John DeFore

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.

Though it leaves some avenues underexplored and gives a bit too much attention to the sci-fi landmark name-checked in its title, the film makes for engrossing, sometimes unsettling viewing.

Though peppered with lots of photos and clips fans haven’t seen, rapid-fire editing ensures we nearly never see enough for a rare clip’s humor to land — instead, the montage persuasively conjures the camaraderie and creative enthusiasm we all wanted to believe in: Yes, these guys were great friends while they were transforming comedy. Then they weren’t. Now they are again.

Though difficult to watch, it's a film that helps outsiders confront the horrifying ways such events can cause damage for decades after the fact.

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.

A crime-flick love story as Pop-conscious as Wright's earlier work but unironic about its romantic core, it will delight the director's fans but requires no film-geek certification.

Jaume Balabueró's effective thriller Sleep Tight puts more value on slow-building bad vibes than on pulled-curtain shock, but its treatment of mental illness and voyeurism, lightly salted with pitch-black humor, will feel pleasingly familiar to fans of the older film.

An assured doc debut that knows how to stand out in a crowded field, Craig Atkinson's Do Not Resist avoids the handwringing format of other (very welcome) examinations of 21st-century American policing, offering instead something like a despairing tone poem.

Stuffed with drama, both climbing-related and not.

As entertaining as any showbiz documentary in recent memory.

Thanks in part to excellent editing and a subtly gripping score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, LA 92 never lags during its nearly two-hour running time.

The film represents another leap forward for [Morris].

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.

Carol Morley's sadly fascinating Dreams of a Life, which plays like a more artful cousin to TV's true-crime documentaries, slowly assembles a portrait of Vincent, unfolding in a way that should earn fans in its niche theatrical run.

Though some plot elements are pushily therapeutic, they're offset by others whose novelty distinguishes Rudderless from movies of its sort.

Some of these trekkers are more resilient than others, but all seem to agree there's a high, maybe insurmountable barrier between them and civilians. However sympathetic we are, they say, we can hardly understand what they've been through. High Ground makes that difficult task a little easier.

Though not as stuffed with rapid-fire laughs as In the Loop...this makes a very fine sophomore outing.

This is among the most enjoyable art-docs of the last couple of years.

Notes on Blindness is more than sufficient to prove that sightlessness, however unwelcome, is a richer experience than we may assume.

Building on the strengths of his justly celebrated debut, maintaining its distinctive point-of-view while broadening the scope of its sympathy, Cooper Raiff‘s Cha Cha Real Smooth is a more mainstream film than 2020’s Shithouse without feeling the least bit generic.

A documentary composed entirely of vintage source material, letting the era speak for itself and the "Great Communicator" show, oddly, both more and less of himself than intended.

While the film plays strongly as both mystery and haunted love story, Bush also gets plenty of mileage simply from the drama of one man's attitude toward himself, if such a thing even exists.

More exciting is Hu's handling of the minutes before violence erupts: His staging and editing pinballs our attention back and forth around the small inn, as conspirators furtively communicate with each other or gauge how to respond to the suspicions of Khan and his underlings. These masterful sequences are a delight.

Thorny, blood-boiling and finely made.

Patient viewers will find much to enjoy in this parable-like story, which is billed as a heist film but is ultimately less concerned with thievery than with moral justice.

A powerful documentary that reminds those of us who've moved on to other worries that this one is far from finished -- and that a government that proclaimed outrage during the summer of 2010 has seemingly done little to prevent or prepare for another such catastrophe.

A cool, confident debut whose steady build mirrors the increasing stakes faced by its namesake, John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal is a nail-biter that makes the most of the tough side Aubrey Plaza has shown in even her most comic performances.

What moviegoers do get is a film both thoughtful and convincing, sympathetic but not flattering to a man who had just three years after this period's end to make himself immortal.