John DeFore

Having already given us a shootout or two, the film grows more involving as Lefty fights for both his life and his good name. Pullman has no trouble making the character sympathetic, even as he maintains the near-ineptitude Lefty's known for.

The doc happily devotes most of its time to a stylish, energetic account of Hanna's career to date and the impact it has had on a generation of women.

Both actors stay sharp through some pretty degrading moments, and if Palmer and screenwriter Tess Morris are bent on serious button-pushing in the closing scenes, at least they garnish it with playfulness and wit.

Hubby captures an artistic personality that could manifest big ideas without a shred of snobbery, could deflate pomposity while still inviting deep thought.

Trophy isn't as good at drawing moral conclusions as it is at laying out the difficult issues around hunting, conservationism and the trade in animal parts. But the film will be involving for those on all sides of animal-welfare debates.

With matter-of-fact Jewish wit, it accepts these beliefs as the story's ground rules, understanding that Shmuel won't make peace with his wife's death until he finds some way of reconciling his ideas with physical realities. If only all conflicts between religion and observable facts came to ends as satisfying as this film does.

The film's diagnosis -- money's corrupting influence, the tendency of powerful people to entrench themselves -- is hardly new, but it's voiced here with enough smarts and conviction to earn respect from non-plutocrat viewers of all political stripes.

[A] modest but heartfelt picture. ... Lost Transmissions tells its story without engaging with foolish cliches about creativity and madness.

Kink is quite convincing in presenting this one workplace as a happy, sane environment where people respect each other and aren't manipulated into doing things they don't ultimately enjoy. But it leaves plenty of room to presume that Kink.com is an outlier in the industry.

Successful to a point (though seemingly unaware of the chuckles it produces in between shrieks), the movie has strong prospects with genre audiences but won't spawn a phenomenon resembling the filmmakers' previous franchise.

Sienna Miller offers a beautiful, agile performance that would by itself justify the film's existence.

Relying on interviews with Schrager and other insiders instead of cramming in every celeb who graced the dancefloor, Tyrnauer delivers a meaty and transporting portrait.

An empathetic drama ready to put straight-laced audiences in the shoes of a maligned subculture.

Quiet and carefully made but cryptic, it relies on the viewer to complete its metaphors.

Horror and cold humor commingle in Dogtooth, a Greek import whose screenwriters approach scenario construction like misanthropic social scientists planning an experiment -- one whose result suggests that governments might want to rethink policies allowing parents to home-school their children.

It successfully imagines a place for its heroine in Holmes' world, then convinces young viewers that Enola needn't be constrained by that world's borders.

Enjoyable despite its familiarity.

The film prefers to share its protagonists' struggle, not lionizing the risks they take but also never questioning them.

Its high-octane but low-stakes action might be just the thing for moviegoers weary of summer's operatic superheroes.

The writer-director's first feature has much going for it, above all a striking performance by Emilie Piponnier in the title role. Neither a fallen-woman melodrama nor an encomium to guilt-free sex work, the complicated moral tale has strong art house potential.

One of the things making Goon so enjoyable is its fairy-tale suggestion that all humanity's violent impulses can be exorcized in a Zamboni-groomed ice rink.

Setting out to show the range of expression found in a field of craft it feels is too often dismissed as a trivial women's pastime, Una Lorenzen's Yarn showcases four artists doing things with crochet your spinster great-aunt probably never imagined.

Revealing tour doc showcases a quick wit and a bruised soul.

Never intending to rationalize away the seedier aspects of Newton's work, the film hopes instead to make us recognize the humor and inventiveness lurking there as well — and to persuade us that an artist's unruly erotic imagination doesn't necessarily tell us much about what he thinks of women.

The film delivers almost exactly what fans of the first installment are hoping for.

More than anything, the doc lives up to its name as a portrait of the photographer in his old age.

Though it mostly summarizes available arguments instead of uncovering new facts, it's an accessible primer.

A class-conscious Scandinavian crime film whose impact is dulled by some extraneous subplots, Daniél Espinosa's Easy Money nevertheless makes a solid vehicle for Joel Kinnaman.

Though undistinguished as a piece of moviemaking (its aesthetic is best suited to educational settings), the doc benefits from the spectrum of talent on display.

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 gore-for-broke affair that strips the flesh off Sam Raimi's cult-beloved comic-horror franchise and exposes the demons at its core.

Less twisted than Natali's last film, Splice, it's sufficiently novel to uphold his reputation as a filmmaker not content telling conventional fanboy stories.

Made with the intelligence and good taste one expects from Ejiofor, the involving film cares about much more than the sweeping images of triumph with which it inevitably closes.

There's nothing moribund about the action in King Georges, the lively first film directed by doc producer Erika Frankel, which observes the perfectionist workhorse in his kitchen.

The ironies of Plimpton's life are handled delicately, made just obvious enough for viewers to mull themselves.

The Food Network crowd will go nuts for the doc, but beyond the shots of luscious dishes, there's a pretty interesting character study here as well.

Though never hard to follow, the discussion can sometimes challenge an unwonky viewer's attention span. But it contains big insights for those who wade in.

If it leaves us more hopeful about those kids' mental health than about the gun debate, that's hardly surprising.

The film will appeal to art lovers, but some viewers who can hardly tell their Cezannes from Chagalls will find the story fascinating as well.

Though not solely for superfans, it plays best for those who appreciate a hard-to-untangle knot of realness, fakeness, vanity, artistry, self-commentary and pure comedy. Laced with truly hilarious moments, it’s less daring than one might hope given its conceit, Eggersian title and Charlie Kaufman-seasoned icon-star.

Mike Mendez's shamelessly Corman-esque Big Ass Spider! does almost everything just a tiny bit better than it needs to.

Viewers will suspect from early on that things aren't as straightforward as they appear, and Clark's screenplay addresses those suspicions only to the extent it must to justify its characters' behavior.

Following the template of documentaries bent on scaring viewers silly, Oasis winds up with a segment pointing to glimmers of hope, one of which addresses the marketing challenge of convincing citizens that recycled waste water is safe for drinking.

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.

Bracing and well paced, it may occasionally stretch too far for an attention-getting quirk, but Lowlife feels fresher than it has any right to be, given its ingredients.

Capturing the spirit of an artist and the quickly-fading moment in media history when his work could have real nationwide impact, Michael Stevens' Herblock: The Black & The White pays homage to the great editorial cartoonist with testimonials from a who's-who of D.C. journalists and opinion-makers.

The shtick sticks in The Mind's Eye, which lovingly apes period details, this time with psychokinetic warriors instead of alien invaders. But where the first film was dour, this one works so hard at its ultra-grave air of menace that it eventually turns (intentionally, one hopes) comic, building to third-act violence that will leave the right kind of audience howling with delight.

While general audiences may wish for a bit more technical information about how Turner keeps track of cards without being able to see them, Korem understandably seizes on the emotional arc before him, following Turner's late-middle-age crisis through to its happy resolution.

More true to its title than viewers may expect, the doc cares more about underlying principles than the details of any one controversy.

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

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

A film whose fascination with bees and their mammoth impact on the global food chain extends far beyond the subject of colony collapse disorder. Arthouse audiences will eat it up.

One of the things The Circle gets right on multiple occasions is that, once one has bought into a technology like this, the problems it creates are invitations not to abandon it but to seek further technological solutions.

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.

Strong performances propel a movie that wears its influences (De Palma, Lynch) on its sleeve without feeling like a copycat.

As our encounters with him continue, it becomes clear that Stroman — whose early life nearly guaranteed problems ahead — evolved dramatically behind bars, and that his remorse for his crimes is sincere.

Though its micro view limits its usefulness in big discussions of public policy — it's easy to imagine American partisans using it as evidence both for and against government-run health care — it is a vivid reminder that all such policies are lived out by millions of individuals, who die every day when things aren't well run.

[A] gorgeously shot and sensitively acted drama, a demonstration of range from the actor-turned-director.

Healy knows exactly the mix of comical bumbling and psychological tension he wants here.

Chipper and fun if occasionally superficial, the doc finds its subject too large to address in a way that satisfies the most curious outsider or devoted fan. Everyone else will have a good time, though.

Self-contained enough for theatrical audiences new to the series, it will play best with those who've come to care for these Brits over time.

The picture survives its excesses thanks to winning chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, who animate banter-heavy dialogue and click so well one wonders why they haven't shared the screen before.

Amanda Knox makes for succinct, involving viewing — a true-crime doc that acknowledges the lingering debates over its subject's guilt while prompting one to ask: Why did anyone ever believe this outrageous stuff in the first place, much less cling to it for years?

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.

Action takes a backseat to local color in well-acted drama.

Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton balance energies well as the boy who thinks he's found his groundhog girlfriend and the girl whose secrets keep romance at bay. Viewers who haven't soured on the format yet could do much worse than this sweet entry.

If Berardini isn't very generous to the company's execs, shortchanging what is likely a genuine belief that they're doing good while making a ton of money, he does spend time with officers who, for a time, embraced the Taser eagerly.

The book's creepy premise justifies this modern second look, which proves to be a solid if not earthshaking horror pic built around notably good performances.

The doc's poignant heart is in observing how ACORN's most dedicated members have pushed to continue doing good after it was forced to close its doors.

Things head eventually in an abstract direction that may have played better onstage than it does here ("we must forget what we didn't see here," guests are eventually instructed), but a compelling atmosphere lingers.