Joe Leydon

Less censorious aficionados likely will be willing to look past the rough edges and enjoy the simple pleasures provided by a respectfully sincere retelling of a familiar legend.

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

Bill Nye: Science Guy is an efficiently thought-provoking study of what it means to be a rational and analytical advocate for science in an age when deniers of evolution and climate-change often seem to have higher profiles, deeper pockets and louder voices. But it’s even more interesting as the story of a beloved celebrity who wants to reinvent himself, to be taken more seriously.

Director Johannes Roberts’ mostly underwater thriller is a compact and sturdily crafted B-movie that generates enough scares and suspense to qualify as — well, maybe not a pleasant surprise, but a reasonably entertaining one.

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.

Illicit is too tepid to qualify as an erotic thriller, or even a guilty pleasure, and the performances range from over the top to tiresomely obvious.

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.

NOLA Circus (the title refers to both a lead character and the abbreviation for New Orleans) is the kind of hideously unfunny folderol in which most cast members are encouraged to act at the top of their lungs to compensate for the witless script.

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.

Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in “Lucky,” an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important

It’s hard to imagine that even the least demanding of tykes will ask for a second sampling of this thoroughly second-rate animated feature, which has all the charm, and twice the volume, of a barking dog.

Writer-director Jared Moshé’s solidly entertaining period drama...can be enjoyed as both a straight-shooting homage to crotchety sidekicks and shoot-’em-up conventions, and a well-crafted movie about loyalty, betrayal, and redemption.

The film benefits greatly from its ability to review events from the viewpoints of the men on the ground in Houston.

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.

Cesc Gay’s wise, wistful and well-observed film about two friends enjoying a final reunion in the shadow of impending death, is by turns amusing and affecting — and quite often both at once.

The big giveaway: While some of the genuine articles sporadically earned chuckles with vulgar sight gags and gratuitous nudity, Pitching Tents is too timorous to risk being truly offensive.

Phillips, who has the everyman look of a younger John Heard, is such a sympathetic sad sack throughout Punching Henry that it’s occasionally discomforting to watch what happens to him. But that is a major part of this low-key comedy’s charm.

Bias provides an emotionally and dramatically satisfying conclusion for his dramedy — which takes its title from a children’s book read aloud twice, each time with starkly different impact — by making sure that everyone gets what’s coming to them before the final credits roll.

Credible and creditable performances by a fine cast of promising newcomers and familiar veterans enhance the emotional impact of this low-key but compelling indie.

Odette edges viewers toward consideration of moral complexities, and places them in the uncomfortable position of observers who are by turns instinctively sympathetic and darkly suspicious.

[A] splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary.

Hicky presents welcome surprises throughout The Grace of Jake, often introducing plot developments that would lead to melodramatic outcomes in more conventional films.

The term “vanity project” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the hubristic folly that is Wheeler, an excruciatingly dull and self-indulgent faux documentary

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.

It may be tempting, and not entirely inaccurate, to describe Christopher Smith’s Detour as “Sliding Doors” reimagined by Quentin Tarantino, but this cleverly twisty neo-noir thriller turns out to be more substantial and surprising than such logline shorthand might suggest.

Arsenal, a pulpy crime drama about desperate characters and excessive carnage in Biloxi, Miss., is memorable primarily for some random scraps of loopy dialogue, the credible evocation of a sleazy demimonde rife with white-trash lawbreakers, and yet another Nicolas Cage performance that could be labeled Swift’s Premium and sold by the pound.

The narrative is so predictable that, when an outburst of trash-talking doesn’t escalate into a barroom brawl, it’s not just surprising, it’s pretty close to shocking.