The documentary is the Debbie Downer of film forms. Over the years, documentaries have evolved into an information-distribution service; a sort of Associated Press for bad news. The networks and great newspapers filled this role in the past, but, as we all know, profit-minded corporations have absorbed and gutted them, leaving them without the resources to produce the in-depth journalism they once did. That job has been outsourced to the independent filmmaking community.... Read more

I sense a trend. Film factories are greenlighting fact-based stories pivoting on the intersection of two historically significant lives and then placing the focus on the less compelling personality. A prime example of an American production that made this error is the baseball bio 42. Proving Europeans have not developed immunity is Gilles (Afterwards) Bourdos’ improbably pointless Renoir.... Read more

Spoiler alert: The Sapphires is likable as hell but so formulaic you’ll swear you’ve already seen it. The heart-tugging, toe-tapping saga of an Aboriginal girl group overcoming obstacles and becoming a soul sensation for a brief moment in the ’60s really has only one surprise, and I found it enormously refreshing.... Read more

In the opening moments of Lore, the sophomore offering from Australian writer-director Cate Shortland (Somersault), a family packs for a country getaway. We soon understand, however, that the getaway they’re preparing for is a run for their lives.

The father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) wears a disheveled SS uniform. The mother (Ursina Lardi) is a tightly wound shrew who appears to hold her husband personally responsible for the fact that Allied forces have not only entered but are in the process of dividing up her country.... Read more

It’s not every director who can make the future feel old hat, but Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) definitely has the knack. This may well be his defining quality as a filmmaker.

In Oblivion, we spend two hours plus in the year 2077 in a postapocalyptic corner of Earth in the company of computer-generated drones, supersize spacecraft and a mechanic who lives in a Jetson-esque mansion 3000 feet in the air. Not a single minute seems like something we haven’t seen countless times before.... Read more

The latest from writer-director Brian Helgeland (The Order) has all the makings of an inspirational sports biopic. Unfortunately, he made a bio about the wrong sports legend.

The movie explores the relationship between two giants of baseball: Jackie Robinson, who made history by becoming the first African American to play alongside whites since the 1880s when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947; and Branch Rickey, the man who made it happen.... Read more

Nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar, The Gatekeepers is a movie about secrets. Secret agents. Secret missions. State secrets. Dirty secrets. This isn’t surprising, given that it consists of interviews with six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s ultra-secret counterterrorism agency. Many secrets are revealed and examined in director Dror Moreh’s mind-blowingly fine film. If I have a quibble, it’s that he never reveals the most tantalizing secret of all: how the hell he pulled it off.... Read more

Certain books are for a certain time. Read after the right moment in one’s life, they may not only lose their remembered magic but become parodies of themselves. Of no piece of writing is this truer, perhaps, than Jack Kerouac’s 1957 hymn to hepness, On the Road.... Read more

There’s a difference between stupid and dumb. A stupid movie just takes your money and wastes your time. It’s a business plan on a big screen. But a dumb movie can be triumphant, even transcendent in its joyful idiocy.

Olympus Has Fallen is such a film. It does Die Hard better than Die Hard and is the definition of a guilty pleasure. Directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and seemingly scripted by the Three Stooges, it is big and dumb and more fun than a barrel of Bruce Willises.... Read more

Here’s a fun party game I made up: It’s called How Would This Movie Have Ended If Cellphones Had Existed? You can play it with nearly every film ever made, because the proliferation of mobile devices is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Take Jaws. Quint smashes the Orca’s radio so Brody can’t call for a bigger boat, potentially dooming everybody onboard. If cellphones had existed, Hooper could have slipped into the can to text the Coast Guard, and the good folks of Amity, flush with tourist dollars, might’ve made him their next mayor.... Read more