Unspeakably ghastly sequel to the merely ghastly original.

This is a film with a positive message that's delivered eloquently, and who's to say that joyous purpose doesn't have its place?

I’ve long been a fan of IMAX nature documentaries, but Humpback Whales, directed by Greg MacGillivray, is something special.

Mr. Von Einsiedel is convinced that his subjects are “true heroes.” Viewers will be convinced of the same.

Ms. McGowan has a wonderful face, and director Jenna Mattison spends a lot of time there. But the effectiveness of The Sound really comes from its atmospherics, which are rich and disturbing and a credit not just to the director but to composer Aaron Gilhuis and the people at Urban Post Production in Toronto.

Joy may not be sweeping the nation portrayed in Our Towns, exactly. But a certain amount of happiness abounds.

Lucy the Human Chimp is a creative assemblage of sundry parts: The archival footage, of which there is a wealth; the news coverage given Lucy when she was a celebrity; and extensive restagings and re-enactments, a device that in many documentaries is either stiff or profoundly unreal but under Alex Parkinson’s direction—and with Lorna Nickson Brown in the role of Janis Carter—rings true.

Golden Arm could be interpreted as having a profound feminist message and liberating agenda. Mostly, it’s just goofy fun. An antic romp. A briskly paced gag fest. A lot of wrist, no relaxation.

Mr. Bulger does a fine enough job defending his own legacy, being, at age 87, a still-charismatic figure and one who refuses to condemn his brother, or even concede that the family knew everything about its black sheep’s nefarious career.

The issues in the film add up to a rat’s nest of athletic, economic and gender questions. But they’re given only superficial scrutiny in a production that’s essentially propaganda, powered by pumped-up music and pumped-up players.

The Blues Chase the Blues Away is almost alarming in its departure from convention—much like Mr. Guy, as it happens.

It’s an unwieldy subject Ms. Tragos has taken on, and the results are somewhat scattershot.

Ms. McDonald resorts to some rather standard practices—fleeting graphics, subtitles and numbers—but the strength of the movie is its interviewees, including journalists Joe Castaldo, Alexandra Posadzki (“There was no plan. Why was there no plan?”) and Amy Castor, as well as Taylor Monahan of the crypto service MyCrypto.

The Found Footage Phenomenon, while long-winded, offers a knowledgeable take on what makes the difference.

Smartly directed, deftly edited, with a cast of performers who all get a chance to show what they can do.

A documentary of remarkable heft. Not to be missed.

“The Lost Tapes” is a chronicle of folly, which makes it perversely fascinating and, one hopes, cautionary.

The story that directors Sami Khan and Michael Gassert tell so intimately is certainly about skirting the law. But it’s also about baseball, in which there aren’t always fairy-tale endings.

If you are going to watch a biographical documentary, it’s not necessarily a disadvantage to go in knowing nothing at all about the story. And if you are up to speed on The Fastest Woman on Earth, it’s still an engaging, moving and even shocking documentary.

In a film of grand acting, flamboyant color, vaulting ambition and global conflict, the more slippery gestures contain much meaning.

As directed by Celia Aniskovich and Jennifer Brea, Call Me Miss Cleo is an affectionate portrait of a fringe character who was more a tool than a beneficiary of PRN’s seamy efforts.

If you’re looking for the exhaustive movie bio on Reggie Jackson, look elsewhere: He’s in this thing for one reason only. Though if you want to watch him hit ninth-inning dingers out of Yankee Stadium, there’s a lot of that. And it is certainly fun.

Throughout The Hong Konger, Mr. Lai exhibits amazing composure as he tells a story that is both inspiring and enraging, in interviews filmed both before and between his arrests.

Mr. Thayi doesn’t tell a straightforward version of the Hwang story, because he’s after more—the story of cloning itself, which will be enlightening for those of us on the fringes of science.

One of the more charming aspects of The Jewel Thief is how little animosity is shown him by members of law enforcement, whom he frequently humiliated but who can’t help but harbor respect for someone so good at what he did.

As directed by Menhaj Huda (“The Flash” TV series), Heist 88 is tidy, economical, forward-moving and not out to expand anyone’s visual vocabulary.

The seductive visual rhythms of “Mr. Chow” are the result of Ms. Tsien’s editing (with Anita H.M. Yu and Eugene Yi), accessorized to no small degree by the magical animation of Rohan Patrick McDonald.

There’s not a lot of mystery to Bye Bye Barry, unless you count the puzzle posed by a person like William Sanders, who is spoken of by his son in nothing but admiring and affectionate terms and must have inspired something in a child so devoted to being the best at what he did.

A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein, his life after Hitler and his sense of “responsibility, not to say guilt” about his theories and how they played into the destruction that, lest one forget, ended World War II.

While it contains little for the devoted in the way of outright revelations, it’s an affecting film around which admirers and newcomers alike can gather to bask in the unique beauty of her work, and to follow the similarly distinctive trajectory of her painful and abbreviated life.

Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans.

The one selling point of No Way Up is that it makes you scared of being scared, which may be enough for a lazy evening on the couch with a friend, a drink and a meal, though it probably wouldn’t work on sushi night.

Fresh Kills could have been a psychologically penetrating character study but settles for merely reiterating that it’s unpleasant to be a gangster’s daughter.

“Sound of Hope,” like its predecessor, is a big-hearted film made with a homespun sincerity that comes as a refreshing surprise at the multiplex these days, though it has the gauzy, simplistic feel of a cable-TV movie.

Mr. Kauffman is interested in pure storytelling, the rise and fall of his various characters, which covers at least the last 10 years; he has created a beautiful film in terms of its aesthetics and affection for the machinery and people. But he is also telling a cautionary tale about the cluttering of space, and the pursuit not just of profit but power.

For the mangy, flea-bitten TV reviewer, there would be no quicker route to ignominy than trashing a show about dogs. Fortunately, even cat ladies will like Inside the Mind of a Dog, which has an abundance of furry charm and retrieves a kennel’s worth of information from those sniffing around the cutting edge of canine science.

What Mr. Farrow does in his very concise, urgent documentary is track how governments and worse are using, abusing and will continue to employ technology by which they can pickpocket your personal data.

Where one suspects Mr. Sires wants to go in his ultimately righteous film is into the squalid margins of America whence a Babudar might spring. That he hits a stone wall, in the form of the subject’s mother, is too bad, but no surprise.

Much of “Over 30 Years Later,” without the surprise factor, seems very soft.

What might have come across as a soap opera in lesser hands instead feels appropriately weighty. As he steers events toward a devastating climax, Mr. August proves he’s still an able steward of refined human drama.

It may be a historical documentary, but it has blinkers on.

What’s missing from Stans is a sense of humor—not among the stans, who are self-reflecting and self-effacing. Mr. Mathers, outside of his songwriting, seems to believe that amused self-examination is a weakness to be hidden. The stans, ironically, are hiding nothing.

The Vietnam echoes are everywhere. The vocabulary is mere embellishment

While it isn’t the intention of the film to generate sympathy for Mr. Út, one can’t quite help it.

The legacy of the Emerson String Quartet includes dozens of recordings, and it’s probably in those that the deepest lessons lie. For anyone curious to meet the musicians who made them, Four Rational People is a decent introduction.

Like Sun Ra’s music, the motion picture is deliberately fractured, the virtues to be found in the departures from the expected, the familiar, the comfortable.

While essentially a disaster film, the visually alarming and nerve-racking “Fukushima” is also a cross-cultural psychodrama, about an industry, and perhaps a society, having a meltdown all its own.

“1000 Women” is briskly entertaining and wildly informative as a clip show, insightful in its academic analysis, and the structure of the film enables a tidy organization of an often messy bunch of films.

Ms. Zenovich possesses the interviewer’s most valuable skill, knowing when to shut up.

While Ms. Gillespie can’t solve the mystery of why exactly her subject did what he did, she has created a novel kind of crime film, one aided in no small way by what seems to be the complete flight recording from Russell’s mad act. And a group of loved ones willing to listen to it.

“The Logo” is directed by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, who is too much of a presence in his own movie. It’s his first documentary. It may be the first one he’s seen. Documentarians usually hide themselves unless they have something to add, which he doesn’t.

The tale doesn’t need any artificial twists. They occur naturally. There’s character development. Foreshadowing.