The Birth of a Nation certainly has the power of conviction, but the grace of art escapes it.

Tears of Gaza is both horrifying and frustrating. This documentary's goals are noble ones, but its execution is something else again.

This film quickly reveals itself to be a beautifully heartfelt and poetic tribute to the filmmaker’s mother.

You brace yourself for a numbing catalog of stupidity — the title isn’t exactly encouraging — and are instead greeted by amusement, suspense and a curious aftertaste of sweetness and melancholy. You might even call it grace.

It’s a tricky balancing act that Feinartz depicts with candor, grace and patience, never letting the film’s provocative pathos turn overly grim or sentimental.

Working with cinematographers Ehab Assal and Peter Flinckenberg, Abu-Assad continually boxes his female leads into tight corners, visually and dramatically. Nearly every scene takes the form of a single unbroken shot, a technique that sometimes pulls you in and sometimes merely calls attention to its own virtuosity.

An elegantly discursive examination of one of the great modern photographers, a surprisingly intimate portrait of an elusive, laconic man.

Within that funhouse mirror of an erotic-thriller premise, Femme proves to be a gorgeously mounted meditation on queer and queered performance.

Tells this most unusual love story with grace and compassion.

In its strangest, most arresting moments, Spider-Man: Far From Home doesn’t just pull the rug out from under you; it tumbles down its own rabbit hole, winding up somewhere in the vicinity of Pixar’s “The Incredibles” (whose composer, Michael Giacchino, also wrote this movie’s bustling score) and Chuck Jones’ classic animated short “Duck Amuck.”

In its most rewardingly complicated moments, this absorbing, incomplete documentary reminds us that there is nothing definitive about what we think we know.

This impeccably made film is chock-full of enlightening and sometimes bizarre moments.

It's unique, powerful stuff.

It would be hard to imagine a more entertaining corrupt-cop documentary than The Seven Five, a slick and fascinating portrait of disgraced New York policeman Michael Dowd.

This movie is more like a gallery exhibition of moving portraits — each more astonishing than the last.

Disney's evergreen, Oscar-winning documentary from 1953, is crawling with the scaly, feathery and furry critters who call the desert home. [12 Aug 1994, p.F27]

The glossy Stanley Donen thriller offers one surprise after another and lots of romantic byplay between Peck and Loren, including a sensational shower scene. [30 Sep 1990, p.85]

It's an adult look at the teenage years, an examination of how personal emotions inform political action, a noteworthy change of pace for writer-director Sally Potter and, most of all, the showcase for a performance by Elle Fanning as Ginger that is little short of phenomenal.

The astonishing thing about Raising Arizona is how it can move so fast, be so loud, and ramain so relentlessly boring at the same time. [20 Mar 1987]

Directors Goldfine and Geller tell their story with such engaged confidence that we are swept along to its wild end.

Live Flesh is an effortlessly articulated tragicomedy by Pedro Almodovar, a world-renowned filmmaker at the height of his powers. [30 Jan 1998]

An effective, efficient and quite dramatic examination of the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured 264, Patriots Day is a tribute to people who earned it: the investigators and first responders who ensured that a horrible situation did not become even worse.

Depraved is smart in its commentary on everything from the evils of the pharmaceuticals industry to the terrors of PTSD, but there’s real heart and empathy here too. Skeptics might question whether Adam has a soul or not, but Fessenden’s film clearly possesses one.

Aside from preserving these folks for a presumably grateful posterity and convincingly depicting Austin as an open-air lunatic asylum, Slacker does not offer much to anyone who likes to stay awake.

By keeping things short, sweet and dutifully tuneful, Echo in the Canyon is like the doc version of one of the period’s sonic nuggets, leaving you with a peace/love/understanding high and a desire to break out the vinyl for more of the same.

Mona Lisa’s story is at first bizarre, and then tense, and then genuinely moving as the escapee figures out what she actually wants from the outside world.

Whether viewers accept the spiritual terms of the conversation or not, the unlikely allies shine a burning light on questions that go to the essence of who we are and what it means to value life.

What unnecessary imprisonment does to families is often written about in abstract terms, but to see what it did to one specific family runs an emotional gamut that the patience of this heroically committed filmmaker does full justice to.

There are two films at war in director Spike Lee's newest feature 25th Hour, one uninteresting, the other an epic of near-tragic miscalculation.

The Hidden has enough smarts that it doesn’t need to be so total and unrelieved a massacre. The caustic dark humor with which it begins ends up drowning in an ocean of blood.

What sustains the film through the rockier times are its challenging themes, offering real issues for the young protagonists to wrestle with, rather than whether anyone will be carded trying to buy beer.

Though some of the jabs "Me" takes at reality TV are clever, the film, like Alice, tends to fracture at key moments. What makes it worth watching is Wiig.

Von Trier is undeniably talented, but Zentropa, which won the 1991 Jury Prize at Cannes, comes across mostly as an exercise in pseudo-profundity. It’s got more metaphors than it knows what to do with.

The film’s greatest achievement is the ease with which it traverses the delicate territory of its characters’ lives without losing the sense of a past both shared and fractured in memory.

Miller and Lord clearly understand the push-and-pull and hyper-competitiveness that make guy friendships both complex and stupid. That it comes to life so fully in 21 Jump Street is what gives the film an endearing, punch-you-in-the-arm-because-I-like-you-man charm.

Greener Grass is a movie that’s not only immediately destined for cult status — it’s the rare movie that truly earns it.

Ejiofor brings a calm magnetism and a beatific serenity to his roles that have the effect of knocking you flat -- there's something about this guy that's messianic.

An appealingly wry little film that is as appetizing as its title.

This ambitious first feature film about the period made entirely by Rwandans (shot in a remarkable 16 days), while hardly an all-inclusive look at this complex conflict, paints a heartfelt, fairly restrained picture of a nation under siege.

Sophie Deraspe's film is a compelling anatomy of an Internet hoax.

As a character study, Selah and the Spades is more than requiem for a mean girl. Think the stylistic snappiness of “Brick” meets the fastidious world-building of “Rushmore” with a fourth-wall-bending feminist perspective and two young black female leads, and you’ve got “Selah.”

Segan doesn’t force anything. He takes each situation and imagines what might realistically happen — and then what might happen next. He builds a world that feels real, and anchors it with a relationship so wholesome that its easy to see why a lonely vampire would upend his whole existence to preserve it.

Though never disorienting or obnoxious (à la “Euphoria”), it can get tiring: a restlessness of spirit and technique that occasionally separates us from this lost antihero when we crave a closer connection to him. Especially since first-time actor Marini is stellar casting.

It seems to be doing everything right but still doesn't manage to leave you with a completely satisfied feeling.

Directed by Mellencamp from a script by Larry McMurtry, the result is a curious, wayward blend of small-town anomie and intrigue and hero-worshipping narcissism. [21 Feb 1992, p.F10]

For all of its cutting cynicism, "Dad" proves unexpectedly moving in its portrait of a middle-aged man leaving childish things behind.

Todd and Anderson's Around the World in 80 Days is an overstuffed, star-crammed affair, but it's also a sly charmer. [11 Jun 1992, p.14]

As things play out, however, Loach and Laverty are realistic enough in their tale of invigorating compassion to grasp that, as difficult as it is to find and nurture hope, just as essential is recognizing the danger lurking in festering grievance.

With moments of odd, dark humor sprinkled among the violence, this traditional study of psycho kittens in love breaks just enough new ground to be an impressive piece of work.

What results is an illuminating new way of seeing this old building — not just as an historic landmark where amazing things happened long ago, but as a place where people have actually lived full lives, finding shelter and inspiration in its haunted halls.

Despite the morbid preoccupation with diving’s dangers, The Deepest Breath is an intense and often beautiful movie, likely to appeal to fans of extreme sports documentaries like “Free Solo” and “Riding Giants.”

It's sweet and winsome and a little pat, done with just enough feeling to lift it out of its class. [15 Mar 1995, Pg.F5]

Quibbles aside, Whirlybird proves a memorably evocative time capsule of 1980s and ’90s Los Angeles and the people who made — and captured — the news, as well as a stirring portrait of regret.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is loud, cheery and fairly relentless in its assault on your rib cage. The pleasingly rudimentary visual design, all bright colors and madly expressive eyebrows, is no more and no less than what the material requires.

They both saw themselves, "Dying to Know" posits, as adventurers exploring alternate realities, and hearing where they ended up is a trip all by itself.

Grafting the buddy picture onto the framework of the classic political thriller, director Jang Hoon also manages to find time for lighter moments of human comedy, and those seemingly disparate elements are deftly navigated by Song and his fellow fully dimensional characters.

I'd like to think the earnest sentiments and machine-tooled dramatic complications of Wells' script could find a receptive audience in late 2010. I'd like to think, too, that the mess we're in demands a gutsier script. Good cast, though.

Morgen's decision to avoid talking heads recounting events and find a way to dramatize them instead is consistent with his intention for the film. The director wants to bring recent history to life for people who weren't around to witness it, and in that he succeeds pretty admirably.

A witty and delightful Christmas present for the entire family.

There is a wonderful natural quality to Jeong's storytelling that is enhanced by cinematographer Young-hwan Choi's graceful camerawork and by a dynamic, contemporary score from M&F.

Not only is the film that good, it's also that wonderfully, inescapably Czech.

The movie love can make it hard to hear the human pulse beneath the noise (it's there, if faint), much less see if there's anything new going on.

Call this a brooding comedy or a darkly whimsical drama, "Wilbur's" willingness to mix gallows humor and real sadness make it something on which labels do not easily fit.

Whatever may be flawed in Oliver Stone's searing, full-torque new war movie "Salvador", one thing about it is burningly right: It's alive. It broils, snaps and explodes with energy. The events (condensed from two years of battles and political upheaval in El Salvador) fly past at a murderous clip, hurtling you along almost demonically. [10 Apr 1986, p.6]

The emotional resonance comes not from the dramatic wartime events, but rather from the long-term effects of Winton’s efforts many years later.

Gripping...It’s a tough, distressing film, yet in the measured hands of directors Pat McGee and Adam Linkenhelt, its emotional and humanistic qualities transcend the kind of exploitive defaults that could have made this a punishing, eye-popping horror show.

Not least of the surprises here is that even when The Monster is trying to scare you witless, its every scene insistently reaffirms its characters’ humanity.

Though the fun is not so much in who wins or loses the girl - it's the playing that matters, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World definitely has game.

There are moments of beauty here, but not enough to make up for the mannered dialogue and hamstrung performances. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative won't be prosecuted, but they'll probably be disappointed.

None of the segments are really interested in jump/scare/slasher horror, but rather the slow, creeping terror of feeling something is wrong and something worse is coming, making the film a most frightful Halloween aperitif.

Though amusing enough to avoid absolutely drowning in schmaltz, it's sad to see a film with potential lose its way in the late innings.

Fahrenheit 11/9 may be a scattered summing-up of bad origins, and a loose blame game about our present corrosiveness, but what gives it its sear is its message of a ruptured country as eminently fixable, as long as wishing and hoping is replaced by organizing and doing.

The conventionality of Happiest Season might be the most radical thing about it. The movie boasts the usual surface delights and yuletide setpieces: It has competitive ice skating and a white-elephant-gift party, shticky running gags and acres of throw-pillow-heavy production design. It also has two lead performances of remarkable grown-up complexity and moment-to-moment coherence.

The feature debut of music video director Ninian Doff is probably best viewed late at night under the influence of a mind-altering, preferably hallucinatory, substance.

There are no spies who “dump” or “shag” anyone here, much less jump out of airplanes or buildings, but The Spy Gone North, based on the exploits of a true-life double agent code-named Black Venus, remains a taut, slowly engrossing, effectively old-fashioned Cold War thriller.

Hitchcock deftly maneuvers the film from comedy to romance to melodrama to near tragedy. [02 Feb 2007, p.E12]

The docudrama Framing Agnes is a fascinating, multidimensional, mosaic-like glimpse at transgender life from the 1950s to today as interpreted by — and through — a group of transmasculine and transfeminine performers and creatives and one uniquely impressive academic.

Grossman doesn't step back for a broader, contextualizing view of the Middle East; the film contains a single comment on the 1948 war's ramifications for displaced Palestinians. But as an oral history of the pilots' experiences, it's indispensable.

It’s an unapologetically soft ride in the slice-of-life sweepstakes, flecked with era-specific archival footage as connective tissue, but with a sneaky, gathering poignancy that prioritizes the journey over story payoffs.

They don’t often make them like this anymore, a story cut, folded and stitched together with care. So “The Outfit” is worth slipping into and savoring.

As the movie dances right up to the conventions of this well-worn genre, then deftly slides (To the left! To the right!) to avoid them, you might just find yourself clapping along in spite of it all being terminally uncool. Uncool can be a lot of fun.

At one point, Klores thought about making a feature film out of the material, but it's a good thing he decided against it. You could not make this stuff up.

The unifying power of music is rewardingly demonstrated in Song of Lahore.

A vibrant, affecting piece of filmmaking that’s sure to widen Hesse's following.

Director Miranda de Pencier and writers Graham Yost and Moira Walley-Beckett haven’t dodged hard sociological truths lurking beneath the gentle humor, engaging performances and stirringly photographed tundra, lending The Grizzlies a decisive, transformative edge.

Made with care and conviction as it explores this unexpected relationship, "Our Souls at Night" understands both what changes in people as they age and what remains the same. It covers quite a bit of emotional territory, and it covers it well.

Frequently laugh-out-loud funny and tangibly tender where it ought to be, the immensely satisfying screwball romp feels freshly contemporary even as it largely conforms to genre conventions.

Small scale though it is, this is a film that knows what it wants to do and has thought out exactly how to go about doing it. The same must be said about the luminous nature of Kazan's performance, which won best actress last year at the Tribeca Film Festival.

A creeping naturalism inhabits virtually every frame of Dayveon.

The film explores what’s funny — and terrifyingly truthful — about being wrenched into adulthood.

Because Ihlen was never the public figure that the often idolized Cohen was, “Words of Love” eventually becomes as much a documentary on him as a record of a relationship. But that relationship does have pride of place, and as described by the participants in vintage audio and by people who knew him in contemporary interviews, it does fascinate.

If the journey is familiar, at least the company is good.

Working closely with master editor William Goldenberg, Greengrass has given 22 July a relentless, remorseless quality, insisting on a matter-of-fact style that allows no escape from reality even while refusing to push anything too hard.

Bloody Oranges isn’t a heavy-handed polemic. It’s more a genre-hopping experiment: sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying. Meurisse’s pluck is admirable, even though — or perhaps because — he’s made something often incredibly unpleasant.

Even if the narrative feels a little forced, the movie still works.

Knives, explosions and knockabout humor have been added to taste. As vigorously staged as it all is -- sometimes confusingly, occasionally with camera-torqueing flair and impressive stuntwork -- the urge to thrill grows wearisome. Were audience members to be included as a collective character as well, they'd be "The Tired."

The documentary doesn’t hesitate to reveal the dangerous reality facing elephants and the other animals, offering a frank look at their existence in a film that’s as entertaining as it is moving.

LaGravenese... has understood that the worst of Bridges is not in its dialogue but in the silent musings that occupy its characters' minds. By keeping those thoughts unspoken, by allowing the camera to show instead of having words tell, much has been accomplished.