Dennis Harvey

Tim Wolff's documentary is a diverting mix of colorful interviewees and footage from one such krewe's 40th anniversary ball, but it doesn't probe very deep.

Sharp performances and writing lend it a fresh appeal well above this genre's average.

What at first looks like a standard missing-person suspense tale turns out to have a more complicated agenda — but it is so haphazardly advanced and clumsily articulated, the film itself seems to be fumbling around for a cohering structure or mood.

Striking and self-indulgent in equal measure, Cam Archer's first feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known, is an impressive declaration of talent that nonetheless gets a little drunk and disorderly at the trough of High Art. Arresting visual and sonic textures frequently overwhelm sketchy narrative, leaving surface provocation too seldom ballasted by deeper psychological truths or emotional impact.

Some material in the docu feels repetitive or unnecessary. But the main problem is that “Citizen Koch” simply juggles too many themes and narratives to cohere. The result is largely compelling in the moment, but unsatisfying as a whole.

Closer to “Her” in its musing on human/machine connectivity, while also incorporating the dystopian and action-thriller aspects of “Blade Runner” and its ilk, albeit on a much smaller scale, the pic will divide fantasy fans, some of whom will give it props for breaking somewhat from genre formula, while others will be disappointed by the largely budgetary limits of its imagination.

David Turpin’s screenplay is adequate but slender, with rather too few complications and a foundational mythology that, when finally revealed, proves pretty skimpy itself. That doesn’t trouble O’Malley. He brings so much gloomy, lustrous visual enchantment to the tale that it feels quite bewitching while you’re watching it.

In trying to succeed as something both metaphorical and very literal-minded, the movie ends up being neither one nor the other — not psychologically deep enough to succeed as pure drama, and too earnest to offer the usual rewards of a genre film.

As a mix of nonfiction and wafer-thin drama, however, it's a genial mess in which both elements emerge undercooked

Hanging out with a 1970s cult figure of raunchy R&B "party records" is less fun than one would expect in The Weird World of Blowfly.

The best thing the film has going for it is editor Avner Shiloah’s scrambled channel-surfing assembly, which seldom sticks with any bit long enough for it to get too stale. Still, VHYes feels overextended even at the 66 slim minutes it takes to reach the final credits.

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.

While plot mechanics aren't wildly imaginative, pic nonetheless delivers requisite jolts in an above-average package.

Being a solid cut above average is good enough, given so much formulaic mediocrity among thrillers cluttering the streaming market.

A surfeit of harrowing on-the-ground footage during protest crackdowns, plus the protagonists’ testimonies, make for a frequently inspiring and exciting documentary. But helmer Greg Barker (“Ghosts of Rwanda”) also risks pretentiousness in various forms of stylistic and thematic overreach, while providing viewers scant explanatory info on the regional conflicts.

Where helmer Adam Wingard's prior "Pop Skull" used a jittery style to convey its delusional, possibly meth-addled protagonist's mindset, here, too much handheld camera wobble and wavering image focus only alienate the viewer from this somewhat sluggish tale.

This hectic pileup of supernatural nonsense is a treasure trove of seemingly unintentional hilarity. Although lacking helmer's usual aesthetic panache, this "Mother" is a cheesy, breathless future camp classic.

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

Limply cute, with underdeveloped subplots and secondary characters, this sitcomish dramedy shares the source material’s primary fault: For a story about a supposed genius, it’s not all that clever or complicated.

Crudup does a lot to keep things watchable, playing with a slightly acidic wryness that suggests the character’s humor has only been heightened by his grieving hopelessness.

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

Non-formulaic character interactions, a uniformly strong cast and deft handling by vet TV helmer Fabrice Cazaneuve render a refreshing take on youthful coming-out.

The Nines arcs from witty Hollywood insiderdom to a climactic metaphysical leap that may leave many viewers nonplussed. Nonetheless, there's more than enough intelligence, intrigue and performance dazzle to make this an adventuresome gizmo for grownups.

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.

There's never any doubt where the picture is headed. If it finally achieves a modicum of poignancy, the impact surely would have been greater if the whole felt fresher.

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.

The referentiality of “Kuso,” its general snark, and even its defensive self-criticism (characters state “I hate this movie!” more than once) fail to make it any more funny or inspired, let alone any less of a shapeless chore to sit through.

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

Good performances and quirky humor make this slick if less than fully satisfying mix of romantic comedy and mystery an easy sit.

Walking a sometimes wobbly line between charming and cloying.

The filmmakers etch the character dynamics so astutely that we never doubt the credibility of even the most ill-considered actions.

Everything about “Fantastic” is designed to charm, and its success in that respect will depend upon the viewer’s susceptibility to cuteness and contrivance ladled on with some proficiency but no subtlety whatsoever.

Real, inspired strangeness — not to mention laughs, and an actual point — prove elusive here, while the musical elements feel so inessential they might be excised entirely without notable loss. Wanderland deserves credit for trying something different. But such an effort shouldn’t end up so innocuous and inconsequential.

The result is a film that somehow manages to be fairly watchable, yet nonetheless really needed intervention from the conceptual stage onward.

Competent if pedestrian Urban Hymn takes a familiar walk down the path of inspirational youth drama.

Unfortunately that blast-off heralds an orbit to nowhere, with initial delight fading as pic runs out of ideas all too soon, never building a sense of momentum or narrative thrust.

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.

A respectful, illuminating appreciation of a few of the estimated 13 million yogis in India.

Those expecting insight into Robbins’ life or career, let alone the overall self-help industry, will be disappointed by this atypically non-investigative Joe Berlinger documentary.

The capable cast and brisk pacing keep attention held toward a happy ending that pleases even if it is a bit pat, not to mention inevitable.

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

Routine in some aspects, but compensates via psychologically sharp writing and performances.

Neil Marshall's flair for visceral action more than compensates for his script's lack of conceptual novelty in Doomsday. Principally South Africa-shot tale of a post-apocalyptic Great Britain cobbles together large chunks of "Escape From New York," "The Road Warrior," "28 Days Later" and "Resident Evil," but those with a taste for revved-up, splattery fantasy thrills won't be complaining.

Isn't about science vs. faith so much as that well-worn dramatic hook, the loss of a child.

The point is not very clear, but there's an impressive weirdness to Mad Cowgirl that elevated it above more strained attempts at transgressive cinema.

Ultimately there are a few twists too many, pushing the story into a realm of excess contrivance. There’s not enough time or nuance to lend numerous narrative turnabouts plausibility.

Loves Her Gun ultimately doesn’t quite cohere as one part slackerish social observation in a nicely turned mumblecore mode, and one part cautionary psychological thriller about the dangers of treating fear with a loaded weapon.

Too often, helmer Rickman galumphs through what’s meant to be a witty romp, underlining the script’s most obvious, rigged qualities.

Perfs are adequate in a movie lacking much use for better ones, though Brody disappoints by using the stock sotto voce rasp of the uber-macho action hero who really, really means business.

This fever dream feels more derivative than distinctive, entertaining and eventful as it is. Still, it’s a well-cast, well-crafted stab at something offbeat.

Nothing gels, as the film careens from cartoonishness to violent peril to attempted satire to sentimentality and so forth, all of it hyperbolic and inorganic.

On its own terms, Noer’s adventure is ultimately a dramatic and dynamic-enough telling of an indelible fact-based story to connect with viewers.

Hardcore feels like umpteen post-“Star Wars” action blockbusters trash-compacted into one — and whether that fundamentally appeals or not, the ingenuity of effort is undeniably high.

This heavy buildup of investigative intel may be TMI for those not already obsessed with all things Cobain. The dramatic sequences have a straightforward telepic-mystery feel, though undeniably enliven by Scott’s blowsy impersonation of the worst detective’s client imaginable.

Energetic but poorly structured.

This is the kind of buddy comedy where you have to take a giant leap of faith just to believe these two characters would ever be friends.

Narrower focus may lend this less crossover appeal than "Step Into Liquid," which was practically a recruitment poster for the surfing lifestyle. But such a tight focus might also make Billabong a repeat must-see for more dedicated boarders and wannabes.

This feature directing debut for Adam Carolla and frequent writing/producing collaborator Kevin Hench is an amiable, nicely assembled semi-autobiographical fiction that will please the former’s fans.

An unnerving home-invasion thriller, In Their Skin has narrative bones we've certainly seen before, bearing perhaps the closest resemblance to Michael Haneke's two versions of "Funny Games." Nonetheless, the same simple premise achieves full creepy impact here without succumbing to cheap genre thrills or cool arthouse abstraction.

The results don’t feel disjointed so much as oddly undernourished and a bit toothless for what’s intended as a bold (mostly) comic expose.

The problem is that writer-director Mike Gan’s first feature, though competently handled in most departments, doesn’t commit enough to any approach to fulfill its potential.

Well acted (though Garriga doesn’t quite make a coherent character out of Lauren, or create believable marital chemistry with Scott), this is a smooth movie that maybe should have been a little less tidy for maximum impact.

Within its modest boundaries, Bloodthirsty does a creditable enough job balancing supernatural suspense with the drama of a young artist’s insecurities at a key early career juncture.

The modest splash made by Andreas Dresen's Dogme-styled 2002 drama "Grill Point" raised expectations his projects since haven't quite met, including the new Summer in Berlin.

Yet even given its budgetary limits and second-tier cast, Lying and Stealing manages to be a retro escapist pleasure — one whose cleverness might actually have been muffled by flashier surface assets.

Warm and entertaining enough, with Brenda Blethyn doing a variation on her "Little Voice" vulgarian amid appealing support perfs.

Promises much in an ominously atmospheric package that nods to 1970s genre stylings. But the payoff is on the meh side.

Pic's complete lack of cinematic verve, along with bland tech work, do much to drain the juice out of what should have been a fierce, fun battle of the sexes.

Its screaming-queen stereotypes will look pretty retro in most Western markets, even if an earnest pro-tolerance message disarms potential offense.

Does a lot with little, milking a single location and minimal dialogue for deadpan humor, tension, and macabre payoff.

An awkward blend of documentary and genre pic.

Skiptrace remains lively, diverting, and essentially good-natured even when it’s cheerfully dumb, exploiting its diverse locations for every last drop of local color.

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

Mary Fishman’s admiring docu is more a general survey than a detailed history or portrait of individual personalities and causes, and as a result, it holds interest without achieving any real narrative arc, offering inspirational content in a merely workmanlike package.

Within the film’s modest scale, the period trappings feel apt, and its aesthetic packaging is attractive enough. But particularly for a movie largely about repression, “Bees” is so full of forced emotions that it teeters on the brink of cliche-riddled camp.

Duly offbeat without ever being very compelling in content or aesthetic.

The Vault has all the external factors that heist movies require. Yet without quite being dull, somehow it misses the danger, esprit and camaraderie we need for such escapades to achieve liftoff.

A first feature for helmer Bradley King and co-scenarist BP Cooper (though the latter has produced several indies), Time Lapse works due to both their escalating pileup of well-thought-out complications and credible character psychologies nicely communicated by expert performances.

The cast is earnestly committed, and if there are a few too many hokey last-second rescues from certain doom, Northmen nevertheless rarely risks curdling into camp.

The very definition of a well-made movie that nonetheless really needn’t have been made at all, Rocher’s entry into the canon will attract a few zombie completists, but provide little fun for the average genre buff and underwhelming reward for art-house audiences.

Director Samuel Bodin’s first theatrical feature is atmospheric, and departs from stock slasher conventions just enough to make for an entertaining if unexceptional scarefest.

Comedic and sentimental beats are as predictable as the storytelling is sloppy.

None of these elements feel very fresh, least of all in Ward Parry’s formulaic screenplay. But they’re executed with sufficient slick professionalism to make for a passable if unmemorable diversion.

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

Second feature from duo David Wain and Ken Marino of comedy group the State is, like their "Wet Hot American Summer," uneven but often hilarious.

Well-acted, nicely crafted and a handsome period piece within modest means, this isn’t the most novel, memorable or intellectually deep enterprise of its type. But it will satisfy viewers looking for a slightly racier variation on “Downton Abbey” terrain.

A time-warp comedy that starts out kinda "Pleasantville" and gets pretty Tepidsville, Blast From the Past expends scant imagination or style on a fun premise that seems an open invitation to both.

In the end, a pretty good buildup to OK payoff without any real surprises en route makes Dark Skies feel just enough above average to make one wish it had one memorable spark of conceptual inspiration up its sleeve.

It's a bad heterosexual date movie (more a date-gone-wrong), has too limited a gay angle for that demographic, and is about characters who are not particularly likable as individuals or as a couple.

High on energy if low on credibility.

You might hesitate to call a film this fixated on child terror, adult perversity and sadistic violence “good,” exactly. But there’s no question director Scott Jeffrey casts a skillfully disturbed spell over a tale that emerges a cross between “It” and the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

Pleasant if slightly pokey documentary.

The result is interesting enough, but feels a bit overextended at feature length considering the limited insight afforded.

If you’ve ever wanted a mashup of Disney princess movies and “The Stepford Wives” or imagined “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a swoony YA fantasy, Paradise Hills is absolutely the movie for you.

Competent performances and a slick veneer make this revamp go down easily enough. Still, one wishes Rick had placed more emphasis on Hitchcockian suspense, rather than trusting the slow-moving tale will hold us via plot and character complexities that really aren’t particularly evident.

Pacing is brisk, and performances and writing sharp enough to engage throughout.

The polished, bland low-budget presentation doesn’t raise much tension, and the script springs no real surprises

Unspectacular but quietly absorbing.

Both the kindest and most damning thing you can say about The Fifth Estate is that it primarily hobbles itself by trying to cram in more context-needy material than any single drama should have to bear.

Unfortunately, Porno gets more uneven as it goes on, with a somewhat slack midsection and a mix of earnestness, broad comedy, titillation, and moralizing that neither fully gels, nor makes something unpredictably wild out of those clashing elements.

Stalled character development in the second half of the pic reduces the impact of the whole.

This first feature from “Walking Dead” thesp-turned-writer/director Pollyanna McIntosh (who played the feral captive in “The Woman”) proves an increasingly wobbly mix of comedy, horror and social critique, its heavy-handed indictment of stereotypical religious hypocrisy finally dragging the enterprise into caricature.

This slick-enough mediocrity will pass the time tolerably for less discriminating genre fans. But it’s a little sad to see Antonio Banderas reduced to a B movie with grade-C material.

Writer-director Brendan Muldowney’s latest lacks the thick atmospherics that might have punched across a sketchy screenplay, which falls short in expanding the premise of his 2004 short “The Ten Steps.”

There’s a curious lack of credibility and urgency in this big-screen adaptation, the kind of respectable near-miss that can happen when worthy talent apply themselves to a project they’re just not ideally suited for.

This one is shorter and has fewer segments, but also earns a much higher batting average. In fact, there’s nary a dud among the four main tales (not including the titled bookends), which each whip elements of terror, macabre humor and the fantastical into a giddy frenzy.

Senesh was a budding writer, and her poems and diary entries add flavor to an already dramatic tale in Roberta Grossman's Blessed Is the Match.

The potentially ludicrous story is handled artfully enough here to cast an eerie but not off-putting spell throughout, though the ultimate point is more than a tad murky, and the desired poignancy doesn’t fully come across.

A most enjoyable flashback. Laura Archibald's documentary about Ground Zero for the 1960s folk explosion -- and its enormous influence on the shape of rock music to come -- isn't assembled in a particularly distinctive manner, but the materials and voices culled offer more than enough reward in themselves.

None is particularly original (though there is one good final twist), but they’re all reasonably entertaining.

Serviceable but uninspired.

The movie’s pileup of dislocating side-swipes from any tangible here/now is intriguing and well-crafted to a degree many genre fans will find exciting. But others will be justified in wondering if all this stylish, increasingly frenetic sleight-of-hand obscures scant substance.

While the results may be perilously slight, Suburban Gothic’s particular brand of low-key sarcasm and absurdity will tickle those looking for laughs more dry than slapstick (or splatstick) in nature.

Jonas Govaerts’ first feature is a pastiche of familiar horror elements that’s well crafted throughout, but falls prey to the common dilemma of finding a payoff worthy of the buildup.

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.

Results here are just middling funny, with no truly memorable high points and a sum impact that goes poof!

David Schwimmer's first bigscreen directing effort reveals something very different: a thoroughly competent mainstream craftsman who imposes no individual character on formulaic material.

Part of the problem is that since everything is at so incessant a fever pitch, suspense flattens rather than builds, and we don’t care much about characters who spend nearly all their time yelling instructions at each other.

A clever indie suspense that draws on fantasy-tinged notions of virtual reality and identity exchange to create an ingenious tale more in the realm of an intimately-scaled thriller than sci-fi.

All in all, this Eastern western is a jovial genre cocktail, but it’ll be more interesting to see if its director can bring greater nuance to whatever his next project turns out to be.

Bloopers under the closing credits reveal how much improvisation was involved here — and how that’s a poor substitute for a good script, no matter how talented the cast.

All of this is silly, borderline senseless, lively, and without any real rooting value at all. The supposedly lovable misfits here aren’t, no matter how the cast members feign hilarity at their potty-mouthing. Not that it matters — because nothing does in this expensive toy of a film, which ultimately works on the level of a disco ball. It’s shiny, it moves, and is accompanied by much noise.

A handsome contraption that's never very engaging, let alone convincing.

The film doesn’t quite have the verve or originality to capitalize on its spasmodic absurdist impulses, leaving the whole in a rather innocuous middle ground despite all efforts at quirkiness.

The result is at once fun and fatiguing. Scary it’s not, and many viewers will find their patience tested by the character they most hope will be dealt a quick demise being the one we’re principally stuck with.

Cheerfully gory, derivative and silly, Bounty Killer aspires to nothing more or less than trashy fun for genre fans, and this umpteenth “Mad Max”-style dystopian actioner delivers on that modest but admirable score

A simple misfire rather than a world-class fiasco. This misguided attempt to remake Lina Wertmuller's corrosive 1974 satire as a wistful romance is only unintentionally funny in the last reel.

This muscular yet monotonous "Kane" just isn't much fun.

The ick factor is high in Contracted, a body-horror opus that will satisfy genre fans who like to be grossed out, but doesn’t have much to offer on any other count.

This plotless reverie is easy to admire texturally, including an original soundtrack composed with the helmer’s spouse, singer-songwriter Maria McKee. But despite those virtues, and the pic’s determinedly idiosyncratic take on autobiographically inspired material, most viewers will find the script’s narrative shapelessness and pretentiously poetic dialogue hard to take.

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.

The combination of gay protagonists, mental illness exploration, horror tropes, and surreal elements that gesture toward “Donnie Darko” make for an ambitious mix that holds attention, even if the uneven, somewhat muddled results are ultimately more effortful than insightful.

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.

The late Chogyam Trungpa's very colorful life makes for a most engaging narrative here.

Hodgepodge of archival, re-enactment and staged fictive elements.

This “Death and the Maiden”-like suspense drama is neither fully convincing nor particularly original, its narrative running a course that feels somewhat predictable from the outset. But it’s still strong enough to be effective.

Just when the picture seems to be settling into torture porn, it begins pulling a series of clever twists -- although they lose some punch when you realize the script depends on one whopping coincidence.

3 Needles is a great discussion tool for World AIDS Awareness Day that never achieves coherent shape as a three-paneled drama.

Though professionally smooth in execution, Semper Fi has the frustrating sum impact of a movie at fundamental conflict with itself.

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.

This evenly paced drama holds interest with its uneasy character dynamics, interesting milieu and effective performances, though a story so frequently on the verge of violence ought to build more tension than Burris manages.

It's all efficiently nerve-jangling, with Tyler and Speedman credibly registering every hue of panic. Still, after such a long, creepy, cannily restrained buildup, it must be said the resolution is rather flat, a full-circle postscript rote.

A respectable if non-revelatory cruise through a familiar terrain of mean streets and men in blue.

Rather predictable in its major plot points and social-issue pleadings, the picture is better suited to cable than the big screen, but nonetheless offers solid drama with nice streaks of humor, warmth and local color.

Proteus has enough erotic and exotic content to win back some of the arthouse viewers previously beguiled by Greyson's "Lilies." But pic lacks that gem's lush aesthetics and impassioned complexity, ending up a tad remote.

Solidly crafted if a bit uninspired, Pål Øie’s thriller is like a horizontal, colder, sootier “Towering Inferno” minus the all-star-cast, though their soap-operatics are intact.

Wins no points for delicacy. Still, it does score some laughs.

Well-made if not particularly insightful docu should be catnip to Phishheads, while the previously unconverted are likely to stay that way.

Palahniuk's antic absurdism is duly present, but the hurtling pace and barely-underlying nihilism that transferred to screen so vividly in "Fight Club" aren't much in evidence here.

Leaves nothing to the imagination: Michael Myers is always right there in plain sight, committing mayhem sans suspenseful buildup or mystique.

If Alex Hardcastle’s effortfully high-spirited Netflix feature isn’t exactly good, it’s still good enough to provide reasonable throwaway fun, thanks much less to the material than to a cast that elevates it when they can.

This is a solid if not quite memorable entry in the ever-expanding canon of survivalist undead cinema.

Nona greatly improves if you view it not as a problematic, lopsided attempt to convey the personal danger and political urgency of current migration trends, but as a small, impressionistic two-character piece that veers earnestly if misguidedly into larger issues in its closing lap.

Though slick and more expansive in some ways, with bigger action sequences, it proves an overlong, uninvolving entry, in which any attempted fresh wrinkles to this fantasy universe offer scant viewer reward.

Emerges an uneven, occasionally vivid, ultimately unsatisfactory treatment of themes that should've packed more punch.

Though slick and diverting in some aspects, increasingly silly pic has trouble meshing disparate elements --- horror, superhero fantasy, straight-up action --- into a workable whole.

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.

Delivers fairly tense and engrossing drama before succumbing to thriller convention.

Doesn’t ultimately provide quite enough reward for a slow buildup. But it proves Lobo an able helmer (if one who could probably use a co-writer next time), eking decent atmospherics and good performances within a potentially claustrophobic premise.

Drones is a middling real-time thriller.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with Anderson’s documentary — save that after 96 minutes, any viewer could well obliviously walk right past its principal subjects on the street, so fleeting an impression do they make in this surface-level portrait.

Picture is a colorful human mosaic.

At the Devil’s Door (which premiered at SXSW last spring under the title “Home”) ends up too tentative and underdeveloped, playing like an attenuated prologue for a bigger film.

Though lent a degree of executional grace by helmer Mark Pellington, Nostalgia nonetheless emerges an inorganic experiment that might’ve seemed more at home developed for the stage or as a novella.

Serviceable but uninspired, this latest version of Emile Zola’s much-adapted 1867 novel “Therese Raquin” sends its characters to their doom on schedule without stirring much sense of tragedy or emotional involvement.

Mildly amusing, a tad amateurish in some aspects, this little ensemble piece about funny little people is ultimately just too damn little.

Despite a few good moments, this well-intentioned seriocomedy mostly wobbles between crude yocks, lame generation-gap humor and sentimental cliche.

Medieval succeeds as a lively, handsome chunk of history (however freely imagined), with nary a dull moment between densely-packed intrigues, chases and battles.

Visual flourishes (handsomely lensed by Eric Edwards on Utah locales standing in for Montana) are polished but derivative, with too many time-lapse sky views, reminiscent of Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho."

McNamara’s second directorial feature (following 2003’s Aussie “The Rage in Placid Lake,” another teenage-misfits-make-good comedy) winds up a poorly mixed bowl of mismatched ingredients that is nonetheless tepidly, forgettably digestible.

The problem here isn’t the fairly apparent budgetary limits — it’s the limitations of style and imagination.

It’s one of the most appealing faith-based big-screen entertainments in a while, polished and persuasive without getting too preachy.

Despite its faltering touch with the story's darker, more melodramatic threads, Her Majesty nonetheless proves winning overall thanks to a predominant emphasis on nostalgia, whimsy (heroine's royal audience fantasies include one full-on production number) and droll-to-broad humor.

A crude concoction sewn together from the severed parts of prior horror/serial killer pics.

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.

If outrageous concepts were all, this latest fillip in the oft-eccentric history of Japanese "pink" (softcore sexploitation) cinema would be genius. But the crazy ideas in Takao Nakano's script just fitfully amuse under Mitsuru Meike's draggy direction.

Instead of emphasizing tense action and atmosphere — the usual limited-budget solutions — the filmmakers here seem to think having their characters nervously chatter on about their situation in reams of clumsy dialogue will do the trick. It does not.

There’s no complexity to anyone or anything here. Even the hint of family conflict in the portrayal of our heroes’ children as bratty teens goes nowhere in the director and Cain DeVore’s screenplay, which at times teeters on the edge between simple and simple-minded.

This tale of a violently disillusioned medical student’s wade into the weird world of extreme body modification doesn’t develop all its narrative and thematic ideas to the fullest. But the polished pic is still outre and entertaining enough to please most jaded horror fans.

There’s scant room for characterization, and when the dialogue isn’t banal or cringe-inducing, it aims for generic smirking-wiseguy quippage. No matter: The performers rise ably to what are primarily physical (rather than “acting”) demands, the energy level is fairly non-stop, and there’s a lot of visual stimulus to keep idle minds further occupied.

Exit Plan has been retitled from “Suicide Tourist” for its U.S. release, and while the original monicker was certainly punchier, the new one perhaps better captures the gist of a movie that’s ultimately a little too polite and vague to make much of its intriguing premise.

In a movie that should have gone for funnier or scarier (ideally both), there’s way too much eventual emphasis on the leads’ uninspired evolving romance.

Covering a lot of ground in colorful, pacey fashion, the documentary is nonetheless somewhat compromised itself by co-director Ami Horowitz's insistence on playing the Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock role of onscreen provocateur.

Given its tight dark spaces, opaque water and lunging menace, this movie has plenty of natural nightmare material that it deftly turns toward more atmospheric than rote jump-scare uses.

This shameless knockoff marches lock-stepped through moves that were already looking as tired as the Macarena.

Neither fish nor fowl, slick yet strangely rudderless Ghostlight sounds interesting in description but lacks fascination in actual viewing.

Sommers attempts to glue it all together with a raffish all-in-fun tone (despite some gory moments and unpleasant conceits), but the pic is neither witty nor macabre enough to pull off Koontz’s balance of elements in cinematic terms.

Potter's genius for wrapping black humor, poignancy and fantasy in utterly original story concepts lends this "Detective" an immediate fascination that doesn't begin wearing off for some time.

By turns turgid, embarrassing and plain off-putting.

Entertaining but never fully engrossing.

So little happens in The Boy, and so little suspense is effectively built around its central figure, that by the time things finally do heat up the movie has flatlined too completely for us to care.

An exercise in bad taste that takes itself just seriously enough to be offensive.

Its amusingly off-kilter humor underserved by pedestrian packaging, Dave Boyle's sophomore feature, White on Rice, is the kind of comedy that hinges on a protagonist near-imbecilic in all matters social, physical and especially romantic.

A slick but forgettable, characterless thriller.

Campbell's career and influence encompass much wider fields of interest than are considered here, despite the picture's colorful surface. Narrowing its focus to the simplest inspirational gist, with zero insight into the man behind it, Finding Joe winds up seeming like an infomercial for a personal-growth program.

All this adds up to a big “whatever.” Don’t Go isn’t sure whether it wants to be a frightening fantasy or a poignantly warm-and-fuzzy one.

All three actors labor to make it work, demonstrating their professional skill sets (Thorne sings, Usher recites Shakespeare) to somewhat admirable effect — even if overall credibility and tension remain elusive.

The kind of entertainment perhaps better suited to drinking games than full viewer attention.

What this still modest yet considerably slicker upgrade gains in surface gloss and FX, it loses in psychological intensity and suspension of disbelief — qualities heightened by the prior film’s handmade origins.

A classic case of "Better if you didn't read the book" cinema, Loverboy emerges an OK character study of an abnormally possessive mother.

A decent cast and fast pace make Pixie easy enough to take as disposable entertainment. Yet it also has that annoying edge unique to films that strike an attitude of rakish sophistication while actually serving up lowbrow quips about prison rape, fat people and menstruation.

He's a nondescript protagonist, his benefactors, and he's never truly in need; as is made clear at the start, he has a comfortable life to return to whenever he chooses. So the picture becomes simply the moderately diverting record of an offbeat vacation.

A horror comedy much closer to the actor-riffing drollery of Edgar Wright and Christopher Guest than "Scary Movie"-style splatstick, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead is one sly slice of the ridiculous.

Boarding School includes an odd mix of narrative elements within a classically Grimm child-endangerment scenario that would work best played as a modern fairy tale. Yet Yakin chooses to pace the film more slowly as a serious drama, which keeps the suspense from building real momentum and exacerbates the script’s implausibilities.

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.

Affectionate spoof merits appreciation as a not-so-dumb salute to another era's ultra-dumb genre conventions.

It goes down as easy as a cherry Coke.

Tweedy, dreary, and unconvincing. ... It’s dismaying that so little drama is wrung out of the tale, and that what we get too often feels like a cliché-riddled romantic pulp.

Seance proves a disappointingly boilerplate retro slasher that’s pedestrian on every level from concept to execution.

Competently made but unconvincing melodrama.

This ostensible spoof of "radical chic" is, like his previous works, at once amusingly outrageous and slightly dull.

Rambling road-trip comedy Slow Jam King offers agreeable shenanigans as three mismatched characters find themselves stuck together on a long drive from New York City to Nashville.

Though central dynamic is a familiar one -- old coot and young lost soul thrown together -- perfs, understated script and well-judged direction avoid too-obvious sentimentality or melodrama. Nonetheless, overall story arc is fairly predictable, and deliberate pacing sometimes risks dullness.

Rouses excitement mostly from stuntwork and thesp agility rather than CGI excess.

It’s a fond, briskly diverting homage, but not a truly inspired one.

Stan Brooks’ first directorial feature provides scant psychological depth, drawing its characters and staging their incidents in crude fashion, despite superficial production gloss.

A typical grab bag of works of varying depth, all of them breezy and entertaining.

Beyond the participants' friends and co-workers, it's hard to imagine an audience for this professionally packaged exercise in navel gazing.

This potentially intriguing concept is given disappointingly bland, flat treatment in the Kickstarter-funded project, in which Towne brings professionalism but little personality to both her on- and offcamera roles.

Too underground in feel.

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.

It all seems slick, intense, and unpleasant in the same hollow way “Martyrs” did, because all the cruelty is so meaningless.

The result is a movie that ultimately falls short on both suspense and ideas, though it remains watchable enough.

Worth seeing for its wealth of archival footage hitherto little-seen outside Communist bloc nations, Fidel nonetheless errs badly by slapping a quasi-objective journalistic tenor onto content so flattering and uncritical it might pass for an old "This Is Your Life" episode.

This offbeat effort proves more admirable for its ambition than anything else, as the uneasy mix of satire, allegory, grittiness and redemption never quite jells.

Pleasant enough to watch, even innocuous, Dear Dictator is something that gets worse the more you think about it.

Those looking for much in the way of real insight will find this amiable enterprise doesn’t stray very far from a general, standard-stoner-yuks tenor of “OMG I was SO HIGH!!!”

A watchable but super-silly mix of superheroics and evil-child horror that mashes together singularly uninspired ideas from both.

As a self-aware guilty pleasure, The Belko Experiment may not quite seize greatness, but it does give it a playful squeeze.

While there’s no great originality on display here, Beijing Love Story handles its full range of stylistic and tonal gambits with impressive assurance. A strong performance or a well-placed sober moment always brings things back to terra firma whenever they turn a bit over-the-top.

A fairly sexy, serious-minded drama hobbled by its lack of real conceptual ambition.

Ultimately less dependent on suspense or even scares than on squirm-inducing grossouts, this tale of Yank hardbodies vs. carnivorous creepers should flower briefly in hardtops, then spread like an invasive weed in ancillary.

That original was split between charms and minuses, suffering primarily from careless scripting. Here, those faults are indulged wholesale, with so little attention paid to overall narrative development or individual scene-shaping that the bloated pic often suggests a crowd-funded venture existing solely to pay back (and showcase) the crowd.

Director and cast do their best — well, maybe not their best, but their competent professional duty — with a formulaic, contrived screenplay. Still, the results do no one much credit, landing closer to overripe cheese than taut suspense, or even guilty-pleasure terrain.

Devil is nothing very special or original, but it gets the job done briskly and economically.

Doesn't compare favorably with David Schisgall's similarly themed "The Lifestyle," released to arthouses last year.

[A] thoroughly ingratiating, touchingly heartfelt comedy.

Surprises are reserved for the final half-hour, at which point the slow-paced Palmetto has long since fossilized as a routine exercise in ceiling-fan, sweaty-forehead noir-by-numbers.

This Australia-shot mix of intrigue, soap opera, thriller and tearjerker never quite gels, despite enough surface gloss and cast expertise to hold attention.

While there have been worse-crafted, even more routinely formulaic Netflix horror efforts, this one takes the cake for sheer whateverness of barely-there plot, concept, character detailing and so on.

Overlong, undercooked Rabid can’t settle on a unified tone for its actors, let alone its narrative. Even its misanthropy ultimately feels indecisive and trifling.

An agreeable tone and cast make Sherman’s Way go down easy.

A pic that provides one hour's decent, eye-filling ride, then crashes and burns amid some of the worst writing since ... well, since scenarist/co-producer Akiva Goldsman's last effort, "Batman & Robin."

Eventually pic turns into a formula slasher over-indebted to the usual "Texas Chainsaw" and "Halloween" models. But until then, Mena's direction (if not his script) suggest he's ready for bigger-budget assignments.

Weak even by the standard of uninspired recent Asian-horror remakes, The Uninvited is more likely to induce snickers and yawns than shudders and yelps.

Despite a capable cast and reasonably energetic execution from director Jon Abrahams, this violent caper lacks any real wit or novelty.

Despite occasional bad-taste outrageousness, overall tone is surprisingly sweet, even lyrical and romantic at times.

Tomlin’s screenplay deserves credit for mixing things up, introducing new characters and narrative turnabouts. But nothing is again as bluntly compelling as the early going, and despite hardworking principal performances, these characters and their movie lack the emotional depth to pull off an earnestly teary, draggy finale.

A handsome package whose atmospherics outclass merely serviceable plot and character elements.

While in some ways an improvement on the book, this seriocomedy toplining Katie Holmes remains short on truly involving characters or situations, and is likely to spark unflattering comparisons to such vaguely similar, more distinctive films as "Rachel Getting Married" and "Margot at the Wedding."

An eventual retreat into conventional thriller terrain isn’t managed with much panache or tension, and a limp happily-ever-after sequence underlines the pic’s failure to make very much of the twisted-fairy-tale aspect that is its most distinctive element.

The worst thing you can say about To Catch a Killer is that it’s so adeptly executed in all departments that one is disappointed it ends up feeling a tad generic. It’s engrossing, sometimes exciting, yet never fully free from an overall sense of derivation.

Forgettable fun for the undiscriminating.

Pretty but hollow, Postcards From London isn’t quite clever enough to get away with being this deeply frivolous. It exudes a sense of high amusement at itself but doesn’t make that satisfaction so easy to share.

Not all of it works, but this is a bold and talented debut, all the more impressive for transcending (while embracing) some shameless exploitation tropes.

The result falls short of being especially credible, let alone memorable. Still, this is a polished genre exercise that provides a decent night’s home entertainment.

Nearly half over before it finds a consistent groove, let alone a decent hit-to-miss joke ratio.

This open-air thriller is decently crafted by director Lucky McKee (whose prior films have landed closer to horror terrain), and it eventually summons up enough seriocomic neo-noir perversity to comprise a fun, semi-guilt-free ride.

The story provides basic satisfactions expected from its ilk — infidelity is punished, pure malevolent craziness likewise — even if more rotely than one might hope. Part of the reason there’s a diminished climactic payoff here is that Swank, credible enough early on, can’t quite summon the demented spark Val needs.

Minimally plotted but beautifully atmospheric nightmare.

Lazer Team is consistently enjoyable in a respectable-dumb-fun way, which puts it a few light-years ahead of most similar stuff Hollywood has come up with lately.

Just about every possible peril turns up to thwart their mission en route, making for an increasingly implausible action movie that will entertain most viewers, but also perhaps make them feel a bit played for fools.

A pleasant surprise...more directorial personality here than most "SNL"-derived features get...the cheerily absurd, color-saturated atmosphere recalls John Waters' "Hairspray."

The result isn’t exactly a docudrama indictment like “Traffic,” a thriller a la “Sicario,” a plea for innocent victims, or a Tarantino-esque bloody crime comedy. Rather, Running With the Devil is all the above, confidently blending together many narrative and tonal elements into a surprisingly cohesive whole.

August, whose English-language films have seldom compared well to his distinguished Scandinavian ones, can’t elevate this material much above the flat, pat TV-movie earnestness it seems content to aim for.

Middling drama about euthanasia, worked out through a sprawl of underdeveloped characters.

As generic in every aspect as Brian De Palma's original was inventive.

Austenland doesn’t really satirize Austen’s world (or fans) so much as use them as a pretext for a mixture of middling burlesque and routine romantic comedy.

The pic provides lots of sexy, neon-hued eye-candy but not many images of deeper resonance.

For all its street edge, GhettoPhysics pretty much delivers the usual New Age seminar sleight-of-hand, providing a temporary, generalized sense of empowerment without any practical tools to improve one's lot.

Olnek and collaborators share a genuinely offbeat sensibility, and The Foxy Merkins would have made a hilarious short. Yet it simply doesn’t come up with enough inventive scenes, let alone overall narrative spine, to sustain itself at feature length.

This undeniably slick, energetic contraption plays somewhere between grating and numbing.

Nearly two decades after the original “Blair Witch,” it’s a mystery why any filmmaker feels the need to be “purist” about the found-footage format when it’s been done to death.

If the original could be accused of having a real point (even a subtext), the uninspired redo has none whatsoever.

The concept carries The Final Girls cheerfully past some dry stretches, and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves, with Farmiga the only representative of humorlessness in what is admittedly the sole sincerity-load-bearing role.

Offers radical sexual politics in a jester's surprise package of impudent humor and Situationist-style found-footage monkeyshines.

Like last year's "All Good Things," this fictionalized take on a still unresolved true-crime case of deception and disappearance can't help but intrigue, though the execution falls short of its full potential.

Reprising high-school slasher cliches dating back at least to 1980’s “Prom Night,” minus any particular invention or irony, this new entry is a slick-enough but disappointingly unimaginative effort that can’t even be bothered to reference the mythology established in the prior films.

The result is diverting enough, yet ends up more a mildly offbeat time-filler than something memorable.

Ably filmed by veteran stage producer-director Rowan Joseph, Bradley Rand Smith's theatrical script provides a bravura thespian workout for Ben McKenzie.

Although not entirely successful, this intriguing, above-average genre effort still reps an ambitious and resourceful debut for helmer/co-writer Scott Schirmer.

It’s Looks 10, Personality 4, however, as director Andrew Desmond and collaborator Arthur Morin’s screenplay doesn’t quite provide enough incident to properly milk its own premise, making for a supernatural thriller that ends just as it’s beginning to work up a sweat.

An unbeatable cast lends satisfying emotional texture.

This isn’t a dull film, but it lacks personality as well as originality.

Played flatly head-on with some poetic pretensions, the concept never becomes particularly credible or appealing.

There’s much about Stage Mother that’s slightly stale, but like yesterday’s donut, the icing on top makes it both look inviting and go down easily enough.

Zarcoff does a good job building tension.

Raze is a brutally monotonous fight-to-the-death-contest actioner whose novelty element — all-female competitors — is undermined by lack of imagination on every other level.

This mix of found-footage, missing-person, demonic-possession and other stock narrative hooks too often feels like a compendium of ideas from other movies Frankenstein’d together, with too little effort put towards finding a personality of its own.

Has a quasi-verite, improvisational feel that appears truthful. But it doesn't lend much sympathy, or depth, to characters who never seem worth knowing.

Decently crafted but with not quite enough up its narrative sleeve to make a memorable impact, writer-director Craig DiFolco’s debut feature leaves one waiting for explosive revelations that never arrive.

Solid performances help the dramatic aspects achieve at least some of the gravity aimed for, which in turn helps elevate the proceedings a notch above standard horror suspense until the final reel’s requisite violent payoff.

Its content and execution are innocuous to the point of tedium, while the protagonist is no undervalued sweetie but the kind of grating personality that can clear a room.

Video Games: The Movie is content to celebrate without much insight.

Hectic, sketchy and finally dull.

This is a competently crafted movie too shallow to come up with much reason why we should root for these people, and too derivative to make their vertiginous rise and fall more than forgettable formula entertainment.