Dennis Harvey

Daniel Hanna (“Miss Virginia”) and a strong cast, making for a satisfying scenic ride that picked up several festival audience awards last year.

Chilling, often moving docudrama focuses not so much on the mayhem or murderer, but on the bewildered, occasionally courageous reactions of ordinary citizens caught in the inexplicable violence.

There’s an air of authenticity as well as a pleasingly laid-back yet substantive narrative engagement to this polished effort.

Colossal takes diminishing advantage of an amusing premise, one that seems made for satirical treatment yet is executed with an increasingly awkward semi-seriousness the characters aren’t depthed (or likable) enough to ballast.

If the horror aspects are underdeveloped, so are Johnston’s other major ideas.

The considerable pleasure of Lynn Shelton’s latest “Sword of Trust” is that everyone onscreen is so good at this kind of [improv] work that one wishes more tightly scripted comedy screenplays had such savory dialogue, or inspired character conceptions.

Impresses with the originality of its observation, storytelling techniques and filmmaking style.

10 Things doesn't take much time before ditching its pitch idea in favor of a mishmash of newer formulas, never quite settling on a cogent game plan or directorial tone.

Seimetz takes advantage of the eccentric cultural/natural landscape of central Florida to vivid effect, gets impressive if seldom endearing work from her actors, and seems very much in charge of an assertive if not always explicable presentation.

First-rate assembly has a real dramatic grip as well as considerable lightheartedness, the obvious standout element being the large chunks of startling freefall and helicopter camera footage, both new and archival.

A stirring adventure by any standard.

A powerful and damning look at the long-term impact of sexual abuse.

The low-key drama is well crafted and likable as far as it goes, but there's not enough narrative impetus or depth to maintain more than passing viewer interest.

There’s nothing terribly profound or innovative about what The Quake achieves. But like “The Wave” before it, it’s just intelligent and serious enough to give you your escapist cake — deluxe popcorn perils in all their big-screen glory — without making you eat the familiar guilt of empty-calorie overload.

It’s a densely textured, quite gorgeous dive into folkloric witchiness that avoids nearly all anticipated clichés, finally arriving at something not so much terrifying as unexpectedly poignant.

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.

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.

An amiable, fast-paced entry that should win over fans.

Accomplished in all its tech and design departments, Alone is easily the best of several recent hunted-woman-in-the-wilderness films, including fellow indies “Ravage” and “Range Runners” as well as the flashier French “Revenge.” It doesn’t necessarily need the structural gimmickry of onscreen “chapter” titles (“The Road,” “The Rain,” etc.), but that’s a minor quibble.

Mixing sheer spectacle with modest but pleasing human-interest threads, Viktor Jakovleski’s first directorial feature is a poetical, entrancing documentary.

Brightly packaged and steadily amusing.

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

First-rate talent and a uniquely dyspeptic mood separate this effort from more routine, populist stabs at tasteless yukkage.

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.

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

It’s a fascinating moment for cultural stock-taking. Yet despite the filmmaker’s evident fondness for the people and nation, this impressionistic feature feels frustratingly obtuse, unfocused and unstructured.

Delightful documentary A Cantor's Tale casts a fond eye back at the "golden age" of chazzanut (Jewish liturgical music) and its star performers in the Brooklyn of yesteryear.

Kauffman has crafted an enjoyable armchair adventure that juggles the archival imagery, engaging present-day personalities and glimpses of the magnificent creatures themselves at a leisurely yet absorbing pace.