Shows the human face of both communism and its victims, and shows how hard it is to tell the two apart.

Mr. Patwardhan has located so much information and found so many willing interview subjects that his War and Peace has a riveting intelligence all its own and earns its epic title.

Dense, contradictory and distressingly honest, Valley of Tears is that rarity among political documentaries: a genuinely thought-provoking film.

"For my vision of the cinema," Orson Welles once said, "editing is not simply one aspect. It is the aspect." According to Edge Codes.com, a wonderfully informative new documentary, what was true for Welles's cinema is true for the medium as a whole.

Gorgeously shot, moving through the decades in a gentle adagio, it is less a chronicle than a tribute -- and also, to non-initiates in the game of go, a bit of a puzzle.

An enigmatic and utterly compelling story of incinerated art, unbridled egos and exotic plants.

Generally speaking, bird-watching is a pastime that is extremely interesting to a few people and not at all interesting to anyone else. But Scott Crocker has turned a bird-watching tale into a multilayered story that will fascinate practically everybody in Ghost Bird, a witty, wistful documentary.

If you compared the two main characters with the cowboys in "Brokeback Mountain," they would be ignoble versions of Ennis del Mar (Jimmy) and Jack Twist (Lars). Like their American counterparts, they barely know what to do with their passion.

Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a handsomely produced, television-scale documentary with a split personality.

An admiring but restrained documentary about Darko Kralj, a Paralympic shot-putter from Croatia. The film is more about what it takes to overcome adversity and recommit to finding meaning in life, terrain that anyone with a disability has to negotiate, athlete or not.

This virtuous stance is not unusual for issue-based documentaries, but a film with such illuminating content deserves a more artful vehicle for its moving message.

It’s like a cheap, dry cake covered with a thick layer of frosting. But even bad cake can be enjoyable, especially if celebrating something as worthwhile as these elders, their long lives and their continued gutsiness so late in the game.

It’s not about why he was such a thrill-seeking risk-taker but about appreciating his success in living life on his own terms.

My Name Is Nobody is terribly knowing. It has the manner of a buff who knows absolutely everything about a subject most other people haven't time for, but it's also very entertaining.

A jarring realism comes both from Mr. Oliver’s script and the performances by an ensemble of brilliant character actors.

Maybe I’m repeating myself: The Hateful Eight is a Quentin Tarantino movie. But Mr. Tarantino is also repeating himself, spinning his wheels here in a way he has rarely done before. None of his other films venture so far into tedium or manage to get in their own way so frequently.

It would be hard not to make a thought-provoking, heartstring-tugging film from this source material, and Bound by Flesh certainly tells the twins’ story effectively.

Swiveling from past to present and back again, the writer and director, Lee Su-jin, drops ominous clues — a bruised boy; a mysterious infection — that only slowly coalesce into a larger tragedy.

If You Don’t, I Will is a dour, acutely observed comedy about marital boredom that doesn’t glamorize or overdramatize the characters’ angst. Its lived-in performances evoke an excruciating stalemate that can be ended only by a radical break.

Vessel becomes a film not just about abortion but also about activism. It raises provocative questions about the power of laws to police information in an increasingly globalized world.

Placing sex and gender identity at the center of almost every conversation, the writer and director, Eric Schaeffer, is so keen to demythologize that the film’s potentially most affecting moments are too often smothered by the hackneyed characters and setups that surround them.

Ms. Meeropol is steadfast in providing both sides of the story. That’s admirable, yet it can come across as uninvolving.

The movie is so perfectly acted and gorgeously filmed (the cinematographer is Julie Kirkwood) that we don’t mind its coyness; the twanging notes of trepidation make us almost grateful for the leisurely build.

The sense of danger is palpable, as is the sense of misery after the most dreadful scenes.

Cristin Milioti (“How I Met Your Mother”) is so quirkily endearing in the lead role that she makes it easy to just go with the airy tale.

Whether together or apart, Mr. Sand and Mr. Scully seemed to be operating on a similar wavelength, and the movie gets a lot of mileage from their sometimes excellent, at times hair-raising, occasionally puckishly funny and altogether wild adventures.

The film is a good-natured potpourri of gags, funny bits, populist sentiment and anti-intellectualism.

It’s a film of scenes rather than of one unified narrative, but each scene is a showcase for the magnificent talents of Ms. Balibar, a multifaceted performer of spectacular magnetism and intelligence.

Mr. Crichton's previous films as a director — "Westworld" and "Coma" — are skillful and, each in its own way, entertaining, but they give no hint of the amplitude he displays in this visually dazzling period piece. With Sean Connery as the gang's elegant leader, the sort of mastermind who denies his body nothing, Lesley-Anne Down as his magnificent moll, and Donald Sutherland as his locksmith —"the best screwsman in England" — The Great Train Robbery is classy entertainment of the sort I associate exclusively with movies.

The movie is at its most entertaining when detailing the making of “Midnight Express” and the contentious personalities involved.

The star of the movie is a compelling figure, and Mr. D’Ambrosio presents quite a few people from Mr. Serpico’s past who have a similar draw. But the director’s filmmaking instincts are not always salutary.

By framing the movie as a multipronged narrative that eventually culminates in the big event of the fair itself, it risks prosaicness. But the subjects are winning and heartening, and their mission is one you just can’t take issue with.

Are We Not Cats is a well-put-together film with a lot of striking imagery, but, as you may have already inferred, something of a specialty item.

Blake Edwards's frequently hilarious new film, “10,” is the story of George's desperate efforts to come to terms with life in Southern California even though he knows he's inadequate.

It’s a film that doggedly questions an exam that affects the futures of millions and feeds the fortunes of several big industries. Someone else — the schools — needs to supply some good answers.

The action here is as black-and-white and as pleasantly, if naively, diverting as that in any western even though it was all shot in vivid colors.

It’s rare that a director’s first feature film, accomplished with an ensemble of nonprofessional actors, proves to be as quietly powerful as Jean-Bernard Marlin’s simple but lyrical “Shéhérazade.”

A demented fetish comedy that escalates to startlingly nonchalant violence, Deerskin (written and directed by Quentin Dupieux) flickers tantalizingly between awful and awesome.

Candleshoe, with its beguiling English countryside settings, languid pace, defanged Dickensian villains, compassionate butler, down-at-the-heels nobility, hidden treasure and orphaned children engaged in a plot to outwit swindlers, keep up appearances and save the old manor from foreclosure, is the fiction of a bygone era.

If this, the best American comedy since Tootsie, doesn't have you in stitches, check your vital signs: you may be in as much trouble as Edwina Cutwater, the dying dowager Miss Tomlin plays.

The result is an exceedingly well-made first feature, a simple genre movie elevated by strong visuals, potent performances and a mood that falls somewhere between resignation and guttering hope.

The measured tone with which the movie presents its ostensible revelations is more than half the fun; nothing that comes up is ever played as a twist; the aforementioned opening scene shows Munch’s hand deliberately.

Tiny Shirley Temple is a joy to behold and her spontaneity and cheer in speaking her lines are nothing short of amazing.

Tucked like a pair of aces into a solid but unremarkable hand of poker is a story arc that not only heightens the dramatic tension, but also clarifies the film’s more compelling ideas, skillfully tying the stories of the documentary’s subjects to their political subtext.

It is likely to leave viewers shaken, and it is always comprehensible, even in sequences that illustrate what the pilots saw in the cockpit.

The result is a bittersweet family portrait that, though relatable, lacks the specificity that makes for truly universal cinema.

Quite clearly, Pookie Adams is a marvelous role, full of tough-sweet humor, and Liza Minnelli, the daughter of Vincente Minnelli and the late Judy Garland, turns it into one of the most appealing performances of the season, a triumph limited only by the squashy movie that encases it.

The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies.

Mr. Hopkins's screenplay is funny without being condescending, more aware of history, perhaps, than Conan Doyle's mysteries ever were, but always appreciative of the strengths of the original characters and of the etiquette observed in the course of every hunt.

Matt and Mara is less a movie than an idea for one. It doesn’t help that neither character is likable, or that the director and writer, Kazik Radwanski, fills the screen with close-ups in lieu of information.

Harvest, which takes place over one week’s time, is gorgeous and strange and a bit winding, though not unpleasantly so.

Always intriguing, Stranger Eyes proves stronger on concept than coherence. Perhaps the loose ends are Yeo’s way of suggesting that a film director, too, lacks omniscience.

Comedy was not really his subject. Laughter wasn’t either. Instead, a few interviewees suggest, it was time — a part of existence we normally take for granted. Kaufman had a preternatural ability to remain unperturbed by time passing, even when his audience became disgruntled, hostile or upset.

This entertaining movie is content to be something a bit more modest: a pungent period folk tale that teases you until the very end.

It has the loose-jointed feel of a bunch of sketches packed together into a narrative that doesn't gather much momentum. Its conspiratorial eager beavers are so undeveloped that they could hardly even be called types. You don't care for a second what happens to them.

The most horrifying thing in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's fiercely original, thrillingly creepy Pulse (released as "Kairo," or "Circuit," in Japan) is the way the ghosts move.

Like a diploma, it’s easy to imagine how the rewards of this carefully observed documentary could accrue with a little time.

For all its flaws, the movie, filmed with nonprofessional actors, is steadily gripping.

Lindon stages an intentional anticlimax that feels confusingly abrupt and unconvincing. Yet her point is well taken: that the desires of young people are as fickle and ephemeral as flowers in full bloom.

Queen and Country doesn’t quite have the bittersweet intensity of its precursor. The terrible magic of the war is missing, and so is the heightened, wide-eyed perceptiveness of the child protagonist.

May not be perfect, but it honors its source and captures the key elements -- the humor and good sense, as well as the sheer narrative exuberance -- that have made White’s book a classic.

What makes the film’s episodic approach flow is the pulse-sensitive camerawork. It’s worth singling out, because it is the kind that is often described as “intimate” but rarely pulled off with such Maysles-esque aplomb.

Well-researched and generally evenhanded in its delivery of information (Ted Danson provides the narration), the movie more than makes its points without needing to resort to a montage of adorable fish being bashed on the head.

It's also one of those movies that is itself so lethargic that one welcomes its so-called shock moments not because they are scary but because they indicate that not everyone behind the camera has been napping. You don't dread the possibility of something jumping out from behind the door. You long for it.

A sly and thoroughly charming Trojan horse of a movie.

Mr. Schreiber has almost no physical resemblance to Wepner, in his heyday a burly, mustachioed redhead. Mr. Schreiber is a terrific actor, however, and he pulls it off. His portrayal works partly because of its understatement.

Funny? Yes. Revealing? No. By and large, the movie is content to offer amusing caricatures and leave it at that.

Given [Ms. Cohn] confident hand behind the camera and gift for rich female characters, you hope to see more portraits from her in the future.

Those looking to learn the basic outlines of the life of the singer Chavela Vargas could do worse than watch Chavela, but this plodding documentary from Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi rarely transcends simple biography

This haunting documentary is a powerful addition to a growing body of post #MeToo films — including “Finding Neverland” and “Surviving R. Kelly” — that show how cultural power is accumulated and weaponized.

It’s a persuasive portrait of a monster-to-be, one etched in thrown tantrums and rocks, and heavily supported by an excellent cast that includes Robert Pattinson and Yolande Moreau as well as a driving score that occasionally threatens to upstage the movie.

This disdain for women is not incidental to the film; it is integral to the fantasy Mr. Brewer is selling, which is that pimping is not as hard as it looks.

If you are not too particular about the images of Carroll and Tenniel, if you are high on Disney whimsey and if you'll take a somewhat slow, uneven pace, you should find this picture entertaining.

It tells a finely nuanced tale of right, wrong and the gray area in between.

The keen affinity the actor David Oyelowo has for his fellow performers is the best thing about The Water Man.

Goofball antics and a terrific, raucous finale can’t make up for the essential slackness of its repetitive comedy and punk chest thumping.

Its sense resides firmly in its facing one of civilization's most tragic ironies, its power derives from the sureness with which it tells a mordant tale and its beauty lies in its disclosures of human courage and dignity.

The shadows are what linger from this flawed, fascinating movie.

At once polished and punky, Poser is about the maturing of a vampiric personality. Like its music, the movie feels exploratory and raw-edged, yet with a persistent pathos that clings to Lennon and isolates her.

Winter Sleepers has many such breathtaking moments in which sounds and images synergize with an explosive precision.

Here the clinical, stopwatch precision of Mr. Tykwer's explorations of synchronicity and Kieslowski's warmer, metaphysically dreamy speculations about the role of chance and coincidence in human affairs synchronize into a film whose formal elegance is matched by its depth of feeling.

Soldini's amiable new comedy suggests that an older, better Italy of imagination, rationality and civility survives on the fringes of a modern nation obsessed, like most others, with consumerism, empty prosperity and easy pleasure.

Does a yeoman's job of recycling the day-old dough that passes for its story.

Blurs the line between comedy and epic drama so adroitly that the two styles fuse into something quite original: a lyrical farce that pays homage to its period in any number of ways.

The Bourne Identity, like its hero, triumphs through sheer unreflective professionalism. It is, by today's standards, a modest thriller, with a self-contained storyline and with very few big special effects.

As the screenplay teases natural explanations for these sinister goings-on — Extreme grief? Nightmares? Mental illness? — Bruckner maintains a death grip on the film’s mood while his cinematographer, Elisha Christian, turns the home’s reflective surfaces into shape-shifting puzzle pieces.

The film, written and directed by Bart Layton, can’t quite decide what it wants to be: a slick, speedy caper; a goofball comedy; or a commentary on the state of the American soul. It’s none of those — a tame and toothless creature that is neither fish nor fowl.

Why the sisters felt that prostitution was their best alternative remains unclear, either because they aren't interested in revealing that part of themselves, or the filmmakers didn't know how to get them to talk. Or maybe Ms. Provaas and Mr. Schroder weren't interested, for political or personal reasons, in making what, despite the laughter, they ended up with: another sad story about whores.

What some may see as an examination of loss and legacy, others will view as a portrait of psychological coercion: overbearing men riding roughshod over the wishes of a grieving woman.

Mr. Hill weaves their gestures together with a portentous elegance that promises a great deal that it never delivers.

After a while, the movie plays like a bulleted list of everything wrong with America — fair enough — but hurled so relentlessly at the audience that you can only assume the goal is for anyone watching the movie to find something they agree with. In the onslaught, the narrative tension dulls into passivity, both for us and for the characters.

Mr. Ivin doesn't have a strong narrative line to play with or become distracted by, but he takes off on some lovely detours, whether he's narrowing in on Chook or going wide to take in the world that waits beyond.

“Popstar” takes aim at everything that is artificial and plastic in contemporary pop in a spirit of love rather than spite. It’s a celebration of the curious authenticity — the innocence, the sweetness, the guiltless pleasure — of music whose badness is sometimes hard to separate from its genius.

Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley's honest, sure-footed, emotionally generous second feature. Ms. Williams, one of the bravest and smartest actresses working in movies today, portrays a young woman who is indecisive and confused, but never passive.

Farhadi’s choreography of the shift from rowdy celebration to frantic desperation is the most effective part of the movie, and he keeps the suspense going on several fronts.

The Wedding Banquet is so charming, and then so unexpectedly moving, that its strengths eventually outweigh the bits of mess.

Despite the bracing beauty of the wilderness, and the respite provided by cubs at play, the movie is primarily a sobering treatise on survival.

With a director, screenwriter and star who have deep roots in the theater, Off the Map is more than anything an actor's film.