Dennis Harvey

Goosed by a couple gratuitous interludes of gory amateur surgery, the movie is eventful, with a high body count. But there’s never the baseline authenticity of atmosphere or character depth that might make so much action meaningful, or even particularly exciting.

The director and star’s efforts may have lifted the German-language edition, but this static, lost-in-translation revamp just comes off as effortful, for little reward.

While many movies these days feel stretched too thin to sustain their few real ideas, Rounding emerges in the end as a project that ought to have shed some surplus ideas to better focus on a few. Either that, or the compact pacing should’ve been eased to allow them all more breathing space.

It’s a small, slyly humorous movie that nonetheless ends on a note of more dramatic substance than you’d expect.

Frederik Louis Hviid’s second feature is an absorbing true-crime tale that readily holds attention for two hours, while lacking the deeper emotional involvement to linger in the mind long afterward.

This superficially diverting tangent is too convoluted and tonally wobbly to leave a lasting impression.

How the film conceives of Maya is somewhat limited by her being a naive pawn in a bigger picture, but Dynevor easily demonstrates the screen presence to sustain this whole enterprise.

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.”

Michael Polish’s film gamely tries to compensate for unspectacular production values with a lot of action — but its staging is pedestrian at best. Alexander Vesha’s script never convinces, and the competent actors fail to spark, despite Sylvester Stallone’s presence as a reluctantly reunited former colleague.

There’s no lack of suspense, human interest or unique animal footage in this engrossing feature.

The well-acted, confidently crafted indie Scrap probes messy family dynamics with low-key but taut acuity, avoiding the usual poles of dysfunctional-clan comedy or high drama driven by yelling matches and shocking revelations.

The biggest single factor in making “Young Werther” an antic, pleasing gambit overall is English actor Booth. He channels a bit of the early Val Kilmer from “Top Secret!” and “Real Genius” in conjuring a hero who’s so nimble and amusing in his peacocking, we forgive him being his own biggest admirer.

This is a story with numerous stinging ironies, albeit one told in a refreshingly nuanced, non-hyperbolic fashion that pays off very nicely indeed.

"Mango” tells a story that could have been told many different ways. Still, the path chosen feels unique — not least for conveying some awful truths by means palatable even to the most skittish viewer. It’s a peek down a long, dark tunnel that’s nonetheless suffused throughout by the light at its end.

Justin Routt’s Mississippi-shot feature is competently made. But neither its staging nor its performances transcend the limitations of Adrian Speckert and Cory Todd Hughes’ script, leaving mediocre material unredeemed by any special thrills, style, or character detailing.

This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism. It’s a painful divide, but one that Sabbath Queen helps keep at least partly in the realm of civil argument.

The preachier tenor may be welcomed by older patrons, but younger ones might’ve appreciated more humor being retained to prevent restlessness during the last half hour or so.

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

It’s a fun movie that lands on the right side of “innocuous,” being pleasantly formulaic rather than simply bland.

Despite its new thematic wrinkle, the five segments here feel familiar in ideas and unmemorable in execution. It’s a middling addition to a variably inspired anthology brand that will no doubt trundle on through more installments yet.

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.

If you can withstand spending nearly two hours in the company of these grating, argumentative characters, there are rewards to be had in a skillfully wrought, twisty suspense tale.

This unabashedly derivative movie makes so little pretense of aiming for the qualities it lacks, you can hardly begrudge boilerplate slasher enthusiasts the fun they’ll have with it.

This imperfect drama nevertheless engrosses in its exploration of the life-and-death complexities of the healing arts, and how what may appear a simple matter of right or wrong from the outside can be much more trickily nuanced for those actually making fateful decisions.

In contrast to most movies about serial killers, this one offers nary a glimpse of violence, let alone any wallowing in sadism. Yet somehow that makes it all the more icky — at times the squirm factor is such that you may think no shower could wash a viewer’s taint-by-association away.

A sort of shaggy dog story whose appeal wanes as one gradually realizes it’s unlikely to go anywhere in particular, The Becomers is equally mild as sci-fi, spoof and sociopolitical satire. It’s off-kilter enough to catch one’s attention, but in the end too underdeveloped to strongly reward it.

When crises start occurring at the halfway mark, they pile on too quickly to underwhelming effect, sacrificing credibility for excitement that never really materializes.

This reinvention’s contrastingly elegant yet dislocated revenge-slash-love story is no slam dunk. But neither is it an unwatchable dud.