Dillard’s auspicious shift to features reveals an imaginative young filmmaker prepared to take manageable risks in pursuit of his personal vision.

Although clearly intended to be brimming with symbolical meanings, Lost and Beautiful — which at least is visually striking, thanks to being shot on expired 16mm film stock — never finds sufficient cinematic poetry in its dreamlike storytelling infused with neo-realistic elements.

Compelling enough to anticipate the inevitable Hollywood dramatization of the story, On the Map will prove fascinating even to non-sports buffs.

I Am Bolt presents a dynamic, consistently engaging portrait of the mediagenic track star, and even if it’s sometimes too laudatory, there are also many moments of heartfelt sentiment throughout the film.

Ethnic comedies have their limitations, and a sharper script would have helped this one to stand out from the pack. Nevertheless, audiences in a forgiving mood will enjoy the byplay among an appealing bunch of desperate characters.

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

The overall feeling is a lot less special than their ground-breaking work that flew with birds and swam with deep-sea creatures.

The subject is a rich one, but the film simply isn’t incisive enough.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis know their parts here backward and forward, and they, along with the rest of the fine cast, bat a thousand, hitting both the humorous and serious notes. But with this comes a sense that all the conflicts, jokes and meanings are being smacked right on the nose in vivid close-ups, with nothing left to suggestion, implication and interpretation.

Hancock's apparently irrepressible penchant for folksy Midwestern types and perky montages dilutes any cynicism or misanthropy that might have given this material the edginess it deserves.

Plodding and pedestrian even in the technical magic that is a Zemeckis trademark, this is a case of a director out of his element with a script that fails to generate much heat.

Like the heroic Bostonians it celebrates, civilians and law enforcement both, Peter Berg’s Patriots Day gets the job done.

Concerned with both physical and psychological hazards of the job, Life on the Line manufactures a pileup of looming disasters to which director David Hackl lends no cadence.

Even more inappropriate physical gags, foul-mouthed dialogue and outrageous situations all contribute to raising the stakes, as Waters pushes the cast to amiably outdo the original.

The doc's beautiful final sequence rips your heart out.

The individual personalities that emerge in interviews both from back in 1981 and now, with the actors in their 50s, are often delightful, both funny and rueful.

The storyline, familiar-feeling as it is, could have made for an effective thriller. But writer/director Whedon (brother of Joss) bogs down the pacing with too many routine flashbacks.

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.

the film mainly advocates for the creation of the Behavioral Health Corps (BHC) as a division of the Defense Department that would consolidate mental health services throughout all military branches. The case it makes for its necessity feels impossible to refute.

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.

The film serves as a concise biographical portrait and an excellent introduction to the writer's works.

Twenty years ago, this comedy might have been a slightly amusing diversion. Now it just exudes an air of sweaty desperation.

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.

The action sequences and gun battles are staged with enough flair to satisfy genre fans who haven't gotten their fill with the recent Magnificent Seven remake.

Along the way, the film stares unblinkingly, but with tenderness, at late-middle-age questions of career, identity and the torturous question of whether to let go of a dream that’s not paying off.

As banal as its title, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage lacks even the impact of the monologue about the subject delivered by Robert Shaw in Jaws.

Deliberately skirting the Halloween horror corridor, Brian Bertino’s tautly composed monster movie serves as a brutally effective metaphor for the turmoil of adolescence, with all of its rebelliousness and confusion.

The lurid and unconvincing Shut In should have lived up to its title.