Richard Whittaker

Clunky horror in-jokes, like a heavy-handed Scream nod in the name of Winnie's aunt (Isabelle), feel labored, and it's all plagued by the same unevenness that afflicted director Tyler MacIntyre's Tragedy Girls: The gore and the comedy are well-executed, but the timing is off.

Huang's understatement often seems flat. There's nothing visually distinctive about his depiction of diverse working class NYC, and major events bubble up with surprisingly little impact. With so much on the line, Boogie just sort of dribbles to nothingness.

It’s not frustrating, but then, it’s not quite that engaging. It may spark a little light self-recognition among filmmakers, and that’s all Hansen-Løve seems to aim for.

Prows lets all those subplots divert him from saying something meaningful about how even the best-intentioned of cops end up part of a nightmare machine. Luckily, the plentiful and creative gore splatters enough blood and ichor to provide camouflage disguising those shortcomings. Or rather, enough to make Night Patrol entertaining – just not enough to completely obfuscate what it could have been.

These digressions aren’t enough to build anything like a real conversation about the Austin-made classic. There needs to be something more.

But while Argylle’s stunt-filled antics are suitably loaded with those Vaughnian action sequences, it’s also bloated by more plot twists and reveals than a breezy action comedy can or should be forced to endure.

Written by Mark Duplass and first-time feature director and veteran producer Mel Eslyn (Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off, The One I Love), there's no doubt that Biosphere is filled with ideas, and they're given easy life by Brown and Duplass.

The Outwaters stumbles because it fails to clear the second hurdle of any found footage movie: not simply answering why would the camera stay on (that's the easy part), but why would anyone edit what's been recovered in this way?

Maybe some grasp of the dynamics of the modern publishing industry would have added some grit, making it more than it is: a formulaic and forgettable pulpy beach read.

If you weren't afraid of heights before, then Fall will give you the fear. Welcome to vertigo hell, mainly due to the work of cinematographer MacGregor.

Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners.

What I Want You Back really has going for it is Slate and Day. The set-up may be a Ryan deep cut, but their awkward energy, and shared ability to scattershot subtle one-liners without them getting buried by the sillier antics, harks back to another of her classics: When Harry Met Sally.

If The Five Devils more bravely embraced a single perspective, that might have better bound together its depiction of a family splitting apart.

Misericordia feels like a big metaphysical shrug, sluggish to the point of lethargy.

FP2 is all stupid surface, held together by Trost’s surly charm. It may be filled with dumb “beat off” puns, but it’s just smart enough to be all heart.

Poser, the debut feature from local filmmakers Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is so in love with the scene from which it draws, with the bands given momentary cameos, with the cool hipness and store brand subversion of it all, that they never seem quite capable of giving it the critique for which they seem to aim.

Ultimately, the slow boil bleakness of the script, with its subtle ruminations of what it is to go on in a time of hopelessness, is what marks Settlers apart, even as it looks and feels like so many of the post-apocalyptic drought-plagued SF dramas of the last few years.

PAW Patrol: The Movie is bigger and prettier than the TV show, but it's still PAW Patrol. What makes it worth the time investment for kids is that it's really about introducing the street-smart long-haired Dachshund Liberty (Martin) into the team, while giving a little drama to Chase's life as he processes some old trauma about being a stray in the big city.

As a heartfelt feel-good story about industrial espionage and how to win the right way, Hero Mode is charming if undemanding, and feels at least a little authentic to its milieu.

The animated feature directorial debut of both Kim Burdon and Robert Chandler (writer/producer of The Amazing Maurice) is a light jaunt that's mostly delivered in mid-tier CG and mildly overblown celebrity voice-acting. However, there are still some delightful flourishes, like opening credits that evoke the distinctive vintage British Rail tourism posters, and a flashback involving articulated paper puppets.

Taken on its own fluff piece terms, Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too.

The result is something that feels like an adult’s idea of a sophisticated kids’ movie, its sense of adventure and imagination overruled and undercut by its tone of mature melancholy.

True, the odd quill may scratch the surface, but there’s nothing really penetrating.

Underlit, shot in the same murky beiges that plague so many low budget horrors, and not as profound as it thinks it is, it isn't quite exploitation schlock or a cerebral shocker, instead relying on both conventions for a hybrid that ends up with the satisfaction of neither.

It’s an inevitable problem with the screenlife format, to find a way to keep this deluge of pop-ups and cutaways all interesting without the audience’s POV ever leaving a desktop screen.

For all the effort that Van Sant and his team put into making Dead Man’s Wire look like 1970s Indianapolis, its ability to really summon the spirit of the era only goes skin deep.

The narrative trick that worked within the narrower confines of Krista seems almost absurd here, a leaden feel-good ending that sits at complete odds with the formless opening. Beast Beast is far better when it's abstract and observational, drifting somewhere between the wistful compassion of Jonah Hill's Mid90s and the sociological immediacy of Larry Clark's Kids.

The Wolf and the Lion is deeply sweet, utterly predictable, and may well send a few unintentionally mixed messages about human relationships with large predators.