Angie Han

Regarded as a whole, Fresh is a success — a taste of its creative talents’ abilities that leave the viewer hungry for more.

For those who prefer their gingerbread soaked in booze and their tinsel splattered with gore, Violent Night might be exactly what the season calls for.

It’s a romantic comedy, and whatever its flaws elsewhere, it works best where it counts most — in the chemistry between the two leads.

While the film is unlikely to hold much appeal for Netflix subscribers who never cared about The Witcher to begin with, it’s a worthy side quest for anyone with a passing interest in seeing more of the Continent.

Here I Come still comes out ahead, in the end, delivering enough of the good stuff to keep a fan yelping and laughing and cheering throughout.

At the end of Living, I felt not like I’d seen an old favorite in a new light, but like I might want to go back and watch Ikiru again. There are worse outcomes for a remake than reviving affection for the original, or retelling an old story for a new audience that may not have heard it before. There are better ones, too.

Bennett’s sensitive performance pulls us into her growing anguish and fear.

It’s not reinventing the wheel or breaking new ground; it’s unlikely to wow audiences with its bold artistic vision or profound emotional depths. But there’s a place for sturdy and familiar entertainment that delivers exactly what it intends, and Clifford the Big Red Dog is just that.

The feature debut by writer-director Nastasya Popov is certainly messy, a mélange of contrasting tones and contradictory ideas. But darned if it isn’t bursting with enough personality to charm you all the same.

You Don’t Know Me aims to cut past the mythology to reveal the flesh-and-blood woman underneath, and in doing so assembles a mostly sympathetic, mostly compelling portrait of an all-American tragedy. But when even a movie aimed at capturing the “true” Anna Nicole Smith seems unsure exactly who that might be, it’s hard not to wonder who any of this is really for.

As an appreciation of birds and our connection to them, it’s engrossing and endearing — a fresher take, certainly, than yet another weepie about dog or cat owners. But as an exploration of grief, it’s hindered by a 128-minute run time that spreads its emotional potency too thin.

Elio feels just a tad too familiar in its sights and story beats to seem totally fresh.

If its exploration of these ideas is ultimately too incomplete to feel fully satisfying, its performances are strong enough to draw attention throughout.

If the film’s strength lies in its affection for its title heroine, its greatest flaw is a comparative lack of attention toward the characters surrounding her — yielding a film that, for all its likable beats, feels flimsier than it should.

As a mood piece, the Samir Oliveros-directed The Luckiest Man in America is plenty evocative, full of retro flair tinged with dread or dreaminess. But as a character study or a narrative, it’s too rooted in its particular place to extend its impact beyond it.

As painstakingly crafted as this mystery-thriller is, it remains something to be admired from a distance rather than felt viscerally.

Family Movie is a project that seems to exist entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwick clan just thought it’d be fun to collaborate on something, and that’s being released for the rest of us entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwicks are the Bacon-Sedgwicks. For some fans, maybe that’ll be enough. I think I preferred the actual home movies of the actual Kevin, Kyra, Sosie and Travis that play over the ending.

That McGowan admires the source material and wants to do it justice is clear, and that he’s resisted the temptation to sand down its sharpest edges speaks to a desire to meet his troubled characters where they are. But his movie ends up just another reminder that paying tribute to a novel isn’t the same as breathing it into life.

The comedy never quite settles into a comfortable rhythm, and eventually backs itself into a corner so far away from any recognizable reality that it threatens to undermine the very message it wants to send.

For Worse isn’t all bad; bits of it are intriguing and the rest is too anodyne to get worked up about. But it’s hard to shake the disappointment that this is just an okay movie, when it seems like it should’ve been a good one.

The premise is rich with potential for aching romance and meaningful contemplation of the ways that time and technology can shape how we see our relationships. So it’s too bad that this version of it falls apart under closer examination, with a script that seems enamored of love more as a theoretical concept than a lived experience.

For most of its 110-minute run time, Don’t Make Me Go is a solidly likable drama, anchored by lovely, lived-in chemistry between John Cho and Mia Isaac as a father-daughter duo. But a misguided third-act choice throws off its bittersweet vibe, leaving a distinctly sour aftertaste.

While there’s something to be said for the communal experience of absorbing an album surrounded by dozens of likeminded fans, what’s actually being served up on screen is more filler than killer.

The body-swap comedy isn’t good so much as it is completely and totally innocuous. Its characters are drawn in the broadest of strokes and the plot points unfold along creakily predictable beats, but it’s too blandly sweet to be irritating or offensive.

Despite a juicy hook built on heated emotions and drastic actions, Magpie proves too cold and ultimately too timid to spark much of a reaction.

Only once we’ve gotten the full picture, near the end of the movie, does Charlie Harper finally start to come into its own. The film’s last scenes are its finest.

Neither dull enough to be painful nor fun enough to be engaging, it’s simply too bland to make much of an impression at all.

Last Survivors doesn’t only aim to offer up the usual pleasures of postapocalyptic thrillers like A Quiet Place or It Comes at Night — it also tries to deconstruct their dark appeal, with intriguing but uneven results.