John DeFore

Easily the most satisfying of his Hollywood-produced adventures and a respectable cousin to the long string of Japanese ones, the sequel to Gareth Edwards' admirably serious but dullish 2014 film is the first to suggest any promise for what Legendary is calling its "MonsterVerse" — a franchise in which the Japanese kaiju world meshes with that of Hollywood's favorite oversized ape, King Kong.

A tense debut built around a compelling lead performance by Bethany Anne Lind, it benefits from a couple of graceful storytelling flourishes and a persuasive sense of character.

[A] sweet, semi-romantic road trip.

What the film does best is bear witness to what happened on the day of the arrest and place it in the context of Bland's political life.

The filmmakers prefer, smartly, to focus on the people in present-tense need, making them not statistics to be debated but human stories.

As in Schechter's previous movies, an unusually strong cast is key to making this touchy material work, with supporting players Lynn Cohen and Richard Schiff especially crucial.

From all indications, he's also that very rare genius who's a lovely guy — a soft-spoken, readily smiling man who is endearing company for the nearly two hours of Emma Franz's Bill Frisell: A Portrait.

While the dialogue rarely crackles the way the original screwball films did, the Nees and their two co-writers find some pleasing little bits of action to demonstrate how the heroes’ increasing reliance on each other is destined to grow into love.

Heavily dependent on Wes Anderson's aesthetic but charming nonetheless.

The movie, in which Shenk and Cohen (makers of the standout eco-doc The Island President) take the reins ably from Davis Guggenheim, hardly can hope to create the sensation of its Oscar-winning predecessor. But it finds plenty to add, both in cementing the urgency of Gore's message and in finding cause for hope.

Pete Davidson is so on-target you might forget all the lines he's flubbed on Saturday Night Live.

Kelly depicts a deep filial love that isn't dependent on complete telepathic understanding.

This may not be adequate compensation for the end of their series, which gave them so many more opportunities to try on new personalities and take one-gag ideas for a spin. But it will delight the show's fans while winning over others unlucky enough never to have seen it.

If the premise isn't as attention-grabbing as Rubber's was, the execution should help build the filmmaker's following.

Though its structure doesn't always work to maximum effect, the grim picture gets more involving as it goes and benefits from a hell of a cast.

Malik Bader's Cash Only is one of the more convincingly gritty indies to hit fests in several seasons.

A deceptively slight film that strikes the right balance between realist family drama and earnestness.

A diverting if unimaginatively named little doc.

Far less sensationalistic or cutesy-provocative than its title suggests, the film borrows its subject's infamy to add gravity to some family drama but does so in a good-hearted way.

Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the picture should please horror fans.

Eighty-eight minutes is not nearly enough time to give full attention to every thread of critique here, but The Cleaners does a respectable job of fitting its unruly anecdotes into a coherent stream of thought.

Keep the Change acknowledges that people with disabilities can sometimes be largely responsible for the biggest problems they face, just like the rest of us — and it doesn't need to be Pollyannaish to believe those problems are solvable.

If The Black Godfather has a hard time understanding the man himself — who remains guarded even when interviewed alongside his family or his lifelong buddy Quincy Jones — it does show enough of his legacy to suggest its title is no overstatement.

As much a confessional one-man play as a showcase for tricks, it's a magic show in the way a Hannah Gadsby monologue is stand-up comedy: a work capable of winning over those who normally don't pay much attention to the genre, and certain to leave some in the audience much more moved than they're prepared for.

Being haunted by a ghost here is less like a horror movie than like many of the other secrets teenagers share -- working out matters of life and death that no one around them has a clue about.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

While he's not hinting around at the kind of systems of control he'll expand on to surreal effect in Dogtooth, The Lobster and elsewhere, Lanthimos enjoys provoking us visually.

Coon and Skousen supply just enough information about the boys' post-Raiders lives to satisfy our curiosity.