Peter Keough

But when Dark Horse leaves the feel-good realm to show news footage of a failed miners’ strike, or to have the camera linger on the impoverished surroundings where Dream Alliance’s owners still dwell, it suggests that it will take more than a few fairy tale finishes for their reality to change.

Though the narrative of “Marnie” bogs down toward the end, this does not diminish its spell.

Alain might not have the very particular set of skills of Liam Neeson’s character in “Taken” (2008), but he does have the perseverance of John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards.

Some of Tarantino’s taste for brutish resolutions seems to have slipped into her otherwise nuanced, sensitive, and unflinching adaptation of this YA novel by French author Anne-Sophie Brasme.

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.

In short, the film inserts us into a solipsistic universe of Norman Lear, one that also overlaps many of the most significant social, political, and show-biz issues of the second half of the 20th century.

The result is an extended home movie that is also a sociological experiment.

This is no exercise in miserabilism. Instead Moverman and Gere take a problem and elevate it into a universal experience, turning social issues into existential insights.

In this semi-autobiographical period piece, Simón achieves the rare feat of faithfully recreating the mysterious consciousness of a child. Though her techniques can get repetitive and stall the narrative, more often than not her elliptical editing recreates an innocent’s perception of the slow drift of time.

This is not “Rain Man”; it’s better.

It takes a personal rather than a political perspective, exploring the ambiguities of truth and individual identity rather than the complexities of an ongoing historical calamity. And though the human drama is hypnotically gripping, it comes at the expense of the bigger picture.

In person, as seen in Fifi Howls From Happiness, Mitra Farahani’s ambitious and self-reflexive documentary of the artist’s last days, Mohassess enthusiastically acts out those traits. It’s a performance enhanced by his diabolical, phlegm-choked laughter at his own bleakly ironic pronouncements and denunciations of the world in general.

Dark Horse falls into the formula of underprivileged kids challenging the elites at their own game. But the outcome is never certain.

The painterly beauty of anime detaches the viewer from the terrible events depicted, but it also makes these cataclysms more accessible to the imagination.

This walkabout ends less dramatically and not as tragically as the one in Roeg’s film, but perhaps with a greater poignancy. And Gulpilil, four decades of hard living later, is as magnificent as ever.

Whether unclassifiable and inconsequential oddity, or overlooked key to the meaning of life, or both, The Creeping Garden is the slime mold of documentaries.

The experience of watching Crip Camp might inspire you to reexamine your attitudes about disabled people and how society treats them. Though occasionally sentimental and preachy, it is an essential reminder of a civil-rights struggle that many have forgotten and a cause that has yet to be fully achieved.

As played by Fiennes, who has the aquiline face and piercing eyes of Max Van Sydow, Clavius is no pushover. You believe his disbelief, so when it wavers, yours might as well.

As remorseless in style as it is in message, In the Fog offers little hope and few pleasures, but earns admiration for its elegant exploration of the lowest depths of the human condition.

Only occasionally, as in “Thank You for Smoking” (2005), do these men — and the audience — understand that bucking the system doesn’t always make you less a part of it.

The message is clear, if not original: stray from the herd and you’re dead. What makes Hirayanagi’s iteration of this familiar theme appealing are the quirky characters, the nuanced performances, and the curious cultural topography of Tokyo.

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

His (Hawke) subtle performance also draws attention away from the creaky plot machinery, as does the Spierig brothers’ eye for the seemingly throwaway but pregnant detail.

Despite outstanding performances, the characters lose subtlety as they grow more extreme, and their secrets when spelled out become anticlimactic. Maybe with a little more mystery, the evil would seem less banal.

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.

Not known for subtlety, Besson gets the expected laughs, and then some. He also exercises an unwonted finesse, not only with the allusions, but also with variations on the “f” word that, if not poetic, are at least funny.

True, a lot of marmalade gets spread around, and at times the zaniness gets a bit too slap-sticky, but it’s all good clean fun.

After watching the movie, its relentlessly catchy numbers might keep playing for you; as one of the interviewees says, “You’ll be singing these songs for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not.”