John DeFore

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.

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.

The heavily stylized film further demonstrates the actor's ability to create self-contained worlds behind the camera.

A straightforward biopic ... The film's edge is somewhat dulled by respect for its subject, who's drawn here as more hero than man.

It gives the feature doc treatment to a topic TV journalists (and news-comedy hero John Oliver) have looked at over the decades — showing the slimy ways that reforms prompted by public outrage have been neutered by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Though sympathetic to a woman they have known for over 30 years, Mark and Bell make no positive or negative judgments about her life.

Accepting the film's own standard of plausibility, thrillseekers should appreciate the brisk pace with which scares, setbacks and possible escapes are delivered.

To a person, Tarek's beneficiaries come home feeling changed by the experience. Unfortunately, he and Serban aren't so gauche as to ask if they've reevaluated any political stances as a result; the film is content with the unspoken assumption that this expanded awareness of shared humanity will make the world better. If only someone had the budget to send tens of millions of other frightened Westerners on similar trips.

Buoyed by enjoyable performances by character actors like Paul Ben-Victor, the picture is slight but likeable, especially for fans of its younger leads.

Just looking at men of this age adds new depth to questions about legalizing gay marriage and further normalizing the kind of institutionalized responsibilities straight people take for granted.

A deeply disappointing follow-up to her promising 2015 short Kiss Kiss Fingerbang, Gillian Wallace Horvat's I Blame Society is a first feature that points out many of its faults as it goes, as if to transmute them into satirical jabs at an uncertain object.

Very funny at the outset and escalating steadily for most of its brisk running time, the film represents a big win for neophyte screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien.

Starring John Hawkes as a booze-addicted former cop who stumbles across a mystery he can't stand to leave unsolved, the scuzzy-looking pic is a boon to the actor's fans.

Though not solely for superfans, it plays best for those who appreciate a hard-to-untangle knot of realness, fakeness, vanity, artistry, self-commentary and pure comedy. Laced with truly hilarious moments, it’s less daring than one might hope given its conceit, Eggersian title and Charlie Kaufman-seasoned icon-star.

This film neither really embraces the mechanics of primitive cinema nor creates a coherent syntax of its own.

It's an invigorating chance to experience from afar an ordeal that, unless your name is Eliot Spitzer, you and I will never have to endure.

Sienna Miller offers a beautiful, agile performance that would by itself justify the film's existence.

Scott packages these concerns and others in a smart way, and includes the occasional bit of eye-opening history.

A sharp-looking and enjoyable doc that celebrates the writer's legacy but, in its willfully obscure structure, seems a bit too bent on echoing his famous nonconformity.

A mature crime picture whose decades-hopping action makes the effects of generational poverty obvious without having to spell it out, it lacks some of the flash expected in commercial genre pictures, but makes up for that in seriousness.

While it offers some provocative moral quandaries, it serves mostly as a showcase for Patrick Stewart.

Though less novel than Flanagan's previous pic, Oculus, Hush finds plenty of ways to flip roles in this cat-and-mouse game, letting his heroine get a bead on her stalker only to see the advantage taken away from her again.

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

Robot & Frank reminds quirk-hardened veterans that an odd premise and big heart don't have to add up to too-precious awards bait.

Kyle Mooney (a longtime McCary collaborator on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere) is winning in the lead role, naive but not cartoonishly so in a film that walks a fine line, credibility-wise.

Though Framing John DeLorean offers a more comprehensive look at a flamboyant subject's life, it doesn't entirely do justice to the tale, and the meta-movie nature of its dramatized scenes does little to help.

Docs like Jed Rothstein's excellent The China Hustle present us with such frequent occasions for outrage that, in the interest of fairness, it's time for a few top documentarians to assemble a five-minute disclaimer to run in front of each new exposé.