Mr. Sarmah's film is well intentioned, but it comes off as a kind of Cliffs Notes to enlightenment.

Has a complicated story to tell, about black surfers and, more broadly, about African-American history and the history of surfing. Great topics all, but that's a lot of ground to cover and, unsurprisingly, the film often feels a bit scattershot.

Ah, well. "There Was Once ...may feel like sober, do-gooder public television, but it has integrity, recording one specific town's slice of living history. Simple as that, it's a worthy document.

Somebody must think Joe Swanberg's mumblecore mush is worth the time it takes to watch it, because he keeps making it. But anyone who sees his insufferable Art History and doesn't wish for the 74 minutes back has an empty life indeed.

At times you wish Mr. Marx had sharper storytelling skills (or a better editor). Some important details seem clear only in retrospect, and some remain murky. Still, Mr. Marx shines a light on a place and a way of life that are rapidly changing.

Notable at least in part for its fumbled potential, this health-care-industry melodrama possesses all the right ingredients: an idealistic young lawyer, a corrupt corporate villain and a sympathetic victim. It just fails to assemble them into a compelling whole.

Carl Colby's smart, fact-packed film The Man Nobody Knew operates on many levels, all riveting.

By introducing funky licks, fancy footwork and many of his own compositions to the band's stodgy set list of jazz standards, this indomitable leader (whose declining health adds a poignant twang to the film's final scenes) instilled racial pride alongside musical competency.

Whatever the case, Mr. Owen and Mr. Statham (who provides a nice duet with a chair) make a prettily matched pair amid the pileup of sub-Bourne action set pieces, sad laughs and clichés.

Ms. Nichols is consistently appealing in the kind of role Zooey Deschanel has pretty much cornered, and Philippe Rousselot's nighttime shots of highway tragedy are dreamily atmospheric. If only Roger Towne's screenplay had focused less on the metaphysical import of Lyman's savior impulses and more on the physical rewards of his salvaged life.

As a trippy, trifling memorial to a time before its eponymous club was a mini-mall and rave culture a woozy memory, Limelight delivers the messed-up goods.

Pitched awfully young, without a shred of the satire or subtlety that is generally found in films aimed at tweeners and above. That's not a bad thing; it just means accompanying grown-ups or older siblings will have to choke down a sizable dose of schmaltz with their fish milkshakes.

For all its boisterous profanity and splattery violence, the film is more of a weary sigh than a sputtering volley of indignation.

Before viewers learn this venerable ensemble's story, much less see its members rock out on screen, they are subjected to Mr. Crowe's voice-over account of his own early discovery of the Seattle scene.

Ms. Bonham Carter's hearty performance makes Mrs. Potter almost lovable. You may laugh at her garishness, but you applaud her pluck and stamina.

In movie terms, Mr. Childers's story is too true to be good. Machine Gun Preacher, directed by Marc Forster and starring Gerard Butler, illustrates some of the ways that a terrific story can turn into a bad film despite the best intentions of everyone involved.

There is also a need for stories that address the complex entanglements of love and sex honestly, without sentiment or cynicism and with the appropriate mixture of humor, sympathy and erotic heat. Weekend, Andrew Haigh's astonishingly self-assured, unassumingly profound second feature, is just such a film.

A sloppy, exploitative act of star worship created (if that's the right word for cynical hackwork) around Mr. Lautner, the pouty 19-year-old heartthrob of the "Twilight" franchise.

It's hard to imagine anyone but Mr. Pitt in the role. He's relaxed yet edgy and sometimes unsettling.

Shot in handsome, often vividly contrasting black and white, "____ Year" weighs in as an attempt at poetic expressionism, a bid to create a visual representation of Colleen's diffuse and fragmented mind. Mr. Archer's narrative ambitions are laudable, and some of his images (the cinematographer is Aaron Platt) are striking, though a lot of scenes also look like glossy fashion magazine layouts come to relative life. These poses and pretty rooms may accurately reflect Colleen's visual aesthetic, the world she inhabits or wants to, but whether hers or Mr. Archer's, it's not compelling.

Sets out to puncture the clichéd image of Scandinavians as rosy-cheeked choristers bonded in communal togetherness. But its subversive intentions are ultimately undercut by its lack of nerve, along with a lurking sentimentality.

Mr. Fuller is working on some kind of redemption theme, but he sabotages the story with underdeveloped plot threads: a bartender with cancer, an old car crash, sibling rivalry. Everything is annoyingly oblique; why?

Silent Souls is part folk tale, part lesson in letting go. In its quiet acceptance of the passing of time, this unusual film reminds us that to die is not always the same as to disappear.

A well-reported history of the Camp David talks, the events that led to them, and the difficult negotiations that followed to forge the peace treaty that was signed the next spring.

Like a mint pressing in a bargain bin Sound It Out is a rare find. Sweet.

Skimps on intellectual substance but skirts by on the lightly likable charm of its subject.

A dandy little documentary whether you view the story it captures as a precursor to the flash fame of the Internet age or as one of the last genuine underground phenomena before the Internet made that whole concept obsolete.

A film with nothing to please the eye and even less to excite the mind.