Andrew Barker

Like many a poorly-plotted video game, “Kingsglaive” manages to skate by for a while on the sheer splendor of its visuals.

Imperium’s depiction of the white-nationalist underground is ultimately background for a straightforward potboiler, and the film is at its best when it stays in that arena.

Attempting to naturalistically capture the hugely internal process of mourning, but rarely managing to offer much of an opening into that process, Curran’s tasteful, challenging yet ultimately inscrutable debut feature never quite lives up to the caliber of her fine cast.

We never get more than a glimmer of personality within these well-worn character types, and West never digs beneath them to offer any sort of commentary or criticism.

Very obviously a first feature, Lights Out is full of camp (most of it clearly intentional, some perhaps not), and its underlying mythology is confused and often ridiculous. But there’s an invigorating leanness — and a giddy, almost innocent energy — to the filmmaking.

An arresting visual experience, Kicks has style to spare, and in fact it probably should have spared a little, as this first-time director sometimes crowds his film with more auteurial flourishes than his rather simple story can support. Nonetheless, this is a debut of undeniable promise, both for its director and its largely unknown cast.

Much like classic car customization, effective cinematic storytelling is often all about the detailing, and Ricardo de Montreuil’s Lowriders, which sets a tale of inter-generational rivalry and artistic awakening amidst East LA’s Latino car culture, has style and local color to spare.

A melodrama with soft-rock ballads where its beating heart should be.

As an indictment of Wall Street chicanery, it’s largely toothless; as a pure thriller, it only quickens the pulse once or twice; as a conspiracy saga, its central mystery falls flat. Yet somehow the film hangs together surprisingly well.

The problem with “Alice” is its lack of narrative imagination.

Being Charlie is far from a home run, but it’s the kind of solidly struck single after a string of strikeouts that can be just the thing to help set a veteran back on track.

A sensual, brainy, immersive experience that could invite plenty of festival love and attention for its first-time writer-director.

Atrociously written, begrudgingly acted, haphazardly assembled and never more backward than when it thinks it’s being progressive.

Even when not fighting with her makeup, Saldana’s Simone rarely feels fully formed.

An almost bizarrely limp, emotionless, blank greeting card of a movie, this purported romantic comedy-drama contains little of the three, at best serving as a sort of extended L.L. Bean advertisement, full of fabulously shot footage of Eastern Canadian vistas and the well-dressed rustic yuppies who live there.

Struggling to generate much tension, the film opts for sensory battery in the action scenes, rendering gunshots as loud as cannon fire and splashing blood every which way.

Maintaining the buoyant heartbeat beneath all the digital flash, Favreau never loses sight of the fact that he’s making an adventure story for children.

Snyder has set a Sisyphean task for himself. That this very long, very brooding, often exhilarating and sometimes scattered epic succeeds as often it does therefore has to be seen as an achievement.

Stephen Hopkins’ film offers a safe, middlebrow slice of history that beats a snoozy lecture any day. Making a few admirable attempts to complicate what could have been a standard-issue inspirational sports narrative, Race is better than it has to be, but not by too much.

Director Ross Katz’s The Choice, which mimics “The Notebook” in everything but meaningful conflict, believable characters, style and emotional honesty, is a very unsuccessful story.

Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt substantial audiences, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is in fact a moderately entertaining film, not deficient in old-fashioned costume drama when it pleases, nor in the power of being clever where it chooses, but awkward and unsatisfying.

Structured more like a requiem than a polemic, the doc ebbs and flows in accordance with the cycles of mourning as it speaks with parents of the murdered children, as well as the teachers, priests, doctors and neighbors afflicted with survivor’s guilt, elegantly and devastatingly capturing the tenor of a small town that will carry these scars for at least a generation.

The pic gets quite a lot of mileage out of several note-perfect musical choices...and Fletcher includes just enough odd angles and quirky compositions to suggest a slightly stranger, loopier vision for this film lurking somewhere beneath.

Perhaps the worst one could say about Craig Gillespie’s film is that, rather than their finest hours, the whole cast and crew all put in a solid shift at the office making the movie, producing a perfectly entertaining, sometimes quite well-crafted disaster drama that nonetheless retreats from the memory almost as soon as the credits roll.

On the surface, Diablo would seem to have all of the proper ingredients for a rollicking retro Western, yet its sights are set a bit higher, which inspires both admiration for its moxie and disappointment that its script and direction aren’t up to the challenge.

A mostly harmless yet plenty rough assemblage of musical numbers and rote chases that barely add up to a movie.

The execution here is impressively adroit, with a clever script enlivened by two charmingly compatible lead performances from Rosa Salazar and Adam Pally.

This reimagining features some fun production design and a performance of undiluted bug-eyed flamboyance from James McAvoy as the titular pale student of unhallowed arts, but its reservoirs of energy and ingenuity run dry long before the finale, leaving the film to lumber to its half-hearted conclusion.