Mr. Sallitt lays down a customarily restrained mode of acting (the kind that somehow seems less flat and more natural in French cinema), but it’s in the service of a rare lucidity about feeling.

Shola Lynch’s documentary about Angela Davis, the activist and beacon of counterculture radicalism, is a snappily edited, archivally wallpapered recollection of fearless behavior in the face of an antsy establishment. But it’s equally significant as a pointed act of retelling.

As soon as The Berlin File takes flight with its exhilarating action set pieces, memories of any muddles evaporate amid the tension and vivid engagement with settings, from courtyards to fields.

Though some of the writers inject a force of metaphor and strength of voice, no one would confuse the movie with a short-story collection. But it’s more ambitious and effective at blunting cynicism than most consciousness-raising efforts.

The latest production from the BBC Natural History Unit is a typically eye-catching, years-in-the-making chronicle of animal life that is tainted by the urge to anthropomorphize.

The bare facts of the feat seize the imagination, even if Ms. Tobias’s competent documentary doesn’t quite rise to the challenge.

For all its faults, “We Steal Secrets” reminds us that despite the potential of WikiLeaks, its project of truth and consequences remains treacherous and complicated in practice.

It’s Shannon’s slow, steady world of hurt that makes the film watchable.

The filmmaker strikes gold in her varied selection of defectors, especially the military man fed up with the myopic chain of command.

Documentarian Mark N. Hopkins gives us a mature look at the bracing yet very human personalities attracted to crisis.

While these ninnies' antics and banter are remarkably entertaining, the quality of the satire depends on when the movie is sending up ludicrous extremist logic and when it's just engaging in repetitive buffoonery.

Like most primates, Nénette is both fascinatingly familiar and strange, capable of almost human expressions yet totally unknowable (as well as massive and hairy).

A film plunked somewhat unfortunately between the inspirational and the ordinary.

As heartening as it is to see a slum child tutored about vicious cycles of adversity and using the buzzword “partnership” with aplomb, the film comes to feel cut and dried.

Ms. Ambo communicates the notion of compassion and calm as something teachable, but perhaps feeling already convinced, she’s less ambitious as a filmmaker about taking her subject and her portraits to another level.

Like many broad successes this unremarkable movie proves decidedly reluctant to yield any golden secret to box-office bonanzas, unless you count tried-and-true chase formulas and a moral about rethinking priorities.

This promisingly tragic tale is sunk by cartloads of context and an overbearing, slanted narration.

The movie’s best bits lose out to the requisite moral turnaround.

The film’s ending, introducing farmers whose lives (and weight) have been changed for the better, sounds enough like an infomercial to undermine the whole enterprise.

The escapades are tossed off and fall flat, all products of the business-as-usual template created by the film’s producers, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell.

Eventually runs out of gas--or rather, pedal-power--as the filmmakers grope for how to cap the Beavans’ story.

The 20-year-old Hubble Space Telescope--whose repair mission is the subject of this chronicle--turns out to be a bit of a stage hog, and audiences expecting a blissout of swirling galaxies will wonder why so much time is spent on astronauts sweating over screws and bolts.

Overall, the movie has the bantamweight feel of a really long DVD extra: Little details of the director’s ancestral stomping grounds are appealing, but don’t jell into something satisfying.

Wrong lets most of its random gags and view-askew premises twist in the wind like hamhandedly wacky improv comedy, punctuated with synthesizer effects. The film’s misguided flatness is perhaps its fatal flaw, not so much deadpan or existential as just monotonous.

The filmmakers’ aversion to coherent narrative and genuinely suspenseful visuals (not to mention a penchant for having Ms. Moore receive terrible news via cellphone) keep the movie’s mystery stew from hitting the spot.

Slack storytelling (including snippets from a post-film Q. and A. session) and patchy filmmaking seal the unappealing deal.

The film dresses up pretty young things in fatigues and retro T-shirts for a story so clichéd and brainless that it’s almost more disturbing than laughable.