John DeFore

Amanda Knox makes for succinct, involving viewing — a true-crime doc that acknowledges the lingering debates over its subject's guilt while prompting one to ask: Why did anyone ever believe this outrageous stuff in the first place, much less cling to it for years?

The result is uniquely powerful, putting faces and human consequences to a political dispute that seemingly will never end.

Catherine Gund's Born to Fly works very well as a portrait of a maverick artistic sensibility, even if it will leave some viewers wanting more in terms of performance footage.

A perfectly chosen cast sells this unhurried comedy, which flows unconventionally but is still, by a long stretch, the most mainstream-friendly picture Bujalski has made.

Young and Whisenant hatch a finale that is corny and wonderful — a rare chance to watch someone's dream come true, and an exhortation for others to follow their own weird enthusiasms wherever they might lead.

Throughout, the film's subjects convince us they're doing nothing more than being themselves, so much so that a cynical advisor told Sutton he should market his film as a documentary. That label would prepare potential viewers for Pavilion's lack of story, but it would make a lie of the movie's patient, finely drawn loveliness.

A critique of post-millennial journalism is one of several ideas raised but mostly abandoned in this genre pastiche, which never really coalesces despite some promising elements.

Beautifully put together in just about every way, it will be potent stuff on the small screen but deserves its moment in theaters.

More than most adaptations, this is a film true to Shakespeare's practice of employing all means at hand to keep the crowd entertained.

Recounting his attempt to learn more about his great-grandfather's killing of a black man in 1946, Wilkerson is a compelling enough guide that it may be some time before the audience starts to wonder if the central mystery is a red herring.

Overall, though, the project brings enough good into this rough corner of the world that viewers can walk out with honest cause to be hopeful for its inhabitants.

Following Matt through a public transition and capturing its unique set of complications, Del Monte offers a warm portrait of a thoroughly winning subject.

Tracy Droz Tragos works to get beyond us-versus-them simplicity in Abortion: Stories Women Tell, focusing on personal narrative over politics in a humanistic look at an issue that promises to remain divisive for the foreseeable future.

The film represents another leap forward for [Morris].

Armando Iannucci's The Personal History of David Copperfield turns the author's well-loved autobiographical epic into a fast-moving yarn, sometimes hilarious and always entertaining.

Interspersing technical talk with a quick history of nuclear testing and other near-misses, the doc demonstrates how often situations like this arise.

Honest and well made but lacking a strong hook.

Visually ravishing, thought-provoking and benefitting from just enough playfulness to set it apart from the nature-doc herd, the film is eco-relevant without being at all dominated by climate change, which is only one of many subjects discussed.

Calling itself a "vision" as opposed to a "film," Icaros attempts to conquer fear — of death, of blindness, of loss — by accepting the potency of a magic it knows it will never understand.

A chilly allegory whose antihero is both compelling and repulsive.

The solution to Kyle's problems is as predictable as everything else in this cookie-cutter picture, which is only made tolerable by the surprisingly solid cast Speer has attracted.

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.

Though its cinematography is nothing to write home about, the action Alive and Kicking captures is so transfixing, one marvels that dancers can keep it up for five years, much less five decades.

A cogent, wide-ranging look at both the discovery and the nascent, soon-to-be-giant fights humans are having over it.

The story gets engrossing enough that we don't much miss what Avrich doesn't offer.

Suffice it to say that what satisfies on one level raises questions on others, and that certain plot points mightn't play as well without someone as charismatic as Johnson putting them across.

It may never be quite solid enough for us to be truly worried about its inhabitants' happiness, but watching them pursue that happiness is a uniquely diverting experience.

Very much a work of its time, the documentary offers unique perspectives for fans of both the saxophonist and the pioneering filmmaker, but is unlikely to attract a broad audience beyond those camps.