Alex Saveliev

Yes, it’s all uber-violent, in-your-face, completely lacking sophistication – but I’ll be damned if it’s not entertaining.

The notion of exploring how a young boy views the world through his manipulative older sibling’s eyes – and how poverty affects that developing worldview – is not a bad one. It’s just delivered haphazardly. I applaud McAulay’s efforts, but Don’t Tell a Soul is at its best when it’s simply having fun as a silly B-flick. Shut your brain off, enjoy – and, like with any guilty pleasure, don’t tell a soul you liked it.

Perhaps the fact that the film is so inspired has something to do with the established camaraderie between fellow Marvel veterans. The franchise’s influence – the ebb and flow of the film, the swooping camera shots, the scope – is evident; only in this case, instead of the System’s victim becoming a superhero, a potential hero falls victim to the System. In the Russo brother’s capable hands, Cherry will speak to both millennials and older generations alike.

Beautiful and atmospheric but essentially empty and pointless, Berlin Alexanderplatz hits you with the bluntness of a sledgehammer.

Who wants to be subjected to water torture for 2 hours?

Slight but likable, Changeland deals with moving on and the healing powers of travel and friendship. Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s low-budget cousin, it’ll hopefully finally establish Green as more than just the “Zip It!” guy.

Mrs. Lowry and Son has an appealing old-school charm and two performances that make it worth seeing.

Matt Bomer and Alejandro Patiño, who play the two leads, have a chemistry that brings to mind Tom McCarthy’s superior studies of seemingly disparate characters bonding against all odds, The Station Agent and The Visitor. That unlikely companionship – the heart of Butler’s film – goes a long way to make up for other lags: underdeveloped secondary characters and a few misjudged sequences that unwittingly titter on the brink of “racist.”

Were it not for a few missteps, coupled with an abrupt resolution that doesn’t do justice to the preceding depth, Doyle would have had a little gem on his hands. As it stands, I almost love Almost Love.

It may not break new ground when it comes to this genre, one involving betrayal and heavily-accented mob bosses and brotherly love, but when a familiar path is tread with such confidence, you just may want to take another stroll.

I’ll take a bold if misshapen curiosity such as this over safe Hollywood fare any day.

Teenage Badass will not set your world on fire, but its empathetic characters, sense of rhythm, knowledge of band jargon, and, most importantly, its music are sure to at least warm your heart.

Shabbily structured, with barely any tension, characterization, scares, or thematic depth, Consecration, due to its utter lack of inspiration, loses the audience’s concentration within minutes, and may even lead to constipation (okay, maybe not the last part, but you get my drift).

Nothing here is left to the imagination, Pesce running down the list of clichés and ensuring he includes every single one. Once the realization that this is yet another cheap-o retread settles in (about 10 minutes in), the rest becomes agonizingly painful to sit through.

Shaft attempts to hide its own prejudices by simply acknowledging those issues, without so much as a trace of depth or substance.

The convoluted movie feels like a bunch of grandiose ideas in search of a connecting thread. Perhaps Cahill needs to reconnect with his indie roots to get his creative bliss back.

It may not quite reach the heights of Fargo, but if you enjoyed Cold Pursuit or the inferior-but-similar Daughter of the Wolf, then Blood and Money will be right up your dirt road.

Louis C.K. should’ve applied sandpaper to the movie’s rougher edges; he should’ve adopted the jazzy, purposefully meandering, “anything goes” vibe of his previous outings. The comedic drama starts off like that, then collapses in its last third in a heap of sentimental mush.

If Pachman intended to reiterate the difficult plight of migrant workers, our disregard and abuse of them, then point made, I guess. Yet for a film titled Beneath Us, it certainly never digs deep under the surface.

We may not learn about Casanova the gambler or the spy, but we get to see a vulnerable side previously unexposed.

I Love America doesn’t delve too deeply, or at all, into things like the American dream, the implications of aging in contemporary society, cultural/generational differences, or the lasting marks one’s parents leave on their offspring. As it stands, the film is a cute little love letter to the City of Angels, bound to evaporate from your mind sooner than a meal at the In-N-Out.

The ambiguity in this glacially-paced but atmospheric and at times striking little film doesn’t so much tantalize as frustrate – only because the filmmaker duo approaches something so much deeper, wiser, and subtler.

This shameless excuse for children’s entertainment would be a blemish on any hack’s resume.

On all accounts, filmmaker John Swab’s gratuitous and grave Run with the Hunted fails to live up to the promise of its premise. Instead, it comes off as a lunkheaded exercise in self-aggrandizing mental masturbation.

Preposterous but entertaining, Jurassic World: Dominion not only finds new ways to inspire the awe and wonder sorely lacking from previous installments, but it also recaptures some of that Spielberg magic.

While decent in capable directorial hands – or as a supporting character – based on the evidence on display here, Carano doesn’t seem quite capable of carrying a film yet, let alone pull a dreary feature like Daughter of the Wolf out of the murk.

There are worse ways to pass 90 minutes for those willing to disregard the film’s numerous, glaring flaws. Call it a Chinese Mission Impossible, minus Ethan Hunt’s budget and brains.

The film teeters on a fine line between soulful triumph and B-movie cheese.