John DeFore

Davis isn't given a very satisfying backstory to work with, but when has she needed one? The actress strikes a satisfying balance between reluctance and protectiveness. Gaffigan and Janney offer just what their parts in the story need, but Davis keeps it all on the rails.

While left-leaning viewers will respond warmly to the film's common-sense take on Christianity's core teachings, one wonders if there might have been ways to make this more palatable to audiences who have been trained for a generation to view progressives as enemies of religion.

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.

The picture hits many of the expected schoolyard beats with just enough specificity (the vegetarian boy's first encounter with fried chicken, for example) to keep it from feeling generic.

This film feels more of a piece with the fashion shows and musical efforts it chronicles: an art-therapy product valuable mostly to those who made it.

Throughout, connoisseurs of Cage's career should appreciate a performance that rides the edge of his crazy tendencies.

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

A feel-good flick about a serial killer who just wants what's best for her daughter. Broad and not too spicy, the London-set Indian rom-com is a crowd-pleaser.

Along the way, though, 2U throws enough wrinkles into the first film's action — if you don't remember it well, rewatch it before seeing this — to engage us.

Though hardly groundbreaking in either its content or its aesthetics, the film is more serious than it initially lets on, and can only benefit from the VHS nostalgia that has, often irrationally, taken root in some quarters.

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

Genre conventions are a formality here, as de Almeida gravitates reliably back to the places where nightlife professionals spend their downtime together, swapping stories about the past while welcoming those who've been mistreated by changing times.

Koepp and his cast successfully convey how afraid the family becomes once it's clear they're being supernaturally prevented from leaving the house. But that's not the most original idea upon which to build a franchise, and it's clear from both third-act exposition and the pic's final scene that the filmmakers want just that.

Engrossing on a moment-to-moment scale thanks so some very fine performances, the film doesn't click together in the transformative way such stories occasionally do, and does less with themes of wealth and class than it surely intends to.

Enjoyable but incomplete-feeling bio-doc both celebrates the Milius myth and tries to undo the damage it did to his reputation.

The doc is less interested in analyzing Ledger's acting technique than in impressing viewers with his overall creative drive.

Jack Black...finds a role that invites a great deal of Jack Black-ness, full of peppy showmanship and thickly accented dialogue. But even moviegoers with a strong tolerance for that shtick may be less than involved with this half-charming feature, which inspires some sympathy for its protagonist but not enough to carry the film.

Too dark for a very broad audience, it will flummox some viewers drawn by its cast but will strike others with its more-than-prickly approach and standoffish humor.

An enjoyable entry into the swelling ranks of corrupt-the-youth comedies.

In the end, Kangaroo is the kind of advocacy film that's most likely to convince you if you already believe.

Feel-good documentary gathers great interviews but isn't sure what they add up to.

Though the movie is rife with too-convenient coincidences and relies on another iffy plot point or two to make its emotional arc work, the monster-killin’ functions well enough that few will complain.

The picture is mildly unsettling even if its ingredients don't add up to as much as they promise to.

In a showy adaptation by first-time helmer Charlie Stratton, the story is more glum than seductive -- offering surprising sexual encounters, yes, but too little of the slow burn and psychological depth that might have made the Les Mis-meets-Jim Thompson concept get under one's skin.

Though the documentary will be welcomed by a certain breed of space buff, both its impact and its commercial hopes are seriously diminished by Todd Douglas Miller's awe-harnessing "Apollo 11," which, unlike this film, demanded to be experienced in a theater.

Page's no-regrets spirit and the enraptured testimonials from those who knew her in her prime (including some swooning ex-lovers) overpowers clumsy filmmaking.

An acting-forward sports film capable of engaging viewers who don't know their 30-loves from their birdies or hat tricks.

While the film suffers from its own occasional sluggishness, it picks up as the lawmen watching our hero grow as strained as he is.