Andy Webster

The conventions are trundled out in Stanley J. Orzel’s cross-cultural romance, Lost for Words, but not the tension or the chemistry.

The ending to this fable misses the opportunity for broader metaphorical resonance, but getting there has its own unnerving rewards.

Almost every image in this movie — from webcams, websites and laptop cameras — appears on a monitor. Scenes pulse with the Internet’s speed and sprawl, aided by clever editing that pops. The effect is insular, off-putting and disconcertingly familiar.

[A] crisp if feather-light documentary.

Though rich in period detail, the movie grows tiresome with solemn, protracted soap-operatic encounters laden with glowering stares and tearful outbursts.

The longtime friends Mr. Guzmán and Mr. Garcia have an unforced chemistry. But the effective jokes land too rarely. You’ll be ready to leave when the trip is over.

Freedom does not remotely approach, say, “12 Years a Slave” in its production values or dramatic impact. But it does offer Mr. Gooding, whose weathered countenance is no longer the exuberantly cherubic face featured in “Jerry Maguire.” In its place is something more interesting: a quiet, rugged and arresting conviction.

This film — the second from the Soskas, and shot in their hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia — combines gore, quiet dread, feminist conviction and a visual classicism, often using a red palette, with impressive, unbelabored dexterity.

The Queen of Spain, a light ensemble romp from the veteran director Fernando Trueba, has fun with movie lore even as it pillories Hollywood’s deal-making with the Francisco Franco regime in the 1950s.

Mr. Diez, a former effects specialist, skillfully blends viscous textures with cheesy digital flourishes. The screenwriter, Adam Aresty, also earns points for the dialogue’s blithe hit-or-miss humor. But it’s Tilman Hahn’s sound design, with its unsettling buzz, that will burrow most unforgettably into your memory.

The Boy, despite remarkable performances and gorgeous imagery, does not sufficiently flesh out its subject.

A richly satisfying poison-pen letter to the music industry.

The film, financed by a Kickstarter campaign, looks polished enough. But its investors’ money might have been better spent elsewhere.

When the Rangers engage in “Transformers”-lite mayhem, an intriguing group portrait collapses into generic pyrotechnics.

An intermittently diverting stew of low-budget effects and potty-mouth humor.

[A] tidy and ingratiating documentary ode to high-end mixologists.

“He can move the mountains.” “I was blind but now I see.” Those lines are but drops in the torrent of clichés saturating Michael John Warren’s narcotizing documentary Hillsong — Let Hope Rise.

If you’re a boy between, say, 8 and 12 and wired to the hilt on Coca-Cola, the shrill, exhausting “Gold” might be for you. But only if.

The movie benefits from Austin Schmidt’s neon-infused cinematography and Annie Simeone’s lush production design. But Mr. LaChiusa’s songs largely fail to resonate here. Dramatic traction suffers, probably as a result of the many, and diffuse, vignettes. And yet this is a commendably audacious effort by Mr. Gustafson (“Were the World Mine”).

While the director, Peter Askin, employs an all-too-customary suspense arsenal (vertiginous stairway perspectives, foreboding thunderstorms, ominous headlights), Mr. King’s script offers a wealth of behavioral details.

An investigation among the attendees grants Mr. Andò the opportunity to pursue pithy, discursive exchanges about power, austerity and capitalism amid high-end accommodations and a tasteful classical soundtrack.

[A] slight exercise, which, for all its modesty, generates a measure of dread.

The actors, including Erin Boyes as another captive, try to infuse their characters with depth, and the cinematographer, Scott Winig, lends the proceedings a professional gloss, especially in nighttime scenes. But their efforts cannot lift the story beyond its thin, lurid premise.

It’s an eco-fable devoid of didactic overkill, delivered with energy, winking mischief, unobtrusive effects and a skilled cast.

The trouble lies in Tyler Hisel’s script, which teems with wheezy conventions.

Mostly, Last Weekend is an elegiac ode to affluence.

Mr. Hough, a “Dancing With the Stars” champion, impresses with his footwork and sufficiently fulfills his romantic-lead duties. BoA is cute and appealingly impudent, but a bit more remote. On the floor, however, their chemistry ignites.

There’s claustrophobia to burn in Steven C. Miller’s Submerged, a modest thriller offering glints of talent amid predictable plot threads.