A look inside a remote ashram in southern India — students spend anywhere from 3 months to 3 years studying the ancient wisdom of Advaita Vedanta from Swami Dayananda Saraswati — that’s a feast for the senses. Opening opposite one of the summer’s big event movies, Gurukulam is hardly the kind of “smaller film” to benefit from the spillover effect. The sights, sounds, colors, and textures reproduced in this unvarying, “life as lived” documentary are as foreign to most moviegoers as the sounds of CG aliens bleeding over from the auditorium next door. Watching it on television, one might only imagine the power of sound editor Ernst Karel’s audio design when spread out across a powerful sound system. It would be disingenuous to issue a disclaimer; prior to seeing the film, I’d have fit it snugly into the “Not for all tastes” classification. Directed by Neil Dalal and Jillian Elizabeth. (2014) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.