Peter Keough

After “Rocco,” Visconti’s style lost the vestiges of naturalism and indulged in rococo artifice and aristocratic splendor.

As for Drucker and Ménochet, they vividly embody the roles of abuser and victim but have little else to work with.

Like films such as Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), Glory transforms that realism into metaphors that don’t just criticize a particular system but lay plain the universal exploitation of the weak and honest by the corrupt and powerful.

Churns out dread, suspense, and hellish splendor with its derelict cityscapes and breakneck action.

In this alternately whimsical and grim documentary, Zachary Heinzerling relates the couple’s down-and-out, inspiring saga, which slyly comments on the evolution and ironies of the past half century in contemporary art.

“[Dance] gives you nothing back,” says Cage. “No manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.” Kovgan’s film comes close to capturing that moment.

The performances are meticulous and passionate, the narrative low-key and obliquely sensitive enough to conceal, until the traumatic incidents keep piling up, the film’s contrivance.

Visually, it has the intense intimacy of a dream.

A kitchen, a guestroom, and swimming pool become battlegrounds. Though hardly revolutionary, “Mother” subverts conventions — both cinematic and social.

Sharif is a paragon of decency and endurance, but his camera skills are limited and often constrained by circumstances. For the most part this roughness reflects the raw immediacy of the experience.

These men tend to be laconic, tormented, tattooed, impenetrable, usually bearded, potentially or actively violent, with screwed-up families and traumatic pasts. Nothing that a good horse couldn’t cure, or a talented female director.

Another thing that might bug people is the acting. The roles are performed almost devoid of affect, something like the characters voiced by Tom Noonan in “Anomalisa.”

Despite the self-conscious derivativeness and allusions, Tsai’s debut already demonstrates the contrariness and motifs that have distinguished him as a unique, difficult, and transcendent filmmaker.

Though some of the concepts may be New Age boilerplate, the film’s images linger; especially that of the river, the snake devouring us all.

It is a delight for flamenco fans and provides a fascinating introduction for those unfamiliar with the music. But as cinema, despite the lush cinematography of Vittorio Storaro, it is lacking.

What Stranger by the Lake lacks in suspense and back story it makes up for in atmosphere: It’s a subtle exercise in the pathetic fallacy.

After watching David Douglas and Drew Fellman’s visually spectacular, technically amazing, and occasionally cutesy documentary, Pandas, you’d think that IMAX 3-D was invented solely for close-ups of adorable panda cubs, their giant doleful, domino faces peering out with cuddly curiosity.

The rest of the film consists mostly of Akerman talking with her mother, blithely and lovingly, about everyday ephemera and about the past (Natalia was a survivor of Auschwitz), both via Skype and at her mother’s genteel home in Brussels.

The observations coalesce into a cogent whole, providing insights that are never overtly stated.

Step, the African-American competitive art that is the subject of Amanda Lipitz’s taut, intimate, passionate, and celebratory documentary of the same title, is not to be confused with its Irish namesake in “Riverdance.”

Despite this labyrinthine self-consciousness, the film, like its subject, keeps careful note of dates and places.

Unlike “Something in the Air,” or even “Saint Laurent,” Eden is utterly apolitical.

The world of cinema is richer for the voice of Al Mansour; she speaks for the women of her country, and for people everywhere.

After a period of creative drought, Zhang’s homecoming is a cause for celebration.

Like a great silent movie, it creates its pathos and comedy out of the concrete objects being animated, building elaborate gags involving everyday items transformed into Rube Goldberg devices that sometimes entrap the characters, or, when properly manipulated by them, provide a means of achieving their goals.

The duo provide a bit of wit and warmth amid the contrived subplots and the self-satisfied moralism.

When Ducournau keeps the viewer off balance and doesn’t lose her own, she shows signs of being an outstanding stylist and storyteller, balancing mood, composition, startling images, slow-burning suspense, and sardonic humor.

It is part Rorschach test and part theme park ride as the filmmakers shoot from the strangest places and from such odd perspectives that much of the film consists of trying to figure out what the heck is going on.