The Other Dream Team

A terrific September for documentaries continues with the inspirational, feel-good “The Other Dream Team,” which contextualizes the bronze-winning 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team within the country’s history of freedom, followed by Russian invasion and subjugation, followed by its heroic 1991 push for independence. For decades, not only did the people of Lithuanian live under the boot of Soviet oppression, but their sports teams (basketball has been the national pastime since Frank Lubin brought it back from Los Angeles) were forced to play for and wear the uniform of their oppressors.

17 Girls

“17 Girls” tells the true story of a pregnancy cluster in a single high school class in Lorient, a seaside fishing and manufacturing town in Bretagne. In the early establishing scenes, directors Delphine and Muriel Coulin set a tone of quiet naturalism, of unpeopled seascapes and landscapes and girls’ bedrooms that look like girls’ bedrooms, not Hollywood set design.... The first half of the movie shares some of the otherworldly enigma and vibe of “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” But the filmmakers turn out to have little to say once the girls have actually gotten themselves knocked up and dig in against the rest of the world. The most interesting element relates to their knowledge of their legal rights – what their parents, teachers, and administrators can and cannot make them do.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Author Stephen Chbosky steps behind the camera for the first time to adapt his popular novel "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," about a troubled Pittsburgh high school freshman named Charlie (Logan Lerman) who, desperate for friends, gets himself adopted by a clique of misfit seniors: flamboyantly gay Patrick (Ezra Miller), sweet, easy, unselfconfident Sam (Emma Watson), misanthropic Buddhist Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman), rich kleptomaniac Alice (Erin Wilhelmi). It was a mistake not to hand the project to a more experienced director. There's some good material trying to get out here, but Chbosky paces the action so that each line of dialogue gets its moment in the sun. That's not the way life works. People - especially teenagers - talk over one another. It's as simple as a scene in which the kids go home after a party. "Goodbye, Charlie," says Patrick. Pause. "Goodbye, Charlie," says Sam. Unh uh.

End of Watch

“Training Day” writer David Ayer takes the director’s chair for his new script “End of Watch,” which is much better and infinitely more fun than the overpraised 2001 Denzel Washington-Ethan Hawke film. “End of Watch” teams Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, LAPD partners who share more than a squad car. Each is the most important person in the other’s life, outside of family, and each would take a bullet for the other.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel

A lot of people read the word “documentary” and see “broccoli.” A documentary is a movie you’re supposed to see because it’s good for you – it’s educational, it’s highbrow, it’s rich in iron and calcium. Bullshit. A great documentary is as entertaining as any feature film, or more. Not two minutes go by in “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel” without a huge laugh. It’s a perfect match of biographical style and subject, as witty, breezy, and over-the-top as DV herself, and as much fun as “The September Issue.”

Dredd 3D

Sharing a basic plot outline with “The Raid: Redemption,” the worst movie of 2012 to date, isn’t a good starting point for the dreadful “Dredd 3D,” which plays like the world’s uncoolest video game. In its dystopian future America, “judges” (cops who make on-the-spot determinations of guilt and impose and execute the prescribed sentences) patrol Mega City One, an 800-mile megalopolis from Boston to D.C. Greatest among equals is Judge Dredd (of the 1995 Sly Stallone bomb, “played” this time by Karl Urban behind a mask that makes Tom Hardy’s in “The Dark Knight Rises” look positively commodious).

How to Survive a Plague

The staggering, draining and triumphant documentary “How to Survive a Plague” tells, through original video footage shot by the participants and carefully selected present-day interviews, the story of a band of war heroes. The war was the war on AIDS, and most of the heroes did not volunteer for the fight (though many inspiring allies, most of them women, adopted their cause despite not having the same personal stake). For the members of ACT UP New York, raising awareness of AIDS and sounding the drumbeat for federal research funding and accelerated drug testing were truly a matter of life or death.