TOOTS
Unrated, 85 minutes

Was Toots Shor, the saloon-restaurant at 51 W. 51st Street, real? Or was it dreamed up as a place for Tony Curtis’s Sidney Falco to meet with Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunseker in “Sweet Smell of Success”? Was there really once a place in the 1940s and ’50s where Babe Ruth, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Sinatra, Walter Cronkite, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mickey Mantle, John Wayne, Jack Dempsey, Richard Nixon, Yogi Berra, Earl Warren, and Frank Costello actually rubbed elbows with locals?

Yes, there was, but something about it seems unreal. “Toots,” the endearing and invigorating 85-minute documentary about Bernard “Toots” Shor and his iconic establishment by his granddaughter, Kristi Jacobson, is a time capsule from a world so far removed from our own that it scarcely seems possible that many of the people who lived in it are still here to talk about it. Fortunately, many of them are — Mr. Cronkite, Pete Hamill, Frank Gifford, Whitey Ford, Gay Talese, and others are available to pass along anecdotes, real and apocryphal.

Allen Barra, September 14

GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
R, 106 minutes

“Great World of Sound” vividly and trenchantly examines the inexhaustible American capacity to sustain hope and generate self-delusion, with a native storytelling acumen close to extinction here at home.

Martin (Patrick Healy) and Clarence (Kene Holliday), partner up in Craig Zobel’s marvelous debut feature and inadvertently become part of a venerable regional American con game called “song sharking.” The only thing that the musical hopefuls they audition at home in Charlotte, N.C., and on the road in several Southeastern motel suites are likely to receive for their $3,000 is an expensive ethics lesson. As Martin and Clarence’s working relationship meshes, they become their company’s biggest earners. But as their personal relationship grows, the two men find it increasingly difficult to kid themselves that what they’re doing is anything more than a shell game where the elusive pea is fame, wealth, and validation for untalented and rightfully obscure music hopefuls.

Bruce Bennett, September 14

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
PG, 100 minutes

Astronauts stand at the meeting point of heroism and celebrity. Like other explorers, they have to their credit genuine, real-world accomplishments that take guts as well as know-how and talent. But although they go into space as representatives of a country, and although it takes a quasi-military organization like NASA to get them there, they are regarded as individuals.

One of the astronaut subjects of David Sington’s “In the Shadow of the Moon” tells of how, after he had gone to the moon, everywhere he went, in every country, people would say not “you” — that is America — “did it” but “we” — that is the whole human race — did. That’s the hallmark of the celebrity. He makes his audience a participant in his fame.

But Mr. Sington’s documentary is not a celebrity vehicle. It celebrates real heroism and a consciousness of the heroic, mainly of the astronauts in relation to one another.

James Bowman, September 7

3:10 TO YUMA
R, 120 minutes

James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma” is, in every sense, a rarity. It’s an unapologetic Western and a remake of a low-budget classic that maintains the virtues of the original while expanding its scope.

Perhaps at this point, only foreign-born actors like Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, who grew up watching Westerns on TV, still feel an affinity for the genre. Mr. Crowe’s Ben Wade is a thinking man’s thief, possessed of both a bloodlust and a poetic soul.

Mr. Bale, as the down-and-out rancher Dan Evans, has the tougher role. But he does an amazing jujitsu with the part, accepting the weaknesses of his character and searching beyond them.

A.B., September 5