Peter Keough

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.

The main reason it does not seem contrived is the performances of Catherine Deneuve and Catherine Frot. Because of their authenticity, and Provost’s mostly sure hand at maintaining mood and tone, the film is a moving immersion into the mysteries of time, memory, and mortality.

Like “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), the Oscar-winning film about climate change, it is a call to action. As a screed, it builds a credible, engaging argument, presenting evidence, statistics, talking-head testimony, whimsical charts, poignant personal stories, and animated illustrations of digestive processes to make its case.

“Shadows” has its share of lines that will be repeated by fans ad infinitum (a favorite: “Yes, now Google it”).

Kenner and Schlosser not only remind us of a danger that never went away, but honor the men whose bravery was never recognized.

“So how are you going to get them to dance together?” Dancing never explains how. Instead, as in similar films such as “Hoop Dreams,” it focuses on the contest, reducing the participants to a handful of representative kids who end up learning something about themselves and others.

A bittersweet, wryly comic, keenly observed look at senescence.

Akerman, though, is her own best spokesperson as she discusses her films at locations where they were shot.

Though at times it threatens to become too generic to be original, or too original to be generic, it retains enough indirection to frustrate those looking for thrills and to engage those willing to be challenged. And by the time the bottom drops out in a characteristically enigmatic ending, Night Moves distinguishes itself as a genuine Reichardt movie.

If anything, Chernick’s film shows a life that may be too perfect. In addition to his triumphant career, Perlman has a seemingly ideal marriage — to Toby, a woman who is his match in ebullience, wit, and passion for art and music. It has lasted for more than 50 years.

Plá’s comedy is black, but his moral position isn’t black and white.

Presents enough teasing glimpses into the dancer’s personal and inner life to demand a fuller picture.

Unfortunately, Hatley chooses not to offer much context or background history regarding that or other aspects of Helm’s half-century career, other than archival footage of Helm and the Band in their prime, press clippings, and comments from the Band “biographer,” Barney Hoskyns.

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.

There is a fair share of such Betty White-ish feistiness on display, but the pathos creeps in unexpectedly.

A key point, though, is that all the scientists profiled have staked their careers on this one discovery.

More than just a footnote to a wayward period of cultural history, The Source Family portrays an American type, the transcendent charlatan, a latter-day Gatsby, not of material riches but of the soul.

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.

Unlike “Belle,” however, in this case Asante does not allow her story to be overwhelmed by period decor and costumes.

Schnabel tries to re-create van Gogh’s inner workings during the intense last two years of his life — his point of view and his way of looking at the world that resulted in the masterpieces that have since become invaluable investment commodities.

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.