John DeFore

The Widers apply great artistic ambition to a story few would handle in this manner, resulting in a haunting film.

Calling itself a "vision" as opposed to a "film," Icaros attempts to conquer fear — of death, of blindness, of loss — by accepting the potency of a magic it knows it will never understand.

A delightful romp whose varied pleasures should please kids all along the age spectrum.

Jason Zeldes, an editor on Twenty Feet from Stardom, makes an accomplished debut as director here, delivering a film whose polished aesthetic matches its social import and potent emotions.

The first feature-length doc by Suzannah Herbert, it is smartly focused, offering nothing to distract from the stories it is able to fit within its running time.

The birds are not only gorgeous but, as they poke for food and rustle around, entertaining.

The director ties themes together at the end with more finesse than usual, letting a couple of meaningful visuals speak for themselves where he might have thrown in a line or two of explanatory dialogue. And as for that final twist, it's a doozy.

Summarizing the great strides he made for journalism without ignoring his colorful flaws, Oren Rudavsky's Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People is an excellent primer, not just on the man but on the birth of the modern newspaper.

A cracking little one-hander (mostly) that rations glimpses of its well-designed beastie expertly, the picture will please genre fans who don’t mind long stretches with no dialogue.

An effective exercise in stylistic pastiche that has more to offer than its eerie retro mood, Tilman Singer's Luz presents a refreshing take on demonic possession in which the usual fright-flick cliches are nowhere to be found.

Berg's film is very tightly focused, examining just one arena of abuse and dutifully addressing only cases in which an accuser is willing to appear on camera.

Engaging and lively.

A solid backgrounder on a political operative many believe to have changed the course of U.S. history.

Happily, the film is more than a greatest-hits rundown (and at nearly three hours, it had better be): In addition to nuts-and-bolts musicology, it offers real engagement with a complicated character, endearingly stubborn and self-effacing, whose inventiveness changed both his chosen field (“absolute” music) and the one, film scoring, he entered only reluctantly.

Full Mantis gives fans the kind of intimate access more conventional docs often don't manage. Even for viewers who've never heard of the septuagenarian, it's an oddball delight.

The good-looking, easygoing doc settles in with its two subjects, offering not just an intimate perspective on the playwright's biography but some touching reflections on the comforts and perils of long-term friendship.

A trapped-in-a-house thriller pitting thieves against an unexpectedly resourceful victim, the lean and mean pic offers scares aplenty and at least a couple of game-changing twists.

Nothing about the plot is novel, but the film easily maintains a low simmer that picks up in the final act, as Miller has to fight to keep his sinking ship staffed.

Director Lopez offers no more lightheartedness than the film absolutely needs to show that their spirits haven't been crushed by squalor; meanwhile, her effects artists use mostly excellent CG to slowly hint at how interested the world of the dead is in Estrella's predicament.

Far from the filmmaker in both life experience and proximity to the cosmic unknown, the subjects making up this constellation — elderly men and women who evince no self-consciousness around her — are diverse enough to support any number of theories about this graceful film's ultimate meaning.

Viewers may worry that Bazawule's starkly gorgeous pictures aren't going to add up to anything, but Burial satisfies in prosaic as well as poetic terms, supplying an end that makes sense of its beginning. It will leave many who see it eager for the young filmmaker's next fable.

Ben Foster goes through more than one striking transformation here, changing body and soul while neither shying away from nor overdramatizing the uglier aspects of the man’s life.

A refreshing, beautifully made documentary set in a nursing home under suspicion of elder neglect, Maite Alberdi's The Mole Agent begins with its tongue in cheek but grows quite moving by its end.

A funny and tender drawn-from-life love story.

Aubrey Plaza proves she can carry a film with this multiplex-friendly comedy about time travel.

[A] bitterly funny, clear-eyed debut.

This picture satisfies fully on entertainment terms without cheapening its real-world concerns.

Most importantly, the pic gets laughs out of the class system without being glib about its cruelties. The gulf between rich and poor clearly matters to Huang, who poignantly shows how poverty robs even the dead of dignity.

Oyelowo is sure-footed in his feature directing debut, delivering a smart and wholesome picture with about as little sentimentality as such a tale can have.

Modest in aesthetic terms but more jounalistically serious than many low-budget advocacy docs, the film will be an eye-opener for some, and should add to pressure on executives to stop pretending they're innocent of the crimes contractors commit on their behalf.

In Transit is a pure dose of the humanism that helped establish Albert Maysles as one of nonfiction film's key voices.

Taking itself much less seriously than the Taken series and its predecessors, it's a wish-fulfillment romp just as ludicrous as any of them but more fun than most.

A thrill-stuffed sports doc whose daredevil subject will quickly endear himself even to viewers who've never heard his name.

The sequel will impress any fan of the original. It's fresher than most of the low-budget thrillers gracing theaters lately.

Hersonski enriches this evidence by bringing in survivors of the ghetto, who tell stories of life there while watching the film themselves.

A quiet stunner of a drama.

Inherently unpreachy but making its point more effectively than many participants in the debate can, the film should find vocal advocates in a niche theatrical run.

The ritualized presentation of these disasters... adds up to a kind of unsettling spiritual experience, a communion with the dead that demands the quiet participation of a group

The picture is one part vintage Woody Allen, a few parts Screwball-era comedy of remarriage, and a vigorous shake of Gerwig herself, without whose particular spirit — "so pure," as an admirer puts it here, and "a little stupid" — this scenario might have trouble getting off the ground.

It's an invigorating chance to experience from afar an ordeal that, unless your name is Eliot Spitzer, you and I will never have to endure.

Straight history is not the whole point here, as Nelson enthusiastically conjures a sense of what it felt like to be a Panther and to be a young black person inspired by them.

A loving biography of a guitarist whose work was "not folk, not blues, not gospel," but drew from and colored those genres and more.

If the film's title is an ironic use of Trumpian bluster, it also accurately represents the movie itself, which is about as far as you can get from Michael Moore-style agitprop while still having a red-blooded interest in this country's continued existence: The filmmakers avoid insulting a politician who deserves anything they might wish to sling at him, opting instead to let facts speak for themselves.

Even the more cartoonish performances, like John Malkovich's acid-damaged paranoiac, fit the movie's vision of the vanished, wild-and-woolly heyday of spycraft.

The third doc Ai has released this year (following Coronation and the Sundance entry Vivos), it's among his most effective films to date — tightly focused and morally urgent. As an example of civilian/police conflict that has become literally incendiary, its relevance to current protests for justice in America should be obvious.

Frederic Jardin's gripping Sleepless Night maintains a consistently high pitch without growing monotonous.

Buzzing attentively but not exclusively around cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, director Leah Wolchok strikes a pleasing balance between office minutiae and comic greatest hits; she gets enough face time with individual artists to please comedy nerds while keeping things wholly accessible to casual fans.

A film about the sudden onset of deafness that is too attentive to specifics of character and setting to ever feel like a rote disability drama.

An easygoing hangout film that will ring true for anyone who has worked in the service industry, it continues the filmmaker's streak of making movies that have few obvious common denominators besides empathy for types of characters who rarely get it.

At some point, we realize we've stopped counting the '80s dance hits we recognize (or trying to figure out when that Frankie Goes to Hollywood remix will end) and have become invested in the social lives of the men and women on camera.

Following up on his lauded debut, Welcome to Pine Hill, Miller again blends fiction and reality to fine effect.

A pure-bliss celebration of Paul Simon's landmark album Graceland coupled with an interesting if not unbiased look at the controversy surrounding its release.

Following Matt through a public transition and capturing its unique set of complications, Del Monte offers a warm portrait of a thoroughly winning subject.

The often-very-funny picture entertains while affording its characters their share of no-laughing-matter concerns.

Intriguing characters and elements of crime fiction prevent the film from being a dour slog, but there’s not much hope to be found here, especially for victims who, due to payoffs and court-ordered silence, can never share their trauma with an outraged public.

A comedy in both the current and the original senses of the word, Little Hours earns its laughs before ensuring a happy end.

Whatever its impetus, the film is a warm bath of sensations that suffers little for any thematic haziness.

A deeply satisfying pop biopic whose subject's bifurcated creative life lends itself to an unconventional structure.

Maclean's screenplay is unshowy but keen.

The ironies of gentrification will be a chief attraction for this lovely new 4K restoration of the 16mm original. But that theme is just a bonus in a picture whose in-the-trenches look at poverty is humane and, sadly, perpetually timely.

A mournful testament to a vibrant piece of global film history almost entirely wiped out of existence.

An excellent blend of musical behind-the-scenes, open-hearted interviews, and performance.

Gook rises above message-movie mediocrity, enjoying its characters too much to use them as political mouthpieces.

Pure joy for Beatles fans and, one guesses, charming enough to seduce some viewers who wouldn't mind never hearing "She Loves You" ever again.

A love story whose resolution remains tough to predict, Outside In respects all its characters by not pretending their choices are easily made.

The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers

Exciting and enlightening, the still-timely film ranks with docs like The Weather Underground in its evocation of a more politically engaged era.

Stars Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska go a long way toward keeping this tricky pic balanced, though Pesce's knowing use of sleazy-Seventies vibe (following the distinctive b&w spareness of The Eyes of My Mother, his only previous feature) creates the perfect world for them to do it in.

Steph Green's first feature has more going for it than a solid dramatic turn by Will Forte.

Sanchez delivers a couple of very effective twists that change the nature of his tale.

Sharp dramatization and direct performances suffice to put the story's themes across more urgently than expected.

Choosing it for his debut as director, Bateman demonstrates the same knack for timing and fine shadings of attitude as he does onscreen.

The picture has a good shock or two up its sleeve before getting to Laurie's armored, booby-trapped home, and once it's there, it surprises us again.

Funny, dark, and riding a very fine line in its depiction of mental illness, it may be the best thing we could hope would emerge from the side of Wiig that gave us Gilly.

A disability-centric documentary that moves viewers without resorting to trite devices, Seung-Jun Yi's Planet of Snail takes a condition most of us would find unbearable and demystifies it while finding room for poetry.

Less a portrait of accidental activist Nadia Murad than a sensitive witnessing of the way she has endured life in the public eye, Alexandria Bombach's On Her Shoulders is passionately attentive to the plight of the Yazidis while making broader observations about the call to public service.

A vital, gripping film.

The picture is fresh and frightening, a strong arthouse contender certain to leave audiences talking.

Cutting through many of the easy signifiers found in bad-behavior comedies to get at what it actually feels like to be an intimacy-phobic mess, Trainwreck finds Judd Apatow putting his directing chops in service of Amy Schumer's deeply felt but cracklingly funny screenplay.

Suffice it to say that what satisfies on one level raises questions on others, and that certain plot points mightn't play as well without someone as charismatic as Johnson putting them across.

Though it leaves some avenues underexplored and gives a bit too much attention to the sci-fi landmark name-checked in its title, the film makes for engrossing, sometimes unsettling viewing.

Though peppered with lots of photos and clips fans haven’t seen, rapid-fire editing ensures we nearly never see enough for a rare clip’s humor to land — instead, the montage persuasively conjures the camaraderie and creative enthusiasm we all wanted to believe in: Yes, these guys were great friends while they were transforming comedy. Then they weren’t. Now they are again.

Though difficult to watch, it's a film that helps outsiders confront the horrifying ways such events can cause damage for decades after the fact.

Very funny at the outset and escalating steadily for most of its brisk running time, the film represents a big win for neophyte screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien.

A crime-flick love story as Pop-conscious as Wright's earlier work but unironic about its romantic core, it will delight the director's fans but requires no film-geek certification.

Jaume Balabueró's effective thriller Sleep Tight puts more value on slow-building bad vibes than on pulled-curtain shock, but its treatment of mental illness and voyeurism, lightly salted with pitch-black humor, will feel pleasingly familiar to fans of the older film.

An assured doc debut that knows how to stand out in a crowded field, Craig Atkinson's Do Not Resist avoids the handwringing format of other (very welcome) examinations of 21st-century American policing, offering instead something like a despairing tone poem.

Stuffed with drama, both climbing-related and not.

As entertaining as any showbiz documentary in recent memory.

Thanks in part to excellent editing and a subtly gripping score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, LA 92 never lags during its nearly two-hour running time.

The film represents another leap forward for [Morris].

Throughout, the film's subjects convince us they're doing nothing more than being themselves, so much so that a cynical advisor told Sutton he should market his film as a documentary. That label would prepare potential viewers for Pavilion's lack of story, but it would make a lie of the movie's patient, finely drawn loveliness.

Carol Morley's sadly fascinating Dreams of a Life, which plays like a more artful cousin to TV's true-crime documentaries, slowly assembles a portrait of Vincent, unfolding in a way that should earn fans in its niche theatrical run.

Though some plot elements are pushily therapeutic, they're offset by others whose novelty distinguishes Rudderless from movies of its sort.

Some of these trekkers are more resilient than others, but all seem to agree there's a high, maybe insurmountable barrier between them and civilians. However sympathetic we are, they say, we can hardly understand what they've been through. High Ground makes that difficult task a little easier.

Though not as stuffed with rapid-fire laughs as In the Loop...this makes a very fine sophomore outing.

This is among the most enjoyable art-docs of the last couple of years.