Talking with the residents of these different worlds, and contrasting their different lives, is where the film’s heart and greatest insights reside.

Luckily, the performances and characterizations add heft, and the very Russian vibe of soulful heaviness sets it apart from its American cousins.

The question of how we see our history and who gets to decide is powerfully presented, with respect and insight, in the documentary “Natchez.”

I haven’t seen anything quite like it before. That alone makes it worth seeing, as long as you accept the proposition that a movie like this is unique, in some ways beyond genre labels, and feeling its way towards the right flow and shape as it goes.

Late Night comes directly from Kaling's own experiences. This is an earnest and funny comedy, with very sharp teeth.

The strength of Hama-Brown’s film is how deftly it captures that feeling that emotion can’t always be expressed through language.

It's a small movie that takes big swings.

Brad’s Status might be the most Ben Stillerish movie Ben Stiller has ever made, and that’s actually a good thing.

It’s a movie that doesn’t just allow for silence but thrives in it, with Ahmed’s eyes and body language charting the arc of his character. He doesn't miss a beat.

It’s about empowerment, empathy, and the impact we can have on one another, even those we never meet. You’ll cry. It’s worth the tears.

Written and directed by Robin Lutz, this is a rare feature that takes the trouble not just to understand its subject and communicate his significance, but find ways to actually show us, visually, how his style evolved, and the principles behind that evolution.

By the end of Arnold’s lyrical passion project, one feels genuinely connected to Luma and her likes, deeply concerned about their wellbeing amid the grueling circumstances they are obligated to dwell in.

No wonder the lean, 79-minute running time of All This Panic is not a liability: Gage makes each minute boldly and deeply matter.

As Olfa and the sisters give perspective on their shared trauma and heartbreak and discuss the underlying principles of it with each other and the actresses, what ensues is not simply the story of a family but a tour de force examination of women’s place in the world and the costs of how they choose to cope with it.

The result, though not without flaws, is an invigorating and interesting observation of the man, his work and the entire medium of photography.

The result feels like one of the many thoughtful films made about life under dictatorship, but with a unique twist: This one isn’t critiquing past events in Argentina, Chile, or Uganda from a safe historical distance, but events happening right now in the U.S., from behind a scrim of metaphor as thin as tissue paper.

At times, Hale County This Morning, This Evening evokes the work of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose films “Tropical Malady” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” tell the stories of people and places primarily through their visuals.

It’s quite a ride even when the tempo drops ever so slightly towards the end; the kind of stuff fun summer entertainment should be made of.

Stillman pushes the comedy right up to the edge of screwball.

Thankfully, “Queendom” is not a dull documentary on a fascinating subject.

A nearly great documentary about a national crisis, but its heart is a tragedy with a sickening ironic twist.

It’s very easy to dismiss a film about a hapless loser. But it’s nearly as difficult to ignore a performance like the one Rios gives.

I love this kind of backstage documentary, which is not surprising for someone who has "All That Jazz" and "All About Eve" on his all-time top ten list.

I Love My Dad is the kind of story that doesn’t overthink what makes it so laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s a whole lot of ugly, extremely human things going on each time its comedy makes you cover your eyes.

It's messy in the way that life is messy. It's one of those movies that simultaneously feels too long and not long enough. But there's a purity and earnestness to what it's doing that's increasingly unusual in American independent cinema.

The Children Act is perhaps a bit stilted in the overt way it sometimes attempts to spell out its arguments. But director Richard Eyre’s film still poses sophisticated questions around family, religion, marriage, law and the delicate boundaries that can or cannot be crossed in each institution.

The Meyerowitz Stories shockingly belongs to Sandler, who is absolutely fantastic.

The result is a twisty-turny plot that sometimes feels like a family drama, sometimes like a legal thriller, with Bahkshi delivering a bombshell, allowing the film’s characters time to react to it, and then dropping another secret that is even more shocking than the first.