It's also poetic and meditative in a way that never feels pretentious.

My Perestroika is fairly foursquare as documentary filmmaking goes; it isn't stylistically snazzy, nor doggedly vérité. Its closest kin in the genre is Michael Apted's "Up" films, which are similarly focused on how people change over time.

In the end, Blank City becomes not just a salute to the artistic adventurousness of a bygone New York, but a reminder that new strains of creativity keep emerging, just when the scene looks stalest.

Tavernier turns a tale of courtly duty and manners into a tense, twisty drama.

deWitt's script is much better than anything Jacobs has worked on before, with a story that gets richer as it goes.

Writer-director Jeff Nichols re-teams with his "Shotgun Stories" star Michael Shannon for his second feature, Take Shelter, which has a similar setting, but a different mood. Nichols is still concerned with family legacies, and the ways people in smaller communities relate to each other, but Take Shelter is slower and smoother, deliberately developing a mood of creeping dread.

Most viewers should find the documentary Battle For Brooklyn gripping and provocative, no matter their opinions about eminent domain, historic preservation, or public dollars going to support private development.

A few broadly comic moments aside, This Is 40 also captures the rhythms and concerns of real life in ways that slicker Hollywood comedies don't.

The Woman With The 5 Elephants isn't flawless; as articulate and fascinating as Geier could be, she was also dry at times. But Jendreyko cleverly parcels out her personal history, and he isn't afraid to break up the talkiness with long silences and luminous images.

Mysteries Of Lisbon is an odd kind of epic: It's digressive and even trifling at times, and though a large cast wanders through the frame, the individual scenes tend to be focused on just two or three people, having winding conversations about political intrigue and affairs of the heart.

The moral to Clash's story? It's surprisingly easy being red.

Most likely, The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu will mean the most to actual Romanians, who will recognize the locations and fashions, and may even know what the government's documentarians left out of the picture. But the movie offers plenty to captivate even outsiders.

Gareth Evans' Indonesian martial-arts throwback The Raid: Redemption has a look and feel that resembles the best of '80s cult action movies: half John Carpenter, half John Woo.

If The Catechism Cataclysm does have something to say, it's that it's possible to enjoy a trip even when it isn't really going anywhere.

Mostly, though, the pleasure of The Love We Make comes from watching one of the most famous musicians in the world looking totally chill, whether he's rehearsing with his band or casually chatting with Bill Clinton.

It's so much fun that as Tomboy moves toward its conclusion, the inevitable end of Héran's days as Mikael feels like watching someone die.

Though The Hunter maintains the same even tone after it turns into a chase thriller, the look begins to resemble the work of William Friedkin and Walter Hill in its clean, elemental approach to action.

David Gelb's documentary Jiro Dreams Of Sushi shows what a meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro is like: each morsel prepared simply and perfectly, then replaced by another as soon as the previous piece is consumed, with no repetition of courses. Once an item is gone, it doesn't come back. That's why each one has to be memorable.

Anyone could make a film about a theater full of naked women; only Wiseman would take equal interest in the person who handles the ticket-ordering, and the one who makes sure there's a bottle of champagne on every table.

Return is unusually attuned to its protagonist's alienation, which is especially painful because its source isn't some horrendous event she witnessed, but the hundreds of annoying aspects of everyday life.

Better Than Something doesn't really try to resolve the mystery of how someone could be simultaneously so productive and destructive.

The notion of a love story that's really about two women becoming friends is gimmicky, I'll grant, but Graynor and Miller are so charming together, and the movie is so focused and funny.

Just as a document of the sheer physical labor that goes into covering a giant canvas with color, Gerhard Richter Painting is never less than absorbing.

Larrain crafts Post Mortem as a slow, quiet character study, narrowing in on Castro in his home and office while the world outside descends into madness.

As always with Hong's films, Oki's Movie goes through stretches where it seems aimless and self-indulgent, followed by stretches where it's sharp, funny, and poetic.

The Day He Arrives is a talky movie, full of long, boozy scenes and cosmic coincidences - and in that it echoes Allen, as well as Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the best of British kitchen-sink drama.

Patience reveals through images and tone as well as through the interviews how Sebald yearned for restorative meaning in the places he toured, only to end up lost in thought.

The documentary seems a little structureless and unfocused at times, as Akers moves from dramatic moment to dramatic moment, not always taking care to connect them.