Peter Keough

Bizarre, fascinating, and frustrating documentary.

Never has space travel looked so sordid, debased, mean-spirited, or crummy, qualities intensified by the (intentionally) ugliest cinematography ever — except for the close-ups of faces — from the great Agnès Godard, Denis’s longtime collaborator. But seldom has space travel served as such an eloquent and tragic representation of the human condition.

Their non-specific excursion unfolds like a blithe Woody Allen movie without all the name-dropping.

Tweel has edited this material into a complex and emotionally exhausting vérité-like tapestry.

Though not as graphically powerful as other documentaries on similar subjects, such as Fredrick Wiseman’s “Meat” (1976) or Georges Franju’s “Les Sang des Bête” (1949), the emphasis on the disastrous global impact of these practices is more disturbing .

In Brad’s Status, Stiller becomes the face of white male privilege — and its comeuppance.

Slowly it emerges that Gaga is Naharin’s “dance language,” a way of expressing one’s inner being through external movement. Gaga is dada — for dancers.

The quest ends in a surprise Capra-esque resolution, which both satisfies and cloys.

Argott and Joyce subordinate these more pressing political questions to a mirror-box exploration of the nature of truth and the unfathomable secrets of the soul. As such it is thoughtful, sometimes ingenious, but you can’t help thinking that they missed the real story.

Those who don’t especially like cats — or Istanbul, for that matter — might not get a lot out of Turkish director Ceyda Torun’s love letter to the feline population of her native city. For everyone else, it should be an almost unadulterated pleasure.

Jolie does not dwell on the atrocities, though a horrifyingly ironic battle scene near the end contains some gruesome imagery.

Green’s narrative confidence quickly kicks in, as well as the sharp dialogue by screenwriter Peter Straughan (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”). More importantly, the film indulges in the unabashed goofiness that stoked Green’s “Pineapple Express,” and which Sandra Bullock demonstrated to raucous effect in “The Heat.”

Including the high expectations set up by the film’s early going, Eubank had a thoughtful thriller in the works but along the way he got his signals crossed.

Think Like a Man Too vastly surpasses the septic “The Hangover Part III.” If Story and company keep thinking like filmmakers, maybe three will be the charm.

For answers, prepare to sit through two hours of complications, though you will probably figure it out before the spectacular ending.

Engrossing and occasionally moving, it doesn’t electrify like that other film about the press taking on a chief executive, Alan Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” (1976).

The clichéd dialogue, stereotypical characters (except for Toby Jones, who distinguishes himself as the wryly incompetent company cook), and the constrained setting (it takes place almost entirely in the officers’ dugout) deadens the suspense and diminishes the mood of dread endured by those awaiting their doom.

In other words, Citizen Koch is preaching to the choir. Which might not be a pointless exercise, seeing how the choir failed to show up for the last midterm election in 2010, and might need extra motivation not to repeat that mistake this November.

Visually, this translates into thrilling action sequences of lone knife-wielders hewing down ranks of adversaries with balletic precision. If preserving this means sacrificing a scruple or two, it’s worth the trade.

A bittersweet musing about the nature of parenthood and about the conflict between nature and nurture, it is as banal and insightful as its title.

It is epic in scope, intimate in detail, and otherworldly in its dimensions, like the Bayeux Tapestry with special effects and a stentorian soundtrack.

Smith’s ambitious film at times resembles “Badlands” (1973) crossed with “Fight Club” (1999) as directed by the Coen brothers. Mostly, though, it founders in the complications of its own excess of themes, interconnected story-lines, and multiple personality disorders sketchily connected by an anti-establishment point of view.

Over-stylized and overly re-enacted documentary.

Though Mazer’s ambition is laudable, he has not yet integrated the comedy of manners into the comedy of no manners.

The creepiest part of XX, a quartet of short horror films by women, might be the Jan Svankmejer-like stop-action segments between each of them. Sofia Carrillo’s animated antique dolls and little furniture walking on stilt-like legs are the stuff of nightmares.

One appreciates the desire of the filmmaker to let the audience fill in the back story, but Rasmussen’s behavior reflects badly on the Danish and heightens sympathy for the POWs.

Powell never achieves the absurdist, uncanny poetry of that scene in Herzog’s film where a “demented” penguin marches into oblivion, but he does arouse wonder at nature’s sublimity.

Though it touches on the usual themes of youthful innocence and imagination challenged by misfortune, and on occasion achieves moments of supremely subtle, sublimely exquisite detail, “Momo” strains when it comes to evoking whimsy and magic.

Though admirable in ambition, McGowan’s decision to broaden his simple story’s scope diminishes an affecting melodrama about the increasingly common, insufficiently acknowledged plagues of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Although Raymond’s career extended over five decades of London sleaze, decadence, and celebrity, neither director nor actor provide much insight into the man or his times, not to mention the significance of Raymond’s prime product.

Flawed as it is, “River” reminds us where all the great music came from.

Lawrence is an impeccable, commanding subject, not just because of his credentials but because of his presence and demeanor.

Unlike the Makioka sisters, this quartet lack ambiguity and mystery.

It’s like a Parisian variation on Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give,” or the premise of another PBS Masterpiece Theater series with Smith.

Being cluttered isn’t the only problem with Your Name. It also features insipid characters and dippy montage music from the J-pop band Radwimps.

Murky, clunky, but sometimes nihilistically exhilarating.

Kevin Costner should stop trying to be so nice. His best performances have been as baddies.

Campos really doesn’t need to tack on such heavy-handed irony as the scene near the end of a disconsolate woman eating ice cream and singing along with the theme song of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Subtlety and irony are not among the film’s virtues.

It answers most questions by the end, except the most important one: Is the devil in Miss Sloane, or is Miss Sloane the devil?

Visitors is lovely, soothing, like the cinematic equivalent of tasteful elevator music, but it doesn’t convey as much truth as a single glimpse into Triska’s eyes.

Enigmatic, atmospheric, and seductive, the film unfortunately sheds little light on subjects that have too long been hidden in the dark.

More spectacular special effects might have helped, or at least something more creative than a spaceship that resembles a giant Christmas tree ornament shaped like a corkscrew. Perhaps as a well-written play for a cast of three, Passengers might have been first class. Instead, it’s just another mediocre thrill ride.

The film works adequately as a historical drama.

John Landis’s “Animal House” (1978) this is not.

What they don’t quite make clear, and perhaps it is impossible to do so, is what really happened in this odd episode of international espionage epitomizing movie-mogul tyranny.

It’s a mordant if unwieldy thriller examining how evil not only becomes the norm, but a virtue.

It consists of a series of episodic encounters, misadventures, and musings redeemed in part by the presence of two scenic wonders, the unspoiled 2,190-mile grandeur of the Appalachian Trail and the spectacular crapulousness of Nick Nolte.

Unfortunately, the material flounders from the broadly farcical to the bombastically melodramatic. Race and ethnicity aren’t so much the problem as gender is. Despite Gainsbourg’s efforts, her character becomes a caricature.

When the two veteran actors team up in Vermont writer-director Jay Craven’s wry, uneven Northern Borders, adapted from Howard Frank Mosher’s novel, they mesh so well they almost hold the rest of the movie together. But their nuanced performances underscore the weakness of the rest of the cast, and Craven’s erratic tonal shifts from the whimsical to the sentimental trip up the episodic plot.

F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton starts out strong, peaks quickly, and then gets tangled in complications and compromise and falls apart.

After Lake Bell’s smart, unconventional debut, “In a World. . .” (2013), her new film, I Do . . . Until I Don’t (she apparently likes ellipses in her titles), is disappointingly ordinary.

The sardonic laughs include title cards with the name of each character who has joined the ranks of the disappeared.

Because of the film’s earnest awkwardness, these excursions into the demimonde come off as campy.

Ronit’s ebullient spirit spreads vivacity, discontent, and resentment. She offers the possibility of choice — between secular independence or religious tradition. But Lelio opts for an insipid neutrality that does a disservice to both.

At its best the film evokes the palpable terror of a city where uniformed thugs could arrest or kill anyone at any time with impunity.

Perhaps Poe’s tone poses a problem; the edge-of-hysteria voice does not hold up well over the course of a feature-length film.

Drawing on the memories of family members, friends, and collaborators, and tapping into a trove of archival material, including tapes of James’s raucous, raunchy live shows, Jenkins keeps pace with his subject’s breakneck progress. Along the way James encounters opportunities that are missed or exploited and tragedies that are averted or courted. He transforms hard times into artistic success, and squanders success in debauchery.

With Too Late, Hauck confirms that he’s a master of the film medium. What’s less convincing is why this film matters.

In the war between zombies and vampires for the domination of American popular culture, the zombies currently seem to have the edge. So suggests a montage in Rob Kuhns’s amusing but perfunctory documentary about the origins of the 1968 ur-text of zombiedom, George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”

For the next two decades, the end notes reveal, Baker made the best music of his career. The film does its job if it encourages people to give that music a listen.

As a suspenseful true crime story, 24 Days succeeds. As a warning against the ever present dangers of anti-Semitism, it is eloquent and disturbing. It’s in combining the two that Arcady mishandles the case.