Since the lead character is effectively a mystery man, some lack of grounding is appropriate. Unfortunately, the impressionism — the improvisation, you might say, of this particular life (mirroring, one supposes, Bolden's approach to music) — is so dominant that it finally proves a crutch.

Despite a nagging tendency to milk sentiment from wrenching subject matter that requires no manipulation, the film is notable for its admirably inclusive perspective.

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

The doc has stirring moments, but it has too many gaps to be considered a complete success.

It’s got a nervously eerie feel to it that’s grounded in Canet’s gripping turn as a dad out to do good for his estranged family.

Ready has a fine time with its setting (the trappings of old money are much more appealing here than they were in Netflix's Murder Mystery), and Weaving is sharp enough to play things straight as the ensemble around her goes for the occasional laugh.

A charming exercise in low-key romantic realism that risks being too subtle for its own good.

Favoring psychological chills over blood-soaked mayhem, Callahan’s impressively crafted debut nods to recent horror classics while displaying an eminently distinctive vision of its own.

The gritty environment and the non-pro cast are convincingly directed by Marlin, a native of Marseille, particularly in the pic's stronger second half.

Though handsome in style and admirable in ambition, this sprawling neo-Western never comes together as a satisfying whole.

It’s unlikely to be remembered with any great fondness by all but Almodovar diehards, its self-regarding inwardness suggesting that he’s struggling, as his hero is here, to find something new to say.

Breezy and bright, with the stylized look and feel of a stage play, Honore’s bubbly bottle of cinematic champagne runs out of fizz somewhere around its midway point. Even so, there are still enjoyably shallow pleasures to be savored here.

The director's latest rise-and-fall chronicle suffers from a few structural problems that did not bedevil Senna or Amy. Most obviously, the subject is still very much alive, which may explain why this officially endorsed film feels more cautious and compromised than it might have been.

It's all business as per Noe usual.

Slight but quite amusing ... But despite a few good gags and committed performances, the nagging suspicion that this eccentric concept would’ve worked better as a medium-length work or even a short remains.

The result feels like two incomplete movies in one, neither of them fully satisfying in the end. Still, there are some graceful moments scattered throughout, especially in the Haitian sequences, while it’s also rather refreshing to see a brand new take on a subject that’s been worked to death elsewhere.

The pedestrian script inevitably gets sidetracked into a possible romance between JJ and Kate, keeping the film from building much real chemistry between Bautista and Coleman. (It's easy to imagine replacing this subplot with more scenes of JJ helping put middle-school meanies in their places.) But at least this angle keeps the pic's save-the-world storyline from getting too bloated.

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

The doc swells with wonderful archival footage that immerses you in the hedonistic environment the principals occupied, but in ranging wide it somehow doesn’t go deep, or at least deep enough, into its twin protagonists to satisfy as the full story.

Supervized is never quite as inspired as it should be, but it offers some amusing moments along the way.

Funny Story (co-written with Steve Greene) proves much more polished than its pedigree might suggest — a warmhearted seriocomedy that, even when not thoroughly convincing, projects a disarming sincerity.

Too often, the film gives off the feeling that it was designed for the inevitable line of toys for the upcoming holiday season, with plenty of cuddly animals of disparate types soon to line the shelves of a store near you.

Despite being an alt-comedy Funny or Die production — far from the mainstream ethos of TV's 45-year-old sketch comedy king — Netflix's Between Two Ferns: The Movie is a modern-day SNL flick.

Though the documentary will be welcomed by a certain breed of space buff, both its impact and its commercial hopes are seriously diminished by Todd Douglas Miller's awe-harnessing "Apollo 11," which, unlike this film, demanded to be experienced in a theater.

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

Intelligently observed and backed by a strong cast, this well-performed ensemble piece oscillates between documentary-style study of the French social care system and Lifetime-style tearjerker that tends to overdose on the saccharine.

It lacks infectious magic. Any promise of originality fueled early on by the amusing sight of unicorns sniffing through suburban trash quickly dissipates as the siblings' journey gets under way, their progress marked by slapstick gags, predictable close shaves, encounters with characters that often feel like plot padding and standard life lessons writ large.

This is a demanding and fitfully rewarding film which focuses minutely on the shifting relationships between its three protagonists.

Despite its title, this mild-mannered feature debut from British TV actor turned writer-director Shelagh McLeod remains determinedly earthbound for most of its duration, more heart-tugging family saga than intergalactic adventure.

Fortunately, its talented and appealing young ensemble make it go down as easily as a cold beer on a hot…well, you know.

Itsy Bitsy works well enough on its own terms, providing some genuine jolts and benefiting from the excellent performances.

The picture's mission to shine a light on the expertise of bag-toting sidekicks is admirable, and the story's told in breezy fashion. Just leave your non-golfing loved ones at home for this one.

Journey mostly works thanks to Dhanush's radiant charm, with the actor adding humor and sincerity to a project that can feel too overstuffed and wacky for its own good — mixing magical realism, deadpan comedy, musical numbers and moments of tear-jerking drama.

The closing scenes of Straight Up are more contrived and constrained — an acquiescence to living inside the box, with one dramatic wrinkle that feels tacked on and ill-considered. The fiery talent that Sweeney displays throughout, both in front of and behind the camera, regrettably ends up ashen.

The whole thing looks as glossy as any of the filmmaker's spots for Nike, and though surf competition is not exactly suspenseful (at least for the uninitiated), the many vivid sequences on the waves are enough to justify the pic's presence on the big screen.

While Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock 'n' Roll too often feels like a promotional video created by a local tourism organization, it nonetheless provides an engaging history of the town and its once-vibrant music scene.

While left-leaning viewers will respond warmly to the film's common-sense take on Christianity's core teachings, one wonders if there might have been ways to make this more palatable to audiences who have been trained for a generation to view progressives as enemies of religion.

The Cat Rescuers can sometimes feel manipulative, with its endless shots of adorable felines calmly and happily responding to being petted and embraced.

This action-drenched roller-coaster of a film tries to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to generating a tidal wave of violence — but it undeniably delivers the goods when it comes to action and impudence.

A relatively run-of-the-mill cops-and-robbers thriller with few surprises.

Words can't do justice to the truly lavish sets and costumes on display here which are so dazzling, intricate and bizarre they serve as a useful distraction from the awkward dialogue and plot holes.

Though unsatisfying in some respects, the film is enough fun to make one wish for a portal to a variant universe in which Marvel movies spent more time exploiting their own strengths and less time trying to make you want more Marvel movies.

There are some tonal problems here, particularly around the way the film tends to homogenize very disparate views and opinions into one sweet, easily digestible polemical smoothie.

At its best, which is often enough, the film does provide that sort of intimate and evocative insight into a culture too often vilified due to Western ignorance. At others, the gentle exquisiteness with which Longley approaches even the most unappealing sights and sounds feels like an evasion of something more troubling, and potentially more profound.

Odd, then, that [Brewer and Murphy's] Dolemite Is My Name is such a conventional-feeling biopic, one with its share of laughs and surprising anecdotes but little of the enduring strangeness that kept the 1975 Dolemite rattling around in our cultural memory

For those who like head-on, immersive emotional experiences at the movies, The Sky Is Pink may be a direct hit.

It's a wobbly but amusing pic that only really raises eyebrows at the end.

Hope Gap may engage the mind up to a point with its pithy dialogue and resourceful players, but it offers little insight into the complexities and wages of wedlock.

Even when it veers into familiar territory, I Am Woman remains entertaining and sharply packaged.

This moody, black-and-white period piece always intrigues, even if it only intermittently catches fire.

If the pic is ultimately an entertaining ride, it is because Sudeikis takes the audience by the hand through this very unlikely story that was inspired by true events.

The heart of this complex material for too long remains elusive to Assayas, and he locates it too late to give the choppy drama cohesion. That's not to say Wasp Network is dull or uninvolving.

Initially a caustic and somewhat programmatic checklist of alt-right obsessions, Cuck becomes more tonally and dramatically interesting after it shifts gear midway through, when Ronnie's story becomes a lurid psychosexual nightmare reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream."

Govenar is not what you'd call a natural filmmaker. Hodgepodgey in its storytelling, the film introduces enough appealing characters to hold the interest of a casual viewer; presumably, tattoo-diehards know much of this stuff already.

A good-natured ride at first, its limited scope grows more apparent as it goes; still, a feel-good approach is unlikely to hurt it as it begins a road-show release concurrent with the band's 50th-anniversary tour.

The movie — like the performances of its small ensemble — works best when the director gets out of her own way, forgetting her aversion to clean, conventional narrative and giving the material breathing space to resonate.

While it hardly sells Wrinkles as a culture-shaking phenomenon, this modest documentary will play best to those who enjoy being creeped out by him enough to suspend their disbelief.

The film captures the cost of Henry's well-intentioned sin, following this pained new creature out into the world and, very briefly, giving his suffering an almost Malick-like voice.

This well-intentioned meditation of the banality of evil packs a modest emotional punch, but it might have been more powerful if it had shown us a little less banality and a little more evil.

The critique of those in power and their need to put down others — preferably foreign or different-looking people — in order to stay on top is as relevant in 2019 as it was in 1980, when the novel was first published. But like its noncommittal production design, which combines various North African, Middle Eastern and Asian influences for the locals and locales, the critique itself remains finally quite dull and dispersed because it's so broad and unspecific.

Any failure to expand into cinema's possibilities is overshadowed by the uniformly strong performances in a four-person cast led by an excellent Kerry Washington.

One couldn’t wish for a more painstakingly researched or beautifully rendered account of the infamous Dreyfus affair than Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse).... Yet the result is oddly lacking in heart and soul, almost as though a mask of military discipline held it in check.

The picture will naturally hold its biggest appeal for racing buffs but may also prove appealing to nonfans thanks to the moving story at its core.

While The Last Photograph ultimately feels too narratively slight to justify even its brief 85-minute running time, the intriguing film demonstrates that the actor should follow in his legendary father's directorial footsteps more often.

Modine makes it work anyway thanks to his charm and charisma. His enjoyably playful performance helps prevent Miss Virginia from feeling entirely like an issue-of-the-week television movie.

The central character never develops in an interesting way. Well before the wrap-up of this brief tale, her cultivated recessiveness becomes tiresome and, in these particular circumstances, a bit dull.

The high-wire tonal balancing act proves a little wobbly at times, resulting in a film that is feels less than the sum of its parts. But some of those parts work very well, providing moments of uncomfortable hilarity and genuine poignancy.

But for all its vividly detailed eccentricity, the movie, like Abby, connects the dots rather too easily. As Clifton Hill digs deeper into exceedingly sordid stuff, it doesn't dish up the kind of aha moments or chilling frissons that would lift the story from clever contrivance — until a final, delicious twist pulls the rug out from under this richly atmospheric but not always convincing tale.

The film takes a more prosaic approach to its sci-fi premise than its predecessors did, presumably in an attempt to reach viewers who need more hand-holding. ... Despite its uncanny start, Synchronic is just more normal than it might have been, and less deep.

Engrossing on a moment-to-moment scale thanks so some very fine performances, the film doesn't click together in the transformative way such stories occasionally do, and does less with themes of wealth and class than it surely intends to.

No film involving Nicholas Cage and a blowgun with curare-tipped darts can be all bad, and Primal gives us at least a little of everything we'd want in this kind of yarn.

Whimsical and wistful, if occasionally a little too self-consciously kooky, British comedy-drama Sometimes Always Never constructs a pleasant portrait of a mildly unhappy family living in the English northwest.

It's also — for better and worse — never quite as grim as its grisly, sometimes gag-inducing action might suggest. Falling in between outright psychological combat and black comedy, Harpoon might flounder a bit without Gelman's ironic tone.

While that personal connection lends an undeniably poignant aspect, the film never quite fully captures the essence of the enigmatic legal and political fixer.

Wisely, McFadden avoids nailing things down too tightly here, being content to show the shaky ground his characters stand on.

It would have been nice if Cold Brook had added up to something more substantial, but at least it's a film about grown-ups who generally try to behave that way, and these days that feels like a rare thing.

Heavy on oppressively humid atmosphere and light on originality, the film is a mostly forgettable genre exercise whose viewers won't miss much by watching at home.

Fortunately, the new actioner directed by the prolific Steven C. Miller (First Kill, Arsenal, Marauders) proves fast-paced enough to overcome its more ludicrous plot elements.

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

The doc serves the valuable purpose of shedding a much-needed spotlight on a problem that, as anyone who's recently walked on any city's streets can attest, only seems to be getting worse.

Delivers enough tense atmospherics to make it worth checking out for sci-fi fans.

Though viewers who follow the subject in print won't learn a whole lot they don't already know here — and, given technology's pace, it may be irrelevant in a year — the documentary gathers news in a useful way, prompting discussions about what variety of a computer-guided world we'd like to live in

Most will learn something here, in a film that both follows the practice to its natural, dire conclusions and champions the ordinary citizens who have stepped up to fight against it.

Though hardly groundbreaking in either its content or its aesthetics, the film is more serious than it initially lets on, and can only benefit from the VHS nostalgia that has, often irrationally, taken root in some quarters.

Star Daniel Radcliffe will be the biggest draw here, but the pic's focus on planning and genre mechanics over personalities may limit its appeal for his fans.

The late-’60s and early-’70s production and costume design, by Bob Shaw and Amy Westcott, respectively, are rooted firmly in an evocative sense of time and place, enhanced by a soundtrack of pinpoint needle drops. But The Many Saints of Newark is more of a diverting footnote than an invaluable extension of the show’s colossal legacy.

Working from a diligently researched screenplay by his late father, Jack Fincher, the director has made a high-style piece of cinematic nostalgia that's a constant pleasure to look at but only intermittently finds a heartbeat.

Rebecca Hall’s admirable refusal to soften the brittle edges of her recently widowed protagonist in The Night House makes her a compelling variation on the usual woman in ghostly peril.

There's definitely a tighter, more disciplined movie trapped in here begging for a more rigorous edit. Like a head full of split ends, it needs trimming.

Writer-director Maïmouna Doucouré's captivating but structurally shaky first feature is stronger on setup than development or payoff, becoming less controlled as its opposing forces of tradition and rebellion collide.

Steinberg, Kriegman and Despres get the balance right between the legal heroes and their collaborators, the marginalized groups they are fighting to protect.

Though it never transforms into a grade-A spy thriller, the film boasts action that's briefly quite involving.

It could use some sharper editing, but it’s an engaging portrait of a flamboyant character.

Despite its obvious lack of objectivity, Clarence Thomas: In His Own Words proves an undeniably important historical document, if only for the rare opportunity it provides to hear from its subject directly. Unfortunately, the unintentional portrait it paints is hardly a flattering one, although obviously many will disagree.

An appealing cast and slick period production values make this an entertaining enough retro bloodbath.

Impossible Monsters at times gets too baroque for its own good, straining for a Ken Russell-like hallucinatory style that it doesn't fully succeed in pulling off. But it's an admirably ambitious and accomplished debut for its tyro filmmaker who should easily move on to bigger things.

The tragic dimension of a woman adored by the world, devoured by Hollywood and ultimately abandoned to her own despair in an ordinary little house in Brentwood resonates because we know Marilyn’s sad story. But it’s hard to ignore the queasy feeling that Dominik is getting off on the tawdry spectacle. De Armas holds nothing back in connecting with the character’s pain. She deserves better.

While this cinematic adaptation of W. Glasgow Phillip's acclaimed 1994 novel isn't wholly effective in handling its complex storyline, the film offers compelling performances by its two leads and enough provocative elements to make it worthy of attention.