Justin Lowe

Mildly involving indie.

Sinister 2 comes up a bit short on creative resources, although director Ciaran Foy probably gets enough right to entice those partial to the original.

A blithely derivative romantic comedy that isn’t without a certain smug charm.

The cast handles the sometimes ludicrous plot shifts with relative equanimity, although Cavill seems like he’s trying way too hard to embrace his role as a conflicted cop and father attempting to protect his teen daughter while pursuing a killer ruthlessly targeting innocent young women.

It feels too much like we’ve been here, done this already.

Wang’s verite approach attempts to strike a tone somewhere between revealing and contemplative, but her principal subjects are too young and inexperienced with the world to have much of import to say.

More curio than classic, Four Kids and It may hold children’s attention (and sometimes test adults’ patience) over the movie’s brief running time, but seems unlikely to inspire many a rewatch.

The threats faced in Runoff feel generic: predatory corporations, merciless banks, environmental contamination and encroaching industrialization just seem like overly familiar themes, lacking sustained suspense.

Taken together though, the script’s rather shaky foundations and Crowe’s bombastic performance effectively derail the narrative in the second half.

An unlikely romantic comedy concerning a young parish priest struggling to discover the true scope of his religious calling, The Good Catholic doesn't so much challenge conventions as reinforce them.

Setting aside the movie’s tediously lame dialogue, self-conscious performances and frequently predicable scares, the narrative’s compulsively shifting chronology intermittently manages to engage, although it does little to obscure the distracting shortcomings of both plot and character development.

The film manages to generate only mild shocks and surprises.

Commercial director Bruce Macdonald’s first feature film feels curiously inert.

The too-infrequent scare techniques, however, are mostly by the book, rarely developing sufficient dread to heighten the film’s rather unremarkable climax.

What new information The Culture High offers is almost entirely subsumed by its sprawling ambitions to make every conceivable connection to the marijuana debate, limiting both its reliability and its impact.

Actor and first-time feature director Matt Rabinowitz’s intense focus on a fragile father-son relationship makes for unexceptional developments in The Frontier, an insubstantial low-budget ensembler.

This passably palatable film never hits any real high notes.

Fastvold and co-writer Corbet subscribe to the less-is-more branch of screenwriting, assuming that audiences will be drawn in by the air of mystery surrounding the sisters, when in fact the lack of narrative detail is consistently off-putting.

With its measured pacing, focus on family and repurposing of familiar horror conventions, the film represents a rather adult offering that can’t manage any memorable frights until well into the first hour of running time.

The film’s central conflicts are almost stereotypically outlined, with the flawed locals arrayed against intrusive outsiders, and Doleac’s characters don’t display much more depth either.

Debuting directors Damon Maulucci and Keir Politz have a better sense of storycraft than the filmmaking on display.

Lacking the flash of big-budget blockbusters or the originality of a uniquely imagined world, First Light is left trying to make the best of overly familiar sci-fi themes.

Monson does succeed in editing the frequently dissimilar footage together into a fairly attractive package, although an animated sequence depicting the power of cosmic forces and another illustrating an historical timeline of human events feel rather too forced and self-consciously showy.

The performances in the 1997 scenes are relatively low-key, relying more on the dramatic development of personal relationships than the shock value of unexpected events. The contemporary storyline offers little of particular interest, however, serving more to contextualize earlier developments.

The second installment, which reveals some of the reasons behind their imprisonment, lacks a similar sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

Playing it safe with a script that offers Riddick up as a lone avenging hero, Twohy passes on the opportunity to effectively shade the character’s distinctive dimensionality.

The outcome is usually fairly tiresome, but on occasion reaches levels of moderate originality.

Temple comes off as more of a half-hearted attempt at exploiting typical J-horror themes than an actual homage to the Japanese genre.

Michael and Thomas Matthews’ debut feature Lost Holiday gives the impression of an in-joke that never quite lands.

Ku shows a decent grasp of plot mechanics, but never manages to adequately develop the characters or effectively modulate the film’s pacing, even in the brief action scenes, which prove too tame by typical Cage standards.

There’s no shortage of eye candy on display, with acrobats, dancers, fireworks and carnival rides providing a colorful backdrop to the fairly formulaic story arc. The lack of specific background on the event's origins and history is somewhat frustrating, however, since the 85-minute runtime could certainly accommodate further exploration.

The filmmakers’ reliance on romantic situations throughout the midsection may have some older teens and adults rolling their eyes, but the final scenes over-deliver with a literal flood of action that enables Hinako to definitively prove herself and discover her true calling.

Shea's intense focus on constructing an overly intricate plot isn't borne out by the film's visual style, which is more workmanlike than inspired.

Writer-director J.C. Khoury’s second feature is a romantic dramedy featuring a conventionally appealing cast that’s squandered on a dissatisfingly derivative premise.

DeNucci has a good sense for period detail, costuming and accessorizing the cast with a color palette ranging from earthy yellow through fashionable beige to muddy brown. Stylistically though, the film doesn’t have much in common with its most distinctive progenitors, missing an opportunity to recreate an authentic 70s aesthetic.

Writer-director Shaka King clearly knows this world, perhaps too well, but making pot use, or denial, the focus of nearly every scene becomes tedious.

Alternately both repetitive and repulsive, this home-invasion thriller never quite hits its stride.

Surprisingly for a writer turned director, the most evident shortcomings with Garcia’s feature originate with the script. With barely any backstory to support them, the characters consistently appear to lack the motivations necessary for their actions.

The rather routine imitation of reality TV-style camera and editing techniques, along with uninspired special effects associated with Carson’s spiritual affliction, don’t attempt to break new ground but gain little by repeating familiar formulas.

Even at this late stage in the evolution of the franchise, logical lapses in filmmaking technique undercut the integrity of the found-footage format.... What may be less acceptable, however, is the film’s unaccountably weak effort to sort out the mythology concerning the series of demonic hauntings.

Cory Monteith in one of his last screen roles may be the best thing going for McCanick, a tired cop drama that recycles predictable narrative elements almost to the point of meaninglessness and then substitutes wildly improbable developments in place of actual originality.

Miller demonstrates even less conviction than his writers, relying on frequent flashbacks to fill in backstory that’s not evident from the main plot and substituting CGI exteriors for actual locations. His workmanlike approach conveys the essentials without delivering many of the thrills or stylistic flourishes that the genre demands, adequately fulfilling a familiar expectation for forgettable entertainment.

The film’s cardinal sin isn’t so much that it’s unoriginal as that it’s so uninvolving it almost assures attention deficit will set in early.

Nirmalakhandan attempts to pull off this whirlwind display of staggeringly dysfunctional family dynamics with a lightness of tone that’s often at odds with events in the film.

As low-budget horror filmmaking goes however, this is derivative, uninspired material.

Hank and Asha takes an unremarkable situation and renders it completely banal.

Rife with rom-com cliches and jaw-droppingly idiotic situations, the story is so off-putting that its irrationality becomes almost secondary to its pointless attempts to prove that opposites really do attract -- when they’re actually not as divergent as they first appear.

Although he can’t quite get a grip on guiding the lightweight narrative, Zada demonstrates a fluid visual style, particularly in the complex sequences filmed in the forest settings.

A horror film that relies on a silent child to adequately convey terror is starting off with a significant handicap, one that The Unspoken never manages to overcome.

The cinematic axiom of diminishing returns appears to be catching up with Robert Rodriguez’s Machete franchise in only the second installment, as the series’ engagingly lowbrow concept gets overwhelmed by episodic plotting and uninspired, rote performances.

Stiffly scripted and stoically directed, Siberia shamelessly squanders the particular appeal of its charismatic lead and wastes an inordinate amount of screen time going practically nowhere, except undoubtedly right to VOD.

A discordantly derivative attempt at amalgamating divergent horror cliches and unrelated cultural traditions.

The reductionist plot eventually forces both the protagonists and the filmmakers into a blind shaft without a productive exit strategy.

Co-scripters and directors Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath never seem quite sure which horror subgenre the film should favor, as the supernatural elements demonstrate little synergy with the serial-killer procedural plotting.

Ill-advised and amateurishly executed, Ass Backwards begins with a passably funny concept and runs it into the ground within 20 minutes.

The filmmakers attempt to inject some life into their dubiously thin narrative by incorporating sequences shot at actual haunted houses that favor more elaborate shock tactics.

If similarities to mumblecore dramedies seem appropriate, be advised that by comparison, that subgenre is way more involving than Never will ever be.

It's commonly expected that a self-described "thriller" should deliver some, well, thrills, but actor-director Zoe Quist's self-indulgent third feature turns out to be practically inert.

Exhibiting all of the same weaknesses as its predecessor, as well as a fatal lack of originality, this iteration will probably mean the nail in the coffin for this smugly self-regarding series, at least on the theatrical circuit.

Aside from the ponderously contrived narrative, however, which mines a long list of supposedly relatable female insecurities and neuroses, much of the characterization relies on one-dimensional stereotyping.

New World Order demonstrates a distinct lack of originality.

Step Up All In and Into the Storm writer John Swetnam’s debut is just as derivative as his earlier films, but also demonstrates that his dearth of imagination extends to directing as well.

Crucially, Litz misses almost every opportunity to build atmosphere and create suspense, or even a hint of heightened drama, rendering the tone of the film virtually somnambulistic throughout.

Plot details turn out to be secondary to the cheap visual effects and abundant gore that Reeder frequently manages to incorporate by taking the narrative on some inexplicable and queasily violent detours. Overall, performances are just perfunctory enough to convey the concept of acting.

The film’s uneasy mixture of melodramatic and supernatural elements quickly devolves into a frequently risible genre mashup.

Other than some rather surprising DJ appearances, attractive scenery and beautiful bodies, Lebrija can’t find much to command attention other than an indulgently long and off-putting cock-fighting sequence.

Garant and Lennon’ script, with its insistence on constantly repeating the same gags, rapidly wears thin.

Tiresomely unimaginative feature.

Lacking sufficient self-parody to entertain as a campy monster-movie spoof, or the budget to thrill as action adventure or sci-fi, much like the creature it depicts, Poseidon Rex represents a throwback that even its own distributor can't really get behind.