It's never a good sign if you're watching a thriller, and your first thought is, "Is this supposed to be funny?" So goes the comically overblown The Vanished.

What Desert One does accomplish in shining a light on this epic national failure is to celebrate the American can-do spirit and a noble willingness to go down trying.

All in all, it's a bleak lesson in civility: don't honk your horn, because you just never know who you're honking at.

Less initially mawkish than the first film and more entertainingly overblown, Peninsula keeps to the established paradigm that the living are far worse than the dead, then goes on a gonzo excursion through a wrecked city.

It's rebellious within an era of restraint, bathing Tesla in glowing pastel shades in a time of mahogany, leather, and steam.

In the end, your appreciation for horror-Westerns will determine where you stand with The Pale Door. If you are willing to look past the film’s genre shortcomings and find happiness in the little things – such as Sage’s Creole accent, or several cinematic nods to iconic entries in the genre – you might find the film to be worth your while.

Fiennes assumes the character and recites shocking revelations that Amirami’s obsessive research has disclosed. It sounds like a cheap trick, but the actor pulls it off flawlessly.

Unlike Alfonso Cuarón's critically-lauded "Roma," which somehow managed to reduce its indigenous protagonist to a passive observer in her own life, Song Without a Name never loses sight of Georgina's pain or her agency - or its limits.

Beyond the title, the elegant, calm, and unnerving La Llorona has nothing in common with the bland big budget namesake. If it has real cinematic kin, it's the much harsher and more grotesque "A Serbian Film," or the darkly comedic "Cold Sweat" - even (and especially in the trial sequences) Costa-Gavras' "Music Box."

So while there's nothing incredibly new here in the narrative, it's also a reminder that Keery has natural charisma, and is turning that to increasingly interesting ends.

In an era where so many horror films are anchored in the aesthetics of Eighties American cinema, Sputnik establishes itself as an especially polished work of retro-futurism.

Denise Ho: Becoming the Song offers an affecting timeline of a political awakening of a person, of a movement, and of a generation utterly frustrated with the machinations of oppression.

These are just boys, and it is all pretend, but Boys State, like the event itself, delivers some legitimate life lessons.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

The larger message of River City Drumbeat isn't just about how important White has been to his community. It's about how important community is.

Mostly it will just make you hungry to revisit Ashman’s work. That’s perhaps not the intended result of this fond tribute/merely serviceable survey of a too-short career – but it’s not necessarily a bad one.

Max Reload isn't for everyone, but it's not trying to be. It's a pizza-and-soda Saturday night gamer film for serious gamers - not the kind that just grind through bug releases, but can name a developer other than Hideo Kojima.

Brutally honest, startlingly insightful, and poignant when it could have been bizarre, Dead Dicks earns its tragic, purposefully misleading title and reframes it with dire meaning.

She Dies Tomorrow often feels more like an experiment than a film – which would be fine, but Siemetz doesn't do much to define her metrics for success or failure.

Predictable, affable, and completely guileless, the only part of Made in Italy that distinguishes it as having been made now, rather than any other random point in the last 30 years, is how grizzled Neeson's beard has become. The hapless English romantic lead bumbles on.

By the end, Kate admits “[her book] could be better.” Maybe this is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that real life doesn’t always make for a great movie.

Fake beer brands, star cars, crotch shots – a boy’s life unfolded, according to co-writer Uhelszki. Red Hot Chili Smith opines Mad magazine meets Esquire, and Uhelszki echoes equally extinct forces: “Everybody was politically incorrect. No one watched their words. That’s what made Creem so good ... If you put it through that politically incorrect filter, you would have lost 60% of what made Creem great.”

While not exactly rote, the script undeniably feels a little derivative in places.

One of the most brutally innovative horrors of the last few years, and all done through windows on a computer screen.

Rebuilding Paradise speaks to the resiliency of human beings, and maybe something about the American can-do spirit.

The Fight is an endlessly engaging look into the often labyrinthine legal apparatus, and the film seamlessly moves between the cases with such incredible skill that the team of editors deserve all the accolades afforded to them.

Dyer’s masturbation scenes feel innocent as opposed to titillating, and she charms with her mix of cautious curiosity and wide-eyed expressions.

It's like Garai can never work out whether she wants this to be a modern Gothic fantasy, or a contemporary horror with deeper social meaning, then falls afoul of excessive coincidence. The parts of the spell are all there, but the conjuring is incomplete.