John DeFore

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.