Nick Schager

Though there are times when the material could be tighter, Newnham’s latest film is a compelling celebration of the revolutionary Hite.

Proves to be an ideal showcase for its lead—even if its light comedy is a bit too slight.

A work that proves hopelessly at odds with itself all the way to a conclusion that fizzles at the moment it should explode.

Setting a new benchmark for diverse, agile, breathtaking animation, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is as striking as non-live-action films come.

Rob Savage’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1973 short story is as stereotypical as they come, so devoid of originality that the most pressing emotion it elicits is pity for its leads, Sophie Thatcher and Chris Messina, who deserve better than to be put through this paint-by-numbers ringer.

There’s no way to get a total read on what Qualley’s protagonist is up to, which turns out to be the primary thrill of this snapshot of personal, professional, and class warfare.

Though its real-life story ultimately proves a little too one-note, it makes up for its thinness with a powerhouse lead turn from Sydney Sweeney as a woman caught in a nerve-wracking mess of her own making.

What [Waugh] delivers is precisely what fans are likely looking for, albeit in a package that’s more politically muddled than is necessary.

A film about a police culture that doesn’t seem to take rape charges seriously—or, at the very least, doesn’t think that thoroughly examining accusations is worth the hassle when intimidation and humiliation will facilitate their jobs.

Director Calmatic sanitizes every aspect of his source material until the entire thing looks, sounds and feels like a Disney sitcom. Thus, it’s no surprise when things get self-help maudlin.

What it reveals is an exclusionary environment that views beauty, wealth, privilege, and conformity as the highest of ideals—and which seems, in some cases, to exacerbate the very problems these young women believe it will solve.

There’s plenty of preposterousness to be found in this sequel, which barely revs to life when indulging in automotive mayhem and outright stalls every time its human characters open their mouths.

A satire that’s neither sharp enough to make its industry skewering sting, nor sweet enough to compensate for its toothlessness.

A B-movie with a C+ premise and D-minus execution, the last of which largely falls at the feet of director Robert Rodriguez.

Helander’s latest tells its story with compact concision, even as it also indulges in great gooey gobs of over-the-top mayhem.

[A] portrait of one woman’s heroism and the means by which it’s motivated by guilt, regret, fury, and despair—the last of which, ultimately, proves inescapable.

A first-rate rebound from the relatively underwhelming Vol. 2, it’s a bursting-at-the-seams adventure that, minor missteps aside, reminds viewers why this ragtag crew remains one of the MCU’s highlights.

Infused with bounding energy but little meaningful invention, it climbs to only modest heights, weighed down by its inability to add much to the iconic legend.

Celebrates feminist independence and rage, even as it embraces the conventions of its many cinematic and pop culture influences.

A sober military thriller that excoriates Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021 and, in the process, to strand the thousands of local interpreters who had risked their lives to aid the American cause.

Capturing the pulse-pounding emotional whirlwind of its source material (and its characters), it’s a florid reimagining that’s at once bold, beautiful, and, at its peak, brilliant.

Evil Dead Rises is confirmation that—like so many that have come before it—Raimi’s legendary horror saga has run out of steam, continuing onward only because its easy-to-market IP value remains relatively high.

Featuring not a single convincing element or exchange, this fiasco plays like a wannabe-Knight and Day exercise in eliciting annoyed reactions.

Rock ‘n’ roll portraits this vibrant, introspective, and nimble don’t come around very often.

[Cage] is the prince of pretentious darkness, and the saving grace of this otherwise slapdash variation on the Bram Stoker legend.

A true American original, and proof that, while the hype surrounding [Aster] may have been early, it wasn’t wrong.

Fails to locate a humorous rhythm or coherently develop its collection of characters. It’s the skeleton of a promising idea rather than a full-fledged movie.

A rousing underdog saga that—like Ben Affleck’s prior directorial efforts Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo—has the type of snappy energy and charm that should earn it a long post-theatrical shelf life.

Dismally lazy nonsense whose only redeeming element is that its credits roll a good 10 minutes before the conclusion of its stated runtime.

Those with a craving for out-there mystery and dread, however, will get a heady buzz from its bizarro madness.

Refusing to provide an accurate and trustworthy snapshot of what both these opposing factions are really about, the film comes across as a superficial exposé afraid of getting dirty.

The film’s placid aesthetics help the directors strip away any artificial barriers between the audience and their subjects, thereby eliciting immense, compassionate engagement with Tori and Lokita’s plight.

As a showcase for the inimitable Dafoe it has its minor freaky-deaky pleasures. Ultimately, though, it goes nowhere—literally and figuratively.

It has one thing to say, and it says it over and over again with a dismal lack of nuance.

Messy and mirthless, it resounds as the death knell for this interconnected cinematic enterprise’s current iteration.

More turns out to be just about right in this case, with the film offering up such an onslaught of brutal, breakneck action that it’s easy to forgive its less compelling narrative excesses.

The proceedings resemble an impromptu game of make-believe concocted by a kid playing with his or her toys—a situation that renders it both inane and lighthearted.

This sixth chapter boasts not a single genuinely unnerving jolt—a consequence of tepid writing as well as the familiarity of Ghostface’s tactics, which have long since become their own genre clichés.

Offsetting its naughtier impulses with feel-good schmaltz, it employs a tired formula to losing results.

It’s espionage executed with cheeky flair and playful sexiness, and it’s enlivened by Aubrey Plaza, who runs away with the show.

It’s easy to see the film’s punches coming before they’re thrown, but that doesn’t lessen their wallop when they land.

As superb as any feature debut in recent memory, its power derived from its marriage of graceful writing, subtle direction, and unbearably expressive performances. Movies don’t come much more exquisitely heartbreaking than this.

To call the proceedings one-note is to oversell their depth; the sheer dearth of ideas in this fiasco is almost impressively profound.

In sticking its landing, Linoleum proves a case study in why no story can be fully judged until it’s over.

Affords an intimate and wrenching view of a national collapsing under the weight of unbearable traumas, and of the young children who are the prime victims of that strain.

Some of the chintziest and most uninspired exploitation cinema this side of Sharknado.

While the star adequately acquits himself, Neil Jordan’s throwback noir is a cover song that knows all the notes but can’t capture its predecessor’s spirit.

Just as readers will likely get lost in its gobbledygook subtitle, so too does Rudd get swallowed up by the consuming CGI insanity of his latest comic book extravaganza.

A cannier, and more effective, slice of shaky-cam insanity than most of its brethren, right down to a finale that’s akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey as processed through a meat grinder.

The meager surprises it does contain aren’t particularly effective, considering that early clues suggest only one possible twist and the proceedings do little to mask it.

It’s an egregiously transparent endeavor modeled after the finest swindle-y works of David Mamet, but boasting none of those predecessors’ cleverness, surprise or precision.

Delivering the male-entertainment goods while radiating a newfound degree of tender romanticism, it’s a fairy-tale coda that’s at once sensual, lyrical, and liberating.

It’s Dynevor, though, who makes Fair Play sizzle. Balancing fiery sensuality and severe determination, the red-headed 27-year-old actress lights up the screen.

A rollicking tale of the inextricable bonds between life and art, and the value of ensuring that the latter remains preserved for future generations.

Strives to scrutinize mother-daughter relations through a darkly comedic lens and only comes up with grating incoherence.

Not for the faint of heart but precisely the sort of nightmare that fans of Cronenberg (and his father David) crave.

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World affords a detailed analysis of the causes of Asahara’s popularity, and the deeply rooted hang-ups that drove him to order the infamous assault—as well as numerous other crimes.

Its poignancy and humor is amplified by its canny decision to let Fox tell his own tale.

Justice is more of a stinging, straightforward recap than a formally daring non-fiction work, but its direct approach allows its speakers to make their case with precision and passion.

Bernal is a charismatic force of nature, his magnetism so great that it elevates Williams’ drama above its clunkier, clichéd elements.

Everything and everyone lurches about in a desperate bid to be hilariously weird, and the effect is to make the proceedings feel hopelessly strained, as if they know that there’s nothing funny going on and thus must compensate via out-there quirkiness and constant mugging.

The Sky Is Everywhere finds director Josephine Decker indulging in affectation overload in an effort to imbue her adaptation of Jandy Nelson’s young-adult novel with uplifting magic. Whereas individual moments might work on their own, however, the “Madeline’s Madeline” auteur’s latest never provides its romantic tale with room to breathe, so intent is it about operating with maximum whimsicality.

Designed for maximum corniness, The Tiger Rising peppers its action with enough references to God, upturned-to-the-heavens gazes and warm enveloping light to make clear its function as a homily.

Handsomely mounted and deftly dramatized, it’s an agonized study of suffering and treachery, and no less valuable — or powerful — for being regrettably familiar.

In any decade, the film’s bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem would disappoint.

While following a typical rom-com pattern isn’t inherently unpleasant, the movie’s wink-wink insinuations that it’s going to take things in a novel direction, followed by its embrace of the very clichés it’s poked fun at, makes it feel disingenuous and stale.

Writer-director Michael Mohan’s film plays like rehashed leftovers cooked up for young viewers who’ve never seen any of its superior inspirations.

Rosenfield and Law are such a likable duo — he clownish and earnest in equally uninhibited fashion, she brazen and fierce with an underlying sweetness — that the film remains amusing and spry even as it coasts along a path that will feel familiar to most rom-com fans.

Obvious and derivative in borderline-shameless fashion, it’s a B-movie knock-off with little originality and even less flair.

Aided by Steven Price’s enthusiastic score, Mendoza’s vigorous direction keeps things speeding along, and Momoa is such a charismatic presence — whether sensitively interacting with Rachel (skillfully embodied by Merced) or inventively snapping an adversary’s neck — that the proceedings’ lack of realism works to its advantage.

The film is formally beautiful almost to a fault, giving it a schematic quality that’s at odds with its roiling emotions.

Fully Realized Humans solidifies its central dynamic through alternately jokey and heartfelt dialogue that rings true, and via its leads’ sure-footed performances as committed partners grappling with a crazed stew of issues involving control, doubt and masculinity.

It strikes not a single authentic chord, and that also goes for the lead performance of Ben Platt, whose overdone theater-kid turn further dooms the material’s stabs at humor and pathos.

With low stakes and even lower energy, writer-director Maria Bissell’s feature debut isn’t sure if it’s a thriller with amusing elements or a comedy of criminal absurdity. What it winds up being, therefore, is neither, stuck in a dull middle ground that will please no one.

While The God Committee routinely resides on the precipice of preachiness, Stark’s script (via St. Germain’s source material) avoids one-note sermonizing and characterizations at most turns, instead maturely investigating the messy intersection of medicine, morality and commerce.

A lively saga about a young coding wizard who’s charged with saving his family’s gaming business, this celebration of old- and new-school creativity doesn’t break novel ground in any respect. Fortunately, though, its good humor, spry pacing and likable performances should appeal to its pre-high-school target audience.

Despite having characters incessantly explain key plot points, Separation lacks basic logic.

Aiming for a darkly humorous portrait of marital bliss — and the difficulties of maintaining it — the film comes off as a half-formed “Twilight Zone” joke minus the punchline.

With sterling command of its malevolently dreamy tone, it casts a disquieting spell.

Boogie is most assured when focusing on specific Chinese American routines, rituals and mindsets, yet it falters when crafting its larger portrait of Boogie’s predicament. Huang’s script routinely indulges in leaden exposition to get its message, as well as character details and dynamics, across.

A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.

Feels Good Man offers an inside peek at the internet’s growing ability to affect and shape modern society, which often makes the film a nightmare about extremism and technology.

Even though Chatwin is only seen in a handful of snapshots and one brief video snippet, Herzog brings him to vivid life.

Spike Lee’s documentary on this formative period in Michael Jackson’s career derives its electric, enlivening energy from these fantastic clips. Alas, they’re not enough to alter the fact that this non-fiction effort . . . is merely a nostalgic promotional puff piece meant to look back fondly, and uncritically, at an artist transitioning from a youth-oriented pop fad to the biggest star in the world.

More than the film’s activist message, however, it’s writer-director Tommy Avallone’s portrait of whatever-it-takes parental risk and sacrifice that will help it resonate with audiences no matter their views on marijuana.

With vibrantly expressive aesthetics that match the energy of its defiant and distressed heroine, this impressive coming-of-age indie . . . heralds the arrival of both a distinctive new filmmaking voice and a leading lady with charisma to burn.

No amount of marquee talent, however, can fully compensate for the inert melodrama peddled by this inspired-by-true-events film

“You think you’re in the movies or something?” crows Davi’s Genovese to an underling, but Mob Town’s wink-wink address of its own artificiality doesn’t excuse its inept execution, which extends to a stereotypical Italian score by Lionel Cohen.

The film’s finely crafted serenity is in keeping with its main character’s secluded state of affairs, and mind.

In “Feast of the Epiphany,” a narrative-documentary hybrid, the line between fiction and reality is demarcated quite clearly, even as those two modes remain in constant dialogue — and the conceit is entrancing precisely because of its elusiveness.

Unfortunately, the invention on display is of a helter-skelter variety, as Samantha Buck and Marie Schlingmann’s film so madly lurches about in search of a tone that it feels like the first draft of a gonzo faux-biopic.

A biographical portrait that doubles as an origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.

Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.

Bolstered by the writer-director’s own journey, recounted via a collage-like aesthetic that eloquently conveys his circumscribed condition, it’s a nonfiction study of artistic creation and, also, of individual courage and perseverance.

Laced with white-savior undertones this vaguely “The Blind Side”-esque sports drama doesn’t bother investigating (if it recognizes them at all), Overcomer offers nothing in the way of nuance — even its title is awkward — and, also, no respite from its religious propagandizing.

Angels Are Made of Light serves as a lament for a prosperous past that can’t be reclaimed, a volatile present that affords few prospects for joy or success, and a future that’s terrifyingly uncertain.

Mixing archival photos and TV footage with straightforward to-the-camera remembrances, Greenfield-Sanders’ deft structural approach isn’t as daring as those found in Morrison’s own work.

As highlighted by its pitch-perfect finale, South Mountain demonstrates a realistically complex conception of stock ideas like “vengeance,” “moving on” and “healing,” and Ethan Mass’s cinematography echoes the material’s dualities in its delicate interplay of light and dark. Guiding the material from start to finish, however, is Balsam.

Chuck Smith’s documentary is at once accessible and formally daring, echoing its subject’s style while simultaneously celebrating her radical achievements. It’s an enlightening nonfiction portrait of a feminist pioneer that, in this #MeToo era, should strike a timely chord.

Eden-Smith makes the film her own, right up to the surprising, challenging and altogether sharp final note.

As a literal origin story about how we live today, it’s a captivating history lesson with global appeal.

[A] winning film ... Genre fans won’t want to miss it.

Those familiar with this story won’t find any novel twists here, but Krauss astutely conveys the literal and moral quagmires produced by such military situations.

The aesthetic devices used by the directors to embellish their material — including educational and archival videos, split-screens, slow-motion, time-lapse footage, and lingering close-ups of needles and money — are a bit too self-consciously stylish for their own good. Nonetheless, their film captures the recurring nightmare of substance abuse.

dreary...Bright, crude and aggressively hackneyed, director Nacho G. Velilla’s follow-up prizes energy over originality. While its humor elicits far more eye-rolls than laughs — and will thus leave franchise newbies cold — its high-octane style should appeal to fans of the first film.

The film moves along lackadaisically, without any knack for establishing scenarios, or setting up punchlines, that might lead to laughs — which, in turn, often makes it play like an enervating drama. Bruce!!!! makes a lot of verbal noise, but it says nothing worth remembering.

Monaghan radiates a winning measure of defiant resilience and dignity, even when she and her illustrious co-stars are reduced to mouthpieces for political sentiments (as in Common’s censure of ICE) — which is depressingly often.

By consigning its most interesting character to a supporting role, this amiable slice of fictionalized history loses a good deal of its heft. Nonetheless, solid direction and a charming Berkeley turn help it stave off insubstantiality.

A movie about cancer has no right to be as consistently amusing as Paddleton — a triumph for which credit should be spread around, even if it most deservedly goes to Ray Romano.

Portraits of institutional dysfunction don’t come much more urgent, and quietly bleak, than this.

A testament to its maker’s staunch belief in the cause of shark preservation, it’s a plea for transparency and conservation whose gorgeous 4K cinematography should make it an enticing proposition for nonfiction cinephiles and activists alike.

For the most part, the film is similarly content to repeat the past, all the way through to its predictable liberating-feel-good wrap-up.

Duncan’s film is at once obvious and repetitive, ably depicting the in-depth study required to be a doctor and yet failing to convey anything that isn’t readily apparent–including the sheer unpleasantness of seeing deceased men and women carved up for scientific inquiry.

Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens.

Dubbed “a documentary about a fairytale,” Manchevski’s film leaps around in time before eventually indulging in some magic realism, but it’s most compelling when simply fixating on Rashad, who makes Bikini at once wounded and tough, conniving and kind, desperate and volatile.

The Song of Sway Lake never finds a thematic center around which to pivot its action.

From the get-go, Levinson makes every wrongheaded directorial decision imaginable in an apparent effort to make one loathe Assassination Nation—and his success in that regard proves this teensploitation schlock’s lone triumph.

With access to only one side of its central conflict, and a scattershot approach that skims over key details and points of interest, this well-intentioned documentary leaves audiences feeling like they’re only getting part of a much larger story.

Inventing Tomorrow won’t win points for originality, but this snapshot of adolescent ingenuity and innovation, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, nonetheless proves equally entertaining and inspiring.

It’s an investigation into memory, intolerance, corporate-labor conflicts and race relations that’s as audacious as it is timely — and further confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in nonfiction.

A Whale of a Tale only skims the surface of the many matters it raises, be it cultural imperialism, tradition, animal rights and socioeconomic necessities. Still, its objective approach, and subtle plea for middle-ground compromise, makes it a worthwhile addendum to Psihoyos’ celebrated predecessor.

Affording viewers a trip to the Chilean desert to gaze up at the crystal-clear sky, Cielo is a rapturous act of cinematic contemplation.

Broken Star is a thriller interested in voyeurism, the camera’s affect on both subject and photographer, and the tangled relationship between art and artist, fiction and reality. What it’s not, however, is capable of processing those ideas in a manner that might be compelling, much less thrilling.

Robert Scott Wildes’ directorial debut is the sort of out-of-control whatsit that spins about like a decapitated chicken in its spastic death throes.

A time-traveler becomes fragmented in disastrous ways, and so too does the film itself, in “7 Splinters in Time,” edited to ribbons in a schizoid manner that likely only makes complete sense to its maker.

Radiating not only paternal devotion but also a blunt matter-of-factness that amplifies as his situation becomes more dire, Freeman’s empathetic turn makes Andy an endearing center of attention, and the film — even for those who’ve seen its source material — a heartfelt entry in the overstuffed genre.

Think of it as “Miss Congeniality” for dogs, replete with the sort of slapstick humor, puerile gags and for-adults-only pop-culture references required of such endeavors. Its frantic pace should make it a mildly amusing diversion for the younger set, but its juvenile imagination (or lack thereof) is likely to drive anyone over the age of 7 barking mad.

Though the film’s heart is in the right place, writer Timothy McNeil’s directorial debut (an adaptation of his play) hits so many familiar notes that it undercuts its compassionate lead performances, in the process rendering it merely a superficial tale of unlikely amour.

Aided by Christopher Blauvelt’s sumptuous cinematography, this consistently surprising film slinks along with melancholic dreaminess, matching the fugue state that plagues its grief-stricken protagonist.

The portrait it paints is sure to confound and infuriate in equal measure. Far from simply a snapshot of a discussion about race, Brownson’s documentary is a riveting account of self-sabotage, misplaced priorities, and obstinacy run amok.

The material comes across as too far-fetched to be taken seriously, and too bland to elicit laughs.

Unavoidably, this sequel is, for all its majestic beauty, somewhat less awe-inspiring than its revelatory predecessor. Once again boasting narration from Morgan Freeman, the doc has a gracefulness and understated profundity that’ll naturally appeal to those who loved the first film.

Pacific Rim Uprising delivers plentiful CG mayhem.... What it lacks, though, is both del Toro’s trademark Lovecraftian imagery (all slick tentacles and dank subterranean locales) and the sense of thunderous heft that the Mexican auteur bestowed upon his titans.

While eschewing genre formula is admirable, England’s tack proves enervating, since Hank and Josie generally feel like archetypes devoid of purpose.

When the jokes don’t actually materialize (or land), the proceedings become bogged down in drama that the film’s one-dimensional characters can’t sustain.

Its first draft-grade script lacks the absurdity necessary to elicit laughs, or the depth that might make it moving. Caught between its competing urges, it merely squanders its accomplished leads Tessa Thompson and Melissa Leo in a listless purgatory.

The doc is all talk and little action, with most of the first hour of this 75-minute pic focused on DiMaggio chatting about the good old days, as well as his stand-up plans and what tonal approach he should take — the nuances of crafting a set — rather than genuinely working toward those goals.

Even when the film’s eccentricities feel too choreographed, it manages to deliver its preordained uplift with good-humored charm.

[Geoghegan] allows his film’s message about intolerance and oppression to emanate naturally from the action, thereby letting the proceedings gradually transform into a revisionist fantasy of defiance, expulsion and vengeance.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a charming actress who radiates poise and intelligence, which is why Irreplaceable You — in which her character acts in ways that are clearly self-destructive and counterproductive — rings so false.

Like James’ direction, full of off-center and oddly angled compositions that aren’t warranted by the action, Entanglement dresses up familiar romantic-comedy themes with affected gimmicks to jumbled ends.

The film’s lack of a traditional narrative will no doubt alienate many, but for the more adventurous, it offers a uniquely weird take on loneliness and lunacy.

Pleasant in the blandest sense of the term, writer-director Pavan Moondi’s film likely won’t entice anyone outside die-hard fans of cult-comic co-star Tim Heidecker.

Devoid of characters or a story about which one might care, Psychopaths proves to be a fright-free pastiche without purpose — save, that is, for unimaginatively paying homage to a string of superior genre predecessors.

Survival is depicted as a double-edged sword in Destination Unknown, an accomplished and heartrending documentary.

In the stories of both men, Grieco’s film highlights the double-edged nature of eye-opening visuals, which are just as apt to enrage others and endanger the messenger as they are to achieve noble ends.

Caring more about what its characters represent — and its empathetic representation of them — than about crafting a fully formed drama concerning flesh-and-blood people, Cone’s film has little more than its heart in the right place.

Unfortunately, the film has nothing much to say other than that the enterprise is inherently complicated — which isn’t point enough for 111 minutes of screen time.

The well-intentioned biopic is ungainly, overtly articulating everything it doesn’t need to yet failing to explain much of what starts out as unclear about the tale.

Even when their bananas premise grows a bit stale, the directors prove at least semi-serious about their material’s rawer emotions, thereby making the film an uncanny character study about an alienated anthropomorphic primate who yearns to be himself.

As amateurish as its 1990-grade VHS title graphics, Surviving Peace is possibly the clunkiest — and most one-sided — film ever made about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The horror film of 2017 is AlphaGo, a documentary about an artificial intelligence program designed to play Go – the oldest and most complex board game in the world – that feels like it’s sounding the alarm for the human race’s impending extinction.

It’s a worthy tribute bound to illuminate and inspire.

Empathetic and yet ultimately too draggy to elicit much engagement with its paper-thin story, Elizabeth Blue proves at once well-intentioned and inert.

Crowther’s courage and sacrifice deserves lionization, and comes shining through in Man with Red Bandana, but there’s no shaking the feeling that he also merits a more elegant cinematic celebration.

Reynolds’ film conveys a legitimate, stirring sense of awe about mankind’s innate desire for adventure, discovery and communion with all that surrounds it.

No doubt, these talking-head assertions about DeJoria’s charitable attitude toward work and life...are true. Alas, they’re delivered in a celebratory one-note package that feels like something cooked up by a publicity team.

Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh’s film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets.

Armed Response has less story than your average first-person shooter video game — and far fewer moments of exciting action or nerve-wracking suspense as well.

Writer/director Tom Costabile's found-footage conceit is painfully hackneyed, although not nearly as enervating as his actual drama.

Compounding the action’s lack of originality are both the amateurishness of every performance and the wobbly-camera aesthetics. Worse, though, is the wholesale absence of any political point of view on its immigrant-horror-story subject matter, leaving the film feeling like the thinnest type of retread.

The film is buoyed by its sharp, witty lead performances, with Spall’s holier-than-thou imperiousness clashing suitably with Meaney’s more affable obstinacy.

Often too clunky for its own good, and (ahem) doggedly apolitical throughout, this earnest feel-good tale nonetheless manages to pull on the heartstrings with sufficient gentleness.

This trippy work maps the intersections of West and East, body and spirit, faith and terror with beguiling grace.

At once superficial and overblown, this documentary also often feels downright phony.

It’s mostly interested in the off-kilter but natural chemistry of its leads, who despite their differences come across as comrades who genuinely care about each other, and whose bond is solidified by their shared hangups.

It’s an ode to self-discovery and acceptance that’s as funny as it is sweet.

Though the film’s feel-good construction undercuts its ability to surprise, Petra Volpe’s cine-history lesson remains a mainstream crowd-pleaser adept at inspiring and amusing in equal measure.

House of Z captures the way in which direct hands-on engagement is vital to an artist’s continued relevance, and vitality.

Driven by both empathy and a passion for justice, “How to Survive a Plague” director David France’s stellar documentary charts an investigation into the still-unsolved death of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, along the way illuminating the persistent discrimination that exists today, and the bonds of community designed to counter it.

From one wild mood swing to the next, it keeps us interested with aplomb, with Mike Makowsky’s script never lingering too long on any one element, the better to keep the pace brisk, and unpredictable.

Rambling in the best manner imaginable, it’s an amusingly heartbreaking (and hopeful) portrait of misery’s messiness.

From unique to generic, it's a gear-shift that may prolong the franchise's life (a mid-credits coda confirms that a sixth installment is on its way), but, in the process, also renders it redundant.

At once sorrowful and optimistic, Heal the Living captures the terrifying fragility of life, even as it also recognizes the strength derived from the many connections — organic, emotional, and associative — that bind and define us.

Live Cargo is one of the most evocatively shot debut films in recent memory, which is why its shabby storytelling is such a crushing disappointment.

So tasteful it’s torturous, Despite the Falling Snow is a Cold War espionage thriller for those who like their period-piece action airless and derivative.

Unconstrained by the need for a neat-and-tidy dramatic arc, All This Panic opts for messy honesty — and, in the process, finds hope for all of its subjects, in ways both big and small.

[An] insightfully open-ended inquiry into the role of humor as it relates to unspeakable tragedy.

It’s a showcase for some fine acting and even finer basketball action, but neither are enough to cover for this story’s enervating formulaic construction.

The film would be a routine affair if not for its baroque aesthetic gestures and a captivating turn from star Abbie Cornish.

In a finale rife with twisted feelings of resentment, fury, and self-loathing, the film transforms into a grave meditation on the corrosive shadow cast by the decisions, and crimes, of yesterday.

Somewhere buried deep within You’re Killing Me Susana is a commentary on loutish manliness, and the way in which romances are inherently fraught with tensions between individual and shared desires. Unfortunately, such notions are drowned out by all manner of irritating shenanigans.

The film proves a rousing, and ravishing, call-to-engineering-arms for future generations.

Despite its familiarity, Chapter & Verse manages to make its material both fresh and authentic.

Staging multiple sequences as extended Altman-esque tapestries in which overlapping voices uneasily harmonize with the soundtrack's swelling jazz, On the Rocks is like a blood pressure–raising anxiety attack extended to an hour and a half — except funny.

If the doc’s ultimate argument is less than wholly persuasive, A Good American nonetheless paints a fascinating picture of Binney’s mind, and the way in which he first envisioned ThinThread as a giant neural network-like globe filled with graphically linked nodes.

From homophobic start to misogynistic finish, My Father Die is a parade of thrift-store images and scenarios as dull as they are repugnant.

Trophy’s wealth of conflicting facts, figures, and arguments routinely force one to re-calibrate their feelings about the issues at hand. The result is a lament for both the animals at the center of so many crosshairs, and for a modern world seemingly only capable of saving lives by taking them.

They Call Us Monsters, alas, is so taken with its access to kids facing such legal circumstances that it forgets to form a compelling argument about them.

In virtually every closeup, Donald Cried practically seethes with barely suppressed emotion, though Avedisian cannily couches his characters’ very real, raw feelings amid a ridiculousness born of Donald’s wholesale weirdness.

Pseudo-revelatory bombshells and heart-healing epiphanies inevitably arrive by film’s climax, which only reaffirms that — no matter how it’s cleaned up, reconstituted and transformed into something new — garbage is still garbage.

Alongside electricity and clean drinking water, one of the casualties of Go North's Armageddon was artistic inspiration.

Reset is so gorgeously shot that it almost distracts attention away from the sheer inertia of its material.

Maudlin and mannered, this contrived indie squanders another fine late-career performance from Frank Langella, dousing its treatment of the subject in affectations until it’s snuffed out any trace of genuine life.

If immaculately realized, Silence is also an increasingly monotonous, patience-testing slow-burner, with characters repeatedly voicing their fears about God’s silence (often in voiceover), debating the merits of apostatizing in service of a compassionate cause, and suffering in quiet.

Taking the macro view, [Fulton and Pepe] seem to miss out on the types of thorny micro details — about McGee’s relationship with his mother, or about Viland’s own history preceding her tenure at Black Rock — that would have provided additional complexity.

While thrills are mitigated by convoluted plotting and suspect character behavior, the film’s uniquely bleak twist on classic noir conventions is enlivening.

Noble intentions alone do not a great movie make, as evidenced by Po, whose heart is in the right place but whose drama is woefully lacking in momentum.

Jessica Chastain is a great actress, but with Miss Sloane, she also proves that she’s a great movie star.

Waters’ comedy — like its forerunner — comes impressively close to elevating cursing to an art form, especially when wielded by Thornton and Cox, who spit and sneer vulgar invectives at each other like gutter-trash virtuosos.

Most like-minded films spend approximately twenty minutes on the same material covered by the entirety of Come and Find Me — a fact that leaves this mystery from writer/director Zack Whedon (brother of Joss) feeling insufferably drawn out.

Regardless of its capable performances and understated direction, and no matter that it was inspired by Sadwith’s own hunt for Salinger, Coming Through the Rye comes across as a cute conceit incapable of sustaining a substantial feature.

Seemingly primed to deliver daffy thrills, The Accountant instead goes about its noble-killer business with all the excitement of an IRS audit.

The underlying point of this elaborate stunt is that modern audiences are all too willing to believe (and be manipulated by) anything sold in a familiar nonfiction package. No matter how valid that theory might be, there are surely more compelling ways to offer it than via a one-note, 88-minute-long joke.

The director posits that the world is now shaped by clandestine arms deals conducted, often illegally, by the U.S. and Great Britain, but Shadow World sells its argument about the West's criminality not with reporting but through paranoid propaganda.

This adaptation of Ransom Riggs’ children’s-lit novel offers up merely serviceable studio spectacle, minus any of Burton’s former malevolent mad-genius spirit.

A Man Called Ove — preaching tolerant togetherness as the key to happiness — earns its sentimentality by striking a delicate balance between barking-mad comedy and syrupy melodrama.

A film that — from its basic set-up to its dearth of tension — plays like the tedious inverse of Don't Breathe.

"Southwest of Salem” proves a portrait of individual tragedy, and an indictment of a system willing to let prejudice cloud its judgment — and, also, to avoid admitting its own wrongdoing.

Subtly visualizing the connection shared between the land and its people (and their interior conditions), Tanna proves rich in both sociological detail and roiling emotions.

Cuban-American writer-director Julio Quintana’s feature debut has an understated formal loveliness that helps offset its more heavy-handed allegorical inclinations.

Director Christian Carion’s first feature since 2009’s “Farewell” is bolstered by a sweeping Ennio Morricone score, yet his narrative is too episodic, and his characters too one-dimensional, to carry the weight of grand historical tragedy, resulting in a picturesque, middle-of-the-road effort.

Based on the harrowing book by Eric Schlosser (who not only co-wrote, but also appears in the film), this unsettling production...is equal parts history lesson, cautionary tale and nerve-rattling thriller, using all manner of nonfiction devices to elicit both horror and outrage over the precariousness of our deadliest arsenals.

It's the rare film to miss its every mark.

Despite a strong sense of its characters, however, Kelly rarely generates much melodramatic or amusing momentum.

Swinton’s warm, unassuming direction generates an intimacy that does much to compensate for the overarching project’s wispiness — although even her clear affection for Berger can’t ultimately make “The Seasons in Quincy” more than a for-aficionados-only companion piece to his pre-existing paintings and writing.

Without narration or a conventional storyline, it’s a uniquely insightful memoir-cum-critical-treatise.

An insistent, clunky sermon about triumph through faith, David Hunt’s film is so determined to turn its subject into a Christ-like saint that it loses any sense of him as an actual flesh-and-blood man, the result being a third-string sports saga only apt to play to its devout target audience.

Writer-director Brett Allen Smith’s quasi-romance meanders about with the same aimlessness as its characters, revealing nothing substantial about them, or twentysomething love and identity formation.

Beginning with a series of traps before escalating into sword-to-sword skirmishes, Miike's centerpiece boasts sharp momentum and nasty muscularity.

A crude sugary-sweet fantasy.

Bazodee itself dutifully hews to convention, but its plotting is so torpid that it never feels as if there are any genuine stakes to the protagonist’s which-beau-should-I-choose predicament.

Only faintly touching upon notions of intuitive collaboration and inspiration, For the Plasma wanders about as if it’s in a fog, ultimately to the point of pointlessness.

Though its verité aesthetics are often more serviceable than inspired, and its vague who-what-where-when-why set-up neuters some of its lingering impact, the film’s depiction of entrenched prejudice remains astutely realized.

With characters who range from mildly aggravating to out-and-out intolerable, and revolving around a game whose outcome is of no meaningful consequence, this underdogs-make-good fairy tale is a dramatic and comic rainout.

It’s a unique, associative blend of sounds and images that aims to convey details as well as underlying truths about Frank’s life. Unfortunately, it also often leaves one feeling aesthetically pummeled to the point of exhaustion.

The pitfall of a tantalizing set-up is that it requires a sterling payoff to match — a recipe for disappointment born out by Rebirth, whose premise-establishing early passages lead only to underwhelming revelations.

Mature and moving in its navigation of convoluted, conflicting desires, it’s an indie as assured in its silences as it is in its speeches.

Striking in its evocation of a demanding time and place, this intimate drama about individual and national transformation heralds the arrival of an arresting new filmmaking voice.

With a scuzzy style to match its sleazeball vision of spotlight desperation and depravity, this Tinseltown satire — led by voice work from Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt — revels in the foulness of 21st-century pop culture, albeit to a degree that’s ultimately both exhausting and redundant.

Yadav pinpoints the various ways in which institutional and personal prejudices keep people enslaved, crafting a sharp portrait of gender inequality.

Throughout, Bird’s visuals are consistently flat, and his habit of cinematographically spinning around his characters (at a dinner table, on a dance floor, in a field) is dizzying in an unpleasant, nausea-inducing way — thus creating a fitting marriage of form and content.

Out of the Shadows’ barrels forward like such a rampaging beast that it decimates everything – plot, character, emotion, basic visual lucidity – in its wake.

Victor Kanefsky's documentary nonetheless manages to be as cursory as it is intimate, skimming over so much of Cenedella's life and career that it imparts only a hazy impression of who he is and what he believes.

Herzog’s latest proves a masterful inquiry into technological evolution.

The off-putting aesthetics of ‘Looking Glass’ are complemented by an equally putrid tale that’s determined to make its protagonist loathsome.

Brody does his sturdiest work in years as the morally compromised Porter, and Strahovski makes for a fittingly seductive temptress with ambiguous motives. Manhattan Night's pedestrian style and affected atmosphere, however, make it a routine descent into the black heart of a city and its shady inhabitants.

Led by performances imbued with barely concealed sorrow, regret and longing to come to terms with that which has been lost, Kaili Blues affords a view of people, and a nation, caught in between a haunting yesterday and — as implied by the film’s conclusion — a hopeful tomorrow.

Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.

The Offering leaves few horror devices unused.

Gervais’ tale is primarily consumed with middle-of-the-road squabbling between its headliners, whose yin-yang chemistry never results in more than a few chuckle-worthy bon mots.

Detailing the eight-month build-up to the show’s debut, First Monday in May is most compelling when simply taking up residence alongside Bolton, Wintour and Wong as they oversee the myriad aspects of their production.

Dramatically speaking, God’s Not Dead 2 operates at the level of your average middle-school play – except with far greater levels of upside-down logic and bald-faced intolerance for anyone not enraptured by the New Testament.

A film that captures the underlying essence of baseball at the beginning of the 21st century: both humbly wistful and progressively cutting-edge.

A wretched excuse for a comedy.

It’s a singularly off-kilter vision of repurposed invention, though even at 72 minutes, the film struggles to keep itself afloat, its central conceit too slender to maintain its sense of mirth or wonder.

The film so diligently eschews any tempered analysis that it eventually comes across as akin to the very thing it's decrying.

This pious drama is a work of minimal imagination and even less subtlety.

Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger.

Cohen’s willingness to do, or say, anything in order to elicit a chuckle at least somewhat salvages The Brothers Grimsby — right up to a riotously nasty climactic gag shoved down the throat of Donald Trump.

Brash, brutal, and simplistic in equal measure, it’s a retrograde work that, for better and worse, delivers its old-school mayhem with punishing precision and unrepentant glee.

It’s a spectacular mess that’s shameless in its desire to entertain through sheer, misbegotten excess.

Amid Kiefer's narrow-eyed glowering, Donald's exhausted-sage routine, and Moore's approximation of rural homeliness, only Wincott seems to fit in, exuding a poised, laconic cold-bloodedness that stands in stark contrast to the film's inert phoniness.

Splintered between thinly sketched focal points rather than actually plumbing the real fear, paranoia and elation that come from operating without a romantic partner, How to Be Single never transcends its most sitcom-y instincts.

Identifying the method behind the Coens’ madness takes some work, as the film moves at such a rat-a-tat-tat screwball speed that following along often feels like clinging for dear life to the side of a speeding train.

Even at its conclusion, Holmer’s film refuses to provide easy answers regarding its meaning, instead using poised formal techniques to impart that which is not spoken — and, in the process, portends impressive things to come from its confident, capable director.

An old-fashioned tale of heroism in the face of insurmountable odds, The Finest Hours is never less than aggressively hokey and manipulatively sentimental — and, in the end, better off for it.

This contemptible fiasco is not only comfortable courting laughs through ugly mockery of minorities, but also doesn’t even have the courage of its own crass-as-I-wannabe convictions.

The Witness functions as a project of not only confrontation but resurrection, as Bill’s sleuthing sheds new light on Kitty’s personality, romances and career, and thus finally re-emphasizes her as a flesh-and-blood person rather than just a famous victim.

Moretz strikes a convincing empowered-badass pose but has no amount of charismatic fearsomeness can energize the illogical latter portions of The 5th Wave, which are driven by revelations about the aliens that, to put it bluntly, make no sense.

Engaging and enraging but also, alas, consistently superficial.

As pitifully generic as its title, The Forest hews to clichés until its final, dying breath.

Despite the capable presence of Jason Patric in a thanklessly one-note role, this generic chiller clings so tightly to conventions that it fails to even moderately raise one’s pulse

O'Brien's slow-motion-heavy staging is graceless, and his script is twice as unwieldy. With characters stuffed full of clichéd platitudes about fate, love, honor, and other topics the film isn't capable of addressing in any mature way, it's a fiasco of frontier-wide proportions.

This ungainly B movie makes virtually no sense in terms of either mythology or basic plotting.

Without an amusing instinct in its cowboy-hatted head, this painfully protracted, puerile effort meanders about the Old West as if it were making up its nonsense on the fly. The result is a torturous genre joke that marks a new low not only for the star, but for the art of cinematic comedy.

No matter its cinematic derivativeness, Stink!’s outcry against continuing to use the American citizenry as chemistry experiment guinea pigs carries with it the unassailable whiff of common sense.

Opting for dutiful, reverent beatification over flesh-and-blood characterizations (or insights), the film is merely a clunky primer on how poor storytelling can make even the grandest of figures seem small.

Even at a brisk 81 minutes, this indie can barely sustain its boozy comedic buzz.

The film's lack of terror might be more forgivable had it embraced its more humorous inclinations, but the script’s pedestrian liberals-vs.-conservatives, boors-vs.-yuppies conflicts rarely result in anything laugh-out-loud funny.

Every Thing Will Be Fine is torturously slow and hopelessly mannered.

Deformed from the start, it confirms the very thing argued by its narrative – namely, the folly of unwarranted resurrections.

It's as unsubtle as a boot to the head, but its dour-and-campy lo-fi style is far preferable to the spastic flash of its big-budget genre compatriots.

Though at times too splintered by its various points of interest, Bernardo Ruiz's up-close-and-personal documentary is nonetheless harrowing in its details.

It’s a promising premise fit for a thorny inquiry into personal and institutional priorities, and yet no sooner has Secret In Their Eyes laid its story’s groundwork than it goes off the rails

Lawrence is never less than commanding in her last outing as the fiery dystopian heroine, but the most heartening liberation proffered by Part 2 is its star’s escape from this one-note fantasy series.

The film proves a piercing character study whose narrow view frustrates complete empathy.

Rogen’s zonked-to-insanity performance is the lifeblood of The Night Before, giving it the sort of joyous, madcap energy that comes from letting loose with one’s closest comrades, even to the point of potential oblivion.

Decked out in the usual tinsel-and-mistletoe trappings, the film lurches awkwardly between gloominess and giddiness, never hitting the boisterously bittersweet groove it seeks.

The film proves — in both style and attitude — a successful bridge between the old and the new, and one that, no matter its emotional slimness, ultimately never loses sight of the fretful angst with which all kids must, at some point, contend.

While his images have been composed with care, Nelson's screenplay is a far less impressive invention.

The film serves as an authentic examination of the mid-twentieth-century immigrant experience — and an intimate exploration of one woman's attempt to understand who she is and where she wants to belong.