John DeFore

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.

Where it might have been an old-fashioned melodrama with credible historical appeal, instead it suggests an old-school celluloid epic whose print has lost a reel or two.

Budgetary and other constraints make this attempt to conjure post-war Hollywood more sincere than believable, a history lesson with little to offer even a serious film buff.

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.

Along the way, though, 2U throws enough wrinkles into the first film's action — if you don't remember it well, rewatch it before seeing this — to engage us.

The film's emotional intelligence gets it past the occasional false note, and the strength of its central performances keeps us engaged even when the characters themselves might not deserve our sympathy.

The doc mostly addresses trauma and healing from afar, referring to combat experience without dwelling on it, never saying much about what difficulties men then faced in peacetime.

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.

De Clermont-Tonnerre shows admirable restraint, knowing that, in her carefully constructed frames, it can be enough just to get Roman's newly compassionate eyes into a close-up with the expressionless eye of a horse.

A by-the-book script and stiff direction fail to milk any suspense from this scenario, and in the absence of thrills, the picture's heavy focus on the long-lasting impact of trauma is suffocating.

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.

Veteran comic actors make the most of the not very original (though well-timed) one-liners the script gives them. But the movie's last act drags almost as slowly for viewers as for the gang in the cave, and the story's resolution is no better.

Slate and Sharp (a Tony winner for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) can't be blamed for their lack of chemistry, and if sparks aren't flying between them, at least viewers can occasionally drown in gorgeous coastal scenery, shot nicely by Martin Ahlgren.

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.

This Bannon is a snooze, occasionally making a wry aside but nearly never saying anything unusually smart or new. ... It's hard to see what ordinary viewers at any point on the political spectrum will gain from this particular status report.

Its approach to the source material (a close cousin to the Frankenstein tale) is emotionally and intellectually sincere, enacted seriously, if not always engrossingly, by cast and crew.

The action never stops being fun, and it eventually does make excellent use of the heavy machinery Nels' job requires. Cold Pursuit just gets a little winded, like a 66-year-old action hero working hard at high altitudes.

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.

Light is just as faithful to formula as Bend It Like Beckham and just as reliant on its lead's likability; here, newcomer Viveik Kalra radiates enough guileless enthusiasm to carry viewers past the film's rough patches.

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

Fighting With My Family reminds us several times that the sport is as much about charismatic storytelling as it is about skill. Judged by that standard, the film is far from belt-worthy.

A Danny Elfman-like score and the dark earnestness of lead voice-actor Matheus Nachtergaele's performance make this world believable enough that the film's big revelation — city pigeons, as humanity's ancient companions, know how we can stop being so paralyzed by fear — doesn't sound quite as ridiculous as it should.

It uses historical artifacts to excellent, devastating effect.

While its protagonist is believably eccentric, the people surrounding her look more like transparent plot devices the more of them we meet.

A smart doc that's as earnest and scattered as the viewers likely to seek it out, Astra Taylor's What Is Democracy? looks around at the world and realizes that even those of us on the right sides of things aren't always sure what we're fighting for.

In a genre populated by an unusually high percentage of nearly unwatchable movies — the surprise-paternity comedy — John Asher's I Hate Kids comes as something of a surprise. Not because it's any good (no, no, no), but because of the number of talented people who, presumably having read the witless script, agreed to appear in it.

Less relentlessly bleak than Winter's Bone, which along with Frozen River is an obvious inspiration here, the life-on-the-margins drama makes a fine, tense vehicle for Tessa Thompson, who in the last few years has stood out in a variety of genres.

McGowan doesn't try to turn the modest material into a nail-biting thriller. While grim confrontations between men with guns don't always convince us, they at least don't upstage the survival tale at the movie's heart.