Ronnie Scheib

Devos depicts stages of grief not as a series of emotions but as an evolving alchemy of perception that surrounds the protagonist, distorting time, space, color and light in patterns of dislocation, muffling the synapses that connect sounds and images.

The filmmakers quietly expose conflicts and contradictions without the intrusion of voiceover, and with only occasional intertitles furnishing factual information.

Throughout the film, the beauty of the landscapes and the totally natural insertion of human, animal and insect movement within the frame lend The Creation of Meaning a particular grace.

The filmmakers eavesdrop on intimate musical interludes at home and in the workplace, where it becomes immediately apparent that these forgotten maestros consider themselves representatives of families who have practiced their art for centuries, passing on their musical knowledge from generation to generation.

Though highly improvisational and slapdash a la mumblecore, Kotlyarenko’s pic proves more anarchic and satirically energetic, showcasing individual actors almost like performance artists.

Beginning as a colorful documentary about the Puerto Rican transgender community, candidly showcasing nine very different subjects, Mala Mala slowly morphs into a celebration of solidarity and collective activism without ever losing sight of its likable protagonists.

The film doesn’t so much avoid cliches as brush off any sentimental excess, briskly maintaining narrative flow.

Impressive though the results of the WHO’s campaign to eradicate polio may be, it is Zaidi’s lensing of the streets, waterways and people of Pakistan that lingers in the mind.

Contemporary issues pale before the fascination exerted by the generously sampled films themselves, executed throughout with masterful classical film vocabulary.

A joyous celebration of creativity and razor-sharp wit sustained into old age, as evinced by outspoken nonagenarian fashion icon Iris Apfel, Iris also offers proof of Albert Maysles’ continued vitality as a documentarian.

A magnificent tapestry of sounds and images, this documentary interweaves multiple leitmotifs that flow through the film like familiar old friends, surging to the forefront only to be reabsorbed and casually encountered farther on.

Momentarily abandoning the strain of imagining liberation within a realistically perceived Israel, Fox here settles for the ephemeral glow of an exuberant block party.

The documentary moves with the same fluidity that characterizes Peck’s choreography.

The film offers surprisingly cogent, lived-in evocations of a period too often glossed over in impersonal, by-the-book montages.

The superlatively acted indie promises more than it delivers, but chillingly evokes sufficient primal dread.

Static, strikingly composed documentary stretches are interspersed with actors playing workers who voice a variety of complaints, appreciations and parables that deliberately, even pointedly, fail to encompass the sense of being there amid the unfolding spectacle.

The amazing invincibility of Hollywood-entrenched pedophiles creates a thematic unity of its own in Berg’s otherwise somewhat shakily constructed film.

Here, as in his 1992 breakthrough feature, “In the Soup,” Rockwell conveys his characters’ peculiar suppositions and perceptions using a variety of cinematic approaches, many recalling the untrammeled exuberance of early cinema.

Beneath the strings of gags and wisecracks run parallel threads of ruthlessness and hysteria which bring “Motivation” a little closer to “Full Metal Jacket” than “Private Benjamin” as off-screen conflicts invade the closed-in encampment.

Deftly sidestepping both melodrama and family-values messaging, Poppe imbues the film with enormous emotional resonance, brilliantly grounded by his leading lady.

Oreck spins a mesmerizing web that appropriates a wealth of disparate Eastern European images — of mushrooms, farmers, falling trees and war-destroyed buildings — to illustrate its lyrical discourse.

Adapting the cold language of data encryption to recount a dramatic saga of abuse of power and justified paranoia, Poitras brilliantly demonstrates that information is a weapon that cuts both ways.

The movie belongs to thesps Jacobs and Meester. Jacobs fully inhabits her less-than-completely-sympathetic role with warmth and just the right touch of unconscious entitlement, while Meester luminously expands the film’s affective core.

Altina makes for loose, exasperating but oddly endearing viewing.

Thanks to Saville’s tightly controlled direction and a superlative cast, the mere exchange of glances builds as much suspense as the kinetic action sequence that opens the pic.

A unique blend of camp and conviction, To Be Takei deftly showcases George Takei’s eclectic personality and wildly disparate achievements.

Hentoff presides over a film rich in the sounds and occasional sights of legendary cultural figures, from Lenny Bruce and Malcolm X to Bob Dylan and Coleman Hawkins.

The film’s slow deliberation and aesthetic rigor act as a form of seduction, luring the viewer into unwilling identification with Carlos.

Competently written and skillfully acted, the film seems to be melodrama-bound, when a shocking discovery and the sudden arrival of friends instead send it careening into comedy.

This dual focus on the need to end the ineffective, destructive “war on drugs” and broader questions of political compromise gives director Riley Morton’s film particular resonance.

Banks allows the exhilaration of the game and the exigencies of realpolitik to determine the ups and downs of her film’s sentimental journey.

Maintaining a bemused, sometimes comic distance, Betbeder traces how happenstance crystallizes into biography as his characters traverse the titular seasons.

Throughout, Before You Know It resists foundering in pathos or kitsch; its subjects are too complex and resistant, having survived decades of change, to be reduced to victims or examples.

Alain Gsponer’s well-crafted romantic comedy, glides along on the sheer power of rising German star Daniel Bruhl’s boyish charm.

A surprising, well-crafted documentary.

Consistently fascinating and suspenseful.

[A] meticulous postmortem.

Mistaken for Strangers, a documentary about indie group the National, comes off like an exercise in self-deprecation. As much a diary film as a rockumentary, it almost compulsively veers away from its ostensible subject.

The constant, genial comic undercurrent of teenspeak exchanges, penned by the writing team of helmer Meyer and Luke Matheny, contrasts satisfyingly with Kingsley’s wry musings and the more serious treatment given to David’s evolving maturity.

Giving not an inch to any sort of readable moral paradigm, this third installment in Potrykus’ Grand Rapids-set animal trilogy (including his 2010 short “Coyote” and his 2012 feature “Ape”) proves as fascinating as it is off-putting.

For all their concentration on the human factor, the filmmakers by no means shortchange the aesthetic dimensions of LHC.

Laid-back yet incisive, The New Black examines the complexity of black attitudes toward same-sex marriage, which the mainstream media tend to oversimplify as church-dominated and uniformly negative.

The film represents a scathing critique of America’s juvenile justice system, the privatization of penal institutions, and the whole notion of “zero tolerance.”

With remarkable warmth and immediacy, Green and co-scripter Keogan have managed to capture the beauty of an obviously flawed family, one neither too perfect nor too demographically balanced to ring true, and imbue it with a sense of plenitude that seems to flow as much from the sun-drenched land itself as from the quirkily particular personalities involved.

Works better as a series of well-conceived, impeccably timed and executed physical gags, with light dustings of pathos, than as the story of a woman sacrificing her artistic identity on the altar of motherhood.

Morrison has always closely collaborated with musicians, but here the helmer goes one better, making music the ultimate product of the Great Flood.

Mordaunt previously directed a docu in Laos that featured kids who sold unexploded bombs for scrap metal, and that earlier experience invests this feature’s characters and milieu with an absolute integrity.

Yet even as the timelessness of the human activity on display seduces with its serenity, it evokes in modern viewers a definite impatience with the impracticality of traditional rites and rhythms, perhaps only enjoyable in 90-minute doses.

Pray deftly maintains the integrity and momentum of his story’s various strands while moving backward and forward in time, and from one discreet subtopic to another, his segues as unpredictable as they are imperceptible.

Gondry and his frisky hieroglyphs successfully convey Chomsky’s concept of language as the fleeting “meanings we impose on fragmentary experience.”

The sensual movement of bodies through space creates a visual language whose infinite variations seduce and fascinate over the course of the film’s numerous rehearsals.

Although the film wears its dated genre affectations on its sleeve, the script avoids pretension, its hero’s believably alienated exhaustion overriding mere nostalgia.

This engaging if somewhat underwhelming tale of unlikely redemption builds a funny-sad web of intersecting interactions around its strong central perfs.

[A] deft assemblage of homemovies, work tapes and interviews is further invigorated by 1980s interviews with Pomus and a dynamite soundtrack of his rock ‘n’ roll perennials.

The brilliantly edited tapestry of actions and reactions exposes a pattern of prejudice and fear capable of infinitely repeating itself.

Incandescent performances by Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon and an unerring grasp of strip-mall-dominated Florida distinguish Sunlight Jr.

A fascinatingly fractured glimpse into a disengaged mind and a biopic-in-reverse of its subject, quite unlike any documentary seen before.

The novelty of helmer Gardner’s approach to 9/11, her insider’s look at the almost unimaginable difficulties faced by Cantor Fitzgerald in the weeks following the attack, and the abundance of coverage spanning 10 years of inhouse interactions more than compensate for the docu’s occasional unevenness.

The film’s rather simplistic cultural juxtapositions, pitting artistic appreciators against status-seeking philistines, work best when narrowly focused on the subject of wine.

“Waka” refers to an ancient form of poetry still widely popular today, and helmers Haptas and Samuelson, through their serene lensing and fluid editing, propose a visual thread linking the past to the present “as the crow flies.”

The director’s double vision establishes a level of equality on film that in some ways defies the disparity in power between the two opposing forces.

Spearheaded by phenomenal pint-sized lead Sydney Aguirre, this challenging third feature from the Zellner Brothers retains much of their provocative trademark idiocy but navigates darker waters.

The dialogue — natural, vibrant and totally embedded in the moment, never sententious or showoff-y — is delivered with consummate believability by an excellent cast.

Sweetgrass offers a one-of-a-kind experience.

Cindy Kleine pays tribute to her famed theater-director hubby in Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner, with thoroughly delightful results.

Craig Rosebraugh’s docu Greedy, Lying Bastards covers ground well-traveled by environmental exposes from “An Inconvenient Truth” to “The Island President.” Rosebraugh, however, focuses less on the issue of global warming itself and more on the deniers and their big-money backers.

With its convincingly antique-looking artifacts and hilarious “re-creations,” the March 1 release should please audiences searching for an intelligent, satiric spin on historical hindsight.

Unlike Steven Soderbergh's twisty "Side Effects," Karpovsky's picture seldom surprises, its strengths lying in a leisurely journey toward a clearly predestined denouement.

Director Kimball's sharply focused, serenely ravishing nature photography provides reason enough to go armchair birding.

Amid the flood of documentaries about the Arab Spring in general and the Egyptian Revolution in particular, Uprising takes a clear, cohesive approach to the spontaneous events at its center.

Filled with colorful, articulate neighborhood champions, this absorbing picture eschews militant outrage for a quietly devastating look at social commodification.

A curiously warm-and-fuzzy hindsight interpretation of artistic aggression, delivered by the artists themselves.

Clearer, more thoughtful editing would have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of this sometimes-revelatory documentary.

Suffused with buoyant, sunlit sensuality, like its free-flying heroine, Elza confounds logic while seducing the senses.

This thoroughly engrossing, highly anticipated picture boasts assured direction by sophomore helmer Reema Kagti, a well-constructed script by Kagti and fellow femme writer Zoya Akhtar, and strong thesping by familiar Bollywood luminaries Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukerji.

This engaging character study functions best as a two-hander: The male leads build a wholly believable, offbeat co-dependency, while their interactions with others tend toward the more generic.

Revelatory for the disabled and entertaining for the rest of us.

The film, produced by Cherney, makes a clear and cogent case (later upheld by a court verdict) that police and FBI falsified evidence in order to discredit Bari's cause.

Imamura's square-framed, black-and-white imagery, in all its various stylistic incarnations, proves as compelling through the docu's myriad detours as in any of his better-known psychological thrillers.

The 13 women, all born or made New Yorkers -- all born or made women -- of various ages, shapes, sizes and backgrounds, lose none of their mystique by being captured "behind the scenes," traipsing through airports or meticulously applying weird makeup. Rather, they reveal themselves as more conscious, integral parts of a spectacle that unfolds to hypnotic effect.

Brief Encounters reps a must-see for art lovers.

The kinetically shot concert footage captures the volatile dynamic between performers and audience, as Mick Jagger's provocative posturing is followed by fans storming the stage.

This strong, well-crafted documentary preaches eloquently to the choir.

Daly deftly creates a disturbing, Chabrol-like tension that plays on immediate identification with the handsome medico's lonely, shy vulnerability and slow-building horror at the depths to which his self-delusion can sink.

One need not fully subscribe to Peter Navarro's demonization to appreciate his lucid wake-up call to the imminent dangers of the huge U.S.-China trade imbalance and its disastrous impact on the American economy.

Nicole Karsin's beautifully crafted documentary We Women Warriors highlights the activism of three strong, extraordinarily likable women from three different regions and indigenous cultures of Colombia.

Rob Schroder and Gabrielle Provaas' raunchy, hilariously uninhibited documentary should wow arthouse audiences.

Tension flows organically from every phase of this dangerous endeavor, making for a highly entertaining outing for operaphiles and operaphobes alike.

Gee follows Sebald's path with only occasional detours, while intermittently glimpsed talking heads fade in and out of artful black-and-white landscapes.

Lee Hirsch's "The Bully Project" serves as a call to action against abuse of students by their peers as it follows, over the course of a year, five sobering case histories of unrelenting schoolyard persecution.

The uncompromising power of Ingrid Jonker's poetry runs like a pulsing vein through Black Butterflies.

A delightfully inventive valentine to his 83-year-old Lebanese grandmother, Mahmoud Kaabour's Grandma, a Thousand Times tenderly deconstructs the family-portrait genre, investing all manner of postmodernist distancing devices with emotional resonance.

A must-see for stargazers of all ages.

Morrison sometimes slows down imagery to a hypnotic, frame-by-frame trance-like state; one can imagine townsfolk scrutinizing the faces of long-dead relatives magically raised.

Sticking closely to the written text (with basketballs and barbells supplying incidental props) and wisely not attempting to reimagine the specific circumstances that separate the lovers, a dynamite ensemble cast of young actors invests the Bard's poetry with energetic immediacy.

Gerwig, charmingly unflappable in "Greenberg," lets it all hang out here, unafraid to sacrifice likability to over-the-top hysteria as someone who cannot control herself, despite a lingering sense of her own absurdity. Alexander proves a worthily understated foil, his self-deprecatory whimsy recalling that of a young Johnny Depp.

Deftly avoiding both the haphazardness of mumblecore and the fakery of studio romantic comedies, Khoury deploys a light directorial touch marked by assured thesping and a genuine appreciation for neurotic angst.

Reminiscences about Goodman and readings of his poetry are played over old pictures that capture his singularly seductive appeal and lively sense of humor.