John DeFore

If the three hours of filming Cameron did in the Trench yield little obvious drama, the story of how the Deepsea Challenger reached those depths makes up for it.

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

Although laughs do come... the film is happy to observe wryly as boredom and failure threaten to overwhelm the men.

The action is lively and quick-paced, and then suddenly over — at which point the film gets to hammer down some of its more wholesome messages.

Talking heads aside, the movie gets a big boost from the wealth of news footage and post-standoff reportage the filmmakers cull from archives.

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

The doc could benefit from more information about what led up to that day.

Laurent walks between pulpy suspense and a more serious grimness as she presents the action.

Becker is now completely paralyzed, unable even to speak. But Vile keeps him almost entirely offscreen until the last thirty minutes, preferring to introduce him as he once was: Uncommonly positive and single-minded in his obsession with the electric guitar.

However off-putting this fragmentary approach might be for those who'd prefer a clean chronology of important works and their assimilation into academic histories of art, it's clear by the end that the aesthetic fits the subject like a glove.

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 film is focused enough on relationships not to sound preachy.

I, Tonya spins a convincing yarn despite, or maybe because of, its surfeit of unreliable narrators.

Honest and well made but lacking a strong hook.

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.

Even given the standards of off-the-rails cinematic family reunions, you'd have to look a while to find one as bizarre as Anders Thomas Jensen's Men & Chicken.

Knowing and funny without straining to be clever, the found-footage-style pic works better than the Duplass Brothers' 2008 Baghead, with which it has some elements in common.

An account of captivity and torture unlike most that have emerged from recent conflicts in the Middle East, David Schisgall's Theo Who Lived finds, in freed journalist Theo Padnos, a man with surprising empathy for those who beat and nearly killed him.

The issues it addresses are of massive importance.

Directors Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley offer a straightforward account of this unlikely story, following as their young subjects (and the adults who made this possible) enjoy the fruits of overnight social-media stardom.

The topic's appeal is broad, but Whitehair's tight focus on one activist family keeps this film from being the one to reach an audience beyond those already involved in the issue.

It's the kind of serious but broadly appealing, modestly scaled picture that people love to say doesn't exist any more.

Pairing some of the spirit of schlocky Nazisploitation fare with a top-flight young cast and better-than-solid filmmaking, the movie is more mainstream that the midnight fare it sounds like on paper, if only by a bit. Horror fans should cheer.

Estes finds a way to twist things up, organically adding a Groundhog Day element. Time's still moving forward toward Ashley's death, but the detective work gets more interesting.

The picture is deeply weird, with an entrancement factor almost entirely dependent on the performance of Michael Parks.

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.

Damning documentary pairs an individual sex-abuse case with analysis of institutional dysfunction at the Vatican.

Though Marceau's artistic ideals are central to the film, Resistance happily avoids novelty, making its hero one credible human among many in a wartime tale that, though largely familiar in its feel, dramatizes a question that has become urgent for many in recent years: How does one best resist hatred — by fighting its proponents, or rushing to assist its targets?