Robert Abele

It assuredly can’t be easy for a filmmaker to choose whether to leave viewers motivated by warmth or woe. Yet your capacity to be both awed and enraged is ultimately well-served by “The Territory,” a gripping portrait of an endangered community for whom nature is both their precious environment and the facet of humanity that can all too easily be turned malicious.

In its imaginative depiction of how marginalized souls view home — especially youth, for whom belonging and the future can be fraught concepts — Gagarine bears witness to not only a historic building, but the hearts of people, which is what brings a place alive, anyway.

Youmans’ poetic wade into rural black Louisiana, and the private realms of the faithful and faltering across three generations, is the kind of boldly off-road and unapologetically arty family drama that makes one sit up and take notice.

Although Reynolds rises above the rest as a father consumed by sadness and anger, The Captive quickly devolves into scenes that feel like stilted dramatic re-creations demanding a noirish voice-over by "Cold Case Files" host Bill Kurtis.

Classify Pietro Marcello’s sweet new film Scarlet at your own risk, because its pleasures are as diverse and unexpected as a stroll through uncharted lands: Mapping the terrain wouldn’t be half as enjoyable as letting the place host its own truths and enchantments.

It all remains remarkably free of memorable comic situations, dramatic tension or emotional insight. Adolescence may be bruising, crazy or normal, but it's rarely this staid.

Sensitively handled yet unafraid to elicit squirming, and boasting a seriously affecting turn by Lindon — who won last year’s Cannes award for Best Actor — it’s a miniature portrait of quotidian desperation that nevertheless speaks to the collective psychic moan of job-seekers and those barely holding on everywhere.

As always, what’s so joyously, infectiously funny about “Jackass” is rarely the prank itself, but how funny they all find it to reduce each other to writhing heaps.

Though a thoughtful reflection is occasionally allowed — sometimes humanity finds its way out — this indulgent, stylized slog is straight out of a well-worn aren’t-people-weird-and-awful playbook.

Tomboy stands out as an especially affecting delicacy about the thrills and pitfalls of exploring who one is.

Combined with the forces of anti-regulation in government and profit-driven companies who know how to market to doctors and cover up their mistakes, the movie lays bare a blueprint for countless suffering.

When Masear dedicates herself to something as simple as an impaired hummingbird’s hesitant first jump from one stick to another, the tension is both unexpectedly beautiful and poignant. These are small, scary steps for hummingbirds, seeding faith in giant leaps for humankind.

At its most absorbing, Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles makes it clear there are no easy answers, perhaps especially when the art itself isn’t easy.

For the diehards and the curious, it should hold some intrigue, because in its exploration of pop longevity and band dynamics, it’s more a cousin of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster . . . than the typically image-conscious, preserve-the-legacy music doc.

The trappings are thriller-ish, but the playing field is recognizably timely: a fast-changing economic/cultural world in which some youth are up for the challenge to reconcile a vanished past with a roiling present — France's terrorism woes are explicitly referenced — while others are dangerously indifferent to it.

Becoming Cousteau may not be as deep a journey as some would hope, but for having to chart a lot of years, it hits its points about passion, fame and activism smartly, even movingly.

That dance of performance and being — mindsets committed artists don’t always manage smoothly — is what makes Val an appealing, at times even touching hodgepodge of the actor’s journey.

The same intelligence, wit and mature spirit that actress Vera Farmiga brings to her performances is richly apparent in her directorial debut as well, the inquisitive spiritual drama Higher Ground.

While it may have started as a spellbinding evening of theater, what Raim’s unfussy, handsomely mounted documentary reinforces is that film is its own spiritually transporting medium, with its own risks and rewards, and its own ability to turn the enjoyment of art into — what else? — tradition!

Fusing exquisitely shot color 16mm footage from 1964 of the team’s training sessions, drone-like music and splices of animation, we get a delirious sense of what these committed women endured six out of seven days a week.

Even with the thinnest of narrative framing and some arty touches that feel superfluous, there’s an overall portrait of authentic grit and resilience here, of knowing when to hold on and when to let go, that is well-nurtured by Beecroft’s admiring eye for these renegade women.

Mothers are complicated. Children are complicated. Daughter of Mine doesn’t try to explain this bond — it just wants to revel in its glorious, enriching messiness.

Sully, an honest, skillful rumination on what makes a hero, is just one more example of how Eastwood, having directed movies only slightly longer than his protagonist had been flying planes, is still a masterful pilot himself.

Kennebeck’s handling of the labyrinthine narrative is commendable, particularly since the realigning she needs to do in the final act requires a deft touch, like changing the flavor of a dish already prepped, spiced and cooked.

The movie is practically a textbook about how ravenous corporations and feckless government can strip-mine the souls of workers, and replace them with a political narrative about their problems that keeps reality forever hidden behind a fine, dusty fog.

The result, anchored by enchanting performances and Kormákur’s reliably visceral storytelling, is an appealing pivot for a filmmaker who tends to gravitate toward adrenalized tales of survival.

As the memory of it washes back over you, Omaha lingers, like a devastating short story — devastating because it’s about a pained father for whom the road ahead only seems to get narrower.

In its garishness, Mommy is a weirdly compelling overreach for this young filmmaker. It's the work of someone clearly passionate, if not disciplined yet, about his cinematic interests.