It gives the feature doc treatment to a topic TV journalists (and news-comedy hero John Oliver) have looked at over the decades — showing the slimy ways that reforms prompted by public outrage have been neutered by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Meditative and dreamlike yet gem-sharp, director Rob Tregenza's fifth feature in 30 years is an elegantly told story that churns with emotion beneath its deceptive stillness.

While it offers more style than substance, Bullitt County delivers an engrossing tale with enough twists to satisfy thrill-loving audiences. If anything, it offers too many twists, proving unable to live up to its considerable narrative ambitions.

The dramatic approach here is clear, efficient and entirely on-the-nose, with little time for anything that might distract from the hagiographic effort in play. Its sole purpose is to ennoble and proclaim a hero, which its subject almost certainly is. But it makes for notably simplified drama.

Pimp is an engrossing melodrama that could easily have played to enthusiastic grindhouse audiences in the 1970s.

Certain niche audiences will find it fascinating and/or emotionally powerful, but — among those who are unfazed by the sight of a masked woman pulling things out of her vagina — most will shrug.

Though its tone is amiable and its performances are (mostly) professional, it's hard to care if these four people live happily ever after or never see each other again.

Though hardly a failure, the serious-minded work is less affecting than it might've been, relying sometimes on hints that are needlessly ambiguous and on symbols that don't quite click.

The sequel has better and at times galvanizing special effects, a darker tone and a high-stakes battle between good and evil. Best of all, its characters are more vibrantly drawn, and tangled in relationships that range from delightful to lethal.

A solid ensemble, including many acting veterans, manages to make the film, on which Bobby Farrelly served as one of the executive producers, a diverting holiday comedy.

Everything the film has to offer is obvious and on the surface, its pleasures simple and sincere under the attentive guidance of director Jon S. Baird.

What the production may have lost in a “nasty-wasty skunk” of an antagonist, it gains in an inspired voice cast (led by Benedict Cumberbatch) and a dazzlingly merry and bright visual palette.

The Reckoning: Hollywood's Worst Kept Secret is generally effective as a fast-paced primer on the sexual harassment scandals that have swept show business in the last year but doesn't really add much to the story that we don't already know.

The Food Network crowd will go nuts for the doc, but beyond the shots of luscious dishes, there's a pretty interesting character study here as well.

Few mainstream romantic comedies are so brazen or as unconvincing in their third acts. As if the movie were embarrassed about the tidy way it wraps things up, it trots Haddish out for a silly coda that reminds us how little we saw of her during the film's final hour.

Gleefully gory and darkly funny, Monster Party is the sort of extreme genre exercise that separates real fans from mere dilettantes.

Reasonably engaging as far as it goes, Searching for Ingmar Bergman evinces great appreciation for the writer-director's legacy and offers the testimonies of numerous eminent enthusiasts, but it leaves a good deal to be desired.

What is gratifying about the film is Volf's obvious love for and devotion to Callas, as well as his completist's urge to track down and include every scrap of footage at all relevant to telling her story and documenting her greatness.

It's a Frankenstein's monster. It lacks the captivating charms of Disney's live-action remakes of "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast," or the fabulous distraction of Angelina Jolie that kept the revisionist "Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent," semi-entertaining.

Rampant is a little all over the map, with its biggest flaw securely rooted in its inability to maintain consistency in its mythology — an unforgivable genre crime.

A step up in terms of complexity, with more subplots and a larger cast of protagonists to juggle and less instantly sympathetic characters or an evident cause to rally behind, this drama again offers many quiet, often character-driven rewards but struggles to become larger than the sum of its parts.

This is derivative if well-executed product, except when it comes to the relationship at the film’s center.

Good luck trying to make heads or tails of it, but as an eye-popping exercise in cinematic strangeness, 9 Fingers is a rare breed.

Hosoda has a lovely, light touch and leavens the proceedings with dry, well-observed humor.

Has clear appeal for heartland Christians who are more concerned with uncomplicated edification than with storytelling. It would be more at home in the rec rooms of churches than in movie theaters.

Having invested a bit of time early on to the dawn of the internet, Trust Machine has shown us how beautiful inventions can be twisted by entrenched powers. The film's hope is that, if more people are paying attention this time around, blockchain might remain a tool for popular empowerment.

At some point, all the analysis drains the Bill Murray-ness out of these delightful encounters, whose inexplicability is presumably key to their charm.

Moderately informative but almost as disappointing as his Hey Bartender, the doc may ride the coattails of its subject's surging popularity, but will leave most thirsts unquenched.