Dennis Harvey

If Basir and Samantha Tanner’s screenplay ultimately feels like less than a full meal, its intelligence and restraint — particularly in resisting the lure of a heavier-handed message — are nonetheless admirable.

The result is a diverting-to-a-point curio whose nice atmospherics and good performances ultimately don’t add up to quite enough to satisfy the constructs of horror, allegory, satire — or anything else.

There’s a big twist at the end, but like everything else here, it aims for a shock effect that the film is simply too clumsy and psychologically far-fetched to pull off.

Park your brain cells in the lobby, and this U.K. production about a terrorist attack on a London soccer stadium — with Dave Bautista as Bruce Willis plus 100 or so extra pounds of muscle — is an entertainingly over-the-top ride that doesn’t even try to be “credible.” It’s not quite daft or otherwise distinctive enough to be memorable.

A generically conceived horror thriller distinguished only by its belief that more hysteria equals a more frightening movie.

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

This is a decent modern Gothic thriller handled with sufficient style and a straight face by genre ace Cortés. His efforts, and strong performances by the young female leads, make for a movie that’s fairly strong meat by juvenile fantasy standards, if probably a tad wimpy for horror-fan tastes.

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.

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.

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.

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

The results are, in artistic terms, a modest success. In commercial terms, it’s a dicier prospect — viewers expecting the kind of bigger-budget spectacle that typically ensues when a screen teenager stumbles into sci-fi situations may be befuddled by what’s primarily a medium-scaled road trip drama with thriller elements … and a very special ray gun.

Blue Iguana strains to be antic in every joint, from gimmicky editorial and camera choices to a soundtrack cluttered with early ’80s New Wave tracks by the B-52’s, Violent Femmes, Only Ones — great stuff, but they can’t get a party started that’s already flatlined.

Whatever attracted Cuenca (“Cannibal”) to this material is seldom evident in his handling of it. Yet the material itself still lends the film its genuine if all-too-modest pleasures.

Summer of ’84 is only cute and competent enough to be diverting; it’s neither funny nor scary enough to leave a lasting impression.

It’s a dramatic portrait of institutionalized injustice, though the film is too narrowly focused to plead its case with maximum effectiveness.

Chomko mitigates a fairly heavy narrative agenda with a great deal of humor, sometimes threatening to make things a little too seriocomic, but never quite crossing the line into pat dramedy.

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.

There’s nothing particularly inspired about Mitchell’s treatment here — he’s directed a lot of DVD extras, and this first feature feels like a plus-sized version of one — but there’s considerable entertainment value in its subject.

It’s a handsomely crafted portrait overall, yet one whose middleweight content flatters the subject without ultimately quite doing him justice.

This Midsummer Night’s Dream actually works. It’s charming, funny and moderately sexy, with witty use of the disconnect between modern manners and melodious prose. And yes, the actors can speak the language — which, as many a movie has proven before, is never a given.

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

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.

In contrast to the very personal “Prodigal Sons,” Reed’s sophomore feature is straightforward reportage, telling a complex, multi-issue story with a large number of players, in admirably cogent terms.

In addition to its scenic virtues, there’s a pleasant sense of life’s innate harmoniousness here.

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