Michael Nordine

Less is often more when it comes to depicting such rituals onscreen, and Smith is highly attuned to the simple power of, say, characters cryptically chanting under their breath.

It’s unfortunate that, even with this wealth of uncovered materials, I Am Ali still plays as a greatest-hits version of its subject’s life, offering little depth or insight into any one element of it.

The movie’s ending is misguided to the point of being perplexing rather than upsetting, recasting everything that came before it in a less favorable light. That’s a shame, as this father-daughter drama starring John Cho has more than its fair share of touching moments before hitting the roadblock that is its questionable third act.

Fuglsig’s feature debut is ultimately less an action movie and more a procedural, one in which incremental gains and minimal casualties are as much as can be hoped for.

Like the hardboiled detectives of yore, Too Late ultimately gets the job done — even if it's in its own off-the-books way.

Though far from perfect, Toad Road is also the first unique horror film to come along in years.

Embedded in all this is a would-be message about those who trade freedom for security, the human spirit, and so on and so forth, all of which is too muddled to register with the intended force. Captive State is many things at once — or at least it’s trying to be — and every match it lights along the way is quickly snuffed out.

The witch-hunt metaphor that emerges from Abigail’s bullying is more overt than it needs to be, but Shephard clearly didn’t rely on SparkNotes in crafting her film.

Alita: Battle Angel is [Rodriguez’s] best film since he brought Frank Miller’s graphic novel to the screen, a sci-fi epic that does something rare in an age of endless adaptations and reboots: lives up to its potential while leaving you wanting more.

It feels like an attempt to transpose the mix of thrills and prestige of a film like “Argo” onto a different true story, a paint-by-numbers approach that’s far less compelling than drawing outside the lines would have been.

Rarely ha-ha funny and never scary, it’s ultimately more sentimental than anything else — a clunky approach that undermines its strong performances.

While the movie itself is more whimsical than magical, it does have a few tricks up its sleeve.

Jonathan Jakubowicz’s drama doesn’t add as much to the beyond-crowded World War II genre as it could despite the genuinely compelling true story on which it’s based.

While the landing isn’t as smooth as might be hoped for after the exemplary first act, neither does I.S.S. burn up on reentry.

The film’s low-key charms, such as they are, aren’t restrained by adherence to formula so much as its myopic worldview.

47 Meters Down sinks rather than swims, even if there are a few buoyant moments along the way.

It's refreshing that director Jim Taihuttu is more interested in the humdrum goings on of those who split their time between illegal and legitimate activities.

Red Christmas rarely deals in gore for gore’s sake in its early going. By the end, however, it becomes such an exercise in sensibility-testing brutality that any message about the fragility of the family unit is as murky as the cinematography.

Bier’s direction is coolly efficient, which fits the material to a t — anything more ostentatious would just feel wasteful.

Cliff Curtis is appealingly low-key as Christ, humble in a way that the film around him would have done well to emulate.

With a firm commitment to its alluringly offbeat premise and a grounding lead performance from Susanne Wuest, this indie oddity is an enjoyable descent into the absurd despite an apparent lack of interest in answering most of the questions it raises.

Has a lived-in, almost documentary-like realism to it, but as drama it's occasionally inert.

It's better than the first.

Enemies Closer captures the feel of action flicks of yore -- unsurprising, given that some of them were directed by Hyams himself -- in a way that only limited-release and straight-to-video titles seem allowed to these days (aside from the latest Riddick, that is).

The film is far less successful once it delves into body horror that makes Sarah's transformation as ghoulishly physical as it is mental.

For the first time, the story supports and adds to the action rather than distract from it; it’s almost as though Anderson was holding back in the earlier films because he wanted to save the best for last.

It’s a diverting enough entertainment from a group that has repeatedly proven itself to be capable of much more.

Worse than the latent silliness of such a premise is how little the filmmakers ultimately do with the world of narrative possibilities it presents; in attempting to show the universality of love, The Beauty Inside succeeds in showing the opposite.