frame to this resourcefully, even wittily, edited tour. But the flaws don’t detract from the film’s casual and calamitous sights.

While Mr. Workman evidently respects Mr. Carbee’s talent, he also frames his movie as a trite narrative about a kind of lovably odd acquaintance who comes out of his shell, without many incisive ideas about shaping or broadening the material.

Low Down stumbles into the pitfalls of both addiction narratives and observer-style autobiography, even if Ms. Albany’s memoir suggests even rougher times. But it still catches in-between moments of closeness that aren’t always seen or heard.

This New York drama in some ways finds new names for age-old insecurities among men and women, though it doesn’t entirely deliver on its promising buildup.

What initially feels like brash energy peters out until what’s left mainly evokes pretty ordinary gangster movies.

In a way, the occasionally lugubrious undertones and casual cruelties suit the setting, but the tragic heft Mr. Martinez seems to be pushing for doesn’t materialize.

Watchers of the Sky is a film that can dash hopes about humanity but also raise them in depicting the stories of these tireless defenders.

It’s all mellowly funny rather than creepy, something like a stand-up conceit elaborated into scenes.

Exquisitely drawn with both watercolor delicacy and a brisk sense of line, the film finds a peculiarly moving undertow of feeling in a venerable Japanese folk tale.

This two-track meditation wraps ethereal glimpses of age-old Slavic locales around a fairy tale told through hand-drawn illustrations.

A certain curiosity value arises out of Mr. Phillippe’s coincidental occupation here as a professional actor and a director.

Holly is supposed to be out of Guy’s league, but neither of them is up to carrying scene after scene of weak sparring and punny flirting.

Mr. Harmon is delightfully talented at improvisation, freestyling nonsense lyrics. Mr. Berkeley, on the other hand, proves himself a dismayingly predictable chronicler, making sure that we know exactly what we’re supposed to think and efficiently packaging jokes and revelations.

This film could have been more surely and deftly put together.

Perhaps most impressive are the resources deployed in shooting this production. As if the film’s ostentatious aerial vistas, merely functional scene-writing and score weren’t distracting enough, Mr. Sexton’s dialogue freezes dead any simulation of the period with tone-deaf lines amid Bolívar’s impassioned rhetoric.

Despite some conventional moves here and there and a weakness for the cult of genius, the documentary sustains that uneasy mood cast by Nas’s expression as a child on the “Illmatic” cover, sobered by experience and wisdom before his time.

The voice-over-driven readings and the illustrative footage — unwisely augmented with new sound effects — lack a fundamental filmic momentum.

The old story of art as a refuge for scoundrels and callow youth is amusing and updated with assorted details.

As skillful an orchestrator as Björk is, her crescendos and tightly designed wilderness can lose their strength with repetition. But she and her collaborators do make a pretty singing picture with their chosen audiovisual tool set.

Wiktor Ericsson’s A Life in Dirty Movies outlines this filmmaker’s work reasonably well, but, somewhat surprisingly, truly hits home with a heartwarming look at Mr. Sarno’s relationship with his wife, Peggy.

Not that Dr. Bot and the oblivious self-righteousness won’t delight certain fans, but this remains a protracted, scattershot comedy sketch that never quite nails its tone.

Neither the action nor the comedy in this action comedy is consistently strong.

Mr. Nalin applies an on-the-ground approach, mainly looking at holy men and lost boys at the gathering. But he lets the sprawl slacken his overlong film’s grasp and, strangely, underplays the nuances of the event’s spiritual aspects.

Mr. Gomes remains laudably faithful to his character, and Ms. Guedes’s bodily sense of languor gets across more than any crystal-clear dramatic statement would.

Mr. Rollinger, a protagonist of a curiously circumscribed life, proves to have an opaque appeal.

Mr. Chapman administers some of his (amplified) thwacks and drop kicks with a likable, you-should-know-better air of amusement, recalling a Reagan-era TV cop show.

The bravery of Ms. Baumane’s own coping methods (which some may disagree with) brings her tough-minded film to a cleareyed, forward-looking conclusion that doesn’t lose sight of her demons.

Enervatingly synthetic, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears slices and dices the images and tropes of Italian giallo-style slasher films into an inert pile of style.

The story comes to feel mild (and incomplete) in its tempered nostalgia.

[Ms. Kroot's] banalizing documentary is self-defeating as it tags along with Mr. Takei and his wonky husband, Brad, on their busy daily schedule.

Loving difficult people (and being difficult, and sometimes helpless) is the subject of the film’s drama, shot through with comedy and satire, thanks to Mr. Tobia’s razor-sharp, rapid cutting of scenes and needling dialogue.

The film is essentially an evolved hybrid of global environmental documentary and the group-trip experiments of reality television. Its biggest step onto unfamiliar terrain might be its ambivalent ending, conveying uncertainty about what can or should be done next.

Though Ms. Louise-Salomé’s film strikes a potentially irritating pose as a kind of artistic séance — shrouding interviewees in shadow, conjuring up clips with the drifting rhythm of the unconscious — it delivers articulate insights and has an elegant construction.

Mr. Kim does show an abiding concern here for the unsubtle realities of human libido and cruelty, but he’s alarmingly tone-deaf as he makes his points, and shows disregard for his female characters as he uses them up.

It’s all a bit like a classic-rock tribute concert, or playing with all your action figures at once, or maybe “Cannonball Run,” with the strained buddy-buddy back-and-forth.

This film is actually less menacing than marveling, though a disturbing opening scene in a storm-tossed van could fit right into Mr. Quale’s earlier work.

A certain kind of discipline and experience is at work here: It’s no accident that the action and dialogue seem blandly cartoonish, as if the moviemakers wanted to keep everything easy for all ages to follow.

It’s a proud film but average.

Most of the movie is a losing proposition.

Regular hazily scored, gauzy interludes cut into the film’s immediacy and tone. But the filmmakers shade in humble, sympathetic portraits of these children.

The behind-the-scenes component, juiced with razzle-dazzle excerpts from the “Fela!” production, is sound, in theory. But — like many sequences — it’s not so tightly executed, and this strand tends to knock the documentary off balance.

The screenplay tracing the characters’ struggles has a tidy, workshopped feel, and the dialogue and acting can be gratingly flat. But what gives the film a certain confidence is its cultural specificity and the fresh clashes and contrasts it presents.

Bringing out truths about fatherhood, love and pride without dissolving into crowd-pleasing, that material feels like the genuine article. Fluffy, not fluff.

This glossy movie from Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz about the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas feels the burden of promotional urges and lacks a sense of immersion in a multistage event attended by hundreds of thousands.

Relatable doesn’t have to mean routine, but Mr. Reiner doesn’t always bother to tell the difference.

Despite a generous attempt at a series recap, it’s chaotic for the uninitiated. These characters require several episodes of exposure for us to feel that much is at stake in the ebb and flow of honor, hysteria and eternal friendship. In any case, the animation is often a pure sensual delight.

Neither the value of music nor the deficiencies of certain nursing homes are tough to debate. But a documentary that never leaves any doubt about what comes next, while single-mindedly stumping for a cause presented as unique, is also not terribly interesting as a film.

The graceful flow avoids the spoon-feeding of pocket biographies, and even if the material can feel lean at times, Mr. Klinger shepherds along a valuable encounter with a sense of easy, generally uncanned observation.

The newer film’s picture of neglect and denial, with flashes of connection and empathy, is promising, if tough to inhabit.

The filmmaker Caroline Strubbe’s affection for her characters is evident, even through the often oblique narrative.

The hand-me-down showiness and sluggish storytelling by the director, Paco Cabezas, underline the monotony in this ordinary revenge thriller.

Premature bops along with a wiseacre self-awareness and a nimble cast... But Mr. Beers and his fellow screenwriter, Mathew Harawitz, also have a numbing Seth MacFarlane-esque weakness for purely attention-getting crudeness and unfunny stereotypes.

Technology remains no substitute for well-written characters and genuine intrigue and atmosphere, so despite the cute special effects and camera jostling, this film feels like an extended episode of an after-school show by Disney.

This succinct documentary sticks smoothly to its beat.

Mr. Lespert and his screenwriters tend to telegraph what’s happening next with on-the-nose dialogue, leaving behind an orderly but not vividly realized biography (or necessarily a complete one).

Though not pretentious, his film feels a tad overthought, held back somehow by a stubborn, dour obscurity clouding its freshly realized, lurid milieu.

William Eubank’s The Signal demonstrates the fine line between paranoid science-fiction fantasy and demo reel.

If there’s a certain depth missing in The Amazing Catfish, the film brings forth the small-scale pleasures and poignancy of an ambling short story.

Mr. Voss’s metaphors pile up helplessly: Finance is like being in the army, like catching a virus and as hard to grasp as quantum particles. The film in which he appears is a vertiginous look inside the bubble behind the financial bubble, with no end in sight.

It’s a hodgepodge that Michael Moore (whose movies Ms. Lessin and Mr. Deal have produced) and his editors might snappily dice together, but here the construction falls short.

Mr. Gordon is likable, though it would be naïve to think he is unaware of cultivating his own image here.

The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.

The Life & Crimes of Doris Payne has an embarrassment of riches in Ms. Payne’s story, and it’s often a ripping good yarn, but, as a film, it lacks the nimbleness and resourcefulness of its subject.

Mr. Fleifel helps walk us through the history with an ingratiating voice-over that lightens the seemingly permanent clouds of a dire history.

The movie is predictably sentimental at its root, but it’s also meant to be comedy, partly resting on Mr. Williams’s energetic but failed attempt to play a jerk.

Despite Mr. Maren’s own ample experience as a writer, the references to book culture don’t feel vivid enough to act as more than scene-setting, and the film’s strength lies in the family relationships.

Cold Bloom, in its tightly controlled moods, comes to feel like a smaller and more tentative film than it might have been, despite an admirably frank ending.

While the documentary marshals an impressive array of survivors and visits several international locations, it grindingly adheres to an unwieldy tour-style presentation, with more than a few rough spots and, at times, an unpolished look.

All in all, the beloved kingdom of Oz is not well served, though there’s just enough detectable affection to keep it from feeling like a pure cashing-in.

If the film is less persuasive for its lack of balance, it’s at least heartening to learn that undesirable dams can be destroyed and their rivers restored to their old ways and means.

The filmmakers are blessed and cursed with a subject who seems to lack the usual filters. We in turn witness Mr. Foulkes in action, at length — revamping his works, railing against the art world and speaking his neurotic mind.

Mr. Wechsler’s film might be loose to a fault, but Mr. Weber’s work yields its share of gratifying, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it New York moments.

His strategy is political — in a meaningful way — but not cinematic.

Sometimes genre-based filmmakers don’t know how to make their material fun without making fun of their material, but that’s not a failing of Mr. Kren’s.

A movie whose techniques present problems not containable by the noble intentions of its makers.

The movie proves to be a fragile conceit. It’s as likely to fall apart and cause frustration as it is to induce a reverie.

Shot in sleek tones by Christopher Doyle, the film melds class-conscious melodrama with malleable mood piece, but keeps threatening to fade from understatement into stasis.

Pulp done with passion can be its own reward, as the veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Dante Lam shows with his feverish cop thriller That Demon Within.

Despite the bracing beauty of the wilderness, and the respite provided by cubs at play, the movie is primarily a sobering treatise on survival.