It is a violent, funny, well-acted pulpy delight.

Dead Envy seldom rises above its stock story plots and underdeveloped characters.

Sunset Society manages to abuse what little b-grade credibility it earns through its cast and premise with an unbearable slog through monotony and surprising tameness.

A failure on virtually every level, Peppermint is a slapdash, half-hearted affront to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in its crosshairs.

Hal is a loving tribute to a filmmaker who rarely gets the attention he deserves.

It should be noted that the film, directed by Corin Hardy, looks great. From a visual standpoint, The Nun is a success. There is an effective use of framing, color, and light that Hardy executes with polish.

Directed by Colin Minihan, What Keeps You Alive is an exercise in extreme style and visual trickery in the hopes of keeping the tension high. He isn’t subtle when dropping clues, cutting to an object more than a couple times as to warn us this will be important at some point. Working from his own script, the movie deserves some credit for not always arriving at the most obvious conclusions, even if it takes a well-trodden path.

Every scene in Never Steady, Never Still feels focused and intentional, like someone has agonized over how to most directly and honestly express the characters’ inner states.

Let the Corpses Tan is a fiendishly clever, meticulously stylish, lean, comedic thriller. Its sole purpose is to grab you by the lapels and entertain the living hell out of you, boy does it.

Despite Arterton’s outstanding performance, the film weakens considerably in its last section.

Horror’s goal is simply delivering fun. The thrill of constant frights releases rollercoaster-level endorphins the fans can’t get enough of the rush. Blood Fest shoves it right in our faces and then some. Get ready to bleed.

Hardy and Nachman’s film is the uncommon near-perfect documentary: the filmic elements fade, done so well the viewer focuses on the dogs and their journey. All of this leads up to the tremendous joy of freedom and partnership for those whose lives are transformed by their new guide dogs.

Sure, Blindspotting can feel a bit rough around the edges. Diggs and Casal have so many ideas they want to explore, and they aren’t always able to articulate them in a concise, economical way. But even if they haven’t quite honed their craft as screenwriters yet, theirs is a story that desperately needs to be told and they continue to find compelling ways by which to convey its urgency.

An impressive documentary-style drama film, whose soulfulness and elegance dazzle.

Dark Money does succeed in presenting a strong case for campaign finance reform.

Record nerds be damned, The Public Image Is Rotten rises to the top of rock documentary filmmaking with a refreshing sense of candid storytelling only made possible by the genuine frankness of its subjects.

It’s a film too real to be written. It was lived and continues to be lived in Alabama every day.

Nyoni’s handling of tone is astoundingly careful, and because of it, I Am Not a Witch is a truly unique and stirring experience.

You must see Operation Finale solely for this interaction between Malkin and Eichmann (Isaac and Kingsley).

Spiro has produced a beautiful film on loss, and the cycles of violence that all too many are understandably pulled into, yet she still manages to give us a glimmer of hope in a world of desperation.

In the end, Restoring Tomorrow reminds us that you can restore an old historic building to its original beauty, but it’s ultimately about the people.

This isn’t a movie, it is anti-cinema; an endurance test to discover how malleable a human’s brain is.

It doesn’t serve up the belly laughter or lightheartedness expected of the genre, at least in the traditional sense. Nor is there a satisfying ending that would align it snugly into the dramatic grouping. What it does do is excel in outright mockery of a persistent cultural issue. Primarily, the ignorance of those immersed in affluence towards the plight of their suffering neighbors.

The Happytime Murders eventually ends up spinning its wheels, telling the same joke over-and-over.

It’s unfortunate that The Swan doesn’t fully catch fire as a family drama or a rites-of-passage story, but a film with such a rich and finely honed sense of place is one that nevertheless deserves to be seen.

Thematically relevant and persistently moving the form forward, Searching is an emotional roller coaster, taking a familiar premise and invigorating it along with biting commentary on viral video culture.

The adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 novel The Bookshop by Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, Elegy, Learning To Drive) is not devoid of plot disturbances but provides fair moments of gorgeous filmmaking and acceptable entertainment.

There are occasional moments of inspiration, stylistically and thematically, where the movie hints at its true potential. But most of the time, the movie is tripping over its desire to be noticed.