Justin Lowe

For a movie that aspires to antic comedy, it brings way too much casting firepower to a slim plot and even sketchier character development. Whether a streaming audience will even notice the mis-calibration is probably irrelevant, as long as they remember the mismatched brothers.

Wilson acquits himself adequately enough, emphasizing pacing over character development, but delivering a series of kinetically propelled scenes that clearly benefit from his extensive visual effects experience.

Initially more a series of gags than a cohesive narrative, Merkins gets by on its considerable wit and a few genuinely hilarious moments for the first hour, then tries to play catch-up in the final 30 minutes by attempting to capitalize on marginal subplots.

The castmembers portraying Splinter and the turtles achieve a persuasive level of realism that was never possible with the elaborate puppetry required for the original film series and adequately fulfill expectations for their characters.

The New Romantic comes off as too forced and calculated.

Although Landon and co-screenwriter Michael Kennedy have latched onto a winning concept, pairing the body-swap conceit with serial killer thrills, they’ve freighted the film with so many trite life-lesson moments that the fun gradually drains from the narrative, like blood from a murder victim.

Fitfully amusing and occasionally grating, Amanda & Jack Go Glamping succeeds best when it focuses on its protagonists’ unique shared experiences rather than the overly familiar conflicts of partners in crisis.

Rather than relying on amplifying typical genre conventions, Wingard methodically lays the foundation to set up this particular Death Note adaptation for a potential sequel, but the outcome is more deliberate than inspired.

Reliant on suspense rather than gore, this is functional middle-brow psychological horror and screenwriter Joe Croker finds plenty of tired haunted house tropes he’s happy to recycle in adapting material from Susan Hill’s original novel.

Lee makes a credible transition from directing comedy, but relies too frequently on sub-par special effects and poorly staged reenactments that only inconsistently pump up the action.

Fortunately Schulman and Joost keep the film visually engaging.... All that busyness onscreen distracts somewhat from the impression that Roberts and Franco don't look much like teenagers, although they form a fairly good team as long as they’re pursuing specific challenges rather than sharing their nascent emotions for one another or attempting to unravel the intricacies of the game.

At just 70 minutes it comes across as rather too tentative and brief to amount to much more than a sensitively observed but ultimately inconclusive coming of age narrative.

It’s a fun concept, but the feature lacks the deft touch required to make disembowelments and virgin sacrifices actually seem amusing, although gore-hounds will certainly get their fill.

Beyond a few chuckle-worthy one-liners and some amusing visual comedy, there’s not much to engage adults, although the wee ones should be distracted enough.

While Levin’s writing is sharp and observant, it’s also often overwrought and eventually just plain tiresome.

Klein conveys his characters’ shifting mental states with expressionistic sequences that are often unevenly framed, shot from behind his subjects or even unfocused. The result can be intentionally disorienting, but not always particularly revealing. By contrast, the performances are far more compelling.

Although it’s an inspired gamble to introduce familiar genre elements into what’s essentially a high-strung relationship drama, Nina Forever’s repeatedly shifting tone ultimately proves more of a drawback than an asset.

Although it makes for an initially absorbing narrative and filmmaking challenge, with nowhere for the characters to run or hide, the thrills and shocks gradually become repetitive, as the writer-director recycles his own material, forcing the girls to evade the same threats again and again.

Although concentrating on delivering easily digestible situations and scene progressions, Landon does demonstrate some enticing visual flair that gets rather diminished by the repetitiveness of the plot.

Although screenwriter John Kare Raake’s Raiders of the Lost Ark template may sometimes seem a bit shopworn, at least it doesn’t dwell too indulgently on Viking mythology, playing to the strengths of the action scenario instead.

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.