Dennis Harvey

The lead performers, the brighter fillips in Daniel Taplitz’s screenplay and Marcos Siega’s (“Pretty Persuasion”) assured direction make this a pleasing item overall.

Harrelson shines, particularly in framing scenes with Sandra Oh as a tactful court psychiatrist.

The Wrath of Becky is entertaining enough. But perhaps inevitably, with its heroine grown to near-adulthood, the novelty is a bit dulled now.

It’s basic action entertainment of a somewhat old-fashioned ilk, giving viewers exactly what they expect in a borderline-hokey yet satisfying way.

Evaluating this project in conventional feature terms is a lost cause; relevant contexts are purely avant-garde and pornographic. Suffice it to say that helmer's careful attention to framing camera, music and content signal primary allegiance to Art rather than Smut.

The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.

For a film with such a narrow scope, this one oddly refuses to ask some of the basic questions that might have enriched our understanding.

The fact that the films that serve as her models often sported the same flaws doesn’t excuse this fairly poker-faced spoof’s sometimes borderline-torpid pace and disappointing fade-out.

Zarcoff does a good job building tension.

If this wrap-up proves less than fully satisfying, Possum still casts an impressive spell.

This energetic spin through high school antics redolent of everything since “Ferris Bueller” is colorful and amusing enough to entertain viewers looking for a familiar mix of bad-taste gags in a squeaky-clean suburban setting.

A bright, snappy culture-clash farce in the mode of "Desperately Seeking Susan" and its ilk, Kiss Me, Guido plays gay and Italian-American stereotypes against one another to good-natured, crowd-pleasing results.

Fans excited to see John Carpenter back in bigscreen action after nine years' absence will find limited cause for joy in The Ward, a horror opus that briskly -- maybe too briskly -- charts ghostly doings at a nuthouse.

Ultimately, Stante’s raw energy and sure hand with actors are more encouraging than the screenplay’s lack of depth is bothersome.

Too much of “Bombshell” skims over Lamarr’s more troubling and troubled aspects to paint her in somewhat stock terms as the victim of keep-her-on-that-pedestal misogyny.

It’s pleasant enough cinematic comfort food, but even so, you may be hungry again soon afterward.

Recycles familiar ideas, with just enough droll wit to score as a nifty normal-folk-doing-stupid-deadly-things comedy a la "Fargo."

Smrz brings considerable gusto if not much conceptual originality to the pileup of dire crises, keeping the pace brisk and seriocomic tone variable.

The track record of SNL-drawn movies is dire ("It's Pat," "Stuart Saves His Family," "Blues Brothers 2000"), and this one stands just a peg higher, as an amiable, if flyweight, di-version.

She hasn’t just created a stylish potboiler, but a densely textured piece that makes for a truly arresting viewing experience to a point. A shame then that the film succumbs somewhat to the more pretentious and silly aspects of Garai’s initially cryptic puzzle of a script.

Brad Anderson’s film steers a middle course between dysfunctional domestic drama and supernatural horror. That balance doesn’t completely work. But solid performances and some strong, occasionally unpleasant content make this an involving if not entirely satisfying watch.

Lutsik takes aim at reckless capitalism --- as well as the increasing Westernization of Russian filmmaking --- with a disquieting allegory that in both themes and aesthetic is an audacious throwback to pre-WWII Soviet cinema formalism.

The picture delivers enough of the expected goods, if seldom with the wit or panache of the series' best.

Respectable but unmemorable end result may suffer from comparison with the similarly themed, albeit differently angled, “Traffic.”

Unspectacular but quietly absorbing.

While its storytelling wavers, there’s nothing unsteady about the movie’s overall packaging craftsmanship.

Unlike the vast majority of rude bigscreen comedies these days, "Prison" may actually improve with repeat viewings, since its best aspects are offhand enough to be missed the first time around.

Despite the tale's real-life basis and a solid Ed Harris as their fictive equivalents' alcoholic dad, Touching Home emerges as a formulaic triumph-over-odds tale with too little distinguishing detail.

Even the most deliberately airy amusement can use more ingenious structuring and assertive personality than Pineiro is inclined to provide at this (still early) stage in his career.

This “Capital” succeeds as a well-acted crisscrosser of a melodrama between two awkwardly entangled families in upstate New York. Where it falls well short is in attaining the level of biting social commentary Virzi drew from the same material.

The players are deft enough that a little more wit in the writing would have surely been well-served. (Nighy in particular makes much of relatively little.) And while briskly handled, none of the ideas here are fresh enough for Role Play to score points on narrative or character unpredictability.

If the ultimate effect is a little more slight than one might’ve hoped, Jones and his appealing cast nonetheless sustain a low-key charm even after the enigmatic initial promise burns off like morning fog.

The audacity of de Silveira’s concept — in which enrollees at an upscale Christian college indulge in secret, moralizing vigilante mayhem — and her deliberately over-the-top aesthetic render Medusa a compelling mixed bag. It may miss the bull’s-eye, but not for lack of intriguing ideas or style.

Despite a second half that feels more routine than its first, Pride is a definite crowd-pleaser.

What might have seemed a familiar if sad drama in live-action form benefits from this relative novelty of presentation, which lends a certain universality, as well as heightened viewer access, to Salomon’s story. But the rather pedestrian animation here also makes Charlotte a bit of a disappointment.

Thanks largely to the performers (and Crystal in particular), the end result is diverting enough if unmemorable.

Shy on the celebrity-gawking (and celebrity input) that marks many fashion documentaries, and neither gossipy nor an objective appreciation of his impact and legacy, picture is a successful portrait on its own terms, save one: It's unlikely to excite much theatrical interest.

Pleasant, if mediocre family fare.

In some respects an improvement on its predecessor, in others not, this is finally one more good-enough if unmemorable entry sure to extend the series’ life in lucrative fashion.

If There’s Something in the Water isn’t the most sophisticated treatment of the issues it scrutinizes, it nonetheless makes a very convincing case for protections against environmental harm being applied equally to all members of society.

Lingua Franca is notable not just for the deftness of its overall assembly and performances, but for its approaching hot-button issues of the moment (the status/rights of both transpersons and undocumented workers) in ways that are insightful without being heavy-handed.

Sometimes spare to a fault (especially scriptwise), low-key effort nonetheless holds attention with its naturalistic, nonsensationalized approach.

This year's kinder, gentler "Animal House."

An unusually low-key Filipino drama whose neo-realist air generally triumphs over the script's violent, tearful contrivances.

Its inspiring portraits of hardworking subjects make a fine case for raising the bar by rewarding excellence rather than punishing failure.

Outlaws & Angels trades in the lurid character psychology and crude ironies of the spaghetti Western — an idiom whose cynical worst-case-scenario view of humanity seems more acceptable to modern audiences than the good-shall-triumph faith of the traditional Hollywood western.

Picture's ambition, cogency and decent performances make up for its uneven aspects. Woody Harrelson has some especially good moments as a cop.

This is all a lot more interesting than some guy in a mask running around with a kitchen knife. Though not at all comedic like the “Happy Death Day” films, Head Count similarly plays with narrative perception in clever ways. It’s an admirably disciplined film with committed performances by actors playing characters more complicated than the usual horror casualty list.

A good-looking and well-crafted if familiar chunk of creature-siege horror.

Though inevitably the formula wears a little thinner in spots this time, it’s a frothy fantasy that should satisfy viewers’ itch for confectionary-looking Christmas fluff.

Siren is lively if occasionally rough around the edges, packing a satisfying amount of action and a couple of amusingly nasty surprises into its short running time.

This update of 1950s drive-in sci-fiers finds the right balance between icky, funny and scary, with sheer energy compensating for a script that could have used more parodic panache.

This entertaining-enough quartet of loosely interwoven terror tales falls right into the middle ground of horror omnibuses, with no outright duds but no truly memorable (or scary) segments either.

Whatever literary talent Leroy was praised for shouldn’t have been so quickly forgotten and dismissed by those who’d once championed it. However, that praise was won under false pretenses — and while you can criticize Leroy fans for claiming to love the writing when they really fell in love with the myth it came packaged in, you can’t blame them for feeling ripped off.

If “Soul’s” script errs on the side of simplicity, it does effectively downplay the cliches inherent in its unambitious story arc. And the foregrounded local culture is always engaging, with meticulous but unshowy attention to period detail on all levels.

Forsaking the usual anime fantasy terrain for a straight suspense plot that might easily have been executed in live-action form, director Satoshi Kon's debut pic, "Perfect Blue," is a psychological thriller that intrigues without quite hitting the bull's-eye.

It has a somewhat routine midlevel-cable-production feel. But the content is engaging, and the use of old movie clips to illustrate biographical details... is amusing.

Solid, straightforward docu should prove a durable broadcast and educational item for years to come.

It’s not that “My Love” feels inherently dubious; it’s that its execution is just a little too smiling-through-tears slick to be swallowed whole.

This slick exercise about a housewife whose spouse might or might not be dead is effective until a downright maudlin close.

Overlapping with other recent documentaries, picture nonetheless presents a stimulating argument.

A well-crafted if incompletely satisfying drama whose character study intrigues but ultimately feels somewhat frustratingly underdeveloped.

Though the results aren’t terribly original or memorable, they do provide a creepy 90-odd minutes.

This amiably dumb feature debut for New Zealand writer-director Jason Lei Howden could have used some additional polish on the scripting side to bump its bad-taste humor up from the routinely to the inspirationally silly.

Little in the way of a unified theme emerges to turn Joseph Levy’s feature into something more than a semi-random survey of restaurant life.

Always watchable yet ultimately self-defeating in terms of its tonal/aesthetic choices.

Though well-cast and competently written, The Ritual owes its primary effectiveness not so much to story or character per se as to the unsettling atmosphere Bruckner and company have eked out of the forest itself.

Entertaining but uneven, the result is a deliberately over-the-top sci-fi horror exercise that loses some focus as the action grows more psychedelically unhinged — its oscillating tone not necessarily helped by Nicolas Cage growing likewise, in one of his less inspired gonzo-style performances.

A cheerfully silly action fantasy.

The script doesn't wring many surprises or much character involvement from the premise, and the brothers' helming, while slick, is short on scares, action setpieces and humor.

A straight-ahead slasher pic with the big difference of an all-gay male character cast, Hellbent is fun -- if minor horror fun -- ably handled by first-time feature helmer Paul Etheredge-Ouzts.

Another satirical view of the everyday insanity of working within the Industry, slickly made New Suit adds no special insight to the subgenre.

Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score.

Stitching together a quilt of stories involving disparate Angelenos in the mode of "Magnolia" and "Short Cuts" and myriad other crisscrossers, this somber drama is well crafted and watchable but lacks the distinctive story content, style and standout performances to become more than a serviceable reboot of familiar ideas.

The picture's creepiness factor is sufficient to rate this a notch above genre average.

Results are offbeat and amusing, but also a bit thin as the whole essentially amounts to one long shaggy-dog joke.

Trueba keeps things moving within and between eras in a graceful, affectionate, assured way that’s always enjoyable, even if the film overall seems a bit frivolous given its larger themes.

Even if the rewards are limited, the technique is impeccable.

Never mind the inherent titular redundancy: The Last Exorcism Part II is a generally effective sequel to the 2010 sleeper that injected at least a little new life into the heavily taxed found-footage-horror subgenre.

Vitaletti’s storytelling, and ability to drum up tension or scares, is less potent here than his attention to evoking a general climate of close-minded religious hypocrisy.

Code 8 is better than a mere calling-card film, though one senses a desire to check all the boxes of fan expectation and professional packaging rated higher than the kinds of personal expression that might have lent it a more memorable idiosyncrasy.

If there are no outright duds, there’s no real triumph either. But the whole is certainly diverse, lively and reference-packed enough to please horror fans attracted to this kind of enterprise.

It’s good of its type — just not quite good enough to linger once the lights have come up.

It’s a reasonably taut post-apocalyptic survival tale that makes up for a lack of original ideas with tight pacing and solid craftsmanship.

Miss Juneteenth richly captures the slow pace of ebbing small-town Texas life, even if you might wish there were a bit more narrative momentum to pick up the slack in writer-director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ first feature.

This slacker prince (Hawke) comprises a sinkhole at the center of adaptor-helmer Michael Almereyda's otherwise compelling contempo update.

This revamp (which ignores several interim direct-to-video sequels Van Damme did not participate in) is a bit shorter, a tad more stylish, and utilizes the same clichés a little less ponderously.

It’s admirably well-crafted within its mostly savvy limitations.

A somewhat mixed bag, as the script doesn’t fully ballast the serious tenor, this is nonetheless a confidently crafted effort with enough intriguing elements to keep viewers involved, if not particularly scared.

Has some gaps in storytelling and contextualization that leave it feeling like a less-than-complete picture of the protagonist’s career to date. Yet the film more than succeeds in its primary goals of providing an inspirational role model plus lots of stupendous surfing footage, a combination that will enthrall most viewers.

Straw is too messy to be “good,” exactly — but it has a bitter relevancy, and it works.

None of this will be news to informed viewers, and the documentary's broad theme necessitates quick, superficial treatment of myriad underlying causes. But it's a solid, fairly even-handed spur for discussion that will be particularly welcome in classroom settings.

Cuck is powerful so long as we’re simply trapped observing Ronnie’s all-too-palpable incomprehension and childlike tantrums over his dead-end circumstances. But when those circumstances start to feel rigged, the film’s value as analysis of a hot-button social phenomenon begins to cool.

A watchable mess with ultra-laid-back Me Decade vibe.

Loathe to mar his exquisite package with the least hint of vulgar commentary, Ancarani arrives at something that is at once luxuriously alluring and a little too like an advertisement for luxury products — dazzling, aloof, uncritical and fatuous.

A consistently intriguing psychodrama that may nonetheless leave many viewers feeling that it’s all buildup and scant payoff.

A giant data dump of diverse archival and interview materials shaped into an admirably cogent if cluttered two-hour whole, “Caught” provides a fascinating albeit extreme illustration of the intersection between fame, greed, copyright and technology in the internet age.

This thriller about a lesbian couple whose weekend takes a drastic turn is less one-note as a narrative conceit than “It Stains the Sand Red,” though it too ultimately stretches inspiration a tad thin. Nonetheless, it’s an entertaining and well-crafted effort.