Nicolas Rapold

In Curling, his (Cote) interest in individuals with "one foot outside of society" continues with a crisp portrait of a Québécois solitary man and his cloistered preteen daughter.

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 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.

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.

Since the filmmaker's main agenda here is to keep things bumping along, the fraught situations are happily played and funk-scored as crowd-pleasing rather than issue-stroking.

12 O’Clock Boys packs more life into its 72 minutes than many longer documentaries do.

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).

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.

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

Mr. Platt’s good-humored attitude helps keep the potent material from turning mawkish, and having his perspective also wards off a sense of exploitive voyeurism.

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

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.

Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.

The fearless streak displayed by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble deserves its equivalent in a bolder movie technique. But Mr. Atlas delivers a rousing finale.

The Invisible War, though revelatory, is perhaps the most straightforward film yet from a director who likes to broach the fault lines of sex and society.

A wistful beauty and a delicately imaginative sense of craft set Vesper apart from most post-apocalyptic stories.

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

As edited, Moreh’s interviews prize policy analysis and haunting candor over gotcha moments or grandstanding.

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

Uri and Raya (who have disarmingly direct affects) show a mix of insight and innocence that also feels like a faithful rendering of the vulnerability within a relationship.

The film’s enduring hook is the spectacle of a self-proclaimed revolutionary government that can’t abide the rebellion of rock without bureaucratic oversight.

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.

With his feature, Davenport stakes out his own vantage point on the world, one that leaves a viewer wishing to hear his thoughts elaborated even further.

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.

Bahrani’s film (which he narrates) beetles along without fully exploiting Davis’s ample entertainment value, which is counterbalanced by accounts of his dubious actions and sometimes unseemly opinions.

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

It’s all a heady brew that leaves one wanting to know even more about Roberts, who is now running for mayor in Denver. The movie resists encapsulating him, or perhaps he escapes its director’s full understanding.

For a movie about two people going through a wobbly patch, Fantasy Life glides with a sneaky storytelling ease.