John DeFore

Alert not just to shifts in the critical zeitgeist but to accompanying changes in social mores, the fascinating film speaks to the most sophisticated students of fine-art photography without alienating casual buffs.

An engaging performance by veteran Argentine actor Miguel Angel Sola is the main selling point here, helping put across some, but not all, of the story's more dubious developments.

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.

A lively but meandering doc that is more seduced by the scene than some viewers might like.

Stuffed with drama, both climbing-related and not.

The film is aware of the weight of its subject but loath to behave like an "important" film — focusing instead on the specificity of one sick young man and the family that loves and fears him in almost equal measure.

A gender-flipped sibling to Crystal Moselle's Skate Kitchen (set in Los Angeles versus that film's NYC), its narrative of sudden belonging and onrushing perils mirrors that Sundance entry. But in emotional punch and shoulda-seen-this-coming skill, it is more like Hill's Lady Bird, a gem that feels simultaneously informed by its author's adolescence and the product of a serious artist's observational distance.

Viewers who've actually been in the protest trenches may long for a grittier take. But in sanitizing some aspects of this experience, The Hate U Give brings the world of protest and agitation a little closer to those whose privilege has made it relatively easy to ignore.

Fall is Pretty Woman for socialists, a Capital-conscious fairy tale in which a nice guy not only attempts a perfect crime but wins the heart of a prostitute hitherto moved only by American dollars.

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.

Pine is fully committed to Robert's mission, but the film has a hard time making him a compelling character, even with a wife and daughter on hand to make him relatable. And it takes forever for his military campaign to get rolling.

Kusama: Infinity presents a creative life that is worth exploring, even by those who've been scared away by the crowds.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin, who has directed everything from veteran movie stars to canine thesps in his career, has a harder time with child actors, eliciting performances that are uneven enough to attract attention to the script's weaker aspects.

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.

For the most part, footage of rehearsals and competition is lackluster.

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.

Isaac and Kingsley bring quite a bit to Orton's dialogue, sometimes seeming to mean it at face value and sometimes inviting skepticism.

The leads all take this as seriously as possible, and Lennon goes the extra mile by investing scenes with Edgar's parents with believable emotional baggage.

Though peppy and bright enough that it might amuse some kids should it show up on a screen in front of them somewhere, it offers no reason for their adult guardians to actually take them someplace to watch it.

The screenplay suffers from a severe imagination deficit, as if this twisted take on "meet cute" should be enough by itself to hang a movie on. It isn't.

Though it shows some strain in containing the topic's inherent sprawl, the doc is more thoughtful than some of its predecessors, and benefits from interviews with newsmakers like Elon Musk and, even better, Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan.

Enjoyably old-fashioned in its narrative but crisply modern in technique, it is engaging enough even for those of us with no soft spot for pets.

The film mostly tests viewers' ability to stay awake — and the one or two actual creepy moments it has up its sleeve come far, far too late to be potent.

Only in its final moments do things crystallize with a nasty, half-ironic commentary.

The emotional moments that push her life in new directions must be colored in by the audience. Though that never feels like much of an intellectual challenge, and the 127-minute film is in no hurry to paint its picture, something about Milla's ordinariness makes her worth getting to know.

Set in a cartoonishly seedy version of California's Inland Empire, this lowlife tale of bikers and reality-show politicians diverts without quite justifying its presence as a feature, though many fans of both artists will be pleased with what appears to be a happy collaboration.

It's a derivative bore, all popped collars, douchey bros and hand-me-down psychology, that gets its characters up to their necks in borrowed money just long enough to have it really hurt when the accounts run dry.

Young moviegoers who haven't yet tired of cookie-cutter dystopias will find a sympathetic protagonist played by Amandla Stenberg; but viewers who've taken this ride enough times to want, for instance, subtext addressing real-world oppression should look elsewhere.

Arguably, the film's hard turn into Scaresville taints what has made it appealing up to this point — and certainly, a tease in its final shot is a cheap gesture toward a possible sequel. But what comes before benefits from the cast's solid familial chemistry and an unhurried approach to the question: Should we want to talk to loved ones who've died, or leave them (and ourselves) in peace?

McKinnon dives head-first into every imbecilic scene, and Kunis stoically pretends to believe her BFF is sentient. But the movie around them is a wreck, and no amount of cloak-and-dagger will keep that secret for long.

Moving to Charlottesville, Lough puts viewers in the action. We don't talk to journalists or politicians about what happened the weekend Heather D. Heyer was killed; we stand in crowds and watch the events unfold.

Introducing an indie auteur whose fans are fervent if comparatively few, Steve Mitchell's King Cohen is a low-rent but colorful tribute to the septuagenarian writer-director who horrified audiences with the monster-baby It's Alive franchise.

Mystery-wise, the film teases viewers pretty effectively, with plenty of jolts that suggest the boys are on the right track balanced by other signs they're making something out of nothing.... But with a couple of small exceptions, attempts to flesh out the teen characters don't work very well.

The protagonists here aren't as insufferable as those in the first Unfriended, but Susco's plot gets harder to buy by the minute; as a first-time director, he doesn't get much out of his cast; and boy, does this Screenlife gimmick grow thin quickly.

The comedian's latest is as dense with laughs as fans would expect, the quality of the material showing no hint of how many other projects (namely the four feature films that have opened this year and eight reportedly in post) he had going on while writing it.

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.

Rawson Marshall Thurber's Skyscraper is one of the most idiotic action movies to come down the pike in some time. It's also a lot of fun if you're willing to go with it, and getting viewers to go with things is one of several fronts on which The Rock routinely earns the money he gets paid.

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.

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.

TAU is winningly guileless as it dresses an old story up in new clothes: Sometimes it takes a Creature to understand the depths of Dr. Frankenstein's monstrosity.

Though enjoyable as it touches on some of the liveliest scenes in New York City's recent pop-culture history, the doc's appeal is greatly limited by Garcia's blinkered perspective on his own life.

Earthlings is rather scattered in both its portrait of Van Tassel as a man and its explanation of his cultural impact.

Though stylish in its way and steeped in shadows (director/writer/editor Gregory Bayne also supplied attractive B&W cinematography), the enjoyable 6 Dynamic Laws for Success (in Life, Love & Money) embraces an oddly chipper spirit as its sad-sack protagonist competes with savvier bad guys to find the loot from a long-ago bank robbery.

Moviegoers who don't get a kick out of spotting athletes on the screen may be less than enthralled by the otherwise formulaic comeback flick, but sports-loving viewers will likely be more enthusiastic.

This doc seeks the vulnerability in subjects who live in pursuit of iron-man ideals many of us find ridiculous.

Beyond the obvious complaints about objectification of women, this second feature from the Canadian who calls himself Director X is just a bore.

A brief but informative look at a crucial chapter in the fight for marriage equality in America.

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

Bayona not only nods to the histories of classic monster movies and the legacy of original Jurassic helmer Steven Spielberg; he brings his own experience to bear, treating monsters like actual characters and trapping us in a vast mansion that's as full of secrets as the site of his breakthrough 2007 film The Orphanage.

If the part of the film devoted to endurance lacks the harrowing power of, say, 2013's All Is Lost, it at least gives Woodley the opportunity to convincingly sink her teeth into a plum dramatic lead role as a young woman fighting fiercely against the forces of nature (instead of a dystopian civilization).

The director and his actors never really make the Gu-Lu connection persuasive.

This derivative B movie is sure to disappoint fans of prior JCVD/Lundgren outings — which are an awfully low bar to hurdle.

With so many discussions to drop in on, each with its own stuff to show off...each sequence can only hint at what's fascinating about its field.

There's action aplenty throughout the film, but Deadpool 2 doesn't bog down in it as many overcooked comic-book sequels do. With Reynolds' charismatic irreverence at its core, the pic moves from bloody mayhem to lewd comedy and back fluidly, occasionally even making room to go warm and mushy.

Throughout, Shuman's eye, her editing, and Paul Brill's charming score weave the individual stories Pigeon finds into the tapestry of life on the street

The doc is so eager to tell you who's visited the hotel and eaten at the restaurant (JFK allegedly trysted here, which didn't keep his widow from enjoying the Cobb salad) that it shares very little about the hotel's origins and operations.

Vaughn Stein's Terminal blends tropes from several sorts of crime flicks into a soundstagey affair that's more brittle than hard-boiled.

But the synthesis is underwhelming on screen where it might have resonated in Lipsyte's book. Here, Measure becomes a mildly nostalgic, mildly romantic entry in a genre that, more than most, requires that the viewer feels a personal connection to the misfit protagonist on screen.

Ray meets Helen, all right, but moviegoers expecting a sprightly golden-years romance have come to the wrong place. So have those looking for a moody but credible reflection on decades of regrets.

As viewers, we have no idea whether the doc's last act is building toward a triumphant reunion or a big dead end. Suffice to say that the final scenes, never manipulative, achieve an emotional impact appropriate to the scale of this journey.

First-time directors Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg start off with a movie so dull it threatens to vanish from the viewer's memory before it's even finished. Things get better midway through, with the directors' screenplay finally playing to the talents of at least one of its stars, Derbez.

A human/robot love story that is less deeply imaginative than Spike Jonze's Her and less heartbreaking than Doremus' own Like Crazy, the picture is nevertheless a beautifully acted, affecting drama that teases some questions society may need to answer sooner than we expect.

The doc's heart is with ordinary people who have no show-business ambitions.

Stockholm, which gently massages actual events to serve as a fine vehicle for Noomi Rapace and Ethan Hawke, is far from the first movie to believably show a crime victim coming to sympathize with a criminal. But it's a funny and agile one.

A warm if not quite comprehensive-feeling biography of a performer who, even for a celebrity, elicited an unusually strong personal affection from fans, Lisa D'Apolito's Love, Gilda tells the far too short story of Gilda Radner.

The debut feature succeeds thanks to a credibly bifurcated performance by star Ansel Elgort.

The premise offers plenty of room for yet another impressive performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The action doesn't start until an hour into the picture, and is as unimaginative as everything that has preceded it.

This debut doc would have benefited from some statistics to back up its ample expert testimony. Numbers would be useful, for instance, to show how SAT scores fail to correlate with college performance or success later in life. It also would be more rounded if it gave time to the SAT's advocates instead of using footage of old speeches to represent their side.