Martin Tsai

It's hard to tell if director and co-writer Ariel Kleiman is being serious or sarcastic with a story this preposterous.

Shark Lake lacks bite. Its audience doesn't even get to revel in blood and guts; the whole thing seems like it was edited for broadcast.

As can be gleaned from snippets of news footage shown during the end credits, Ding has done an outstanding job re-creating the events and conveying the complexity and prudence of the cops' investigative chess moves.

The film never gives a real sense of the daily travails associated with traumatic brain injury.

By cramming in as many tangents as imaginable, Olvidados ultimately loses sight of what the story is even about.

The film is a disingenuous, thoroughly dramatized reenactment at best and a reality show at worst.

Tidbits that would make the film interesting have been squandered. Instead, we get the standard-issue haunted-house fodder. The ghosts manifest in so many different ways that it seems like the movie is grasping for straws.

The film is measured and executed effectively to satiate horror fans' bloodlust, yet its underlying messages are just so repugnant.

This rollicking crowd-pleaser might just be smart and substantive enough to be one of the year's best.

Though the film has trappings of a crowd-pleaser like Jon Favreau’s “Chef,” writer-director Anthony Lucero has left much thematically to unpack.

Director Timothy Wheeler manages to wrangle for interviews some active and reformed egg offenders along with authorities, conservationists and volunteers. Some are quite the characters, indeed.

Perhaps the vapid existence of millennials is precisely the point that co-writers Erik Crary and Steven Piet (who also directs) are driving at, but the film itself proves inarticulate and unsubstantial.

The film has the vibe of something you might see on Nickelodeon or ABC Family but with a lower budget.

Atom Egoyan's 2002 "Ararat" had been perhaps the most notable film to tackle the Armenian genocide, but it did so only anecdotally. The historical epic approach seems long overdue, and Akin does it justice.

Though not as thrilling as the original, this third installment is an improvement over the paint-by-number 2013 direct-to-video “12 Rounds 2: Reloaded.”

To call it amateurish would be kind.

Novice screenwriter Craig Walendziak has followed England's template, charting the daily worsening of the symptoms. But he doesn't get that the 2013 "Contracted" was special because it was much more than a zombie flick.

The film might have gained some heft had director Ruby Yang let the transformations unfold before our eyes instead of force-feeding us testimonials.

There isn't a whole lot to the script, and the exasperating direction by Natalie Bible only makes the film look like an extended trailer that teases but never delivers.

It's almost inconceivable that this effective, nerve-racking thriller is the first feature from former NFL defensive end Simeon Rice. It requires the usual suspension of disbelief, and pacing problems are a sign of Rice's directorial inexperience. But the tension he creates is unrelenting.

It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.

Ribière and Le Bourdonnec get almost hypertechnical with all the cattle breeds, feeds, grades, cuts, marbling, dry-aging and preparation. Nevertheless, most any carnivore would find this absolute torture on an empty stomach.

The performances are cringe-worthy, the appeal of the material marginal.

The Curse of Downers Grove seems to be jumping on that 1990s teen slasher bandwagon two decades too late.

Searching for Home: Coming Back From War touches on wide-ranging veterans' issues, but goes no deeper than that.

Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki withholds judgment and resists editorializing, but the result is frustratingly nebulous and devoid of context.

Top Spin grips, exhilarates and breaks hearts like the 1994 film "Hoop Dreams."

Bollywood veteran Jackie Shroff, assuming Nick Nolte's part as the recovering alcoholic father, delivers the kind of acting reel that would guarantee an Oscar nomination for some Hollywood actors. It's a pleasure to marvel at his performance alone.