John DeFore

Gibney is convincing on every front. And while Apple (big surprise) refused to cooperate — meaning that key players like Jony Ive and Tim Cook are all but invisible in this story — he gets enough of Jobs' collaborators on camera to lend emotional color to the portrait.

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

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.

Even for viewers who know much more about Burden than that thing with the rifle, it's almost certain to trigger a hunger for more.

It will entertain many, and deserves credit for its generosity to characters who, for all their bad decisions, are more complex than the stereotypes they may appear to be.

Though the film stretches out long enough to impress us with the difficulty of their journey, the four actors ensure that the two hours or so we spend in their company aren't dull.

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

Though it doesn't address all of their complaints, the movie makes an excellent case against those who seek blanket prohibitions against genetically modified organisms — and, maybe more importantly, against those of us who support such bans just because we assume it's the eco-conscious thing to do.

A very entertaining film, stuffed with colorful idiots and serves-you-right twists. Silly in ways that reflect poorly of the filmmaker's taste but will endear it to many viewers, it's a true-crime tale that has much to do with Major League Baseball but requires no interest in the sport to enjoy.

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.

All but a must-see for anyone who knows enough to care about the way laws govern information transfer in the digital age, Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is an inspiring account of the life of, and an infuriating chronology of the persecution of, one of the Internet's most impressive prodigies.

A well-tuned vehicle for the comic charms of Irish stand-up Maeve Higgins.

In tracing the origins of this restaurant staple, Ian Cheney's The Search for General Tso is as much an immigration history as a culinary one, observing how a people who were demonized as low-wage laborers found entrepreneurial success in small and large towns across the country.

Less a rock-doc than a surprisingly affecting look at sibling dynamics in a creative family where one brother is vastly more successful than the other.

Captivating for a long stretch.

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

A powerful documentary that reminds those of us who've moved on to other worries that this one is far from finished -- and that a government that proclaimed outrage during the summer of 2010 has seemingly done little to prevent or prepare for another such catastrophe.

There's an emotional logic to the action and imagery, carrying viewers along even if they're not quite sure if they're rooting for the innocent man or his troubled attacker.

Tagging along with the now octogenarian Jean Vanier and meeting some members of his surrogate family, Randall Wright's Summer in the Forest champions his vision by quietly watching it in harmonious action.

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.

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

Cummings works the same muscles that attracted attention in the festival darling Thunder Road and its follow-up, The Wolf of Snow Hollow: Exploring the varieties of volatile awkwardness and desperation, he plays a well-known type (the showbiz ladder-climber who’s nothing but a smile) while making the character unlike any we’ve seen.

One of the most transporting depictions of the Downtown New York scene (in a field crowded with docs, memoirs and fictions — some by artists who weren't alive at the time), Sara Driver's Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat more than does justice to its acknowledged subject, partly by refusing to divorce him from his context.

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.

Frank about economic realities but far from a downer, this curious and humanistic doc is sure to alter the way city-dwellers look at those who linger around trash cans

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.