For either newcomers or fans, the documentary’s cradle-to-grave, talking head approach too readily threatens to take the zip, romance, and funk out of a fascinating subject who would be nothing without those very elements.

There’s a lot of crunch and dazzle here. While the overall tone is pitched to a teen demographic, the creative energy and the execution on display is consistently engaging.

There is a lacking critical quality to the story as it goes along, touching upon the film’s many idiosyncrasies but leaving them alone.

The mosaic arrangement of material ensures that no one subject can be covered in detail -- the sum total sometimes plays like a very good themed edition of "CBS News Sunday Morning" but with a wickedly funny narrator -- and a couple of segments, notably one about a rehab clinic for gaming addicts, feel intellectually undercooked.

It's to the credit of Anthony, who wrote and edited as well as directed, and his cinematographer Corey Hughes, that you come away thinking about parts of the film that felt like cut-able digressions and undergraduate musings when you were watching them.

This expertly made, highly dramatic film achieves must-see status for the inevitable light it sheds on the persistence of toxic racial hatreds not just in Hungary but worldwide.

Kneecap is “about” a lot of things, and its pace makes it impossible to resist getting swept up in it.

This is one of the most relaxing experiences I have had watching a movie in a long time.

Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili’s Tribeca prize-winner, “Brighton 4th,” is a tragicomedy that sneaks up on you stealthily before flooring you with an emotional sucker punch in the final reel.

You may be left cold, feeling that you’ve seen a theoretical exercise whose purpose was never articulated. Or you may react as I did. I took pages of notes for this review, doing my best to describe the movie as a discrete work—an object to be contemplated. When the final credits rolled, I closed my notebook and wept.

While Tramps may be inspired and unusual, it’s hard to shake off the idea that Leon isn't just making the film he wants to see, he's riffing on himself.

It is a touching document of seemingly regular people who yearn to keep an artistic tradition alive.

Filmed in a rich black and white, director Zeshawn Ali’s documentary and feature debut Two Gods is an intimate, lyrical exhumation of the cycles that haunt Black youth and the challenge of putting to rest old habits.

Maggie’s Plan almost isn’t screwball enough. The characters must undergo some introspection, as well, and striking a balance between those two dynamics proves challenging.

An intimate epic, Testament of Youth has great historical sweep yet remains focused on the human vicissitudes experienced by Vera and her circle.

While the documentary’s heart is in the right place, and loaded with many historical goodies for silent movie fans and those interested in championing women directors, the way “Be Natural” presents its findings feels unorganized — like walking through a busy museum exhibit with too many objects, not all of them especially necessary.

Lady Macbeth has the refined, pleasing trappings of a tasteful period piece with the vicious, beating heart of a brutal psychological thriller. You can’t stop watching its beauty, even as you long to look away from its cruelty.

As if to confirm how crucial timing is to documentaries, the artist gives the filmmaker a last performance that helps make her portrait of him as extraordinary as the man it portrays.

This is the kind of movie Piaffe is: one that mostly poises its absurd surreality at the edge of what’s plausible in contemporary everyday life until it moves into unprecedented physical mutations.

The story of “Shayda” is moving, though ordinary. The spectrum of emotion is captured, from tension to joy to despair, but the way the film moves through them is plain at best and bland at worst.

A typical biopic buoyed by its unrelenting hilarity, its affection for its subject and commitment to the time and place it is set. And yet, something still nags at me about its lead performance. Don’t get me wrong, Murphy is very, very good, and on the basis of this, I’d love to see him tackle Pryor next. I just buy him more as Rudy Ray Moore than I do as Dolemite.

A fun and relatively fresh space Western. Think “Firefly” pitched at 15-year-olds, with a lot of overt "Star Wars" nods. And super-“irreverent” dialogue that is, more often than not, genuinely funny.

A relentless, but emotionally well-balanced character study of Hikari (Keita Ninomiya) and his bandmates as they receive a series of transformative reality checks, and also perform post-millennial garage rock that sounds like a cross between post-shoegaze emo rock and video-game-style chiptunes.

This movie is a remarkable feat that requires a strong stomach to sit through. I was unaware, prior to seeing it, that it’s based on a true story, and the movie’s coda was that much more powerful for me as a result.

I Carry You with Me is a complicated film, in many ways, and it covers a lot of ground, but the emotions portrayed are simple and human-sized.

The sumptuous settings, elegiac tone, and Krieps' layered performance bring us into the world of this woman caught between the expectations of her culture and her own desires.

The reporter's story doesn't just hold water, it proven solid enough to provoke mainstream media appearances and Congressional investigations. As a result, even though the tale is urgently important, one still comes away with the sense that something valuable has been lost in the telling.

Centering the character’s experience is pivotal to making the movie so effective, but when it deviates from those visual guidelines, it feels like it loses a touch of its power. As a trained actor with a camera on him throughout the entirety of the film, Poikolainen shoulders the task with a stoic grace and a sardonic wit.

Liza, a tribute to someone still alive, is gentle in its intentions, but the overall effect is meaningful.

Cohn never turns Night School into a sob story or a manipulative tale of redemption.

Despite its missteps, this is Baker's best-directed film, judged purely in terms of how economically he sets up and pays off each mile marker in the story, often getting in and out of a scene with two or three elegantly choreographed but unpretentious shots.

Breaking Fast is a sweet romantic comedy that shows how it's possible to observe nearly every convention of the mainstream romantic comedy yet still deliver something that feels new.

Greene’s film is deceptively profound in that it’s about a specific woman with a specific kind of life, yet it has universal resonance as a reflection of the struggle so many women endure—the desire to be all things to all people and inevitably failing someone, the yearning to balance career and parenthood and never finding enough time to do either completely right.

Despite its shortcomings, there are things about this film that are hard to shake; the movie’s ultimate wisdom and overarching compassion make it very likely that you won’t want to shake them, after all.

A film so obedient to current academic fashions in both politics and cinema aesthetics that it ends up feeling both contrived and a bit dishonest.

Nighy is never less than splendid.

As a character, Yasuko feels a bit underdeveloped, resulting in a late-film character turn that I didn’t quite buy, but every narrative issue in Creepy is overwhelmed by the quality of the filmmaking.

Scene by scene, The White Tiger punctures the fantasy that a rich man could also be a nice man, and although the comedy here is pitch-black, it strums with a particularly focused anger.

The bodies of the competitors are photographed to emphasize their strength, their power, and their unquestionable beauty; classical Greek-style statues modeled after the athletes frame the chapters of the film.

From both a technical and political standpoint, The Stroll is a tremendous achievement.

With "Confessions of a Good Samaritan," Lane is in her most confessional mode yet, finally turning the camera fully on herself.

What's missing is a sense of how Monroe, seemingly a law-abiding young man before his family's financial dark days, suddenly went from being a go-along-to-get-along type to a budding criminal mastermind.

While the on-the-nose title suggests each individual is an isolated entity...the character construction and how their respective desires intersect with one another, in tandem with an effectively dizzying atmosphere, render it more original than expected.

It’s time in a bottle and a pleasure to soak up.

Retrograde is about many things, but it's really about the faces. The cameras linger on the faces, allowing the expressions of suffering, tension, nerves, and desperation, to take root.

However heartfelt and keenly observed this pessimism is, it becomes monotonous.

Shelton and Duplass may not stray very far from the path which, at the film’s outset, they seem likeliest to take, and not every moment along that path lands quite as well as it could. But like Bird’s score, Outside In knows how to take us from the outside and bring us, well, in.

I found the film to be an engrossing look at Zappa and his legacy that nevertheless avoids the mere hagiography that films of this sort run the risk of embracing when not handled properly.

Filmmakers have arguably lost the plot, turning “War is hell” into a “Can you top this?” competition.

Appears at first to take a more macro perspective on gay rights. But it tells a big story indeed.

Michael Shannon is both ruthless and strangely tender in his seemingly irredeemable character.

All in all, this is a thoughtful, remarkable piece of nonfiction, working in an accessible commercial vein but doing its best not to take the easy way into any aspect of Reeve’s story.

It looks and sounds great, but should it?

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

A Cop Movie, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, is exceptionally challenging to begin with. As the movie unspools, and the layers of its production become clearer, we understand the challenge is the movie’s entire objective—up to a point.

For a movie so driven by music, it’s unfortunate that its final number is somewhat of a mess, its lyrics weaker than the performances that led up to it. Tense situations quickly resolve themselves, and everyone in the makeshift group conveniently has a part to play. I only wish it felt more like music to my ears.

Citizen K is skillfully made, with a compelling story, or really stories.

The small but wonderfully rich details of the film invite us in: the trembling of a wrinkled cheek, the arch of an eyebrow, the flicker of a candle, and especially the superbly evocative sound design.

A nuanced and sensitive exploration of the many ways rape affects a person's life.

Documentaries that rely on a steady stream of talking heads—interspersed here with fleeting film clips—usually are not my favorite. However, when those heads belong to talented and perceptive women who rarely get a chance to speak their minds let alone get hired to make a movie, I can definitely make an exception.

A marvelously kooky, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny buddy comedy.

I went into the film knowing nothing about the Cantopop star, and came away from it as an instant fan rejuvenated by my connection to every soul throughout the world currently fighting to preserve human rights against the rising tide of totalitarianism.

Set in rural Iceland, The County unfurls as if Ken Loach found himself near the Arctic Circle, looked around at the myriad villages and struggling farms, and thought, “Hm, I wonder if there is a labor struggle to found here!” There is.

Most of all, Rebel Ridge is just a reminder of how thrilling it can be to see a genre piece with this level of artistry.

It must be noted that Cartel Land weaves together two stories, and the Mexican one is far more compelling and revealing than the American.

Minhal Baig’s “We Grown Now” is a film masterfully tied to the emotive potential of place.

If its account of Randi’s work as an exceptional entertainer and a zealous debunker were all that An Honest Liar gave us, it would be a tremendously fascinating film. But the movie also contains a third-act surprise – which won’t be revealed here – that makes it both unexpectedly revelatory and deeply moving.

The Meaning of Hitler never quite reconciles its central concern of whether continuing to talk about Hitler is an inherently compromised pursuit, and that uneasiness feels like an unintentional capitulation for an otherwise well-intentioned project.

Unlike Kahn’s acclaimed and much tidier 2003 documentary “My Architect,” The Price of Everything has a meandering nature and explores one too many avenues in building a thesis, while losing the viewer in the midst at times.

This strange and creative approach to storytelling and family therapy is a small wonder to see in action.

Housebound is a standout, though, because of its satirical mood and its multiple scenes of almost screwball comedy.

It's as if the group had studied the "Rabbit season! Duck season!" exchange from the Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck classic "Rabbit Seasoning," and figured out how to turn the punchline into a political movement.

One of the strongest aspects of The Student is that, while its view of Venya’s beliefs is decidedly skeptical, it doesn’t ridicule him or suggest that others are immune to his Biblical zealotry.

There’s not much to Porumboiu’s latest beyond a surplus of plot twists and double crosses.

Co-directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren seem to be operating from a place of nonjudgmental curiosity, so pure and sustained that it becomes indistinguishable from love. They can't get enough of John Wojtowicz.

Leonardo van Dijl’’s “Julie Keeps Quiet” is more about what is left unsaid than what’s spoken. Co-written by van Dijl and Ruth Becquart, the film is a quiet drama about keeping secrets buried within and what happens when details finally come to light.

This is the kind of film that tells its story well while simultaneously showing the joy of the creative act, in Bravo's filmmaking, yes, but also in Zola's decision to take to Twitter and tell her story in the first place.

Whether or not we get more rounds with this hand of fate, Talk to Me lingers as a striking and confident directorial debut from the Philippous, whose penchant for hyper-active YouTube fight and prank vids is mostly evident in this movie's emotional carnage.

Midnight Special respects your intelligence, letting you come to its themes emotionally instead of narratively. It is a breathtaking display of visual storytelling, confidently rendered by someone who understands the power of cinema.

McQueen doesn’t aim to achieve an arresting horror or to explain one person's grief. This urban interrogation is a frank interplay between survival and oblivion, selflessness and selfishness, continuity and demolition.

Spa Night takes too much time to portray David's achingly slow and incomplete coming-out process, but its focus on the interior maelstrom of a teenager is extremely insightful

The moviemakers craft a satisfying narrative while leaving the viewer with some questions; this is a movie that manages to be disquieting and entertaining simultaneously.

Documentary filmmakers Cristina Costantini (“Science Fair”) and Kareem Tabsch (“The Last Resort”) celebrate and eulogize the late showman with disarming zest and respect, unpacking how he and his horoscopes became staples of the Latin culture over the years.

The Guest takes its time revealing what is really going on, and has a lot of fun in that slow reveal process.

Polsky’s skill in mining the darkly humorous shades of disastrous hubris is not all that surprising, considering he produced Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage’s funniest film to date, 2009’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.”

With his rich coming-of-age drama The Hand of God, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino not only courts, but squashes comparisons to formative maestro Federico Fellini.

The terrific cast all delves into the material full-bore, which contributes to its peculiar resonance. Perry may hate everyone and everything, but in making a show of it, he’s thoroughly entertaining.

A proudly old-fashioned Gothic fable with grain and grit, the delectable “Vourdalak” is swift to announce in its early moments that we are in the hands of a skillful stylist.

With The Wild Goose Lake, Yinan signals the makings of a major filmmaker. Perhaps the world he creates is a bit too scattered for its own good, but you will still want to melt inside its stunning, riotous glow.

It’s a film whose tranquility and humility sometimes work against it, even in those moments where it overcorrects with didacticism.

Hokum rises above so many films like it because it takes its character’s plight seriously, never winking at the audience, even as the impossible happens.

Son of Monarchs, which is driven by mood as much as it is a metaphor that it can’t get enough of, embodies the equal ambition and shortcomings of a writer/director trying feel their way through science, while having as minimal a narrative as possible.

There's something refreshing, at times remarkable, about the sureness of the acting, and the filmmaker's touch.

Jenkins and her collaborators have done what I thought was previously impossible: created a Wonder Woman film that is inspiring, blistering, and compassionate, in ways that honor what has made this character an icon.

Murina is a slow burn of a movie, one that doesn’t end in a detonation but with an enigma. Nevertheless, it’s one of the more coherent and satisfying narrative releases of the year.

Something in the Dirt has the gritty DIY-vibe of the no-budget world from which it sprang, and is both thought-provoking and crazy-making, just like the mood it presents.

Before the heartbreak, there are outlandish and often funny stories about iconic album covers.

Some of the close-quarters beatings and fights are diminished by shooting and editing so chaotically that the action becomes incomprehensible. For the most part, though, it’s a powerful debut by filmmakers who understand human nature and would rather enlighten than provoke.