Sam Weisberg

Wang favors static, wide, one-take shots, to underscore the relentlessness of his characters’ suffering. But — like Jost — he also has a knack for primitive in-camera effects. The final shot is a triumph of both economy and feeling.

The cast is intoxicating.

As demonstrated by this exquisite documentary, the preparation of Japan’s national dish is an arduous affair, with the most celebrated chefs — variously referred to here as “ramen gods” and “ramen demons” — toiling fanatically to retain the color, richness, and viscosity of their dishes.

Above all else, November, shot in gorgeous black-and-white by Mart Taniel, is a smorgasbord of deliciously grotesque imagery.

Most hilarious is the revelation that the first director assigned to the film Lumet eventually made, the manic John G. Avildsen, wanted the eccentric, bearded hipster ex-cop to play himself. On the basis of this exceptional portrait, he very well could have.

Nakom is sometimes slow-moving and occasionally succumbs to heavy-handed symbolism, contrasting images.... But the movie is commendable for centering on an atypical hero.

There have been upbeat coming-out films (But I'm a Cheerleader) and tragic, infuriating ones (Boys Don't Cry, Brokeback Mountain). Andrew Ahn's Spa Night is executed on a significantly smaller scale, a deliberately anticlimactic one, which makes it all the more doleful.

Andersen's restless yet scholarly methods are contagious: He makes you want to become more well-rounded.

Sex and Broadcasting is at once heartfelt, gritty, and informative, and you don’t really want it to end.

Heartrending throughout, Iraqi Odyssey is everything you want in a documentary — informative, involving, and eager to decipher complex, often paradoxical historical conundrums. Everything, that is, except visually interesting.

[A] vivid and enlightening documentary.

Bialis's growing immersion in the town is poignant, even admirable.

If Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna's exhilarating documentary, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, were merely a testament to McQueen's stubbornness and irascibility, it would still be a damned entertaining portrait.

While Spender spends enough time with both new and retired jockey legends to collect a gold mine of macho, bullheaded rapport, you wish she delved deeper into the more sinister, behind-the-scenes wheelings and dealings.

Rose is a pleasant affair, but you might want to know far more about Blank and far less about, say, pot-au-feu.

Terrific documentaries are a dime a dozen; ones this multifaceted are to be cherished.

It will only be criticized — rightfully — for its skirting over the resulting plight of Palestinian refugees, but Grossman is surely capable of making an equally absorbing, entertaining film on that subject.

Scott Cohen's Red Knot exhibits such spot-on, heartbreaking honesty about behaviors that tear many couples apart — passive-aggressiveness, career obsession, seeking validation to soothe one's inadequacies — that it's easy to forgive Cohen his metaphorical excesses.

The tension never lets up.

Theo Love's mesmerizing documentary Little Hope Was Arson is as evenhanded as it is unsettling.

Shirinian has made a swift, moody film, with impeccable art design — Abner's diorama of the car wreck is a kooky marvel — a scarily convincing feel for recurring panic, and a thunderous, heart-rending performance at its center.

Mortensen is a pro at the slow burn, and he adds genuinely frightening layers of impulsiveness to this tempest-in-a-teapot scenario. The freshest twist is that each man has a notable advantage over the other.

Nothing wrenching happens, just unforgettable moments of piercing isolation and sadness.

Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman is a decidedly well-made, unnerving film.

Equally seductive as it is inert, Terry Miles' Cinemanovels manages to cast an alluring spell, despite not amounting to much. It sticks in the memory, mostly due to the playful lead performance by Lauren Lee Smith.

What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.

[Ramsis] achieves many poignant moments, especially when his subjects express that they have never felt at home anywhere outside Egypt.