Dennis Harvey

Gore and nastiness are plentiful, but they’re just wearyingly gratuitous rather than truly shocking.

Nevertheless, Babygirl has sufficient authenticity and charm as a summer-in-the-city miniature to easily hold attention, however modest its payoff.

A straightforward, solidly crafted inspirational tale.

The film’s brisk progress is always genial and lively, hitting the expected off-color-humor marks without getting too juvenile.

There’s an upbeat tenor to Desert Runners that develops real rooting value for the protags.

Despite retaining the basic narrative architecture of its classic source, Hollywood Seagull too often feels like a trite, sudsy take on privilege, ambition and angst among showbiz players and wannabes — one that seemingly exists mostly to showcase real-life C-listers, aspirants and pals in the tradition of Henry Jaglom’s films.

Zagar’s thesis — that overpowering media exploitation determined its legal outcome early on — is introduced in the very first shot, then hammered home harder the longer the pic goes on.

The richness of the tale told here makes this competently packaged feature a keeper nonetheless.

There’s plenty of archival interview and concert footage here, in addition to that shot by the directing duo, edited together into a package as tight and ingratiating as the music itself — of which there is, naturally, a ton soundtracked.

Despite all the globe-encircling eye candy, there’s a certain monotony of pacing imposed by the nonstop spoken input of various elders whose wisdoms seldom come in anything chewier than (at most) paragraph-length soundbytes.

Pic’s real delight is its sheer resourcefulness, as stunts and FX are re-created on a shoestring in one of the most elaborate amateur features ever made.

Not the cleverest or most original horror comedy, Andy Palmer’s indie feature is nonetheless above average within that subgenre, offering fast-paced fun for fans.

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

An amusingly over-the-top horror comedy.

Deb Shoval’s uneven first feature demonstrates greater assurance in conveying a sense of place (the filmmaker’s native northeastern Pennsylvania) than it does with narrative and character development.

The main thing early reels have going for them isn’t any actual cleverness or wit, but Neff’s pleasant riffing within a stock slacker-bro role. When his character stops having fun, so does the audience. Though needless to say, the unimaginative references to prior/better horror flicks just keep on a-comin’.

Havenhurst grows less scary the more urgently action-packed it becomes. It’s not that Erin’s direction lacks energy when needed, but rather that his and Daniel Ferrands’ script never develops any of its numerous familiar but viable plot themes enough to really give the film a distinguishing edge.

Parents may feel a bit uneven and over-ambiguous as a whole, but its off-center mix of slightly black comedy and drama is never less than interesting.

The short, mercurial, sometimes self-defeating life of professional soccer player Justin Fashanu is so packed with drama that “Forbidden Games,” Adam Darke and Jon Carey’s documentary about him, often feels like a narrative feature — one that engrosses even as its complex central figure defies full understanding.

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.

The problem is that this watchable indie isn’t all that funny, clever or surprising despite its outré premise.

This pileup of frustrations is variably funny, often just mildly so, but rooting value is slight since floppy-haired Jamie is such a passive figure, one defined by little more than his constant cell-phone rambling and general brospeak.

Despite occasional narrative gaps, Check It is consistently compelling, with a brisk pace and vivid personalities making up for the occasional unanswered question.

A slow burn of a horror drama that doesn’t build toward quite enough of a blaze to be truly memorable, Awaken the Shadowman nonetheless ranks a cut above the genre norm for its atmospheric and confident setup

Watchable if never really scary or funny enough to leave a memorable impression.

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is designed to go down easy among exactly the audiences who might assume all environmentalists are “radicals,” but would readily identify with the folksy protagonists herein.

Cold Moon is goofy, but juicy.

Chris Baugh’s accomplished debut feature manages to develop its own distinct flavor while fitting snugly into the general tradition of latter-day U.K. gangster pics, with their rueful humor, colorful characters and realistically nasty violence.

Antiporno has plenty of nudity and (non-graphic) sexual content. Nonetheless, viewers seeking titillation are much less likely to be satisfied than those who’ll appreciate this surreal, aesthetically bold gizmo as the latest left-turn in its creator’s idiosyncratic career.

Writer-director-star Steve Goldbloom’s debut feature is an uneven trifle overly dependent on the familiar, uninspired comedy of immature man-boys behaving badly. But it has an ace up its sleeve in the person of historied veteran Rita Moreno, whose unpredictable performance in an underwritten role gooses things to an amiable degree.

Its intrigue and action neither very well developed nor integrated, Showdown in Manila feels like a checklist of elements typical of such movies — hey, where’s our training montage?!? — with arthritic-level connective tissue.

Director Rob W. King and screenwriter Dave Schultz’s engaging effort has enough standard genre elements to satisfy more open-minded sci-fi fans, and its political-allegory angle is ultimately quite potent without becoming too heavy-handed.

Beyond their obvious talent as a writing team, Amir and Savyon have terrific chemistry — particularly with each other but also with their love interests here.

It’s a movie that’s resourcefully accomplished on comparatively slim means, and less choosy fantasy action fans will find things to enjoy in its foamy cocktail of vampires, kickboxing and neo-noir.

The care that goes into Veronica’s assembly is still ultimately let down a bit by its content: This movie just takes too long getting somewhere that isn’t different enough from umpteen other recent “haunted family” chillers in the “Conjuring” mode.

This genial but very silly gorefest looks like it was fun to make — practically the entire population of Charleston, Mississippi, seems to have pitched in. Still, horror fans will have to be in a generous, perhaps beered-up mood to feel the same way about watching it.

Blandly competent in assembly, Baja has only pedestrian comic ideas, and even those aren’t executed well.

It’s not a total wash, but the eventually dreary mix of vague religious morality and rather ponderous horror suggests Katagiri should pay more attention to script development next time out.

Though the deaths are diverse and fairly gory (Brennan Jones designed the special makeup f/x), “4/20 Massacre” isn’t very scary. It is, however, lively and well-enough crafted, with decent performances.

Billy Boy is the worst kind of grab for “indie cred”: It’s exasperatingly undercooked and arted-up, failing on basic levels of character definition and narrative coherence, too often feeling like a classic indulgence for pretty-boy actors playing tough.

Brisk and ingratiating, with some brief animated sequences adding color, this is an easy watch despite the frequently incendiary nature of its subject’s barbed images.

Focusing on a rescue-and-rehabilitation organization and several youths it plucks from servitude, this is an involving indictment with enough individual human-interest elements to avoid being too much of a grim screed.

This engrossing documentary focuses primarily on the kids as each grows through some rough developmental patches. But en route a few stereotypes get demolished, most notably the notion that every convict is a “deadbeat dad” or otherwise inherently bad person.

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

Despite surface polish, this indie feels like a classroom exercise that checks off the basic technical and narrative-beat boxes needed to get a passing grade, yet never develops any real personality of its own or raison d’etre.

The budget may be low, but the level of scares and imagination are lower still in Along Came the Devil, a feeble indie horror film that sometimes seems like a straight retread and other times feels like a movie aimed specifically at Christian audiences.

As a comedy, The Feels has considerable sprightly appeal, although it could have used slightly more assertive visual packaging.

Despite all rough edges, you want to root for a project that’s so clearly homegrown. (It was shot in Philly’s First Corinthian Baptist Church, which filmmaker Frank’s family has attended for decades.) But The Church’s problem isn’t so much that it lacks polish or spectacle, or even that its special effects look like something a kid developed as an unenthusiastic school project.

Air Strike feels like a movie whose populist yet complicated narrative elements have been haphazardly pared to the nub, while the money shots — all things that go boom, as a great many do here — were left intact.

Fast-paced, determinedly silly, with sharp slangy dialogue and funny situations (particularly once we arrive at the ace sight gag of a half-dozen Johns stirring chaos), the film hits just the right absurdist notes to sustain its joke.

Guto Parente’s eighth feature is a mixed bag: a diverting, stylish, but ultimately rather trite satire whose social critique and grand guignol aspects never quite come to a full boil.

While “War” may be a duly formulaic feel-gooder at heart, it also soft-pedals the more potentially heavy-handed emotional beats to pleasing effect.

It’s a modest, touching dram

On the one hand, it’s nice that in 2020 this hook should (despite our current political chaos) seem no big deal. On the other, one does wish this exercise in blase attitudinizing paid a little more attention to suspense, thrills, plot, mythology, and the other basic horror elements it leaves underdeveloped.

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

Even as a luxe fantasy of danger and hotness, the film falls short — though competently assembled in general, real high style is lacking. Too many scenes take place in empty warehouses or obviously dressed sound stages, budgetary concerns apparently hobbling the story’s feinted milieu of decadent haunts of the criminal-rich.

A watchable if familiar rural melodrama.

It’s an inspired goof — for a while, before it turns into waaaaaay too much of a good thing.

At nearly 100 minutes — way too many for material this flimsy — Followed even has time for a couple clumsily maudlin bits, not excluding brief yet awesomely trite address of “the homeless issue” in downtown L.A. A movie like this doesn’t need to have a social conscience. It ought to have worried first about having a brain, period.

An overcomplicated stew of apparent madness, conspiracy, supernatural powers and revenge whose narrative elements never quite mesh or even come to full fruition individually. Nonetheless, this quasi-horror mixed bag will hold viewers’ attention for its originality even as it flags in both credibility and suspense.

This first narrative feature by cinematographer and documentarian Andrew Wonder is an intriguingly offbeat character sketch that falls somewhere short of a fully-rounded portrait. Nonetheless, his arresting subject matter and refined aesthetic make for a promising debut worthy of discerning viewers’ attention.

It’s compelling enough in its non-hyperbolic take on familiar genre elements, even if the depth of tragedy aimed for proves as much out of reach as any nerve-wracking suspense.

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.

In “Corpus Christi,” Bielenia was electric, but then he had Mateusz Pacewicz’s great script to work with. Here, he retains some charisma in a hard-working performance, but it’s not enough to singlehandedly provide this screenplay with meaning.

Worse things have happened to Oscar winners, but it’s still unfortunate to see both Richard Dreyfuss and Mira Sorvino flailing in the inept muddle of Crime Story.

The Last Matinee is less effective as a straight horror film than it is as a self-conscious genre homage, providing excitement more of the eye-candy design than the visceral ilk. Still, it’s adequately diverting fare for those who’ll grok its somewhat insular appeal.

It’s an embarrassing vanity showcase that’s deliberately campy without actually being fun, and whose stalled-adolescent “transgression” may only appeal to a few actual adolescents.

The on-screen actors’ raw hamming is nicely complemented by the voice performers’ relatively deadpan contributions, which only render the dialogue and situations even more absurd.

This quasi-horror tale of bickering vacationers running afoul of disturbed locals strings together various well-worn clichés with a notable lack of suspense, plausibility and style, while excelling in the realm of characters behaving like complete idiots.

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.

Its cast struggling against material with little real-world or emotional logic, the attempted “surreal” elements uninspired both conceptually and aesthetically, this is a misfire whose intentions are as murky as its results are hapless.

In the end, Fear offers the most beguiling kind of plea for tolerance, via antic suggestion that any other behavior is strictly for dolts whose mob mentality makes them look very stupid indeed. It’s a lesson that goes down easily with this much deadpan charm and skill on tap.

This solid little thriller does a good job balancing character drama and suspense elements, its smooth craftsmanship belying the creator’s newbie status in multiple creative roles.

This solid both-sides-now overview also raises wider questions regarding humanity’s sometimes-hypocritical ethics toward what we eat, where we get it, and how.

A slam-dunk entertainment.

There’s enough sex and violence here to hold attention for an hour and a half, but the care or conviction to explain why it all happens — let alone why viewers should care — proves elusive.

Director Anthony Nardolillo and writer Michael Corcoran’s film strikes a pose of sly ingeniousness throughout that is uncorroborated by any actual cleverness, surprise, wit, tension, thrills or much else you’d hope for in a high-end-heist tale.

It’s a self-canceling combination of the earnest and the clueless, its technical competency shorn of any leavening style or personality.

Psychotronic cinema fans may wish Queen of the Deuce spent more time on her celluloid stomping ground, and a bit less on family ties. Still, she did have a fascinating backstory, and surviving relatives’ (as well as some colleagues’) reminiscences are colorful.

While seldom going for big laughs, the film never takes itself too seriously, allowing its story to occupy the realm of cineaste fantasy.

While most performers are fine within the material’s limitations, principal villains Avgeropoulos and Montesi are notably underwhelming.

The fact-inspired story’s central situation is compelling enough. But director/co-writer Henrik M. Dahlsbakken (of recent biopic “Munch”) delivers a middling effort too sparing of excitement to satisfy action fans, and without the character depth or involvement to score as drama instead.

David Gregory’s documentary won’t convince most viewers that the resulting flood of opportunistic cheapies are worth more extensive investigation. But they’re certainly cheesy fun in excerpt, and interviews with surviving participants provide an entertaining window into an anything-goes heyday for Hong Kong cinema.

Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s documentary “Any Other Way” combines archival materials, interviews and animated reenactments into a compelling investigation of an elusive life, as well as a talent so striking you’ll be amazed it remained forgotten for so long.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Its rags-to-riches-to-near-ruin storytelling is simplistic, the celluloid craftsmanship B-grade, the acting nothing to write home about. Still, there’s a sense of a fertile cultural moment being captured for posterity, however routinely.

It’s a sort of fan-film magnum opus, impressively ambitious on limited means (purportedly around 1/200th the estimated Disney budget) yet still not quite ready for prime time, feeling more like an especially elaborate amateur cosplay than a honed vision with its own distinctive style and ideas.

Donnelly seems reluctant to embrace melodrama at the same time that he fails to provide the psychological detailing needed to elevate this story above stock genre expectations.

It’s slick and fun in just the same way the earlier film was. Though given the parting promise of a third installment, one hopes Uthaug and writer Espen Aukan come up with some new twists — inspiration is beginning to run a little thin here.

White’s bemused alpha authority carries the day. And this uneven, sometimes sloppy vehicle gets a real boost from Method Man. He lends his wannabe-main-character sidekick moments of comedic invention that make him MVP here, much as he was in the very different “Bad Shabbos” a couple months ago.