Michael Rechtshaffen

The end result comes across less as a bona fide, issue-oriented documentary than a package of company profiles.

Based on the dubious, and occasionally eye-rolling responses from the majority of those being pitched, the plan would appear to be as ill-conceived as Surviving Peace itself.

The skillfully assembled documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste proves as eye-opening as it is mouth-watering.

While Harnett’s a real trooper and stuntman-turned-filmmaker Scott Waugh (“Act of Valor”) establishes an effectively bone-chilling milieu heightened by an immersive sound design that keeps those whipping winds and howling wolves in uncomfortably close proximity, the embellishments fail to create crucial suspense.

While the main characters appear to have been given a bit of Powerpuff Girl sass by screenwriters Meghan McCarthy, Rita Hsiao and Michael Vogel, it ultimately does little to goose the limited hand-drawn 2D animation.

One doesn’t need to be into pugilism or well-versed in Gaelic to appreciate Rocky Ros Muc, a documentary that is as much about roots and identity as it is a portrait of Irish American boxer Sean Mannion.

The overstuffed production feels as tediously incessant as its endless winter.

While the storytelling, by Abbess and co-writer Brian Cachia, might lack novelty and, occasionally, coherence, visually the film consistently impresses with creative art direction and costume choices.

Refreshingly devoid of talking animals and anthropomorphic vehicles, Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses is a lovely surprise of a stirringly original animated feature.

Although Chris Perkel’s two-hour documentary can feel like an extended episode of “Behind the Music”...it’s admittedly tough to condense half a century of such remarkable musical diversity.

While Little has a assembled a sharp ensemble, including Bruce Davison as the sheriff who hunts down the felons and the late John Heard as the prison warden, it’s ultimately the hardened intensity of Patrick’s commanding portrayal that gives Last Rampage its take-no-prisoners tautness.

There has been no shortage of films tracking the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, but few have been as laugh-out-loud delightful as The Tiger Hunter, a sparkling first feature by Lena Khan.

Any hope of prestige is dashed by the heavy-handed, cliché-ridden direction of former stuntman Johnny Martin and his star’s detached portrayal of a guy whose mind is permanently elsewhere.

Infinity Chamber (renamed from the original “Somnio”) may accurately convey the oppressive perpetuity of its title, but all that repetition in the absence of more inspired plotting results in a payoff that feels inescapably contrived.

Richard Gabai’s film is too preoccupied corralling all the genre clichés to come up with anything original or compelling.

Although chances are good that something called This Is Your Death is not going to be admirably restrained in the subtlety department, there was at least the hope that this grotesque thriller wouldn’t have kept pivoting uneasily between audacious social satire and mawkish moralizing.

A creeping naturalism inhabits virtually every frame of Dayveon.

Embargo plays like a freshman college paper that’s long on reference material but comes up short in establishing an overriding premise.

The fact-based story, which is allowed to quietly unfold in a series of extended takes, has been stripped of all artifice, especially in regard to the pared-back performances of Harewood, a British actor with regular roles on “Homeland” and “Supergirl,” and Findley, who starred in Ava DuVernay’s 2012 breakthrough feature, “Middle of Nowhere.”

A perfectly watchable if overtly theatrical whodunit.

A straight-ahead political thriller that fails to ratchet up the requisite tension despite its timely subject matter and (largely) effective cast.

A raunchy, ploddingly unfunny comedy sequel to 2012’s equally crass but disarmingly endearing “Goon.”

It may have been a long road to glory, but seeing Perkins (then 97) and Smith (75) enthusiastically accept a 2011 Grammy for their album “Joined at the Hip,” it’s readily apparent that it was worth the trip.

While the dramatic underpinnings could have used more work, the labyrinth that’s the focus of Dave Made a Maze is truly an amazingly inventive sight to behold.

6 Days can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.

While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.

Grafting the buddy picture onto the framework of the classic political thriller, director Jang Hoon also manages to find time for lighter moments of human comedy, and those seemingly disparate elements are deftly navigated by Song and his fellow fully dimensional characters.

Serving as something of an overstuffed sampler platter, the documentary The Pulitzer at 100, marking the centenary of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer’s effort to place journalism on equal footing with arts and letters, is big on variety but comes up frustratingly short on substance.

By the time one of the gun-toting members of Team Snipes growls “Let’s finish this!” viewers would be hard-pressed to disagree.

Pamela Yates’ 500 Years is a palpably passionate if somewhat less contained effort than the two films preceding it.

While Henner and Begley bring a seasoned ease to their secondary roles, their presence, and that of a lively Zach McGowan as Cassidy’s drug-dealing ex, can’t compensate for wobbly dramatic stakes and glib main characters who don’t lend themselves to audience empathy.

While its insights into the consequences of selective memory loss continue to resonate the world over, at its heart, Amnesia is a beautifully acted depiction of confronting regret.

The oddball premise and quirky characters ultimately aren’t enough to lift up Man Underground.

Those accustomed to the sort of grandly executed, tightly paced escape/rescue sequences that tend to go with the territory will have to acclimate themselves to the film’s more subdued rhythms, but in time, the quietly unassuming, character-rich approach pays some affecting dividends.

For a film about one of the fastest guns in the West, the dramatically lightweight Hickok is mighty slow on the draw.

A risible misfire of a contemporary war drama, the low-budget “Unfallen” stands as an epic fail on all fronts.

As captured through the ceaselessly unflinching lens of Sharif’s borrowed video camera, Nowhere to Hide offers an uneasy prognosis that is at once graphically gut-wrenching and doggedly life-affirming.

The film effectively summons an evocative moment in time. But...the film ultimately feels like a marketing tool for ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Nye's openness extends to a clear-eyed examination of his personal life — one which has often taken a back seat to his career pursuits, impacting his ability to sustain meaningful relationships.

The documentary by Frank Dietz and Trish Geiger is big on enthusiasm though it ultimately lacks depth.

A wincingly unfunny comedy caper.

While visually dynamic, Lightning McQueen’s newest challenge still feels out of alignment with a languid end result that lacks sufficient forward momentum.

An ethnically diverse cast and authentic New York locations help to effectively ground Lucky, a palpably gritty, if familiar, take on the immigrant experience.

The affecting work by Almanzar, Rodriguez and the rest of the ensemble in this immersive film tenderly speaks for itself.

Chan maintains his dexterous footing whether choreographing the colorful large-scale battle sequences or the stripped-down, hand-to-hand matchups that boil the conflict down to its most basic — and personal — essence.

Falling just short of being so bad it’s good, Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter is a shameless low-budget “Terminator”/“Star Wars”/“Mad Max” knock-off that will have to settle for being merely godawful.

Even with 15 minutes excised from its original running time, and stirringly photographed and well-acted, the film fails to deliver on a sense of mounting tension or convincingly staged battle sequences.

In the absence of a sturdier storyline and more dimensional characters, the manic, rapid-fire delivery, while yielding some well-deserved laughs, proves more exhausting than inspired.

Amounting to two-plus hours of conspiracy theorist porn, The American Media & the Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, directed and narrated by John Barbour, proves to be as long-winded as its accusatory title.

Director Piscatella maintains an engaging grip on his unassuming subject’s ascendancy.

By now Bowers, who also directed the last two Wimpy Kid movies, knows how to choreograph the inherent chaos for optimal giggles, even if many of the book’s more satirical elements have been swapped out for broader slapstick.

Rather than pulling the viewer in, all the inter-cutting between the barren stage and the barren desert ultimately has a distancing, artificial effect that waters down much of the dramatic potency generated by the shared experience of a live performance.

[An] endlessly fascinating, bracingly up-to-the-minute Netflix documentary.

Healy is never able to find an absorbing middle ground in Mike Makowsky’s script, vacillating gratingly between shrill farce and murky thriller that flails its way toward an intended twist-ending that really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

While a lot of gunfire ensues, Jesse Gustafson’s mechanical direction and Guy Stevenson’s cut-and-paste script shoot laughably hollow blanks.

Marino...is equally at home directing the broader physical comedy and sweeter bonding sequences between Maximo and Hugo, even as the overlong film's two distinct personalities never manage to coalesce into a self-contained whole.

As choreographed by director Moon Hyun-Sung, the adventure seldom gets sufficiently up to speed, and on the occasions it threatens to come to life, the pedestrian action sequences fail to compensate for that lethargic pace.

Ultimately, neither narrative receives sufficient attention, robbing the subjects and that unique p.o.v. of the focus and urgency that lent the previous two films their undeniable potency.

There’s scant evidence of any creative spark in Spark: A Space Tail, a thoroughly generic, unremittingly charmless computer-animated adventure.

Laurent and Dion’s passionate, off-the-beaten-path primer advocates thinking globally but acting locally with community-driven, grassroots alternatives that aren’t affected by any executive orders.

Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo is a well-crafted, revealing British documentary.

This lifeless serving of soggy pulp packs all the gritty authenticity of a gummy vitamin.

Tapping into that transitional juncture where limitless possibility crosses paths with nagging uncertainty, filmmaker Michal Marczak adroitly captures the youthful, restless spirit cradled within the pulsating beat of its immersive, ambient soundtrack.

There’s howlingly awful and then there’s The Assignment, a thoroughly ridiculous, numbingly slow neo-noir thriller.

Two tedious hours later, the sensation of doing time is all too tangible.

In attempting to address its many concerns, the film’s agreeable, lightly satirical tone gives way to increasingly didactic dialogue and a stalling pace.

Although it occasionally feels as if the thoughtful Powell (who unexpectedly died last summer) is being forced into a repentant corner, the film remains a penetrating case study in taking ownership of one’s actions.

Although her colorful life would reach a tragic, decidedly pulpy end, Leo plays it to the absolute hilt.... Unfortunately, the other characters and the vehicle that supports her turn out to be less satisfyingly dimensional.

Franco, who’s absolutely hysterical as the brooding, deluded Wiseau, leads a parade of familiar faces...delivering a winning, Ed Wood-esque blend of comedy and pathos that could very well earn its own cult status.

Words like "inventive" and "inspired" are very rarely applied to the parade of cookie cutter animated features that pass through the multiplex each year, but The Boss Baby proves a refreshing exception.

In the absence of a more dramatically dynamic approach to that awfully familiar subject matter, “Burning Sands” proves neither as incendiary nor as challenging as intended.

Buried beneath all the increasingly tired visual gags and well-worn character conventions is a workable message about following one’s muse, but director Ash Brannon, a Pixar veteran, along with at least eight other writers, seem content simply to lay down the same old licks.

There’s plenty of predatory behavior on display in the impressively acted Wolves, a curious if unsuccessful cross-breeding of gritty domestic drama with conventional coming-of-age sports crowd-rouser.

Through its keenly observed small moments and the presence of the charismatic Nafar and his infectious, socially charged raps, Junction 48 sensitively yet powerfully conveys the considerable challenges inherent in attempting to reconcile those rocky crossroads of coexistence and cultural identity.

While the approach taken by filmmaker Marina Zenovich, who directed 2008’s “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” relies heavily on talking heads — Gov. Jerry Brown among them — she admittedly paints a compelling picture of timeless greed.

Ghost of New Orleans, by Serbian director Peter (Predrag) Atonijevic, is a laughably pretentious crime caper-supernatural thriller hybrid that comes up woefully lacking on both fronts.

Writer-director Park Kwang-hyun certainly keeps the visual energy aloft with its frantic genre-splicing, but the over-the-top approach ultimately plays out like several years’ worth of Super Bowl commercials strung out end to end.

Filmmaker and Columbia professor Joseph, and playwright Beaty, in his feature writing and acting debut, infuse the movie with an intense New York City realism and an evocative street poetry that conjure up early John Cassavetes and Spike Lee.

The Adventure Club is a remarkably dull Canadian tween caper about a sought-after magical ancient box with wish-making powers.

Although there is still much to enjoy here, this DC Comics-fueled Lego adventure fails to clear the creative bar so energetically raised by co-directors and writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller back in 2014.

Intriguing in concept but problematic in execution.

A shrill but often funny anti-romantic comedy from L.A. filmmakers Alex Kavutskiy and Ariel Gardner.

South Korean filmmaker Kim Sung-hoon has clearly done his homework while injecting the action sequences with a terrific kinetic energy.

A staged kidnapping isn’t the only thing that goes from botched to worse where the tone-deaf black comedy-thriller Get the Girl is concerned.

By the time it all culminates in a Chan-led classic Bollywood production number, the cuteness factor may have been pushed to its limit, but good luck trying to stop that goofy smile from spreading across your face.

While the fake news angle is admittedly a timely one, the film’s ultimate dubious achievement is its remarkable ability to make “Dude, Where’s My Car?” feel like vintage Kubrick.

While writer-director-editor Aram Rappaport draws effectively weighted performances (especially from the always committed Driver) and maintains a crisp pace, he’s less adept at balancing those big picture thriller elements with Clifton’s personal journey, which ultimately serves to rob both aspects of greater potency.

A generic coming-of-age comedy that feels inextricably stuck in the ’90s, Hickey serves as the feature debut of TV commercial director Alex Grossman and plays like a never aired UPN series pilot.

Despite attracting some top-drawer talent, “Arsenal” is a brutally unpleasant, bottom-of-the-barrel crime drama that unsuccessfully attempts to drown the terrible dialogue and pedestrian direction with buckets of gushing blood.

While Wedge’s animation background comes in handy during some inventive chase sequences (shot in rural British Columbia), Monster Trucks is otherwise a clunky nonstarter.

It may be by-the-book, but American Wrestler is a story well worth telling.

Martin and Coffa may bear a strong physical resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but their contemporary-sounding line delivery has all the dramatic heft of a Foster’s beer commercial.

Kill Ratio is a laughably inept political thriller that would have been right at home on the USA Network lineup circa 1990.

The penetrating Solitary is a sobering account of life (without parole) inside the Red Onion, a super-maximum security prison ensconced in Virginia’s Appalachians.

While its own roots never go quite as deep as they might, there’s still something goofily endearing about seeing Reitman, armed with that trusty bonsai, traipsing around the country on a healing mission.

In his first feature outing, director Soham Mehta overplays the significance of virtually every aspect of Rajiv Shah’s script, no matter how minor, with painfully slow pans and needlessly lingering establishing shots.

Lopez’s first feature comes across as fragmented and overwrought, with characters and performances that seem to have been egged on by the score’s achingly purposeful piano.

The loneliness of the long-distance chess grandmaster is affectingly conveyed in Magnus.