Simon Abrams

Trying to explain how this movie works as well as it does, without using excessive jargon or some kind of audiovisual aide, is tricky since “To the Ends of the Earth” isn’t about anything less than its heroine’s uncertain relationship with her foreign environment, and what she chooses to communicate simply by being seen and heard. Which is often thrilling to behold, but not so much to explain.

With its gleefuly nihilistic and destructive ending, What Lies Below ends on such a flat note that it makes everything before it seem like an inconsequential and/or needlessly convoluted set-up.

Jiu Jitsu is too disjointed and tame to be worth an impulse-rent; it's also too silly to be enjoyed with a straight face, and too lazy to be endearingly dopey.

The movie’s off-putting and constantly foregrounded political agenda wouldn’t be so unpleasant if the action scenes were more plentiful and/or thrilling. They aren’t.

The most frustrating thing about the British prenatal horror movie Kindred is not that it’s impersonal, but rather that it’s not personal enough.

That opening scene is also, in retrospect, somewhat depressing for the way that it conflates a glib fatalism with an unbelievable sort of turn-the-other-cheek optimism ("If they hurt others, it's because they hurt, too,” as Benedicta says in one scene).

The bad guy likes opera in the mostly forgettable heist/hostage thriller The Doorman, a movie that’s well-versed in clichés and basically watchable, but never really good.

In this context, Farnworth’s appropriately broad performance is exceptional. She doesn’t have much dialogue that’s worthy of her playful, all-in line readings, but Farnworth deserves all due praise.

Based solely on its own merits, Shortcut is both an amateurish production and a mindless genre exercise.

Thankfully, there’s enough affection and charm in the movie’s first half to keep Teenage Badass running on fumes most of the way home.

Children of the Sea is consequently yet another animated fantasy based on hackneyed tropes, like sprite-like martyrs, the guiding hands of fate, and vague nostalgia for a pre-technological past.

A general lack of urgency are the main things holding Get Duked! back from being as good as it is promising.

Emperor is lousy in the same way that many other mediocre slave narratives are: it re-presents a dark period in American history without being inspired or insightful enough to be worth your curiosity or emotional investment.

Thankfully, Jodo’s latest is also way too weird to be hagiographic. It’s indulgent, absurd, frustrating, and more than a little gross. It’s also idiosyncratic and funny enough, and in ways that Jodo’s fans will probably love.

There’s some appreciable serenity and a lot of personal grief on display in Out Stealing Horses, but it’s only visible in fits and starts.

It’s nice to see that the first horror movie to specifically address our present hellish circumstances is as unpretentious and tidy as it is.

If Retaliation were a friend, you’d eventually avoid them.

There aren’t many surprises here, because the bread crumbs that lead to the movie’s big finish are plentiful and very stale. Seriously, the plot twists in this movie are so obvious and unappetizing that you couldn’t miss them if you tried.

A relentless, but emotionally well-balanced character study of Hikari (Keita Ninomiya) and his bandmates as they receive a series of transformative reality checks, and also perform post-millennial garage rock that sounds like a cross between post-shoegaze emo rock and video-game-style chiptunes.

I’m still shocked that Followed is as funny as it is given that Mike is as obnoxious as you might expect given his very online, anything-for-the-lulz persona. He’s a cartoonishly loud, entitled millennial who never stops reminding us that he only cares about the sound of his own voice. He’s also sometimes unintentionally hysterical?

There’s something eerie, and sometimes even dreadful at the heart of The Soul Collector, a new South African horror movie about the damage done by hungry ghosts and their ignorant descendants. Mostly because The Soul Collector often suggests more than its streamlined plot and mythology can express.

An exhausting, and mostly frustrating display of emotional scab-picking.

Villain is the kind of stiflingly reverent genre picture that is so beholden to its main characters’ pity-me worldview that its predictably downbeat ending feels like the kind of hero worship that you often find in either a cloying biopic or a hidebound true crime adaptation.

That kind of gallow’s humor defines the surface tone of Arkansas, which often feels like a riff on “Breaking Bad,” only now it’s more about how sad it is to be poor white trash.

Deerskin isn’t weird enough to be great, mostly because Dupieux (“Rubber, “Reality”) is a little too precious when it comes to pacing, characterizations, humor, etc.

Unlike “Stranger Things,” The Wretched is a little too cute about teen angst, and not light enough on its feet to make you want to root for its ostensibly typical adolescent.

Everything in 1BR is over-exposed, often literally thanks to the movie’s basic camera set-ups and general emphasis on naturally and/or harshly front-lit close-ups, or medium shots of brown stucco walls.

The gory, but weirdly blasé Russian black comedy Why Don’t You Just Die! feels like a gross exercise in style that’s also a passable tribute to Jim Thompson’s bleakly hilarious crime novels, and a brain-dead critique of post-Soviet consumerism.