Gary Goldstein

There’s not much story to tell in The Untold Story, a bland, rather old-hat take on male reinvention and redemption. That it’s as watchable as it is proves a testimony to star Barry Van Dyke’s committed turn.

Actions and emotions turn on a dime, chuckles are few and it’s clear this predictable film, directed by John Asher, doesn’t quite realize how retrograde and often offensive it is — which makes it all even worse.

The generically titled Beyond the Night spins out a twisty mystery that becomes more engrossing as it unfolds. But writer-director Jason Noto’s drama too often proves a drearily one-note look at small-town crime, corruption and narrow-mindedness.

[Martini's] filmmaking instincts, undercut by the script’s meandering, episodic structure, prove too self-indulgent and heavy-handed to tell the kind of emotionally involving tale about post-traumatic stress disorder among returning soldiers that he clearly had in mind.

It’s a mostly fun, logic-be-damned ride if you just stay in the moment and don’t think too deeply as the going gets tough — which is soon enough.

Despite some honest and poignant emotions and a compelling lead turn by Cybill Shepherd, Being Rose unfolds in an awkwardly constructed, herky-jerky manner that shortchanges its many characters and themes. Let’s just say the spirit is willing but the filmmaking is weak.

Propelled by lovely, engaging writing and wonderful performances, Stan & Ollie, the story of the bittersweet final bow of legendary duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, should move and delight fans of the beloved performers while enjoyably exposing the less initiated to these comedy giants.

This astonishingly bad film, adapted by writer-director Raghav Peri from a novel by Michaelangelo Rodriguez, mishmashes such big topics as genocide, homosexuality, teen pregnancy, child abuse, alcoholism and mental illness into a painful, inadvertently laughable stew.

Zippy editing, cool black-and-white photography, an excitingly used classic score and whirling, kooky performances add to this deceptively brainy film’s look-at-me fun.

Unfortunately the film, directed by Leon Marr (script by Marr and Sherry Soules) needs more pep in its step, could use some judicious trimming and, save for the chatty, wheelchair-using Charlie (Louis Del Grande), features an unmemorable, under-drawn group of resident seniors, a missed opportunity to help flesh out — and lighten up — this slender, tender tale.

Although the story can feel chilly and oblique, it gets under your skin.

It’s a valiant but awkward effort.

It’s a potentially warm and delicate story that required a scalpel, but saw the blunt end of a sledgehammer instead.

Write When You Get Work doesn’t work. Not as a romance, not as a Robin Hood-tinged caper flick, not as a social commentary on racial inequity or classism, and not as a male-buddy picture — all elements director Stacy Cochran attempts to wedge into her often muddled, under-focused script.

Sketches a provocative portrait of the prolific, trenchantly talented artist and satirist.

The story...never comes together as a satisfying whole, even if it all proves relatively painless viewing.

This fantasy, about a miniature horse aching to join Santa’s team of reindeer, works hard but underwhelms.

Despite scads of stiff exposition and constant proclamations of Salvador’s genius, the brash, eccentric, weirdly mustachioed artist remains an elusive and puzzling force. That he’s played, unconvincingly from teen years to death, by an often annoying Joan Carreras doesn’t help.

Despite a skillful use of color, lighting, framing and music, the movie’s artificiality might have played in a short film but becomes tedious and pretentious when stretched to 90 minutes.

Russell, he of the shaggy mane and those twinkly, crinkly eyes, digs into the classic role with a sleighful of energy, humor and gusto, deftly making the character his own with guidance from Matt Lieberman’s inventive, myth-bending script. His performance is a gas.

The movie engagingly outlines blockchain’s role as the underlying technology behind such digital currencies as bitcoin (which gets its own dissection), plus its growing part in accounting practices, music industry payments and renewable energy markets.

There’s a potentially smart and sexy lesbian dramedy at the heart of “Anchor and Hope” that gets lost amid idiosyncratic filmmaking and a lack of narrative discipline.

The filmmakers’ choice to focus so heavily — and, unfortunately, dully — on the odd-couple friendship between the tightly-wound, workaholic Hughes (Hilary Swank) and the brashly spirited Riese (Helena Bonham Carter) instead of on the bigger-picture legal wranglings and wider effects of the landmark lawsuit against a San Francisco hospital may point to the chapter’s cinematic limitations.

O’Rowe...evokes both a theatrical and literary sense of narrative (it’s likely no coincidence that Jim references novelist John Updike), with scenes effectively unfolding like well-honed chapters. The cast is also first-rate.

A sluggish film that incessantly tries but never quite hits its big-as-a-barn emotional targets.

A chatty and enjoyable but decidedly nondefinitive look at one of the cinema’s most acclaimed, influential auteurs.

The result, directed by Mark Dennis and Ben Foster (not the actor) from Dennis’ script, is a handful of intriguing ideas in search of a more cohesive and dimensional narrative.

Eldar and Abbas share candid, heartfelt observations about what they consider an internal culture war within Israeli society and its troubling effects.