Joe Leydon

Mason, a close friend of Hutchins, constructs a propulsive and compelling narrative by skillfully interlacing interviews with people involved in the tragedy — including the OSHA investigator who uncovered a pattern of risky behavior on the “Rust” set — with news footage, police interrogations, and video recorded on cellphones and police minicams.

To put it bluntly, Nelson gives this clichéd indie a lot more than it ever gives him.

The filmmaker also makes effective use of some timeworn narrative conventions to build and sustain suspense.

This is hagiography, not history. If you accept it as such, you may find yourself mildly engrossed from scene to scene, regardless of your political persuasion, without ever viewing “Reagan” as anything more substantial than a small-budget docudrama series on cable TV.

The aggressively spectacular (and, again, CGI-intensified) action set-pieces are generously plentiful and undeniably thrilling, and the lead players are charismatic enough, or over-the-top villainous enough, to seize and maintain interest.

Throughout much of The Ballad of Davy Crockett, it’s hard to shake the impression that an hour’s worth of plot has been padded to feature length.

Outlaw Posse proceeds at something a bit slower than a full gallop, and incorporates more subplots than it can adequately do justice. But it never feels dull, thanks in large measure to the game performances of well-cast supporting players in an ensemble.

It’s a competent yet uninspired overview of events.

Maggio has cobbled together a modestly diverting, effectively atmospheric but blatantly derivative crime drama sprinkled with a few joltingly nasty plot twists.

To be fair: Maybe I Do is undemanding, painless and pleasantly diverting, and has the saving grace of never trying too hard for a cheap laugh. There are quite a few undeniably funny lines, many of them made all the more amusing by the perfect-pitch delivery of the pros in the cast.

Yes, the film overall is more diverting than stirring. Still, there is a good deal more than novelty value going for this group effort.

The predictability of events during the film’s first hour of gothic-thriller setup is all the more annoying because of the plodding pace. Evie finally stands up for herself during some modestly clever third-act turnabouts, but, really, that’s not quite enough to regenerate a rooting interest in the character.

Leterrier manages a few modestly exciting chase scenes, including one that begins in a laser tag course, continues through a bowling alley and a go-kart track, and ends in a crowded supermarket. And his two leads are agreeably amusing and for the most part engaging throughout the film.

If you approach it with sufficiently lowered expectations, and have fond memories of the ’70s paranoid dramas that obviously inspired director and co-writer Mark Williams, this might be your house-brand jam.

A wink here or a smirk there, and the whole kit-and-caboodle could have collapsed into laughable nonsense way before “Warhunt” finally does run off the rails. You still might chuckle from time to time, but not as often as any plot synopsis might lead you to expect.

It’s a marked improvement over Feifer’s own “Catch the Bullet,” released just last September — and it features a ferociously nasty turn by Bruce Dern in a role that recalls a character from yet another golden oldie, Walter Brennan’s vicious Old Man Clanton in “My Darling Clementine.”

As inspirational college sports movies go, Heart of the Champions doesn’t go, or row, nearly far enough off the beaten path. It’s every bit as boilerplate as its generic title might indicate.

Vacation Friends does earn a fair share of guffaws with its familiar mix of R-rated raunch and feel-good sentiment, and it’s lightly amusing to see the well-cast players breathe a satisfying degree of fresh life into a predictable scenario that recalls “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” “What About Bob?” and a dozen or so similarly contrived comedies.

Once again displaying the kinetic grace, authoritative physicality and heavy-duty footwear that have made her a cult favorite for fans of the “Underworld” franchise, Beckinsale is fun to watch in both the real and fantasy fight sequences that take up much of the briskly paced Jolt.

Keitel . . . infuses his performance here with more than enough lion-in-winter gravitas to dominate every moment he is on screen, and quite a few when he isn’t, which in turn is sufficient to propel Lansky through stretches when the passing of time is felt, and the budgetary limitations are obvious.

The very best thing in the entire movie is Rourke’s surprisingly affecting and consistently riveting portrayal of Kaden as a melancholy monster who is at once painfully self-aware and unapologetically amoral.

Some of the funny business is very funny indeed, and the movie overall is more enjoyable than not. Which, again, makes it perfect for streaming.

A few abrupt narrative transitions indicate that some scenes, for whatever reason, must have been discarded during the editing process. But what remains on screen is enough to hold attention and generate rooting interest, especially if you’re amused by inside-baseball allusions to the film and TV industry.

Paydirt is a crime drama with darkly comical touches that possibly will be enjoyed best while you’re periodically distracted by other things — microwaving leftovers, feeding pets, washing face masks — and are unable to constantly focus on arrant contrivances and gaping plot holes.

Here and there, amid the tedious sound and fury, you can spot some genuinely witty touches. Lynch and Shapiro are initially portrayed as flirty happy warriors who clearly delight in working with each other, and it’s a pity the movie didn’t make more of the chemistry generated between Robinson-Galvin and Benjamin.

A pleasantly predictable faith-based dramedy.

One can always make the argument that it’s not absolutely necessary to have sympathetic protagonists for a drama to enthrall or enlighten. But Infamous pushes way, way too far in the opposite direction: Dean and especially Arielle seem so irredeemably psychotic even before they begin to mount a body count, you actively wish for them to be caught or killed.

The sort of movie a lot of us need right now. It’s an undemandingly enjoyable and reassuringly predictable dramedy in which nothing, not even the sourball attitudes of its comically unpleasant malcontents, ever is allowed to get out of hand or unduly strain credibility. But it also is too playfully spiky and unaffectedly down-to-earth to come across as bland pablum.

Inside the Rain is so fresh and audacious in so many ways that it’s a bit of letdown when it leans heavily on the cliché of the Gold-Hearted Hooker — or, in this case, the Gold-Hearted Porn Actress and Part-Time Escort — to provide Benjamin with inspiration, emotional support, and, most important, a female lead for his film.

Thanks to the immensely appealing performances by Apa and Robertson, it’s easy for the audience to take a rooting interest in the sometimes awkward, sometimes amusing development of the budding romance between Jeremy and Melissa.

Run This Town offers some sharp observations about the struggle to provide anything like watchdog journalism in an age of diminished budgets and readership.

Too tepidly sincere to consistently excite or amuse. What keeps it at least moderately interesting on a scene-to-scene basis is the novelty value of seeing a strong and self-confident woman, credibly portrayed by Devika Bhise.

A solidly crafted piece of work that, despite its leisurely pacing, manages to infuse a respectable amount of fresh vigor into clichés and conventions common to shoot-’em-ups set during the post-Civil War era.

Ultimately, however, this tonally untidy yet incrementally affecting dramedy scores a cumulative impact by credibly and astutely depicting eruptions, disruptions and reconciliations during the long goodbye to a dying paterfamilias.

Bader does a respectable job of sustaining interest by repeatedly introducing clichés and genre tropes, then upending expectations or taking unpredictable detours.

The final scenes stop far short of providing the cheap thrill of a feel-good wrap-up, and are all the more effective for that.

Despite the preponderance of sets and costumes spectacular enough to make Baz Luhrmann weep with envy, and a handful of thrillingly choreographed production numbers that sporadically quicken the movie’s pulse and boost its eye-candy quotient, the attractive yet underwhelming lead players are too hampered by the lethargic narrative to sufficiently distract viewers from their awareness of time passing and interest diminishing.

Movies as diverse as “Short Cuts,” “Weekend at Bernie’s,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Magnolia” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth” are among the source material that inspire wink-wink allusions and tonal disruptions throughout Super Deluxe, an overextended and wildly uneven Tamil-language extravaganza that manages to impress largely because it’s such a shoot-the-works, go-for-broke mess.

An efficiently formulaic shocker.

Commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

The film sustains more than enough dramatic tension from scene to scene to keep a viewer intrigued, despite the sporadic fuzziness of motivation and plot specifics.

Lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.

If you’re among the heretofore uninitiated drawn to this new Dragon Ball extravaganza, which has been dubbed into English and booked into 1,440 North American theaters, you may often find yourself experiencing similar frustration as you struggle to make sense of a patchwork plot that seems derived from various strands of the ongoing mythos, and is filled with apparently major characters whose backstories are only fuzzily defined.

Throughout most of the movie’s running time, Modine is tasked with the majority of the heavy lifting, and he handles the burden admirably.

Filmed on Tennessee and California locations that convincingly double for everything from Fort Stewart to Iraq, Indivisible feels impressively edgy during battle scenes, especially during a suspenseful firefight set in the streets of Al Sakhar Province.

It would be unfair, and not entirely accurate, to dismiss “Path to Redemption” as irredeemably dull and without merit.

Imagine a Troy Donahue-Sandra Dee teen romance of the early ‘60s with an inoffensive undercurrent of social consciousness, and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from director David L. Cunningham’s thoroughly predictable but lightly enjoyable tale of love and prejudice in 1920s Hawaii.

Reprisal is not a very good movie, but it leaves you with tantalizing hints that some people involved with it are capable of doing something much better.

Diehard gorehounds may be disappointed by its relatively infrequent reliance on graphic and grisly mayhem (relative to this particular subgenre’s standards, that is), but Wexler’s discretion in this area turns out to be one of her film’s few distinguishing characteristics.

The movie, while giddily entertaining and exciting in fits and starts, fails to coalesce into a satisfying whole.

McBride is good for a few chuckles during the first two-thirds of the movie and continues to contribute a fair share of funny business after the plot takes a not altogether persuasive serious turn. But Brolin remains the main attraction, and the saving grace, during this lost weekend in the woods.

For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.

If ever a proselytizing documentary could be described as assaultive, Survivors Guide to Prison might sport that label as a badge of honor.

Equal parts 1960s-style Spaghetti Western pastiche and ’80s-style “Mad Max” knockoff, Scorched Earth is the sort of divertingly hokey post-apocalyptic B-movie that would have amused undiscriminating Blockbuster Video renters a generation ago, and now might pass muster as the pilot for a weekly SyFy series.

Huge swaths of “Agnyaathavaasi” are jaw-droppingly absurd, but those are preferable to the stretches that are dull and/or obnoxious.

First-time filmmaker Jason Headley, directing from his own screenplay, keeps his concoction moving briskly and humorously, with a light sprinkling of acceptably sweet sentimentality here and there.

This drama about the spiritual awakening of “the world’s most famous atheist’” is predictably simplistic and maudlin in content. But it should satisfy the target demographic with an inspirational family-values message wrapped in a sudsy narrative.

Against the Night isn’t a terribly good movie — it’s mostly a patchwork of clichés, stock characters and low-voltage shocks culled from dozens of similar small-budget thrillers — but it isn’t an entirely useless one, either

More apolitical moviegoers are likely to simply enjoy the runaway train of action set pieces that Wu propels with his flimsy but serviceable plot, and dismiss all the jingoist chest-thumping as roughly akin to John Rambo’s stated desire to refight the Vietnam War — and, dammit, win this time! — in “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”

Savage Dog is a good deal less than watertight in terms of logic and credibility, but Adkins’ blunt-force physicality is sufficiently impressive to make it entirely believable that Tillman could emerge victorious when battling bigger and/or bulkier opponents.

A by-the-playbook, family-friendly basketball comedy that never strays outside the paint, Thunderstruck likely won’t score much coin during its limited theatrical runs. Still, this lightly amusing confection — a Warner Premiere presentation that all too obviously resembles a typical made-for-homevid product — could rebound during playoffs in smallscreen platforms.

Misfortune is what it is, a small-budget neo-noir so generic that one half-expects to see a bar code rather than closing credits at the end.

The documentary is too tepid to generate anything like excitement or outrage, and elicits admiration more for its intentions than for its execution.

For the first hour or so, it is unabashedly sappy yet modestly engaging, buoyed by the low-key charm of its two leads. But then an implausible third-act reveal spoils the fun, and the movie never recovers.

There are some very funny bits and pieces scattered amid the proceedings, along with a few darkly comical gags that appear to belong in a different movie, but are more than welcome here.

After 40 or so minutes of teasing hints that its makers may have hit upon a fresh approach to found-footage thrillers, “Phoenix Forgotten” indicates the genre may be having its last gasp on life support as the movie devolves into yet another threadbare patchwork of mounting hysteria, faux cinéma vérité, and shaky-cam visual clichés.

Although it sporadically errs on the side of sentimentality and simplification, The Case for Christ sustains interest, and even generates mild suspense, while offering a faith-based spin on the template of an investigative-journalism drama.

A few individual scenes of hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat are undeniably exciting, and Jovovich once again impresses with her kinetic athleticism. Overall, however, the repetitiveness and occasional incoherence of the nonstop action leave the audience exhausted for all the wrong reasons.

Jenkins and Nasfell refrain from hard-selling anything, so that Gavin never really comes off as an obnoxious jerk, his chaste relationship with Kelly — so chaste, they never even kiss — progresses at a credible pace, and the movie’s religious elements, while respectfully given due dramatic weight, are scarcely more conspicuous here than in many more secular entertainments.

There are sporadic compensations for your investment of time: Ian McShane’s robust overplaying of an unapologetically scuzzy small-town lawman, John Leguizamo’s dead-serious villainy as a scarily resilient hit man, evocative lensing by David Jose Montero, and a few modestly inventive twists in the otherwise predictable plot.

There’s really nothing new here. Still, it’s hard to deny the sporadically satisfying nostalgic appeal of this dash down memory lane.

Offers a relatively fresh take on standard-issue exorcism-melodrama tropes, along with a performance by Aaron Eckhart that is more than persuasive enough to encourage the investment of a rooting interest.

Everything leads to a third-act twist that is absurdly shameless, even by Bollywood standards. Unfortunately, Johar doesn’t appear to have intended it as another joke.

The screenplay by Chris Dowling and Tyler Poelle is, at best, predictable pulp with a smidgen of religion. Indeed, the characters are so thinly written that they are defined entirely by the actors portraying them. But director Ben Smallbone (brother of the movie’s lead player) is adept at generating suspense.

Even dedicated Phantasm fanatics may be hard-pressed to discern anything resembling a unifying narrative thread. But the latter group — the film’s target audience — likely will be willing to eschew coherence for the opportunity to savor this chaotic reprise of familiar characters and concepts in the cinematic equivalent of a greatest hits album.

Brosnan is very effective at playing Regan as a wary technophobe who has become too comfortable with his power and success.

[Banderas] acquits himself admirably with his restrained yet subtly detailed portrayal of an intelligent man subjected to the stings of intolerant attitudes and professional jealousies.

There is more mood than matter to be sampled in “The Disappointments Room,” a spooky psychological thriller — or, perhaps, a psychological thriller with spooks — that is initially intriguing but ultimately, unfortunately, lives down to its title.

Scene after scene (or, if you prefer, round after round) of “The Fight Within” is clunky and didactic, and the movie as a whole has appreciably less mainstream appeal than several other recent, and much better, faith-based dramas.

By turns poignant and plodding, affecting and affected, Ithaca is the sort of frustrating movie that’s just good enough to make you wish it were a lot better.

The presence of a predominantly African-American cast arguably is the only distinguishing characteristic of this by-the-numbers thriller.

Up until its unfortunate third-act detour from intriguing verisimilitude to frustrating abstraction, director Marcin Wrona’s Demon enthralls as an atmospheric ghost story with a cheeky undercurrent of absurdist humor.

Mostly due to the limp direction by Timothy Woodward Jr., Traded never really offers much in the way of suspense or excitement. But the sporadic outbursts of bloody violence are efficiently rendered.

Luis Guzmán and Edgar Garcia give the project much more than it ever gives them, sustaining audience interest and generating mild amusement more or less through sheer force of will as they amble through a threadbare plot.

How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town emerges as surprisingly tame fluff, a modestly amusing trifle scarcely saucier than those wink-wink naughty farces that were staples of the ’70s dinner-theater circuit.

It’s an occupational hazard of rambling psychogeography that the unwary traveller will find themselves irritated as often as they are enthralled: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Gee negotiates this hurdle with variable success.

A flagrantly derivative but modestly diverting drama.

Despite the assiduous grinding of plot mechanics by William Brent Bell (“The Devil Inside”) and scripter Stacey Menear, the movie never fully distracts its audience from the inherent silliness of its premise...and, as a result, is more likely to elicit laughs and rude remarks rather than screams and rooting interest.

Christmas Eve isn’t likely to make anyone feel exceptionally merry. Still, it remains modestly diverting from scene to scene.

This overly long yet consistently involving period drama... could be described, accurately, as equal parts “Remember the Titans” and revivalist tent meeting. But until the balance tips rather too blatantly toward the latter during the final minutes, the overall narrative mix of history lesson, gridiron action and spiritual uplift is effectively and satisfyingly sustained.

Christensen underplays throughout 90 Minutes in Heaven, even in scenes when Piper isn’t operating under the influence of painkillers, and his earnestness often comes off as monotonous. Still, he generates interest and sympathy, almost in spite of himself, and Bosworth lends capable support as a loyal spouse.

It’s easy to see what drew filmmaker Aaron I. Naar to his eponymous subject in Mateo, but it’s almost impossible to share his enthusiasm or even feel much sympathy for a figure who, for a good chunk of this sluggish yet disconcerting documentary, comes across as a genuinely creepy person.

It’s easy to laugh at the arrant contrivances and heavy-handed dialogue in the script penned by Alex and Stephen Kendrick. But it’s even easier to admire the persuasive sincerity and emotional potency of the lead performances by Shirer and Stallings, who do not transcend their material so much as imbue it with conviction.

A strictly members-only entertainment for a dedicated target audience, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ will impress the uninitiated as very loud and very colorful, but not nearly fast-paced enough.

Neatly avoiding temptations toward mawkish excess, writer-director Chris Dowling hits a solid double with Where Hope Grows, his intelligently affecting faith-based drama.

Tonally dissonant and narratively disjointed, Wild Horses plays like a patchwork quilt of scenes excerpted from a much longer movie, or maybe even a miniseries.

Ganem has sufficient verve and appeal to sustain interest in both of her characters, and the sporadic tweaking of telenovelas and the fans who love them is often quite clever.

The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.