Josh Kupecki

Competent and unassuming, mildly problematic but ultimately harmless, Somewhere in Queens is alloyed family sitcom nostalgia sourced from stronger materials.

While Good Boys has some interesting moments of reflection, make no mistake that this is a film about fart jokes and having 12-year-olds say “f**k” a lot.

Writer/director Moshé (South by Southwest 2017 selection The Ballad of Lefty Brown) grounds the tension of the various ethical dilemmas in Aporia by focusing more on his characters than on the gimmick of his delightfully lo-tech time murder machine.

It is difficult to see My Darling Supermarket for the whimsical anthropological oddity it so desperately strives to be.

There There skews its world ever so slightly, arriving at some nicely off-kilter insights amid its non sequiturs, but for all its neat tricks, function is definitely following form here.

While India Sweets and Spices adds a veneer of depicting the contemporary Indian American experience, beyond the gorgeous lehengas and saris, past the insert shots of perfectly arrayed cuisine, lies a bland, uninspired story cut from a well worn template.

A sapphic blending of Westerns and mythology (Boorman via Cocteau?) shot through a filter of Seventies sci-fi paperback covers, After Blue is the second proper feature from French experimental filmmaker Bertrand Mandico – although his output of shorts is abundant – following 2017’s The Wild Boys.

It’s a shame that the narrative, with often astute and eloquent reflections on humanity, fails to cohere as a whole and gets bogged down by a common love triangle. Our Time is gorgeously filmed, but it is also vapid, and perhaps the languorous mind of this auteur needs to be shaken up.

An uninspired, mechanical tale, derivative of a first draft Twilight Zone episode or the chorus of that one Neil Young song whose name escapes me.

True to Canadian stereotypes, it is a polite evisceration: a slap and a tickle, as it were.

One of the main pleasures of the TV series was how Cross and co. always had Luther caught in the crosscurrents of two conflicting agendas, and the tension of that juggling act provided much of the pleasure, especially when it all (mostly) worked out. Fallen Sun is a rote and simpleminded letdown by comparison.

Both Glenn Close and Mila Kunis are very talented actors, but Four Good Days gives them absolutely nothing interesting to say or do.

Formally, Waiting for Bojangles looks marvelous, with Roinsard artfully weaving through throngs of partygoers placed in vibrant, lived-in spaces and exotic locales, and Virginie Efira continues her run of outstanding performances (see Sibyl, Benedetta), but she is ultimately ill-served by a character and a film that’s removed any gravitas it seeks to instill by paradoxically not being removed enough.

The performances are wonderful, especially Hoult and Collins, who exude a charming chemistry, and fans of both the books and the films will find pleasure in this look at the early life of the man whose work still influences artists to this day.

Alice stitches together an intriguing premise, but ends up weaker than the sum of its parts.

Much like the behavior of Sheriff Ambrose as he investigates the murders occurring around him, the story is best served as something to be glanced at rather than examined too closely. If you stare too long at fool’s gold, it loses its fleeting appeal.

Much as he did with his 2016 feature debut (at the age of 23), the love-triangle drama As You Are, Joris-Peyrafitte tells this story with welcome subtlety and a keen attenuation to his actors.

More thought seems to have gone into the future foodstuff and eating utensil design than in the narrative. It’s a lazy film, one whose future will most likely live on in mediocre undergraduate term papers.

In the hands of director Nimród Antal, a filmmaker who’s made good movies (2003’s Kontroll) and bad movies (2010’s Predators), who has worked on engaging TV shows (Apple TV+’s Servant) and brain-dead TV shows (Netflix’s Stranger Things), Retribution falls pretty much right down the middle.

It’s the lack of tension, overlong running time, and ultimately mawkish message that makes Needle a nonstarter.

Silk Road is not without its pleasures – Clarke especially is fun to watch as he gets increasingly cornered with his shakedown shenanigans – just don’t expect the kush; this is strictly schwag.

Chaos Walking is, as with any pop confection, catchy and has a solid beat, it’s just a shame that this tune is all too familiar.

With way too many tonal shifts and a narrative that trades cohesion for caprice, the film feels like riding shotgun with a toddler attempting to drive a manual transmission.

While Reality Queen! seeks to parody contemporary culture, the irony here is that it is the very vapid thing it mocks. Ouroboros, eat your heart out (well, I guess it will anyway, endlessly).

The film offers a familiar structure of family, friends, and experts speaking of O’Brien’s struggle, of the need for more awareness, and of the growing health care crisis that looms in the not too distant future.