John DeFore

Good-looking but not very effective adaptation of the seedy classic by "Grifters" author Jim Thompson.

Lucy plays more like a big dumb superhero flick than sci-fi.

A fable-like horror mystery with strong comic and romantic tendencies, Alexandre Aja's Horns draws on source material by cult scribe (and son of Stephen King) Joe Hill to deliver something much more beguiling than the straighter genre fare (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) that made his name.

Though cheerful and highly polished, the doc's storytelling is less effective than it might've been, a failing balanced by the likability of its lead characters and the scrappy spirit of their project.

Less music-stuffed but more conceptually ambitious than the average music doc.

The script, by Beers and Mathew Harawitz, offers a little less invention in this endless-repeat scenario than it might have.

While the supernatural side of the film suffers a flaw or two — continued references to The Doors are superfluous and sometimes chuckle-inducing — its central conflict works.

Unfocused, overly long documentary raises provocative questions.

Blood-spattered crime comedy benefits from whip-smart pacing and quirky Scandinavian attitude.

The movie doesn't really focus on many individuals long enough to make them compelling screen characters.

All but a must-see for anyone who knows enough to care about the way laws govern information transfer in the digital age, Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is an inspiring account of the life of, and an infuriating chronology of the persecution of, one of the Internet's most impressive prodigies.

Sometimes tender, sometimes frantic and always funny, the film's surprising coherence is exemplified in a climactic scene that pairs credible heartbreak with pure slapstick.

As allegory, the picture requires viewers to connect most of the dots without assistance, offering a preachy bit of dialogue once or twice but failing to use action or the camera to say much about non-sanguinary addictions.

There's nothing new under the sun, but About Alex is very, very not new. Luckily, most of its capable cast muster the warmth we require, and Zwick's script offers more humor (however mild the laughs are) than sentimentality.

Where some other recent observation-only docs (a format seemingly on the rise among festival entries) have suffered from sluggish pacing or needless obscurity, Light benefits from Yoonha Park's editing, which keeps things moving without suffering from ADHD.

The doc highlights undeniably important realities; but it doesn't find a narrative that sustains feature treatment.

Though the inventions of Misan Sagay's script emphasize concerns over dowries and social rank that will be grating for many contemporary viewers, extracting little of the humor that Austen regularly found in such hang-ups, the picture's sour notes are balanced by fine performances and clear historical appeal.

Hugely entertaining for much of its short running time before a third act that's problematic for various reasons, the film benefits from a top-notch cast and some sharp dialogue but will leave many viewers scratching their heads.

The film offers some diverting background on the man.

Meditative, glossy doc provides some glimpses behind the curtain but isn't terribly enlightening.

It's laugh-packed, self-aware in a manner that lets everyone in on the joke, and goofily satisfying in the action department.

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.

Newfoundland-set comedy is formulaic but pleasing.

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.

Unfocussed editing and Mark Rivett's unimaginative score contribute to a lightweight feel that is best suited to TV viewing.

The new film adds slices to our understanding of life in this war but not so much so that it feels essential.

Stocking the supporting cast with top-drawer talent, he gives most of his costars little to do besides attract our attention on movie posters.

The silliness of the conceit is far from the biggest problem in a picture that has no clue what to do with the wealth of talent in front of the camera.

The film becomes a hodgepodge that will enlighten few viewers.

Engaging characters and the persistent appeal of dinosaurs benefit the doc, whose Byzantine legal content might otherwise be off-putting.

A compassionate and psychologically revealing doc.

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

More warm-hearted than funny, Schwarz's feature debut benefits from an intelligent script and sympathetic lead performance by Griffin Dunne

An elegant meditation on one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary art.

Documentary will play best with very serious classical fans.

Another deep disappointment for fans of the raw, exciting "Ong Bak."

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.

Thomas Haden Church hits the exact balance of desperation and resignation demanded by the peculiar story.

Motivated by an earnest need to inspire, Schmidt's debut suffers from stiffness but improves as it goes, the tension of its plot overcoming many dramatic failings.

Pretty in a decaying-opulence sort of way and well cast, the film is more superficial than its nods to highbrow culture would suggest.

Taking an approach that's as unassuming as its almost instantly lovable subject, the film neither plays up the novelty of teens obsessed with Bible trivia nor attempts to gin up fake intrigue.

Etxeberria is a good match for the film's Cassavetes-inspired character study. She's no Gena Rowlands, but this woman is clearly under the influence of something that might destroy more lives than hers.

Funny, fascinating, and packing a surprisingly poignant twist, the doc will get plenty of free publicity and, for unsqueamish moviegoers, will live up to the hype.

One of the aspects that keeps Time from projecting an advertorial vibe, its indifference to outside voices, may also leave casual fans wanting a bit more.

Action takes a backseat to local color in well-acted drama.

Though its even-tempered account may be more thorough than print and TV coverage at the time, the doc doesn't offer anything dramatic enough to draw many eyeballs at this late date.

The story's conclusion benefits from a closure that is satisfying despite — and even because of — its predictability.

The personalities and rhetoric are colorful and the film's presentation is lively, though some viewers will wish for a little more rigor.

A chilly allegory whose antihero is both compelling and repulsive.

Formulaic and often hard to swallow, the picture offers little beyond the familiar pleasures of Duvall's old-coot mode.

Katz has a clear investment in Healy's character and convincingly depicts his choices as inevitable even when they become anything but.

Carbone's script doesn't tell a story so much as watch the fluctuations in emotional energy here, quietly observing activities both directly and indirectly related to the loss. As a director he's patient but never sluggish, taking time to appreciate the still landscapes his characters move through.

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

Less a rock-doc than a surprisingly affecting look at sibling dynamics in a creative family where one brother is vastly more successful than the other.

Though it doesn't quite hit the target, Plotnick's vision of the future of the past is peculiar enough to resist quick dismissal.

Meyer and Luke Matheny's script is full of the kind of nit-picky detail one hears when birders converse, and milks some life lessons out of philosophical differences between "listers" and "watchers."

Revealing tour doc showcases a quick wit and a bruised soul.

Sadly believable and benefiting from an unshowy performance by first-timer Gina Piersanti, it will have many viewers eager to see what Hittman does next.

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.

Amusing but not as funny or suspenseful as it could be.

Enjoyable heist pic is more talk than action.

Captivating for a long stretch.

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.

The easygoing comedy keeps a familiar story going despite minor plot hiccups.

Respectably crafted but short on invention and serious scares.

Annette Bening captivates as the self-delusionist, with Ed Harris ruggedly irresistible as the object of her fantasy.

More a tone poem or gallery installation piece than a verite outing.

A likeable if familiar underdog tale.

Overlong, willfully obscure and scatologically extreme, the film will elicit a variety of negative responses despite offering some individual elements that, on their own, would surely impress any of Barney's admirers. The work simultaneously is more fully realized and less creatively inspired than the Cremaster cycle.

More casual fans are advised to wait a movie or two and see if Begos can do anything new with the idiom he knows so well.

Nelson's amiable comedy occasionally gets fixated on things that don't serve its overall purpose and is too self-conscious to really shine. But it's a more competent, accessible film than its stealthy theatrical release suggests.

Less exploitative and a bit smarter than its seedy adult-film setting would suggest, the shoestring-budgeted film is nevertheless a niche outing that will rely on a stunty premise to attract voyeurs to its debut this Valentine's Day.

A rom-com whose agreeable individual elements aren't enough to sell the witless contrivance around which they revolve.

The story makes 94 minutes seem as long as a season of Lost and as fresh as the seventh viewing of a Gilligan's Island rerun.

A likeable cast of relative newcomers buoys the film, which never quite finds the sweet spot.

A film as soul-sucking as any of the fang-baring bores who populate it.

The ritualized presentation of these disasters... adds up to a kind of unsettling spiritual experience, a communion with the dead that demands the quiet participation of a group

An art film whose seductive qualities don't entirely erase the suspicion that its weirder elements might be empty affectation.

Viewers will surely have their curiosity piqued, but may not walk out convinced of Jobriath's place in the pop Pantheon.

However off-putting this fragmentary approach might be for those who'd prefer a clean chronology of important works and their assimilation into academic histories of art, it's clear by the end that the aesthetic fits the subject like a glove.

Mitt humanizes a man who was never nearly as good with his target audience as he was with his family.

As funny as the first go-round, more beautiful to look at, and better conceived.

A great many of these individual scenes are funny... But the film fails to do what those rare, immortal rom-coms get right: take all its individually pleasing ingredients and make a satisfying movie out of them.

More structure and polish doesn't keep Lynn Shelton's latest from being recognizably hers.

A feel-good picture that is a little less affecting than it might have been, but is entertaining enough.

Steph Green's first feature has more going for it than a solid dramatic turn by Will Forte.

Every word of the story may be true, and if it happened to someone you knew, you'd be captivated. In Jamesy Boy, though, it's hard to see why we should care.

While the personalities engage the viewer, the film's story is a diffuse one.

Creadon's doc benefits substantially from these kids, resulting in a film with modest commercial appeal that should have a healthy video afterlife with activism-minded students in college and graduate programs.

The film's generosity toward Christina's decision-making is, however true to life, dramatically unsatisfying.

A cinematic hangout with a playfully prickly but very sympathetic subject, affording us a chance to sit at his feet while sampling a body of work that impresses on many levels.

Despite a premise with broad appeal and a script boasting plenty of laughs among its misfires, the high school fable falters.

The movie only wakes up when Hart and/or Arkin are on screen (preferably together).

Young actor Sitthiphon Disamoe helps keep the tale of a can-do kid from becoming too cute.

While Leather Bar will surely make some viewers itchy, its most compelling subject isn't whether straight guys can stand to watch one man pleasuring another. More interesting is the question of what would make this project art as opposed to porn.

Battles are sickeningly brutal, and viewers who have no ethical problem with that may object to their sheer lack of imagination.

Though convincing in its argument that pimps and clients are treated much better than they should be in our legal system as compared to prostitutes, the film presents a picture of America's sex-trade landscape that will feel incomplete to many viewers.

Choosing it for his debut as director, Bateman demonstrates the same knack for timing and fine shadings of attitude as he does onscreen.

Where Attenborough's script lent an air of dignity to the shorter film, Allen's reading of Philip LaZebnik's cutesy narration has a canned feel, and is unlikely to connect with viewers too young to appreciate cliched humor about the joys of bachelorhood versus the duties of parenting.

The whole thing reeks of fiction being used to process missteps in its makers' own lives. This story isn't nearly ready to leave the shrink's couch.

Though on paper the idea has some potential -- as a historical meditation on the suffering of East Berliners and the arbitrary nature of borders -- its execution stumbles on multiple fronts.

Rescued from decay after the director's 2011 death and looking radiant in a 2K restoration, this quiet gem is a time capsule whose potential audience may be small, but will be transported.

A loving biography of a guitarist whose work was "not folk, not blues, not gospel," but drew from and colored those genres and more.

The wholly amateurish doc offers much that has been explored more effectively elsewhere; though it makes a few fresh points as it gets into its second half.

While Lee leaves some of Park's more memorable outrages behind, he and screenwriter Mark Protosevich find one or two ways to up the taboo-testing ante, small surprises that retain the tale's edge without pushing into the realm of exploitation.

Ever-curious, self-deprecating about occasions in which his fumbling English keeps him from making questions clear, Gondry works with sweet earnestness to understand his subject and convey that understanding to us.

Page's no-regrets spirit and the enraptured testimonials from those who knew her in her prime (including some swooning ex-lovers) overpowers clumsy filmmaking.

A compact, effective thriller set in way-rural Ireland, Jeremy Lovering's In Fear makes the most of three actors, a car and a network of narrow roads winding through the woods.

While a composited scene, in which has-been Lenny lectures his younger self about work ethic and wisdom, has an undeniable poignancy, actual tragedy remains far beyond the film's grasp -- as does any illumination beyond the unsurprising suggestion that Cooke just didn't want success as much as peers like LeBron James.

The doc happily devotes most of its time to a stylish, energetic account of Hanna's career to date and the impact it has had on a generation of women.

Art doc's stylistic quirks detract slightly from a sometimes fascinating portrait.

A self-aware laffer that indulges in rom-com contrivance up until the point it judo-flips them to its own ends.

Enjoyable but incomplete-feeling bio-doc both celebrates the Milius myth and tries to undo the damage it did to his reputation.

Liz Marshall's Ghosts in Our Machine trades didacticism for first-person atmospherics.

A return to form for John Sayles.

The earnest doc offers enough spirit-lifting moments to prove its thesis and leave viewers inspired.

Aftermath's avoidance of Holocaust-film tropes lets the picture address weighty historical and moral issues while fitting into the genre shoes of a small-town thriller.

A mournful testament to a vibrant piece of global film history almost entirely wiped out of existence.

Some of these gags are hilarious.

The film will frustrate viewers who insist on knowing which interviewees are recounting real experiences and which are perpetuating fictions hatched by the game's creator, Jeff Hull. But mystery is part of the appeal.

Handsome and weighty-feeling but less substantial than it seems.

Mike Mendez's shamelessly Corman-esque Big Ass Spider! does almost everything just a tiny bit better than it needs to.

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.

An enjoyably naughty trip through Divine's career that happily makes time to introduce us to Glenn Milstead, the sweet kid and fledgling hairdresser who transformed himself so daringly.

Alan Rickman's lead performance highlights a sincere but insubstantial rock pic.

A thrill-stuffed sports doc whose daredevil subject will quickly endear himself even to viewers who've never heard his name.

Honest and well made but lacking a strong hook.

The doc could benefit from more information about what led up to that day.

Although laughs do come... the film is happy to observe wryly as boredom and failure threaten to overwhelm the men.

Far from being overkill, the well-conceived drama featuring A-listers Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth in key roles, will bring this infuriating tale of injustice to many mainstream moviegoers for the first time.

A trove of great stills and movie footage accompanies the colorful anecdotes, but the film's most consistent pleasure is the way interviewees recall the moments before the tape rolled on an immortal recording.

In a showy adaptation by first-time helmer Charlie Stratton, the story is more glum than seductive -- offering surprising sexual encounters, yes, but too little of the slow burn and psychological depth that might have made the Les Mis-meets-Jim Thompson concept get under one's skin.

Sam Eidson is perfect for the lead role, but that doesn't exactly guarantee the fanboy crowd will embrace the film.

Heavily dependent on Wes Anderson's aesthetic but charming nonetheless.

The good-looking, easygoing doc settles in with its two subjects, offering not just an intimate perspective on the playwright's biography but some touching reflections on the comforts and perils of long-term friendship.

Well-lensed observational doc exposes an obscure economic reality in Mongolia.

Cartoonish hyperbole aside, the investigation does have its high points.

A technically polished but mostly unmoving example of a genre (the watch-kids-do-something-hard doc) assumed to be inherently charming.

With a frost-bitten script whose skeletal plot cuts and pastes bits from innumerable other survival yarns, the biggest surprise the film offers is that four people were required to write it.

Daniel Schechter's Life of Crime starts promisingly and ends with a smile but underwhelms in between.

The most compelling thing here by far is the film's vision of Assange, by all accounts a man of enormous self-regard and slippery ethics. Benedict Cumberbatch has the character in hand from the start.

Hitting all the rom-com notes with wit and some charm, it'll be a crowd-pleaser.

The force of Darby's personality -- a rich stew of righteousness, arrogance and self-delusion -- gives the doc a psychological appeal independent of politics.

Money for Nothing feels less prophetic than generally handwringing -- it's just enough to produce vague worry in the unschooled without moving policymakers to do anything they're not already doing.

Pure joy for Beatles fans and, one guesses, charming enough to seduce some viewers who wouldn't mind never hearing "She Loves You" ever again.

Although Weigert is convincing as Abby, Passon's attitude toward the character is hazy.

Thoughtful and less sensationalistic than its premise might suggest, it's made for arthouses and offers a fine showcase for costar Rutger Hauer.

If certain pieces of the last act are less convincing than what precedes it, the themes underlying the illicit emigration resonate with the viewer's knowledge that, in the real world, two of these Cubans actually did escape.

Getaway seems built for non-English speaking territories in which dialogue is as disposable as Bulgarian police cars. If only those audiences were as dumb as the action itself.

Unfortunately, writer-director Scott Walker's film is a muddled and strangely inert one, generating little of the suspense or anguish its subject requires; despite its high-profile cast.

Co-directors Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson balance humor and fun with a little fear in a thoroughly accessible way.

The democratic nature of the project and its exploration here jibes with the story of the Vogels, who (to put it mildly) don't conform to the stereotype of the filthy-rich art patron.

Though full of material that will move sports fans, some questions of emphasis and lack of polish make the film less galvanizing than it might've been.

In the absence of sympathetic characters, a little humor would have gone a long way here.

Although it offers some insight into his distinctive technique, it could have gone much further. But viewers will appreciate spending time with this cheerful, unassuming man, and will enjoy seeing the artist acknowledged by celebrities who owe him so much

The film delivers almost exactly what fans of the first installment are hoping for.

Capturing the spirit of an artist and the quickly-fading moment in media history when his work could have real nationwide impact, Michael Stevens' Herblock: The Black & The White pays homage to the great editorial cartoonist with testimonials from a who's-who of D.C. journalists and opinion-makers.

Funny but less successful as comedy than as a cry of you-screwed-us-up solidarity.

A compelling tale even for viewers with no interest in the sweet science.

Though it lacks the specific argumentative point of view that might have carried it into the mainstream, its sympathetic approach to subjects offers a compelling human perspective on questions that get too little attention in debates about health care.

The picture survives its excesses thanks to winning chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, who animate banter-heavy dialogue and click so well one wonders why they haven't shared the screen before.

The movie becomes a survival tale and is more successful in its grueling, slightly crazed second half. The Goetzes do a better job capturing the terrain's physical extremes and the challenge of endurance than they do depicting a relationship.

A no-budget "Alien" ripoff with little reason to exist beyond the few creature-effects shots its design team now can add to its reel, Roger Christian's Stranded might leave viewers yearning for the director's "Battlefield Earth" -- a film that, terrible though it was, at least couldn't be accused of a lack of ambition.

More a filmed haunted house than a movie, the picture is in love with the cobbled-together monsters on offer and will engender similar emotions in many horror buffs.

Babbit's flat direction has none of the lurid appeal or humor that (along with a much more appealing cast) sustained John McNaughton's notionally similar "Wild Things" through crazy plot contrivances.

You ought to have to be an unusually interesting person, or at least be capable of presenting your commonplace tribulations in an interesting light, before you can ask moviegoers to spend fifteen bucks to watch you onscreen. Nina Davenport's First Comes Love doesn't buy into this rule.

Obvious parallels to "Thelma & Louise" do little to raise the dramatic stakes here.

Copeland's film benefits from a cast familiar from such offbeat TV comedies as "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Parks and Recreation," but it tends to embody conventions instead of subverting them, resulting in a product with only a bit more personality than the generic caffeine dispensary at its heart.

Throughout, gags are cartoonishly broad and afforded so little time for setup and delivery we seem to be watching less a story than a catalog of tossed-out material.

Though it mostly summarizes available arguments instead of uncovering new facts, it's an accessible primer.

The film's diagnosis -- money's corrupting influence, the tendency of powerful people to entrench themselves -- is hardly new, but it's voiced here with enough smarts and conviction to earn respect from non-plutocrat viewers of all political stripes.

Diverting but not enough to expand Kevin Hart's fan base much.

Named for a slur used against Northerners who opposed waging war on the South, the film works best when focused on Abner Beech (Billy Campbell), whose conscience-driven minority opinion makes him a pariah in his upstate New York village.

Laughs come less frequently here than in Humpday and Your Sister's Sister, but the writer-director's empathy for floundering characters is intact.

Despite its successful attempts to show how oil has affected everyday citizens in nearby Nigeria, the film remains fairly dry.

A film whose fascination with bees and their mammoth impact on the global food chain extends far beyond the subject of colony collapse disorder. Arthouse audiences will eat it up.

A wrong place/wrong time actioner stupid enough to damage the art-house credibility of actor Paul Walker.

A broken-family melodrama with a minimum of histrionics, Scott McGehee's and David Siegel's What Maisie Knew begins from scenes that will be familiar to most viewers who've witnessed a custody battle. Things get pretty orchestrated from that familiar scenario onward, but never to the point of unbelievability.

Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and a strong cast do right by Neil LaBute's script (based on his play), but the soullessness of the story is a turnoff overpowering the intriguing moments scattered within these one-on-one encounters.

Deeply unpleasant to watch with little edification to offer in compensation.

The film will attract the attention of a public that's increasingly educated about gourmet matters, but leave the most serious viewers unsatisfied. Fatally for a film of this sort, it doesn't leave the viewer wanting a drink.

Familiar faces in supporting roles don't do much for the commercial prospects of this modest film, which feels like a made-for-TV version of the prototypical Sundance-aspiring quest for identity.

An amusing premise yields few yuks.

An ordinary look at four extraordinary kids, Scott Hamilton Kennedy's Fame High sticks firmly to convention but will please viewers who can't help but want the doc's sympathetic teens to escape the heartbreak most would-be artists face.

A vital, gripping film.

The disappointingly generic film, which strands a father and son on Earth a thousand years after a planet-wide evacuation, will leave genre audiences pining for the more Terra-centric conceits of "Oblivion," not to mention countless other future-set films that find novelty in making familiar surroundings threatening.

No legitimate distributor would bother with a film "whose crackpot elements aren't even exploited in a way that will appeal to those watching solely to make fun of them."

The ironies of Plimpton's life are handled delicately, made just obvious enough for viewers to mull themselves.

Crude production values are a stumbling block for bare-bones tale.

When a slasher pic can't exploit a woodchipper for more sadistic thrills than we get here, it shouldn't expect moviegoers to salivate for a sequel.

Kids with healthy attention spans may warm to its (literally) colorful characters and outside-the-frame action, but most will find it as lifeless as their parents do.

Viewers will suspect from early on that things aren't as straightforward as they appear, and Clark's screenplay addresses those suspicions only to the extent it must to justify its characters' behavior.

Pretty, occasionally witty and not believable for a moment, Sophie Lellouche's Paris-Manhattan is suffused with fannish love for Woody Allen's films but hardly lives up to their legacy.

The Source does hold enough anthropological value to please some audiences. Despite lacking the recognition factor and lurid tragedy of a phenomenon like Jonestown, the story should attract viewers on the small screen.

The film is an inspiration for those seeking hope in desperate urban neighborhoods.

Batmanglij balances emotional tension with practical danger nicely, a must in a story whose activist protagonists can make no distinction between the personal and the political.

[A] sweet, semi-romantic road trip.

Tale of the Cultural Revolution is strictly for scholars and students.

A genuinely moving look at life in a group foster home that avoids most of the usual routes into viewers' hearts.

Hess gets her romance just grounded enough to handle the comic extremes supplied by the supporting cast.

The Story of Luke suffers all the flaws associated with disability films and more. Familiar faces in the cast may attract notice in niche bookings, but no one involved will benefit from the exposure.

An appealing cast and well-executed mood of foreboding would seem to hold some promise commercially, but the script grows silly in the third act, letting the picture down.

What might have been annoyingly solipsistic proves mostly charming and poignant instead, largely thanks to Nance's cinematic ingenuity, but also because of his ability to both probe his feelings and hold them at a distance.

If the premise isn't as attention-grabbing as Rubber's was, the execution should help build the filmmaker's following.

Costa's inquiry into that life offers a deeply felt angle on the broader realities of life in Paraguay during the '80s; while the intimate film is unlikely to expand beyond niche theatrical bookings, it will affect many who see it.

Endearing performances buoy predictable film about love in the wake of divorce.

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 gore-for-broke affair that strips the flesh off Sam Raimi's cult-beloved comic-horror franchise and exposes the demons at its core.

A lovable underachiever unwittingly spawns his own village in Starbuck, Ken Scott's crowd-pleasing comedy exploring various meanings of fatherhood in the modern age.

When rehearsals finally give way to full, unconventional production numbers, it's hard to imagine any way Hunky Dory could get much better.

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

Despite the familiarity of this setup, Way Back is a charmer, putting refreshingly little emphasis on Duncan's romantic needs and allowing family melodrama to erupt and simmer down without pat resolution.

A character-driven take on true-crime fare, Alex Karpovsky's Rubberneck marks a solid dramatic turn for a filmmaker best known for playing comedic parts in indie films like "Tiny Furniture."

A curiosity telling the President's story through the eyes of longtime friend Ward Hill Lamon, it's of interest only to serious history-hounds and techies curious about its unusual green-screen production.

The work Richard Linklater and company started in 1995's Before Sunrise retains a clarity of spirit undimmed by 18 years.

Park's unsettling visuals and his handling of the cast make the occasional holes in Wentworth Miller's script practically irrelevant.

A history lesson that holds some pleasures even for those who know its material by heart.

The effective documentary makes her attitudes and techniques look unarguably commonsensical, for the most part; while many distributors will shy away from such graphic material, the film may thrive in niche bookings and will benefit from enthusiastic word-of-mouth on video.

The film's failure to raise the temperature gradually leaves viewers less involved than we should be.

The birds are not only gorgeous but, as they poke for food and rustle around, entertaining.

Its account of the week beginning January 25 feels like a solid, layman-friendly addition to the West's understanding of this chunk of history.

A barrage of unbelievable stereotypes try to kill each other in Barry Battles's dispiriting exploitation flick.

A supernatural action comedy that can never live up to its exciting opening scenes, Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End mixes horror-tinged mayhem with smart-alec laughs but loses momentum early and gets bogged down in exposition.

Self-contained enough for theatrical audiences new to the series, it will play best with those who've come to care for these Brits over time.

Becker is now completely paralyzed, unable even to speak. But Vile keeps him almost entirely offscreen until the last thirty minutes, preferring to introduce him as he once was: Uncommonly positive and single-minded in his obsession with the electric guitar.

Though certainly not for everyone (and not for kids of any age), the regret-tinged film displays a distinctive voice and will be embraced by devotees of offbeat animation.

Feel-good documentary gathers great interviews but isn't sure what they add up to.

Yelling to the Sky drips with a strange but sometimes moving nostalgia for environs its characters clearly want to escape.

Sincere performances and well-intentioned scripting should help it with vets eager to see their stories told on-screen, but the film's dreary, secondhand feel is hard to overcome.

Few would fail to be touched by these stories, or by the sight of these men having generations of kids and grandkids gather to celebrate their accomplishment.

A sustained balancing act between dry upper-crust cynicism and pent-up passions, Donald Rice's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding maintains its uneasy stasis long enough to frustrate some romance-hungry viewers while tantalizing those for whom withheld pleasure is the whole point.

A quietly marvelous travelogue condensing months' worth of observation into a single sleepless night, Bill and Turner Ross's Tchoupitoulas follows their widely praised "45365."

A rare film dealing with Christian evangelism in a realistic way that neither mocks nor proselytizes, New Jerusalem quietly observes as a man tries to comfort his troubled best friend by bringing him to Jesus.

Heartfelt but clumsy.

A cast of young actors is uniformly strong, as is Lance Gewer's photography.

A small but scrappy road-tripper whose solid sense of place and sure-handed blend of poignancy and unsentimental humor should earn it fans on the arthouse circuit.

The romantic dilemmas suffered by these twentysomethings may be universal, but their naive attempts to address them are hard to buy.

Sadly, this film's POV conceit -- in which all scenes are shot by the characters, whether they have a plausible reason to hold the camera up or not -- quickly becomes as grating as Kelly herself.

A very sympathetic turn by Colm Meaney both lends box-office appeal and helps Byrne pull back from the saccharine possibilities inherent in the premise.

One of rock's underheralded pioneers gets his due in Beware of Mr. Baker, an affectionate but unfawning portrait that finds the drummer of Cream still keeping the beat despite hardships both institutional and self-inflicted (heavy on the latter).

Thorny, blood-boiling and finely made.

A must-see for fans of the cult musician and a moving, if sometimes oblique, look at gender-identity issues, it will find many admirers in niche bookings.

Damning documentary pairs an individual sex-abuse case with analysis of institutional dysfunction at the Vatican.

Charming at times but surprisingly cheap-feeling given the cast Heckerling has assembled.

A novel cultural focus, highlighting Guyanese citizens of Indian ancestry, isn't enough to sustain interest in the lifeless film, which will attract few outside the Indo-Guyanese community.

A dispiriting horror cheapie whose monsters-in-the-projects premise plays out like an anti-welfare parable.

A mismatched-friends drama whose overall sensitivity is belied by a couple of clumsily contrived plot points, Sean Baker's Starlet pairs story and setting perfectly.

A documentary so stuffed with eye-soothing images one prays it can seduce a climate-change skeptic or two.

Diehard fashionistas will likely want to see it, but few others will take notice.

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.

Managing to make the lore of snuff films not just repulsive but mind-numbingly dull, the horror film Gut offers two characters -- and, one imagines, a filmmaker -- who should have put splatter films behind them many years ago.

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.

Emphasizing local color but often unconvincing in its depiction of social customs.

Despite the story's elements of suspense, loss and determination, though, the picture has a mundane, low-stakes vibe that fails to make the most of its inspirational content.

Fans will love its intimate mood and class-act portrayal of its subject; Dion Beebe's cinematography boasts the expected polish, but the film will likely be most popular on small screens.

The feel-good documentary is engaging enough to draw a respectable audience at arthouses, but distribs should work for exposure within communities like the ones this school serves.

The documentary offers little to further the national discussion on this divisive topic, but its evenhandedness and unstrident tone will go down well with viewers accustomed to more heated treatments of it.

Strong, entertaining portrait of a hard-to-pin-down online phenomenon.

It has little to offer a well-informed viewer.

Clearly intent on inspiring viewers, the informational film makes a fine sum-up for those who've found the last decade's geopolitics too much to keep track of, but isn't promising in commercial terms.

The film offers a privileged perspective on crucial moments in Johnny Cash's career, and serious fans will likely warm to it on the small screen.

An engrossing two-hander combining the smart-talk microcosm of "My Dinner With Andre" and the sexual dynamics of a Philip Roth novel, David Trueba's Madrid, 1987 is more universal than its title suggests and holds a strong art house appeal.

Alternates languidly between wistful nostalgia and a more clear-eyed assessment of its protagonist's choices.

Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the picture should please horror fans.

The picture is fresh and frightening, a strong arthouse contender certain to leave audiences talking.

Will charm many arthouse patrons, though some highbrow-leaning art lovers will find the subject unworthy of such attention.

A commendably restrained loser-turns-winner tale offering an unexpected second showcase for Terri star Jacob Wysocki, Matthew Lillard's Fat Kid Rules the World is less colorful than its grandeur-deluded title suggests.

Inherently unpreachy but making its point more effectively than many participants in the debate can, the film should find vocal advocates in a niche theatrical run.

A deceptively slight film that strikes the right balance between realist family drama and earnestness.

A timely look at an important issue that's getting more hotly contested every month, Electoral Dysfunction takes a mildly jocular tone to get viewers concerned about what it calls a "war on voting" in America.