Nick Allen

The sporadic magic of The Polka King largely comes from its casting, and the hammy performances that follow.

Filled with insincere wackiness and sappiness, Father Figures never quite figures out whether it wants to be a raunchy, zippy road movie or a more dialogue-driven dramedy. Despite having no personality of its own, this movie just yearns to be recognized at all.

Tone is a revealing element for this project, which it borrows from the B-movie, apocalyptic seriousness of a later “Transformers” sequel. One of the movie’s biggest surprises is then that it has outtakes, which even include poking fun at how easily the intimidating alien’s costume head can fall off.

Feeling like a director’s cut that would play best for people who already know her, Big Sonia is a feature that could have very likely made a deeper impact with the succinctness of a short film.

The director called this “mayhem porn,” a designation and ideology fitting for the latest from indie director Mickey Keating, Psychopaths. This is an active, obnoxious test of an audience’s appetite for blood and how long they can go without novel ideas like purpose or plot.

There is a lacking critical quality to the story as it goes along, touching upon the film’s many idiosyncrasies but leaving them alone.

As the film goes from profound life experience to profound life experience, stuck between gathering information and growing art from its themes, the documentary proves to be more noble than notable.

It can be hard to disagree with the heart and events of this true tale, except for when the movie reveals itself to be mighty self-congratulatory.

There is a fascinating impulsiveness to the production of this story, especially as it essentially drops viewers into the world of Daje, and then has us follow her for months.

The film is too ordinary to feel like it does her legacy complete artistic justice.

The movie is inescapably lifelessness, unintentionally dumbing itself down while desperately hoping to be profound.

While the script has a problem sharing why it was excited to place conjoined twins in such a predicament, the Fontana sisters boast a special emotional eloquence.

Dayveon stands out with its vision, regional flavor and overall personality.

It is a touching document of seemingly regular people who yearn to keep an artistic tradition alive.

Tulip Fever reveals itself to be so nutty because it explicitly believes it’s not crazy, rambling through its odd events and obsessions without an ounce of 17th century kitsch.

It’s baffling, more than anything, as to how all of this talent could create something so uncharacteristic to their collective abilities to make us laugh, or feel something.

Diab effectively creates a monster of blind hatred, and then holds all of us as captors and witnesses to a hateful world tearing itself apart.

The Queen of Spain can only offer scant entertainment for movie buffs and non-movie buffs alike.

Here is a film dedicated to recognizing our most common obstacles, its quiet storytelling largely accompanied by those feelings at the bottom of anyone’s gut: guilt, shame, defeat. Menashe is a gorgeous ode to everyone's inner screw-up.

It’s a low-key trippy sci-fi movie about booty calls with an unwieldy space squid, but I wish I could say it was much more than that.

With a movie like this, it’s hard to tell where the good idea ran out, as it seems to have been lost many drafts ago. 2:22 really just wants to be seen as clever, which often renders something not very clever at all.

There's always something to ponder with this film, which gets stranger and more polarizing as it goes along.

All Eyez on Me is one of the most useless music biopics ever made — it’ll be too confusing for newcomers and too underwhelming for those familiar with the work and the life of rap prophet Tupac Shakur.

From start to finish, Uziel’s packaging of the story seems more inspired than its contents.

Radio Dreams is an example of both the compelling passion and polarizing fallibility that can arise when a director works primarily from the heart.

Hermia & Helena’s touch-and-go approach weakens the movie’s key expression of being a relatable story about being lost during your late 20s/early 30s.

Most of all it is a pure story about love, without the scandals.

Absolutely Anything is more than its unique place in history, and serves to remind us that no one made movies for goofy adults quite like Jones did.

In the long list of movies about death, this is one of the most original in recent memory, if for its emotional delicacy in sparing us hollow, tear-gushing grandiosity, and for its attitude on life: In most movies about grief, you are waiting for the characters to cry. This is a marvelous story about loss in which you are waiting for them to laugh.

While Tramps may be inspired and unusual, it’s hard to shake off the idea that Leon isn't just making the film he wants to see, he's riffing on himself.

Salt and Fire is fundamentally bad, in its filmmaking and expressiveness, whether there is any meaning to a parrot quoting Nostradamus or not.

Only worthwhile storytellers could take an elevator pitch like this one (the last two people on Earth) and produce long-lasting curiosity about its inherent beauty and horror.

As for Paxton, he enters the story with an edge, establishing the authority and revealing sensitivity of a single father with a powerful job. It’s not a career-topping role by any means but it is a reminder of how the late actor could take on a role with sincerity and breathe some type of life into it.

While Suntan is more than just a tale about an older man becoming involved with a younger woman, it's unfortunately not as profound when it later claims to be a statement on the movie you think you're watching.

In the true spirit of this profoundly uninteresting movie, Donald Cried can only shrug through its central notion that men will be sad boys.

Hand-in-hand with its bleeding-heart nature, Collide has the ballsy idea of making a serious action movie about a fool in love, but that just becomes one of its many bungled stunts.

Betsy Brandt gives a compelling performance as the title character whose spirit is slowly breaking, a woman of the arts faced with a painful and personal manifestation of ambiguity.

Though it boasts a large scope with its ensemble cast, huge sequences and the star power of the almighty Jackie Chan, Railroad Tigers lacks the vital focus to come together.

Devon Terrell's performance as Barry is warming, always leading with empathy and a genuine smile, contemplative whenever not sharing his thoughts.

With a documentary as flabby but well-meaning as Best and Most Beautiful Things, you have to savor the small stuff.

Blood on the Mountain is wide-ranging across time, driven by talking heads and select footage, but it nails the human element at its core.

The big problem throughout Uncle Kent 2 is that while it can offer some amusement, it all feels like an inside joke.

Foiled by a weak imagination and clear limits to its awareness, Rainbow Time doesn’t become the strong feminist statement it ultimately wants to be.

That the story is never scary is the least of its problems.

For all of the film's ideas of art and entertainment, it might just forever change your preconceptions of the firework.

Kevin Pollak's raunchy comedy The Late Bloomer is merely cheesy and horny, but rarely amusing.

Long Way North is a different vision, using clear-defined colors, shapes and shadows for hand-drawn beauty, giving the film a bold, intricately-cut-construction-paper look. Especially as the characters are surrounded by ice and cold, the stark white images prove simple yet expressive.

At least with its wide scope, Maya Angelou and Still I Rise shows that her time on Earth was about more than being an author, poet, civil rights activist, a mother, a dancer, a singer, a film director, producer, journalist and much more. Her life was poetry itself.

While empathy is first to go in the tasteless When the Bough Breaks, there is nothing good in its place.

Its story is as common as sunlight, but the entertainment can be just as warm.

Though it too readily compares to other intimate observations on life-changing connections, you could place this take by director Maïwenn somewhere between Ingmar Bergman’s masterful “Scenes from a Marriage” and Derek Cianfrance’s searing “Blue Valentine,” while never being able to forget My King's two brilliant performances from Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel.

Burman's film languishes on the chaos of the events, and it can never be accused of not having some ideas about fatherhood and legacy. But the humor of this rambling film runs dry to the point of unpalatable.

Tallulah is an impressive debut from Heder, who also works as a writer on Netlfix’s “Orange Is the New Black” (Uzo Aduba, who plays Crazy Eyes on the series, has a part as a child services agent with a lot of perspective).

It's more fulfilling to the soul than appetite, but the indulgence — if not the brief escape — is an inestimable perk.

A movie hopped up on the period piece sadism within Tarantino’s regurgitation cinema, Outlaws & Angels gravely mistakes Tarantino’s audaciousness for its own originality.

Owing some of its charms to other sex comedies from that decade, this Sundance 2016 title (now playing on Netflix) proves to be more layered than its promises of shenanigans may expect, especially as this is the rare sex comedy that doesn’t glorify the male gaze.

While Gondry calms his creative instincts to toy with the ordinary, he indirectly errs on making Microbe and Gasoline his first forgettable film.

A welcome surprise for sports cinema, The Phenom handles itself like Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" when exploring the psychology of a Lebron James or Johnny Manziel-like sports sensation.

The episodic narrative of Seoul Searching can be too long and unfocused, but its stubbornness comes from filmmaking that is overflowing with self-pride.

Lacking personality or insight, King Jack is a ho-hum tale of young aggression—been there, bruised that.

Not the type of Iraq soldier film one may expect. It does present intricate experiences of PTSD, but does so with distance.

Park coats the big heart he has for these people with warm LA lens flares, and finds energy from sharp cuts and wall-to-wall music. It’s the performances that prove to be spotty, with flat line-readings all around and displays of emotions that struggle to reach from the script to the audience.

As comedy, the events are more often charming than funny; even when some sequences fall flat, they show a dedication to the surrealism that’s charismatic.