John DeFore

One of the most transporting depictions of the Downtown New York scene (in a field crowded with docs, memoirs and fictions — some by artists who weren't alive at the time), Sara Driver's Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat more than does justice to its acknowledged subject, partly by refusing to divorce him from his context.

The cast does what it can with this thin material, but even at its best, 4/20 Massacre is duller than exploitation cinema has any right to be.

Overflowing with wholesome vibes yet not sappy, the film provokes warm feelings, even if its subject doesn't really demand feature-length treatment.

This would be an interesting subject to explore at length, with a host who didn't seem to be padding an opportunity for self-promotion with the trappings of science. Unfortunately, Friedkin goes overboard in the short film's final scenes, describing a second encounter with the possessed woman that was far more dramatic than this one.

Though Cordula Kablitz-Post's feature debut Lou Andreas-Salome, The Audacity to be Free views this very unconventional woman through the conventions of the biopic, its drama benefits from a viewer's ignorance of her story.

The picture sometimes briefly achieves that rare feat, of being so terrible it entertains. Sometimes it's genuinely offensive as well. Unfortunately, enough dull stretches interrupt the action that only the most hard-core cinematic dumpster-divers will care.

Though less funny than the first, it will play well to those who are in the mood.

Attractive and capably acted but oddly airless, the drama is a downer without offering much reward for our time.

Sanchez delivers a couple of very effective twists that change the nature of his tale.

Less successful as a drama, the out-all-night period piece is overshadowed by many similar coming-of-age tales (the best of which are often made by artists with first-hand knowledge of the period they're depicting). But like its twenty-ish hero, it is well-meaning enough that some viewers will be forgiving.

The movie not only fails to represent the peak of the young Blumhouse shingle's output (Get Out is not their only inventive film), but gets silly in ways that we've seen on screen for decades.

Foley's cult may never grow as big as his most ardent fans would like. But Hawke and Rosen and Dickey have given the man something better than posthumous record sales.

Built around an impressive performance by relative newcomer Elvire Emanuelle, the drama recalls Karyn Kusama's Girlfight, though in that case the parental dynamics ran the opposite direction.

The doc's poignant heart is in observing how ACORN's most dedicated members have pushed to continue doing good after it was forced to close its doors.

Miracle is godawful, even by the standards of sports dramas, where healthy doses of manipulation and hagiography are accepted as part of the inspirational formula.

Lee draws us into the characters' space, judiciously using direct-address at the very end when all this inaction turns suddenly consequential. Pass Over is no happier in the end than the play that inspired it or the real events that inform how we interpret it

Miller knows exactly how the third act should play, and he manages (thanks in part to the increasingly intriguing creature work) to reach an emotionally satisfying conclusion without resorting to some big Gremlins-gore action climax.

Despite all appearances, Personal Problems is indeed moving toward a fairly conventional end. But along the way, it observes much of its era through the corners of its eyes.

For those ready to view it on its own terms, its gentle focus on family and persistence should go down easy.

Tagging along with the now octogenarian Jean Vanier and meeting some members of his surrogate family, Randall Wright's Summer in the Forest champions his vision by quietly watching it in harmonious action.

An easygoing hangout film that will ring true for anyone who has worked in the service industry, it continues the filmmaker's streak of making movies that have few obvious common denominators besides empathy for types of characters who rarely get it.

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.

Perhaps because it wants to play to both sides, the film's viewpoint is awfully muddied when it addresses conflict between traditional DJs — who know how to handle turntables, read a crowd's mood and do their thing for many hours at a time — and those who premix a whole set to a USB stick, hit play and just bounce up and down onstage.

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.

However well or poorly it matches the truth of Emily's life, the film's vision of her long relationship with Susan is warmly funny.

Especially in light of a short parable Cam tells early on about work and retirement, it's pretty obvious that Abbie's voluntary imprisonment is meant to reflect an American underclass that can't imagine any kind of life beyond our late-capitalist constraints.

Enjoyable despite its familiarity.

A fantastic cast doing fine work can't make this feel-good hokum believable.

A good-looking debut that's as obsessive as it sounds, Koki Shigeno's Ramen Heads celebrates those for whom Japan's famous dish is anything but a simple bowl of noodles and broth.

Though the story itself contains enough to intrigue a skeptic, Bagans' tendency to tart things up with horror-movie techniques makes this a movie to scare true believers, not win new ones over.

Keep the Change acknowledges that people with disabilities can sometimes be largely responsible for the biggest problems they face, just like the rest of us — and it doesn't need to be Pollyannaish to believe those problems are solvable.

A rollicking adventure through worlds both bleak and fantastic, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One makes big changes to the specifics and structure of Ernest Cline's best-selling novel but keeps the spirit and level-up thrills intact.

It plays to the strengths of its performers, from screen novices to the comic vet of the cast, Leslie Mann, who may never have had this good a showcase.

A terrifying thriller with a surprisingly warm heart, John Krasinski's A Quiet Place is a monster-movie allegory for parenting in a world gone very, very wrong.

James McAvoy and Alicia Vikander make a photogenic pair in this sometimes sweepingly romantic film, the most roundly satisfying fiction feature Wenders has made since, well, that first one about the angel so in love he gives up immortality.

A sometimes amusing, sometimes draggy and overstuffed affair that always relies on its talent-rich cast to carry the day.

A slow burn often works in creep-outs such as this, but here the pacing is a deficit, despite an especially good performance by Harper (of NBC's The Good Place) as the worker whose partner may be turning against him.

Eli Roth and screenwriter Joe Carnahan could have done the same thing, manifesting the rages and fears that afflict the country we live in right now. Instead they offer a cheap and dishonest Death Wish that (references to social media notwithstanding) is interchangeable with get-tough knockoffs that have flooded cinemas for decades.

Respectful of its heroes' suffering and willing (for a while, at least) not to afford them the usual big-screen satisfactions, it mourns a centuries-old genocide through the torment of three young protagonists.

The scene-setting works better than the storytelling in this sincere but clumsy picture, whose script (by first-timer Tony DuShane, author of the book it was based on) makes a bit of a muddle of the interactions between its teen and adult Jehovah's Witnesses (and the occasional troublemaking nonbeliever).

Survivors Guide to Prison demonstrates just how seriously even a blameless citizen should take every interaction with the police.

If the way Davis wraps things up is neither surprising nor remotely satisfying, it does at least hold a lesson for white-collar tyrants who haven't seen 9 to 5 or the dozens of workplace-revenge fantasies that followed it: "The assistant controls everything."

Though the emotional pull of this love triangle grows more compelling in the second half, for much of its running time November prefers to beguile us with the strangeness of its setting and characters.

A pervy premise and top-flight cast yield a mixed-bag spy flick.

Though competent in technical aspects, the pic's third-hand script and uninspired direction make it hard to invest in the heavy weight each character carries around with him.

A diverting if unimaginatively named little doc.

An empathetic drama ready to put straight-laced audiences in the shoes of a maligned subculture.

Judged as a fiction built on a kernel of fact, Fake Blood hardly distinguishes itself from the glut of mock-docs; it may be a refreshing break for the filmmakers, but viewers might prefer another zombie flick.

A love story whose resolution remains tough to predict, Outside In respects all its characters by not pretending their choices are easily made.

A trainwreck of a sci-fi flick bent on extending a franchise that should have died a peaceful death almost exactly one decade ago.

Beautiful settings and eccentric effects work enliven a tale that's more than meets the eye.

The movie soon devolves into an extremely familiar escape-the-monsters affair, with all the compounding dumbness usually involved when our fleeing heroes are forced to keep filming the action.

The often-very-funny picture entertains while affording its characters their share of no-laughing-matter concerns.

A pulpy and fun fight flick that is better in some respects than it needs to be, Retaliation may not do for Moussi what the original Kickboxer did for Van Damme, but it won't send fans home disappointed.

Robert Mockler's Like Me, while hardly for every taste, rises above the pack in a few ways — ranging from its ambitious style to the out-of-whack humanity of its two lead performances.

Increasingly tense and benefiting from a well-thought-out script by Tony Gilroy, it finds a slim opening for heroics in a place where all parties are tainted.

The creativity doesn't match up to the ideals here, even if Abe & Phil does offer one of the better final scenes (a grace note, really) seen in recent indies.

It offers an eccentric but accessible look at American high-rise history.

Suspenseful and funny, occasionally poignant and often nearly unbelievable, it captures a certain sociological flavor while remaining universally accessible.

In the end, Kangaroo is the kind of advocacy film that's most likely to convince you if you already believe.

The mob-war stuff here could not possibly be more rote.

Only the least critical genre auds are likely to enjoy it much.

Even working with some of the most mainstream ingredients one could possibly find (including, in a funny moment, an NSYNC video) and one of the most familiar settings on earth, Guy Maddin knows how to make things strange.

A workmanlike but fan-pleasing picture.

As the narrative limps along from one encounter to the next, a suspicion grows: Father Figures doesn't need to exist; but if it's going to exist, perhaps some sharper comedic talents could have developed it as a limited-run Netflix show, with each encounter developed as a half-hour episode.

From all indications, he's also that very rare genius who's a lovely guy — a soft-spoken, readily smiling man who is endearing company for the nearly two hours of Emma Franz's Bill Frisell: A Portrait.

Opening action sequences project a cartoony comic flavor that has promise, but that peters out as the battles grow increasingly cosmic.

The finished product, though plenty embarrassing, isn't quite involving enough to merit the kind of pile-on mockery that greeted Ayer's DC Comics abomination Suicide Squad.

Soul of Success does little to capture the eureka moments Canfield evidently produces for his followers. Maybe the doc is worried about giving the goods away for free.

Things get tedious as the filmmakers reach the end of their money and have to pack it all up without getting any celebrities on their record other than Glee's Naya Rivera.

Viewers who push through this silliness will be rewarded with an action climax that, while just about as ludicrous, is at least enjoyable.

His unpolished voiceover and the general sense of overkill aside, Panico delivers a quite respectable doc production.

This stranger-in-a-strange-land adventure has enough appeal to sustain its limited theatrical release.

The film's main appeal is in watching familiar actors pretend to be ordinary kids grappling with their new selves.

The doc delivers enough arresting Neapolitan moments that many viewers will consider tracking down the source material — still in print, nearly four decades after Lewis published it in 1978.

Attention-grabbing for its artifice but most affecting when it is unadorned.

First-time director Dean does an excellent job of marshalling old source material, setting the scene for an account of Lamarr's life on- and off-screen.

Less performance-centric than it might have been, the straightforward documentary consists largely of talking-head testimonials and interviews with current Trockadero members about how they spend their too-brief time offstage.

The film's title promises a story told with the tidy structure of the blues. (Either that, or it's a bad joke about Clapton's long struggle with alcoholism.) But Life proves weirdly assembled, with counterintuitive emphases.

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.

An amiable misfire that (for better or worse) isn't quite as nutty as it sounds, Seth Henrikson's Pottersville pairs Yuletide cheer with the deviance of the Furry scene and an out-of-control hoax involving an ersatz Bigfoot.

Though it's not particularly inventive, the film has a fine time pitting the office dwellers against each other.

What begins as an examination of middle-class-mom exasperation — in which demanding some marital equality makes one not just a figurative "bitch" but a literal one — turns into a more commonplace bad-dad parable in Marianna Palka's off-kilter, largely off-target satire Bitch.

Though we care for those who lost loved ones, and root for them as they pursue a decades-long hunt for the killers, No Stone Unturned plays like a very well made piece of true-crime television.

It's odd, for a film that ostensibly makes male vulnerability its ultimate goal, how much contempt it has for its most open and loving character.

Bad Match clearly only aspires to be a thriller with a surprise or two up its sleeve. On that front, it's adequate.

Gilbert is less interested in the ups and downs of Gottfried's public life than in showing what we've never seen.

Viewers who'd prefer a bit more psychological probing may be left unsatisfied, but most will appreciate this chance to hang out with the legendary whistle-blower.

Though this anecdote-stuffed doc leaves us wanting more of her songs-and-gags routine, it has just enough clips for us to wish she could return to the stage as well.

Hawke delivers a workmanlike performance, but can't redeem the third act's macho baloney; sadly, Rutger Hauer (introduced in the opening and then wasted) doesn't come save him.

Modest but funny, it makes a fine calling card for a performer deserving of bigger things.

The movie's reason for being is the chemistry between Gleeson — mop-headed and awkward, an idealistic milquetoast wearing a pajama top as a shirt — and Church, mustachioed and oozing testosterone, but coolly incisive despite the dumb misogyny of Grady's lines.

The sequel will impress any fan of the original. It's fresher than most of the low-budget thrillers gracing theaters lately.

While Zabielski and his cowriters never shortchange their stars in terms of screen time, their imaginations fail them when it comes to giving Crews and Method Man interesting things to do and say. In the case of Method Man, though, the rapper/actor's attitude alone carries him past the script's deficiencies.

Big, dumb, and boring, it finds the cowriter of Independence Day hoping to start a directing career with the same playbook — but forgetting several rules of the game.

Having already given us a shootout or two, the film grows more involving as Lefty fights for both his life and his good name. Pullman has no trouble making the character sympathetic, even as he maintains the near-ineptitude Lefty's known for.

In the end, the scariest thing about Boo 2! is the idea that A Madea Easter might be next.

A bouncy attempt to get a handle on the fast-changing state of things for pot smokers in America, Peter Spirer's The Legend of 420 wears its sympathies on its sleeve without coming off as a complete lightweight.

Few genre fans will fail to guess the direction in which this is heading. All viewers, though, will scratch their heads at a final plot point, an unnecessary gesture at odds with any conceivable motivation.

Involving and poignant if sometimes less informative than it might be.

Instead of improving on the original's visualization of the liminal state between life and death, director Niels Arden Oplev turns the conceit into just another excuse for rote haunting, making this Flatliners often indistinguishable from its 2017 thriller peers.

It feels like a gift from one outstanding character actor to another, but never one that indulges the thesp at the expense of the film.

Questions of musical taste (as opposed to hit-savvy reading of the zeitgeist) aside, Soundtrack of Our Lives does offer an informative primer for anyone unfamiliar with the scope of this truly impressive career.

Using her own experience with the syndrome as a springboard, Brea offers an affecting film.

A perfectly adequate family film for kids who love watching things they've seen many times before (which is to say, most kids), it offers plenty of chuckles for their parents but nothing approaching the glee of that first Lego Movie.

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.

Sharp dramatization and direct performances suffice to put the story's themes across more urgently than expected.

It's a role very well suited to Liam Neeson, whose righteousness fills the screen and sometimes seems all the movie can offer.

An excellent blend of musical behind-the-scenes, open-hearted interviews, and performance.

Where the final minutes of the movie suffer from clumsy storytelling, most of what precedes them sits well within the romantic finding-oneself comfort zone, and Solo, while not able to imbue her character with Amelie-like spark, helps keep things from getting treacly.

A giant thud of a film that makes one doubt the fact that West ever directed a proper Hollywood movie.

As the script and performances dive inward, exploring David's ability to endure while sending Cal into memories of hunting trips with his own father (Bill Pullman), the movie uses Todd McMullen's fine scenic photography to show how stranded they are.

Given the public's undying curiosity about the literary star who rejected fame, it's surprising he hasn't been the subject of more films. Rebel in the Rye shows how hard it is to satisfyingly pull that enigmatic man out of his hiding place.

Despite its obviously strong philosophical and emotional interest in the nature of memory, the picture is most satisfying as a whodunit, observing Dinklage's deeply empathetic interviews with those who've been wounded, not helped, by a procedure that was meant to be therapeutic.

Trophy isn't as good at drawing moral conclusions as it is at laying out the difficult issues around hunting, conservationism and the trade in animal parts. But the film will be involving for those on all sides of animal-welfare debates.

Movies like Company Town are most useful when they can be shown to the unconvinced and cut through the arguments of self-interested parties.

Kamiyama, a vet of the Ghost in the Shell franchise, brings plenty of sci-fi genre ingredients to what at times might look like a Miyazaki coming-of-age adventure. Though occasionally lopsided, the mix works well.

Its run-of-the-mill standoff may appease some hardcore horror buffs, but it offers nothing to the rest of us and will likely be forgotten before the blood on the ground dries.

While general audiences may wish for a bit more technical information about how Turner keeps track of cards without being able to see them, Korem understandably seizes on the emotional arc before him, following Turner's late-middle-age crisis through to its happy resolution.

The movie devotes an inexcusably short time to the many years Ronson worked after the Spiders from Mars disbanded — and, Hunter aside, talks to nearly nobody from that time.

Though not as fresh or funny as its predecessor, this feature directing debut for actor Jay Baruchel stays true to its spirit and will please its most enthusiastic fans.

It looks better than many of its peers, with only one or two lapses of taste in production design, FX and costumes. (The cutesy CG sidekick of our main hero is the biggest sore thumb.) Diverting but hardly novel enough to win over Stateside viewers outside the circle of hardcore Asian film buffs.

Self-consciously button-pushing pictures like this one usually leaven their transgressions with at least a bit of winking irony, but no humor is to be found here, from the opening frames (slo-mo shots of pro-life and pro-choice factions shouting at each other) to the last.

More of a challenge to the eyes and ears than most pics of its ilk, it invests slightly more in its characters than usual, but not enough to make us care if they live or die.

It intends to introduce novelty to its overfamiliar setup, but uneven casting and a very thin script get in the way.

Its central conceit is so nonsensical that even devoted horror buffs may balk.

Sadly, the ambitious film never approaches the gravitas that helped the Lord of the Rings films involve us in their mythology.

Dead air left in conversations may be meant to unnerve viewers, but is more likely to bore them.

Hitman's Bodyguard offers more than enough shoot-'em-up to keep multiplex auds munching their popcorn, but sharper talents behind the camera might have made it considerably more enjoyable.

An affecting debut for anyone who has dwelled on the far outskirts of adolescent social life, Ian MacAllister McDonald's Some Freaks captures high school/college agony without transmuting it into thank-God-we-survived-it nostalgia.

If there was a shred of life in the movie's performances (Snipes is joined in his phone-it-in appearance by Anne Heche and the obligatory pro wrestler Seth Rollins), or in Stockwell's direction, some in the audience might actually make that rarely true claim, "This is so bad it's good." They'd probably still be wrong.

Though satisfying enough to please many casual moviegoers drawn in by King's name and stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it will likely disappoint many serious fans and leave other newbies underwhelmed.

Gook rises above message-movie mediocrity, enjoying its characters too much to use them as political mouthpieces.

Sensitive readers should be informed that Kuso is not for you; even those with a strong tolerance for monster-movie gore are far from guaranteed to accept its warm, clumpy bath of repugnant ickiness.

Far too broad to be deep in any respect, the lightweight documentary benefits from access to plenty of top-shelf interviewees but plays like a back-patting muddle.

Drew Stone's Who the F**ck is That Guy shows how total, unabashed music fandom took a nobody from New York City's far reaches to the heart of the music business.

If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy.

Jason Zeldes, an editor on Twenty Feet from Stardom, makes an accomplished debut as director here, delivering a film whose polished aesthetic matches its social import and potent emotions.

A loathsome redemption tale that rings false on every front except when depicting capitalistic assholery (and sometimes fails to convince us even then), Williams' directing debut The Headhunter's Calling (from a script by former corporate headhunter Bill Dubuque) not only expects us to root for its unlovable protagonist, but expects us to do so when that man is played by Gerard Butler.

Despite occasionally shaky storytelling, the doc sticks to its mission even as the most fundamental obstacles arise, producing a dramatic account that will make all do-gooders think twice about how they spend their charitable dollars.

A useful primer for those who haven't paid enough attention and a synthesis for those who've been overwhelmed by years of upsetting news reports, the film explains cause-and-effect relationships that, while hardly unexplored, merit continued attention.

Treating the subject of creative exploitation not with overheated moralism but as a year-in-the-life social chronicle, the picture makes a solid, if very tardy, follow-up to the director's 1999 breakout Jesus' Son.

Very funny people are running around onscreen doing very unfunny things.

Sticking mostly to one corner of the turf Berry has staked out, this unusual and quite beautiful documentary seeks to connect with him by getting to know the land and those who work it near the author's Kentucky home.

The question of decades-old torture is an important one, of course, but hardly makes this a must-see doc when there are so many present-tense stories of police misconduct to investigate.

Competent on all fronts but never dazzling, it should please genre devotees.

Where Garfield's Peter Parker displayed a believable 21st-century angst, we return largely to the character's wide-eyed roots with Tom Holland, whose performance is thoroughly winning even when the script isn't helping him.

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.

This film, looking so little like its indie contemporaries, nurtures our appreciation of small details, emotional accomplishments most films would breeze right past or bring too sharply into focus.

In Transit is a pure dose of the humanism that helped establish Albert Maysles as one of nonfiction film's key voices.

The issues it addresses are of massive importance.

The preposterousness of Gregg Hurwitz's screenplay isn't enough to throw star Naomi Watts off her game, and the actor's sincere performance may suffice to keep a segment of the family-film demographic on board, barely.

The execution is weak, and Crowley does himself no favors by repeatedly invoking the memory of more psychologically persuasive films like Five Easy Pieces and Deliverance.

Weirdly out of place here, Cruise brings little daring and less charm to the film, though to be fair to the actor, his character's a stiff.

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.

As generic paranormal mysteries go, this is an awfully dull one, filled with dead air and stiff direction.

Degan's first film, the effort often suffers from hazy storytelling, but its real difficulty for many viewers will be its protagonist, who isn't the most sympathetic proxy for Americans curious about the plant extract's suitability to treat depression.

The pic may have an unlikely story (in real-world love affairs, this kind of second chance rarely ends happily), but benefits from unusually authentic performances.

Scodelario, of the Maze Runner films and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, is just about the only member of the cast who seems to believe she's expected to be more than a thin generic functionary or flamboyant scene-stealer.

Sacred might have made for a satisfying web series of thematically related short films. But as a short feature-length movie, it's not much to see.

Though it doesn't address all of their complaints, the movie makes an excellent case against those who seek blanket prohibitions against genetically modified organisms — and, maybe more importantly, against those of us who support such bans just because we assume it's the eco-conscious thing to do.

Healy knows exactly the mix of comical bumbling and psychological tension he wants here.

Smart, unpredictable performances by Debra Winger and Tracy Letts and an uncommonly crucial score by Mandy Hoffman ensure that the picture's odd nature won't be misconstrued as indecisiveness.

The pic relies almost entirely on the subtle comic gifts of its two leads, finding little in the way of plot to kick its characters into laugh-generating action.

Even for viewers who know much more about Burden than that thing with the rifle, it's almost certain to trigger a hunger for more.

A solid backgrounder on a political operative many believe to have changed the course of U.S. history.

The doc is less interested in analyzing Ledger's acting technique than in impressing viewers with his overall creative drive.

Fashionistas will obviously appreciate this undishy but intimate doc, which is especially strong in its account of the designer's flowering as a creative teen.

A filmmaking decision at the end of the film thumbs its nose at us, with the language of editing seeming to contradict the message of Shoaf's screenplay.

The good news for fans is that The Trip to Spain is no Godfather III. The moderately bad news is that this sometimes hilarious outing is the one in which the conceit comes to resemble a lushly produced, irregularly broadcast TV series.

A cross-cultural buddy-cop flick so bottom-of-the-barrel it would've been hooted off screens even when such things were in commercial demand.

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.

In the absence of sharp writing, all the movie really has to go on is our interest in its heroes — who, happily, are a touch less generic than their surroundings.

One of the things The Circle gets right on multiple occasions is that, once one has bought into a technology like this, the problems it creates are invitations not to abandon it but to seek further technological solutions.

Steven Alexander's A Night Without Armor is a two-hander whose attempts to transcend staginess generally fall flat.

Seeing these likable oldsters talk at length is just about the entire point of this picture, which isn't nearly as good at guiding us through history or explaining technical minutiae as it is at relating to their well-earned sense of pride.

The result should find admirers among the fanboy crowd, raising the stakes for the team's next feature, even if it has little crossover potential.

Engaging and lively.

Fate delivers exactly what fans have come to expect, for better and for worse.

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.

Hubby captures an artistic personality that could manifest big ideas without a shred of snobbery, could deflate pomposity while still inviting deep thought.

An amiable if hardly unusual buddy pic.

The Widers apply great artistic ambition to a story few would handle in this manner, resulting in a haunting film.

The picture struggles to find a satisfying rhythm as the members of this multinational, co-ed team get slooshed up by Calvin or suffer related lethal mishaps.

Given a cast of this size, characterizations are predictably thin, though strong character actors like John C. McGinley and Michael Rooker ensure some viewer engagement with Those About to Die.

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.

Frank about economic realities but far from a downer, this curious and humanistic doc is sure to alter the way city-dwellers look at those who linger around trash cans

Those whose curiosity wasn't sated by Alex Gibney's highbrow Going Clear will appreciate this sometimes funny but not unserious picture.

Though cameras weren't allowed in the courtroom, Rosenstein gets a whiff of the drama there by watching as Bonauto reviews her own performance after the fact, pausing after each exchange to dispassionately critique the way she made her case.

It's no rival for le Carré when it comes to the old cross/double-cross stuff; but a surfeit of style and a tasty supporting turn by James McAvoy help fill the time between fight scenes, which — this being a film by the stuntman/codirector behind John Wick — are pretty much the whole point.

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.

Ersatz local color aside, suffice to say that Song to Song is not designed to win back onetime admirers who felt Malick's To the Wonder and Knight of Cups drowned in their own navels. Though offering the occasional radiant moment (usually involving scenery), it is of a piece with those films.

Though the script's handling of the decision itself is uncomfortably abrupt, everything leading up to it benefits from a convincing, lived-in vibe.

In Water & Power: A California Heist, Zenovich tackles a subject of enormous importance, but fails to match that import with dramatic storytelling.

Throughout the film, a talent-rich gang of cinematographers (many doc-makers in their own right, like Approaching the Elephant's Amanda Rose Wilder and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo's Jessica Oreck) favor that intimacy over the big picture.

Van Cotthem's performance is wholly convincing, which might not be something to brag about, and the film flatlines right along with him.

The film's last act grows more enjoyable by the minute, observing as the teacher stands up not just to his tormentor but to everyone else who might want to demean him.

The picture hits many of the expected schoolyard beats with just enough specificity (the vegetarian boy's first encounter with fried chicken, for example) to keep it from feeling generic.

Leonard and Foley offer enough semi-naked sex scenes here to prove that quantity is no substitute for chemistry.

Amateurish on many levels and at some point seeming to have been made up on the spot (which would be quite a feat for animation), the collaboration between directors Thorbjorn Christoffersen and Stefan Fjeldmark is a strong contender for the year's worst film, and not in a fun way.

The writing/directing debut of Minhal Baig enlists experienced actors but has little idea what to do with them, making a hash of its intended meditation on the compromises required by long-term relationships.

Viewers who don't mind the lack of dramatic tension may appreciate Dorff's credible take on his modest, gentlemanly character.

A good-natured cross-cultural romp in which you can barely be expected to take any human interaction seriously, save for those in which humans smack up against each other with force.

Rings finds a couple of nice, if inconsequential, little chills.

Things get a bit busier than this modest film requires, but rural languor prevails in the end — if not with the "grace" of the title, at least with forgiveness.

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.

A deeply unpromising debut horror flick by visual-effects veteran Robert Legato.

As a sympathetic look at two likeable lovers who don't know what's good for them, it's enough to give us a rooting interest — even if we're rooting for the two protagonists to accept the consequences of their mistakes and move on.

Perhaps cowed by respect for a real man who suffered so much, Stanfield seems reluctant to charm viewers. Warner is sympathetic, of course, but Ruskin continually requires wounded earnestness from his lead, and shows little of whatever spark of inner life must have been required for Warner to survive these years without losing his mind.

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

Jack Black...finds a role that invites a great deal of Jack Black-ness, full of peppy showmanship and thickly accented dialogue. But even moviegoers with a strong tolerance for that shtick may be less than involved with this half-charming feature, which inspires some sympathy for its protagonist but not enough to carry the film.

When the film moves out of the paranoiac realm and into action, the violence is deeply satisfying, the twists delightful.

A comedy in both the current and the original senses of the word, Little Hours earns its laughs before ensuring a happy end.

A funny and tender drawn-from-life love story.

The movie, in which Shenk and Cohen (makers of the standout eco-doc The Island President) take the reins ably from Davis Guggenheim, hardly can hope to create the sensation of its Oscar-winning predecessor. But it finds plenty to add, both in cementing the urgency of Gore's message and in finding cause for hope.

If Fraud presented its fabrication, then followed up with whatever bits of unmanipulated footage might explain itself, some moviegoers would find the exercise worthwhile. But nothing in the film itself acknowledges the source or the actual nature of these scenes.

Viewers expecting a garden-variety horror flick will likely recoil, but those seeking new voices in Mexican cinema may well hail Minter's effort.

Several respectable actors offer dicey performances here, but Rappaport's screenplay is the real villain, expecting thin references to real-world financial peril to paper over gaping holes in credibility and plain-old drama.

More true to its title than viewers may expect, the doc cares more about underlying principles than the details of any one controversy.

Day's debut succeeds in part thanks to its modest scope, viewing the street-art phenomenon through an attempt to rescue one of its highly perishable creations for the public good.

Martin's Dean is more than funny enough to earn its keep, a gentle misfit tale that only gets baldly therapeutic at the very end.

A promising if not quite audacious debut by Robin Pront, the film benefits from a solidly envisioned family dynamic but doesn't really generate much heat until its final act.

Honest performances from Fichtner, Jon Voight as the school's principal, and others make the picture watchable, but can't make up for lackluster storytelling.

A handsome period piece that plays more like a scant-clues mystery than like the psychological thriller it intends to be, Andy Goddard's A Kind of Murder turns to the work of Patricia Highsmith but finds little of what made Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley such nail-biters.

A very hard-to-believe premise sinks an overserious drama.

Producers may have envisioned a Die Hard-like cat-and-mouse game between their protagonists and the heavily armed goon squad. But even using the more appropriate Olympus Has Fallen as a benchmark, Kill Ratio is a snooze.

Though his stories suggest a pansexual curiosity, Neil himself seems only mildly engaged, and sluggish direction keeps both scenes with the nerd's dream girl and the jailbait-courting man from generating much heat.

While Bousman's climax is a not terribly original effects-laden haunted house, the house's builder, and his motives, have enough of their own flavor to please a hardened horror fan.

The screenplay finds ways to make this more involving than the average flee-the-monster storyline and, by the genre's standards, direction and performances rate reasonably well.

Rains, who was given an acting award by the Tribeca jury, brings such a sense of purpose to the part that the movie never goes slack.

While the doc uses reenactment and plentiful period news footage to chart how Sands withered away, and to capture the mixture of respect and grief his determination to die produced in supporters, the film is always about more than Sands.

Compared to other thrillers that treat webcams as a structural gimmick or visualize social media in ways that look corny even by the time credits roll, Videophilia casts a singular spell.

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

Invention and effects are the name of the game here, predictably, and this world invites us in as effectively as the best of the Potter episodes.... Somewhat less effective is the film's character-bonding agenda.

Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill is clumsy and frustrating in many ways. But it demonstrates enough sincerity and openness to challenging ideas — letting representatives of this problematic movement make their case clearly and convincingly — that one wishes it were able to look at multiple sides of this debate at the same time.

It's one of the worst performances Cage has given — and perversely, since he's playing a madman, it contains none of the unabashed weirdness that has made some bad Cage performances guilty pleasures.

[A] minor but enjoyable doc.

Just as one should be wary of tobacco-safety data produced with tobacco-industry money, skeptical audiences will have a hard time putting too much stock in a doc so strongly aligned with vape entrepreneurs.

Jack's Apocalypse holds few rewards.

As our encounters with him continue, it becomes clear that Stroman — whose early life nearly guaranteed problems ahead — evolved dramatically behind bars, and that his remorse for his crimes is sincere.

[An] empty ponderousness suffocating the film.

An affecting brainteaser with echoes of Lynchian dissociation.

Many Christians yearning for faith-based entertainment will be moved by this film, and that crowd may well ensure a profit for the production. But more picky viewers will admit that even taken solely as an exploration of the trials of being a Christian teen, it's awfully weak tea as a movie, instantly disposable if not for the tragic backdrop.

Unassuming but warm and thoroughly involving.

Strong performances propel a movie that wears its influences (De Palma, Lynch) on its sleeve without feeling like a copycat.

While those of us who've seen dozens of similar docs could name plenty that taught or moved or enraged us more, Flood's filmmakers are intelligent in their use of the biggest asset they have: Not only do they keep their movie star onscreen, they work hard to tie viewers' concern for the environment up with his biography.

Kelly spends so long establishing these two relationships, looking at the gifts and the internet fame and the inevitable possessiveness, that he has little time for the developments that might've turned a better paced version of this story into a true-crime nailbiter.

While the three leads are committed and give respectable performances (albeit ones that fail to conjure the artists who inspired the characters), NY84 has little going for it that hasn't been taken directly from much better books and movies.

Fin Edquist's generic but pleasant script offers only a couple of groaner puns to those chaperoning kids in the audience ("got a reptile dysfunction, have you?" is an example); but it's brought to solid life by Aussie thesps Toni Collette, Richard Roxburgh, and others.

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.

Even those who know Mirza Sahiba may have a hard time reconciling the way this decorous present-tense melodrama is juxtaposed with pompous period flashbacks to that story.

A muddled psychological horror film about a young man coping with the death of his father, Jack Goes Home is a puzzle few viewers will care to piece together.

Personal footage interacts intriguingly with reportage here, sometimes making it more than the greatest-hits montage it initially seems.

The comedian's delivery, high-energy throughout, helps him put over material that is funny but hardly justifies the record-setting receipts of Hart's 2016 tour.

As the melee comes to feel like it may never end, the film executes a masterful narrative shift that will produce instant lumps in many viewers' throats.

Danger doesn't quite translate into sustained drama here, in part because the reliance on voiceover distances us from the action.

There's enough variety in the workplace settings here to keep us interested, but the doc's chronology isn't the smoothest.

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.

One of those not-rare-enough limp comedies that leaves viewers wondering who managed to round up so much underexploited talent.

Among the Believers is a step toward understanding how such a man can be entrusted with such a large percentage of a nation's children.

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

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?

Sutherland brings some believable warmth to a film whose spiritual "aha" moments are generally packaged too tidily to hit home.

The director ties themes together at the end with more finesse than usual, letting a couple of meaningful visuals speak for themselves where he might have thrown in a line or two of explanatory dialogue. And as for that final twist, it's a doozy.

Instead of exploding into crime-clan war, the picture trickles into a kind of shrugging, "it is what it is" look at life on the wrong side of the law.

The event-stuffed screenplay seems frightened of the running time associated with historical romances, though, excising any occasion for reflection or distraction; as a result, the picture moves with a mechanical predictability that would be considerably more annoying with a less watchable cast in front of us.

The cast's likability keeps us on board, watching the sometimes baffling behavior onscreen just like those on the streets of Seoul, who gape up at a monster in horror but can't make themselves flee to the suburbs.

If it leaves something to be desired at the start of the tale, the procedural details of seeking release and exoneration are well represented.

An icky but engrossing docu-chiller that may provoke OCD-like ratproofing.

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 poignancy of Hanks's reading of Waitstill's letters — that old staple of Ken Burns documentaries — personalizes the tale, but doesn't make this story as compelling as many feature-film (or even documentary) treatments of similar WWII rescue tales.

The fact that not every terrible thing can be remedied or appropriately punished is a tough lesson even for adults to learn, but A Monster Calls helps find the sense in it.

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.

Things head eventually in an abstract direction that may have played better onstage than it does here ("we must forget what we didn't see here," guests are eventually instructed), but a compelling atmosphere lingers.

There's no way for all this to resolve that isn't fairly absurd. But Morelli's light touch generally keeps the goofiness from becoming tiresome, especially given the help of some quirktronica compositions by Kid Koala on the soundtrack.

At some point, we realize we've stopped counting the '80s dance hits we recognize (or trying to figure out when that Frankie Goes to Hollywood remix will end) and have become invested in the social lives of the men and women on camera.

Though too inside-baseball for many casual art fans, it should find some takers in its nationwide tour of bookings at art houses and museums.

Anne Frank's story has always been a moving way of personalizing the horrors of this war, and that remains the case here; but Fouce's dry doc is best suited for screening rooms in history museums.