Noel Murray

There’s nothing notably new — or especially scary — about any of it.

The movie is most successful when it ditches the particulars of the text and just grooves on how it feels to be displaced and disgruntled, stranded in a surreal mindscape that in some ways makes just as much sense as any other day on a dreary alpaca ranch.

This movie is gripping from start to finish, largely because of Marsan, who makes Jarvis both charismatic and complex.

While Pearce is typically superb as the hero — a self-doubting U.S. marshal named Jim Dillon — the film itself is otherwise utterly unremarkable. The combination of stiff, overwritten dialogue and flatly functional action sequences wastes a good lead performance.

Director Andy Newbery — working from a script credited to four writers — makes the story look classy but can’t find its beating heart.

This is what ultimately makes the movie’s climate-change backdrop more poignant than perplexing. By the end of Weathering With You, this has become a story about two people with their whole lives ahead of them, navigating their way through a future where they pine for things we all take for granted. Like, say, the simple pleasure of a sunny day.

Like the original experiment, this film fails when it tries to impose a conclusion, rather than letting its meaning reveal itself naturally.

The Sonata is well-made but not exceptional. It could use fewer long, expository conversations and more heart-stopping horror set-pieces. The actors have a lot of verve, but because their characters are so straightforward — bordering on archetypal — their situation is hard to connect to on an emotional level.

At both its highest and its lowest, Inherit the Viper lacks excitement. The action sequences are sparse, and the plot is underdeveloped.

This is not a “fun” horror picture. It’s about miseries both supernatural and mundane. And, yes, it’s scary. Pesce’s art-film roots are evident in the movie’s slow-burn first hour. But in the final third, The Grudge piles on the explicit gore and jump scares — all leading to a final scene and final shot as terrifying as anything in the original series.

It’s impossible to overstate what Fraser brings to this movie, with his imposing frame, manic energy and slangy dialogue. The other leads are strong too — including Abhay Deol as an undercover cop. But Batra doesn’t do enough fresh or surprising with the plot or action scenes, both of which are merely functional.

Writer-director Alec Tibaldi pays more attention to the setting than the story; but the heroine and her surroundings are so artfully sketched that a thin plot isn’t a major liability.

An uneven but often energizing remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 cult classic.

It’s rare to see a horror film so devoted to intricate plot mechanics and so concerned with driving to a satisfying payoff.

The limited location here appears to have been strictly a cost-saving measure, not an opportunity to get creative.

For the most part this movie is a tightly constructed and sensitively rendered conversation-starter, comparing grief and loss to the sensation of faulty memories. It takes a strange and fascinating meme, and makes it personal.

This is a rare case when a cheap B-movie isn’t improved by Cage-style clowning.

The ideas outpace the action in a movie that’s clearly been made with passion and intelligence, but without the kind of zip that this kind of story demands.

Watts is plenty convincing as someone well past the brink of a psychotic break, but The Wolf Hour takes too long to get properly cranked up. This movie is mostly just mood-setting, with much more going on in the background than the foreground.

Melody Makers never becomes more than a set of disconnected sound bites and archival photos, loosely assembled. At times the film feels like outtakes from another, more cohesive documentary about Melody Maker’s legacy.

As the heroine of the chase thriller The Courier, Olga Kurylenko brings a lot of personal magnetism and awesome athleticism — and she needs to, because her director, Zackary Adler, has stuck her in an action movie that rarely moves.

Saint Cloud Hill is often dramatic, capturing tense standoffs between cops and vagrants. But this documentary is also filled with hope, and admiration for all those visionaries who see how neglected people and places can be put to good use.

As with “The Better Angels,” Edwards’ new movie is magnificently impressionistic, with Colin Stetson’s rhythmic score and Jeff Bierman’s sun-dappled cinematography making Richie’s life seem as wondrous as it is hard.

Lee coaxes moving performances from a young cast, and he beautifully captures the cultural nuances of the Bronx neighborhoods where his story is set. But he has a tough time finding much new to say with this tale of star-crossed lovers.

Acceleration is like a quest story with all the cool complications and nifty narrow escapes removed.

More often than not, it feels like Dutoit uses shock and surrealism as a way to cover up for the movie’s plodding pace, crude blocking and nonsensical story. It’s admirable that she’s trying to defy convention here, but the result is something ultimately too befuddling to disturb.

Anyone interested in the complexities and controversies surrounding Australia and New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam may find Danger Close disappointing. But the movie actually works OK as one long fight scene.

Fichtner’s love for upstate New York — and his interest in exploring the dynamic of longtime married couples — makes this movie easy to root for. But he doesn’t have much of a story, or much of a directorial eye. His passion project is admirable but minor.