With artistic flourishes, N.C. Heikin’s documentary portrait fits the exceptional life story into a biographical boilerplate that covers the general trajectory and turning points.

Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton, Kingsman's fizzingly droll chutzpah can't help but make Spooks: The Greater Good, for all Peter Firth's ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.

Gathering vintage interviews from a couple of different documentaries, the film movingly observes a man who can be physically unsettled by things he saw several decades prior.

The seemingly autobiographical film from writer/director/star Philipp Karner may have been therapeutic for him, but it is too opaque and slow-moving to compel the attention of many audiences beyond the gay festival circuit.

Bolshoi Babylon explores the bizarre case in more detail, but grows even more interesting when it examines how this storied cultural institution struggles to survive tempestuous politics both inside and outside the theater walls.

If Berardini isn't very generous to the company's execs, shortchanging what is likely a genuine belief that they're doing good while making a ton of money, he does spend time with officers who, for a time, embraced the Taser eagerly.

Mostly one wishes for a more concise edit that would pull this impressive avalanche of memories and faded photos together a lot sooner.

"The truth is malleable,” an onscreen title declares at the beginning of the film. It’s also somewhat elusive in this saga, which is less an investigation than a spirited tribute. But the combination of humor and grit is always intriguing.

Despite it’s entirely predictable, cliché-embracing script, executed with a shrewd mix of forelock-tugging rectitude and cheekiness by director Julian Jarrold (Brideshead Revisited, Kinky Boots), it remains an eminently watchable diversion.

This earnest but painfully clunky film, though professional in tech respects and seemingly well financed, plays like the work of an ambitious high school history student.

McAvoy and Radcliffe are actors with charm to burn, but it’s only in brief moments that their characterizations cut through the film’s pandemonium, while the jokes they’re called upon to deliver land with a thud.

Though Whelan's debut filmmaking effort wears some of its homemade characteristics proudly, it wrangles more than enough credible interviewees to make its points.

Even if the now-veteran director lays everything on a bit thick, repeatedly makes many of the same points and lets things go on too long, he's still found a lively and legitimate way to tackle urgent subject matter that other filmmakers have found excuses to avoid.

Renzi's uneven script makes this a less sturdy vehicle than 2012's Arbitrage, and a less marketable one given the absence of thriller elements that sustained that film's character study. Still, there's plenty here for Gere's admirers to appreciate.

Buzzing attentively but not exclusively around cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, director Leah Wolchok strikes a pleasing balance between office minutiae and comic greatest hits; she gets enough face time with individual artists to please comedy nerds while keeping things wholly accessible to casual fans.

Infusing its generic horror tropes with vaguely satirical aspects, the film doesn't really work on either level. Unintentionally campy (or purposely, it's hard to tell) and marred by ridiculous plotting and dialogue, #Horror is mostly just a horror.

Be prepared to be emotionally devastated.

The portrait that emerges is intimate — perhaps too intimate for film lovers who might have preferred to hear more about the star’s working methods, and fewer details about her husbands and kids.

It’s a solid genre outing with unsettling topical resonance.

Nielsson somewhat frustratingly avoids giving us many cues to the passage of time, but nevertheless the film captures some of the drama generated by the public's impatience and Mugabe's maneuvering during the long drafting process

Sylvester Stallone doesn't get back in the ring in Creed, but he still comes away as a big winner in this far-fetched but likeable offshoot of the geriatric Rocky series.

It offers more than enough laughs to justify taking time out from TV marathons of A Christmas Story, and maybe enough, at least for younger audiences, to become a pinch-hitter each year when established classics like Elf grow too familiar.

An uneven but promising sophomore outing for Montreal-based Italian director Simone Rapisarda Casanova.

Other than undeniably looking good, Harding is unable to bring much depth to his role that, if the film had been shot closer to the period in which it was set, could have been knocked out of the park by a young Pacino or De Niro.

What should have been a tautly paced B-movie thriller instead comes to feel like a mini-series, leaving the viewer too much time to ponder the silliness of its narrative contrivances.

However polished the doc's tech and score, it simply doesn't find drama in this familiar template.

The whimsically humorous script relies primarily on playing up the individual idiosyncrasies of the characters rather than full-on comedic situations, although the overall approach remains grounded in reality, rather than taking to Wes Anderson-style flights of fancy.

Pizzo finds nearly no drama in Freddie's path from high school to college ball.