Joe Leydon

Despite the bumpy pacing and the routine plot elements, writer-director Le-Van Kiet periodically generates a sense of palpable trepidation during what might best be described as a worst-case scenario about post-partum depression.

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.

Long on atmosphere yet short on dramatic tension.

Engaging lead performances and snatches of witty repartee help lubricate the creaky plot mechanics in Weather Girl, a lightly amusing but thoroughly predictable dramedy.

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.

A glossy teen-weepie romance that often plays like an inspirational indie skewed toward Christian niche market.

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.

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.

La Scala is able to maintain interest and sustain narrative momentum throughout his fantastical narrative, even while he covers overly familiar territory. In this, he gets immeasurable aid from the sincere performances by his game cast.

The picture could provide modest amusement for indulgent viewers with a taste for tales of loquacious killers and not-so-innocent bystanders.

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.

Kind of a drag when it resorts to frantic slapstick and tired action-comedy tropes, but modestly engaging during stretches that suggest the project would have worked better as an exuberant musical.

Scores a few chuckles while following a familiar game plan.

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.

Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.

There is a great deal more style than substance here. The special effects experts and the other members of the technical crew do their considerable best to give their various hacking sequences the look of warp-speed sci-fi fantasy.

Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark.

A boisterously Tarantinoesque mash-up of cliches, archetypes and bodacious craziness in the tradition of Southern-fried '60s and '70s drive-in fodder, The Baytown Outlaws is the sort of cartoonishly violent and swaggeringly non-PC concoction that defines guilty pleasure for many genre fans.

This family affair is a squeaky-clean cable-ready comedy, unabashedly retro fluff.

Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.

Too narratively disjointed to achieve maximum impact, but too emotionally potent in fits and starts to be dismissed out of hand. Ultimately, Over the GW resembles nothing so much as a rough draft for a more conventional feature.

A slickly produced, unabashedly celebratory picture about professional skateboarder Danny Way.

Modestly engaging but thoroughly formulaic drama about a boxer turned preacher who returns to the ring to fund a community-outreach center.

A seamless albeit frequently cornball scenario.