Free State of Jones

Co-writer and director Gary Ross takes on the Civil War-era true story of Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), a farmer in Jones County, Miss., who comes to lead a rag-tag group of army deserters, irate fellow farmers and escaped slaves in a guerrilla battle against the Confederacy. The intent may be to show the right-side-of-history consequences of fighting for seemingly lost causes, but the result is a film that rambles on, assuming that everything that happened to this man was equally worth putting in a movie. R, 2016.