John DeFore

Oddly, everyone from boat-tour guides to shot-bar patrons find time to ask our hero solicitous personal questions. If only he, or the film, had more interesting answers.

Making her debut as director with a true story from her native Australia, actor Rachel Griffiths gives the pic a workmanlike, generic feel that would play well on family-centric cable channels. Horse lovers will be the moviegoers most vulnerable to its modest charms.

Despite its successful attempts to show how oil has affected everyday citizens in nearby Nigeria, the film remains fairly dry.

Though its tone is amiable and its performances are (mostly) professional, it's hard to care if these four people live happily ever after or never see each other again.

Pretty, occasionally witty and not believable for a moment, Sophie Lellouche's Paris-Manhattan is suffused with fannish love for Woody Allen's films but hardly lives up to their legacy.

The plot leans toward conventional horror violence as it progresses, but Cresciman has Hogan and Crampton remain largely affectless, their blank-slate characters doing little to make us respond to the action.

Like a frumpy version of "Knocked Up" playing out in a sadder, stranger world, Barry Munday offers two icky humans and hopes that, by the tale's end, we'll be happy they're procreating.

As shamelessly corporate popcorn movies go, Snake Eyes is better than most. That’s not high praise, but considering the film’s dopey pedigree, it’s not nothing.

A good-natured ride at first, its limited scope grows more apparent as it goes; still, a feel-good approach is unlikely to hurt it as it begins a road-show release concurrent with the band's 50th-anniversary tour.

Boys State inevitably feels more and more like reality TV programming, which is both appropriate for our times and depressing.

Katz is much more interested in observing Jake's newfound emotional core — and probably a bit too confident that a moist-eyed Kroll can turn this quite likable but slight family reunion into something more touching.

Renzi's uneven script makes this a less sturdy vehicle than 2012's Arbitrage, and a less marketable one given the absence of thriller elements that sustained that film's character study. Still, there's plenty here for Gere's admirers to appreciate.

Especially in light of a short parable Cam tells early on about work and retirement, it's pretty obvious that Abbie's voluntary imprisonment is meant to reflect an American underclass that can't imagine any kind of life beyond our late-capitalist constraints.

A fairy tale about parenting that stays kid-friendly without completely glossing over the darker themes of its premise.

Though the 55 year-old plot's bones are sturdy and its new performers gifted, moviegoers hoping for a mercilessly funny post-Weinstein revenge fantasy (its poster declares: "They're giving dirty rotten men a run for their money") will walk away feeling conned.

Wes Tooke offers stiff dialogue and sometimes oddly structured action, leaving much dramatic potential unexploited. Yes, Emmerich stages plenty of aerial battles in which fighter pilots plunge through hailstorms of sizzling projectiles. But those hoping to get a thrill would be better served by revisiting his Earth-vs-aliens war flick Independence Day.

The Queen of Versailles will prompt loathing not only among the so-called 99 Percent, but among those in the top 1 percent who would like someone more sane to represent them on camera.

Modest but revealing documentary.

It's not just superhero fatigue that makes this feature feel generic and cheap — lively enough to keep young kids occupied, but preferably while parents are doing something more interesting in the next room.

The essence of what made the man inspiring to so many — it's not the winning, but the effort that's important — comes through with gonglike clarity in Dexter Fletcher's film, a straight-down-the-ramp sports tale that plays to the average man's dreams of momentary greatness.

Heartfelt but clumsy.

While Hobson's smarts are evident here, the picture's uniformly dim visuals and sometimes overplayed sound design are static enough to do a disservice to his work with the cast.

Costner and Harrelson both give fine performances, but when it's time for each to have his one allotted dramatic monologue, you can practically hear the movie clearing its throat: Shut up and listen while the man is speaking, folks.

Though those glimpses don't add up to what most people would call a portrait, they do evoke a life of old-fashioned female pampering, and contain just enough of Sellam's quirky personality to make those habits charming.

Though it lacks the specific argumentative point of view that might have carried it into the mainstream, its sympathetic approach to subjects offers a compelling human perspective on questions that get too little attention in debates about health care.

A critique of post-millennial journalism is one of several ideas raised but mostly abandoned in this genre pastiche, which never really coalesces despite some promising elements.

Where it might have been an old-fashioned melodrama with credible historical appeal, instead it suggests an old-school celluloid epic whose print has lost a reel or two.

Very much a work of its time, the documentary offers unique perspectives for fans of both the saxophonist and the pioneering filmmaker, but is unlikely to attract a broad audience beyond those camps.

Wisely, McFadden avoids nailing things down too tightly here, being content to show the shaky ground his characters stand on.

The movie flirts with the usual mixed-signals of romantic comedy, but is on much more solid ground with sight gags (as when Drac's jello-like blob friend happily absorbs the slice-and-smash violence Ericka aims at the vampire) and character work that depends less on celebrity voice talent than on body-language animation.

Odd, then, that [Brewer and Murphy's] Dolemite Is My Name is such a conventional-feeling biopic, one with its share of laughs and surprising anecdotes but little of the enduring strangeness that kept the 1975 Dolemite rattling around in our cultural memory

First-time feature helmer Romanowsky has a hard time distinguishing between the things that draw her to Elliott's story and the things that make him pathetic.

A Danny Elfman-like score and the dark earnestness of lead voice-actor Matheus Nachtergaele's performance make this world believable enough that the film's big revelation — city pigeons, as humanity's ancient companions, know how we can stop being so paralyzed by fear — doesn't sound quite as ridiculous as it should.

A capable cast abets the director, but the film's slow pace and half-hearted perspective shifts don't generate the gravitas that's clearly intended.

It's not nearly funny enough to call a comedy, but its seriousness about her lonely life is undercut by its depiction of her frankly ridiculous behavior.

The movie plays quite well for a while but begins to run out of steam in its second half, its occasional laughs not coming quickly enough to keep us interested in the unfolding lore of 19th century murders.

Less an investigation into or comprehensive summary of the Penn State sex-abuse scandal than a look at the feelings it elicited, Amir Bar-Lev's Happy Valley is more concerned with the phenomenon of team spirit than any single question of fact or moral judgment.

It's as stylistically straightforward as concert films get, but should play well to fans in its limited theatrical release as it simultaneously arrives on digital platforms.

Honoring the journalist's sense of mission but never shying away from the hard living and psychological damage that went with it, A Private War relies on the believability of star Rosamund Pike, who commits to this take on the character even when Heineman risks pushing off-the-battlefield drama too far.

Benefitting from likeable, good-natured subjects and the peculiar pastimes with which they fill their cooped-up hours, the doc certainly gets us interested in and rooting for the Angulo boys.

The doc's structure is a countdown to opening night, but planning goes smoothly enough that little drama accompanies that ticking clock.

Matthew Akers' film is a personally revealing look at an artist most famous for maintaining stone-faced silence for three months.

Not exactly the celebration of female promiscuity its title suggests.

It's not wholly satisfying as a dramatic work, which is probably a sign of its honest identification with its two troubled protagonists.

Promising but inert genre pic.

Viewed on its own, it communicates much less than its maker seems to intend, hovering in a not-very-satisfying zone between advocacy doc, first-person impressionism, and (very) tentative essay film about the world’s tendency to view difference as freakishness.

However well or poorly it matches the truth of Emily's life, the film's vision of her long relationship with Susan is warmly funny.

More a tone poem or gallery installation piece than a verite outing.

Crude production values are a stumbling block for bare-bones tale.

Though never managing to surprise us much, this brisk encounter with the living past has moments of charm and the occasional fresh perspective.

Competent on all fronts but never dazzling, it should please genre devotees.

Though we care for those who lost loved ones, and root for them as they pursue a decades-long hunt for the killers, No Stone Unturned plays like a very well made piece of true-crime television.

The plot reversals of the third act happen rather abruptly, perhaps unbelievably, in comparison to what precedes them. But those who've been in Margaret's shoes may find this appropriate — an honest acknowledgement of the false starts that can result when a newly hatched idealist tries to apply abstract principles to messy human emotions.

The documentary plays like a home movie that snowballed, causing its maker to overestimate her subject's relevance to the outside world. Though parts of it will certainly resonate within the deaf community (assuming it is made available with closed captioning), the film has little of the philosophical appeal of other documentaries on this topic, and sometimes seems willfully solipsistic.

Where Garfield's Peter Parker displayed a believable 21st-century angst, we return largely to the character's wide-eyed roots with Tom Holland, whose performance is thoroughly winning even when the script isn't helping him.

Director Bao Nguyen doesn't try to dig too deep, leaving serious behind-the-scenes lore to the SNL obsessives who've been poring over backstage accounts for years. Focusing on talking heads, almost all of whom say nice things about their experience of the show, he offers a puffy remembrance just a couple of notches more substantive than the supplemental doc in a DVD box set.

Most will learn something here, in a film that both follows the practice to its natural, dire conclusions and champions the ordinary citizens who have stepped up to fight against it.

[A] semi-convincing yet enjoyable tale, relying on familiar names in a cast that acquits itself well given the demands of the unusual plot.

Though not novel enough to attract non-devotees of America's Pastime, the film should please fans on the small screen.

He (De Palma) has rarely been guilty of dullness, as he is with Domino, a counterterrorism thriller offering just slightly more excitement than the average TV police procedural.

Twisty enough to please many arthouse patrons, though some will be rolling their eyes by the end.

The question of decades-old torture is an important one, of course, but hardly makes this a must-see doc when there are so many present-tense stories of police misconduct to investigate.

Teasing the viewer with ambiguous evidence is one thing, but the film doesn't seem to know what truth is behind the curtain. Luce the man remains unknown, and Luce the movie a missed opportunity.

Young actor Sitthiphon Disamoe helps keep the tale of a can-do kid from becoming too cute.

Captivating for a long stretch.

Though there aren’t many laughs on the way to that Battle of the Bands, Sollett’s unassuming cast and breezy pace ensure we won’t be too bored before we get there.

More impressionistic than enlightening, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Detropia introduces us to some interesting citizens of Detroit and gives them a welcome opportunity to speak for themselves, but reveals little we don't already know.

The script, by Beers and Mathew Harawitz, offers a little less invention in this endless-repeat scenario than it might have.

Unfortunately, [Robert Duvall's] attempt to create a multigenerational Lone Star-like mystery doesn't gel as John Sayles's film did, leaving so many dramatic moments unresolved that one wonders how many scenes must have been left on the cutting-room floor.

One of the aspects that keeps Time from projecting an advertorial vibe, its indifference to outside voices, may also leave casual fans wanting a bit more.

Meditative, glossy doc provides some glimpses behind the curtain but isn't terribly enlightening.

While a composited scene, in which has-been Lenny lectures his younger self about work ethic and wisdom, has an undeniable poignancy, actual tragedy remains far beyond the film's grasp -- as does any illumination beyond the unsurprising suggestion that Cooke just didn't want success as much as peers like LeBron James.

Colin Minihan's What Keeps You Alive sets itself up promisingly enough before succumbing to a progression of implausibilities and excesses that test even this genre's lenient standards.

Seeing these likable oldsters talk at length is just about the entire point of this picture, which isn't nearly as good at guiding us through history or explaining technical minutiae as it is at relating to their well-earned sense of pride.

To the extent that it works, much credit goes to Keery, for finding the real human need inside this twentysomething cipher.

A smart doc that's as earnest and scattered as the viewers likely to seek it out, Astra Taylor's What Is Democracy? looks around at the world and realizes that even those of us on the right sides of things aren't always sure what we're fighting for.

While the doc uses reenactment and plentiful period news footage to chart how Sands withered away, and to capture the mixture of respect and grief his determination to die produced in supporters, the film is always about more than Sands.

Unfocused, overly long documentary raises provocative questions.

Come as You Are hits most of the familiar road-movie beats, and telegraphs its surprises pretty shamelessly. It's not the most subtle disability comedy you've seen, nor is it at all concerned with exploring the ethical issues surrounding sex work. But its lightness is a virtue in the film's rare sentimental moments, which might've been too corny to bear in other contexts.

Anderson, who previously made several Beach Boys/Brian Wilson video docs, is attentive to chronology and to Butterfield's legacy, but isn't making the kind of film that might win the artist new fans or magically transport older ones back to the moment when he was at the top of his field.

No film involving Nicholas Cage and a blowgun with curare-tipped darts can be all bad, and Primal gives us at least a little of everything we'd want in this kind of yarn.

The cast's likability keeps us on board, watching the sometimes baffling behavior onscreen just like those on the streets of Seoul, who gape up at a monster in horror but can't make themselves flee to the suburbs.

Neither as frightening as a good horror flick nor as enlightening as a straight documentary, Rodney Ascher's The Nightmare borrows from both worlds in its depiction of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

Kids with healthy attention spans may warm to its (literally) colorful characters and outside-the-frame action, but most will find it as lifeless as their parents do.

If they don't know going in, most viewers will be surprised in the credits to learn this is the voice of Brie Larson. Presumably, Larson wanted to lend her star power to a worthy promotion of scientific research; but in this case, the scientists were doing fine all by themselves.

While this hodgepodge contains the occasional lovely or eloquent moment, as one would expect after Estrada's captivating 2018 Sundance debut Blindspotting, those are overshadowed by material that grates on all but the most forgiving ear, in a semi-narrative setting that clearly just cares about getting from one aria to the next.

The movie doesn't really focus on many individuals long enough to make them compelling screen characters.

The deeper the script gets into how its version of witchcraft works, the less convincing it becomes. Uniformly solid performances and artful camera/sound work make the movie hard to dismiss out of hand, but the script doesn't sell its hokum as effectively as more mainstream supernatural soap operas.

Though the film addresses some questions that remain a sticking point in helping abused women, it sheds little new light on them for viewers who've spent any time thinking about this upsettingly widespread phenomenon.

This is a lazy feature with few laughs and fewer vicarious travel thrills, despite some nice photography of craggy coastlines and ancient villages.

While offering some of the expected musical material and concert footage, the film is much more interested in the singer’s emotional health, especially as it pertains to political unrest in his native Colombia. Though these themes might open the film up to interest outside Balvin’s fan base, neither is explored with enough depth to really accomplish that; in practice, Boy is for pretty devoted fans only.

Certain niche audiences will find it fascinating and/or emotionally powerful, but — among those who are unfazed by the sight of a masked woman pulling things out of her vagina — most will shrug.

The film captures the cost of Henry's well-intentioned sin, following this pained new creature out into the world and, very briefly, giving his suffering an almost Malick-like voice.

A too-familiar vibe hangs over much of the film, whose comic violence is nothing new and whose banter underwhelms, but the pic gets more fun as it goes, especially after an unlikely hallucinogen makes its entrance.

A likeable if not especially vibrant doc.

Fighting With My Family reminds us several times that the sport is as much about charismatic storytelling as it is about skill. Judged by that standard, the film is far from belt-worthy.

Despite the assistance reality continues to give it, making an annual rite of government-sanctioned racial violence seem less far-fetched by the day (or by the tweet), Gerard McMurray's The First Purge still fails to establish a persuasive connection to our own moment in time — its occasional winks to current events serving as limp zingers instead of stinging commentary.