Geoff Berkshire

Even if every word of Coogler’s account of the last day in Grant’s life held up under close scrutiny, the film would still ring false in its relentlessly positive portrayal of its subject.

Headland demonstrated little interest in playing it safe with her previous film... But here she reins in that impulse almost too much, and Sleeping With Other People winds up both looking (with its adequate but unremarkable tech package) and often feeling like a run-of-the-mill studio comedy.

Exceedingly stylish and ultimately quite silly, The Signal is a sci-fi head trip better appreciated for the journey than the destination.

Earth to Echo reaches for the stars with its gentle sci-fi shenanigans, but the rote result remains decidedly earthbound.

Take Me to the River compensates for a lack of originality and depth with no shortage of joyful celebration.

The intense focus on the two lead characters emerges as both a strength and a weakness. There’s a lot of walking and talking, and what begins as rather charming ultimately turns tedious, even with a fleet 80-minute running time before closing credits factor in.

Eerie and haunting without ever being outright scary, Don't Leave Home is different enough from current trends in horror to be of at least some interest to hardcore genre buffs.

While the filmed stage performances are among the pic’s most galvanizing sequences, their inclusion underscores how flat Gibney’s combination of archival footage and talking-head interviews otherwise plays.

Joshy offers a strange mix of elements that never quite add up.

In supporting roles of varying importance, Masterson, Sasha Lane and Hannah Marks do enough to suggest the film would have been better off giving them more. But Daniel Isn’t Real remains a two-man show, and Robbins and Schwarzenegger are an odd couple worth believing in.

What the Pierce brothers lack in flavorful storytelling or compelling characters, they almost entirely make up for in good old-fashioned atmosphere and suspense. The Wretched rarely surprises, but it’s well-crafted enough to get under your skin anyway, with an able assist from the creepy camerawork of cinematographer Conor Murphy and unsettling score by Devin Burrows.

Carefully repeated imagery, in-camera tricks and well-executed fx combine to create a tantalizing visual puzzle that demands full attention, even as the flavorless characters and largely so-so performances risk audience indifference.

The ADD overload combined with an understandably kid-friendly approach to horror (no one’s ever in real danger, and the monsters are never too scary) results in a disposable product intended to appeal to everyone but likely to resonate with no one.

A bittersweet ending offers both victory and defeat, but closes on a note of hard-won optimism.

"Spark” remains a lovingly made and shot tease, designed to ensure that what really happens at Burning Man stays at Burning Man.

Unfortunately, Drunktown’s Finest too often suffers from stilted performances and scripting.

Shyamalan has long been criticized for serving up borderline (or downright) silly premises with a straight face and overtly pretentious atmosphere, but he basically abandons that approach here in favor of a looser, more playful dynamic between his fresh-faced leads.

Solid performances and some genuinely sharp humor elevate writer-director Rob Burnett’s second feature.

For much of the running time, The Midnight Swim is effectively ambiguous, but Smith’s decision to play coy with the sisters’ backstories eventually frustrates.

The ensuing abundant gore is simultaneously gleeful and nonsensical as the filmmakers rope in so many monsters — from seductive vampires to routine zombies to killer clowns — the entire movie becomes literal overkill.

The graceful camerawork, precise editing and high-quality animation still can’t disguise the lack of imagination that went into the overall conception and the repetitive sameness that creeps into every bind the penguins find themselves in.

Even if first-time writer-director Wayne Roberts is sympathetic to the plight he’s chosen for the protagonist, his film never burrows deep enough under her skin to make the string of miserable scenarios connect in a meaningful way.

Lapses in the screenplay are mitigated only slightly by the natural chemistry between Long and Rossum.

Even as some of the supporting players and subplots veer toward caricature, the family dynamics at the film’s center remain entirely relatable.

The film’s haphazard focus muddies the waters without doing anything to clarify the overall stakes. Fortunately, the continual visual splendors make a rather striking argument of their own.

Although the X-Men ensembles are usually large, there are simply too many characters for the action-heavy “Apocalypse” to properly juggle.

The ensemble’s crack comic timing can only go so far to compensate for uneven scripting.

The Land feels a few drafts away from succeeding on its own terms. Still, there’s enough on screen, beyond Lendeborg’s confident star turn, to label Caple as a filmmaker to watch.