Director Marius A. Markevicius and screenwriter Ben York Jones fail to find much of a fresh angle on genocide and widespread cruelty.

Landais has made a version of Aspern that is too often uncertain and unconvincing despite the good work of his female stars. And when the actresses leave the screen and the film ventures into ill-advised flashback territory, things get shakier still.

Like a lot of low-budget horror, writer-director Matty Castano’s Alone in the Dead of Night is more a case study in shrewd resource-management than it is a movie.

Though Krings co-wrote and co-directed the film (the latter alongside Arnaud Bouron), “Tall Tales” lacks his usual gentle kookiness and vivid designs.

Too many scenes run longer than they need to, padded out with overly folksy and reflective dialogue. But McGowan makes good use of autumnal Appalachia, staging a lot of scenes outdoors in the barren, brown hills.

[Martini's] filmmaking instincts, undercut by the script’s meandering, episodic structure, prove too self-indulgent and heavy-handed to tell the kind of emotionally involving tale about post-traumatic stress disorder among returning soldiers that he clearly had in mind.

The film, which debuted last year at Sundance, covers considerable, resonant socio-political ground while being anchored by the compelling performances of its’ leads.

The Upside was probably never going to be a good movie, but it needn’t have been such an unfortunate, spectacularly ill-timed one, the victim of circumstances it ultimately has neither the wit nor the imagination to transcend.

Communion is a heartbreaking example of a classic documentary genre — the immersive, observational film that takes a bold leap and embeds itself with a small group of people.

While “Worm Valley” is generally diverting, the plotting is remedial — and devoid of whatever personality Zhang brought to his books. There’s just enough story here to support the next big special effects sequence.

It’s a mostly fun, logic-be-damned ride if you just stay in the moment and don’t think too deeply as the going gets tough — which is soon enough.

Despite some honest and poignant emotions and a compelling lead turn by Cybill Shepherd, Being Rose unfolds in an awkwardly constructed, herky-jerky manner that shortchanges its many characters and themes. Let’s just say the spirit is willing but the filmmaking is weak.

Mullan brings edginess and gravitas to the kind of role he’s played dozens of times. Butler, though, is a pleasant surprise, departing from his usual one-dimensional action heroes to play a dramatic part — and so well that one wonders why he doesn’t do it more often.

The mix of genres and the overload of characters are too much of a drag on the film. Waterston, though, is a wonder throughout, capturing the deep confusion as a woman whose life has been so upended that she wonders if she’ll ever see straight again.

While this story is more likely to have impact for those who lived through the horrors of this period and Mujica’s eventual emergence as a political leader, A Twelve Year Night avoids the easy trappings of triumph-of-the-human-spirit narratives. Sometimes a human simply withstands what it’s subjected to, and that’s enough to rivet us.

Propelled by lovely, engaging writing and wonderful performances, Stan & Ollie, the story of the bittersweet final bow of legendary duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, should move and delight fans of the beloved performers while enjoyably exposing the less initiated to these comedy giants.

Dhont’s film is a strong debut from a technical angle, but it lacks the humanity necessary for a story of this nature.

Because of the talent involved, every now and then Holmes & Watson hits on something bizarrely inspired.

Destroyer is simultaneously impressive and stand-offish. Persuasively directed by Kusama and convincingly acted by Kidman and expert costars like Toby Kebbell and Sebastian Stan though it is, its determination to live exclusively at the darkest end of the street pays disagreeable dividends.

It would be silly to expect this movie to achieve the cinematic equivalent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s brilliance, but you can’t help wishing it had more to offer than righteous speeches and stirring glances, that it put a few more ideas in your head to go with that lump in your throat.

Brainy, audacious, opinionated and fun, Vice is a tonic for troubled times. As smart as it is partisan, and it is plenty partisan, this savage satire is scared of only one thing, and that is being dull.

This astonishingly bad film, adapted by writer-director Raghav Peri from a novel by Michaelangelo Rodriguez, mishmashes such big topics as genocide, homosexuality, teen pregnancy, child abuse, alcoholism and mental illness into a painful, inadvertently laughable stew.

The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole — which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works.

Passionate, tempestuous, haunting and assured, this latest from writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski explores, as did his Oscar-winning “Ida,” Poland’s recent past, resulting in a potent emotional story with political overtones that plays impeccably today.

It’s a muddled, tortured miasma of a movie and also, inevitably, a fascinating one.

Like any good hoofer, the South Korean musical Swing Kids is eager to please, relying on both subtly graceful moves and aggressive razzle-dazzle. Though a bit longer than necessary, the movie tells an engaging, enjoyable story, peppered with impressive dance numbers.

Quale and his crew clearly want this to be a good old-fashioned two-fisted caper, but the pacing is leaden and the plot lacks imagination. Worst of all, nobody really bothered to give the picture an angle. It’s all straight, flat and dull.

The actor’s fierce commitment turns Between Worlds into another solidly strange entry in the ever-expanding “Nicolas Cage movie” sub-genre.

A fitfully engaging, well-intentioned but disappointing original biographical drama.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a tribute paid by the present to the past, and what a gorgeous gift it turns out to be.

Side effects from watching the anti-Pharma documentary Drug$ start with rage, and pretty much stay there through the call-your-congressperson coda.

Zippy editing, cool black-and-white photography, an excitingly used classic score and whirling, kooky performances add to this deceptively brainy film’s look-at-me fun.

Though its script lacks moments that bring cohesion to its characters and timeline, Elenie remains a woman whom audiences can empathize with.

Not every stylistic choice works, with some moments distracting from the film’s message and occasional shots that don’t feel organic. But Brown’s journey remains compelling and absolutely necessary for the audience to see, as do the stories of his fellow veterans.

Unfortunately the film, directed by Leon Marr (script by Marr and Sherry Soules) needs more pep in its step, could use some judicious trimming and, save for the chatty, wheelchair-using Charlie (Louis Del Grande), features an unmemorable, under-drawn group of resident seniors, a missed opportunity to help flesh out — and lighten up — this slender, tender tale.

There’s a sense of dread as the film wraps up, knowing where the real-life story ended, and it’s increasingly out of step with the rosy picture painted by Tsikurishvili. Is he compelled to update the film or leave us with an image of Bergling in his freest moment? Ultimately, it feels like only part of the story, and therefore not entirely true.

Bier plunges herself into mainstream horror filmmaking with a gusto that doesn’t always offset her lack of precision. For visceral intensity, she never tops the early scenes of mayhem and mass panic; slow-building, artfully modulated tension in close quarters seems beyond the movie’s interest or purview.

Von Trier has managed to cobble together just enough of interest — odd moments, pieces of performance, stray ideas and the simple audacity of putting this mess out into the world, that it feels like there may be something there worth considering, a maddening possibility. And that may be his cruelest prank of all.

Mortal Engines is bursting with everything you’d want except compelling emotional intelligence.

Though the feeling sneaks up on you, The Mule has an unexpected emotional kick. That’s because in subject and execution it plays as personal as anything the filmmaker has done.

[Labaki] finds a magically resonant space between documentary-like vibe and dramatic performance that honors the characters’ inherent humanity while memorably framing the wretched circumstances that dictate their actions.

Although the story can feel chilly and oblique, it gets under your skin.

Tyrel is a lab experiment with no insight into feelings of otherness beyond the blinding light directed at its wigged-out subject.

Starting as a dirge and ending as an ode to joy, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki provides a privileged glimpse into the creative processes of one of the greatest animators who ever lived.

A disturbing portrait of the substantial emotional and physical price exacted when mental illness hits devastatingly close to home.

Where Maine ultimately goes is a little off the map, but the mysterious emotional journey is nevertheless fascinating.

Even genre buffs will be disappointed by how minor-league this movie is.

A movie that very quickly becomes yet another story about people with guns chasing other people with guns, through featureless forests and abandoned buildings.

The story almost feels like an afterthought, whipped up to support the spectacle — and not, as it should always be, the other way around.

When the trouble does hit in this film, it hits hard, at which point all the investment in character pays off.

there’s something undeniably inspiring about [Groo's] stick-to-it-iveness, as he hustles around the Utah mountains, completing more movies in a year than better filmmakers ever will.

As it is, so much obvious care has been taken to reproduce and update the charms of the Robert Stevenson-directed original — to deliver an old-fashioned yet newfangled burst of family-friendly uplift — that Mary Poppins Returns winds up feeling both hyperactive and paralyzed. It sits there flailing on the screen, bright, gaudy and mirthless, tossing off strained bits of comic business and all but strangling itself with its own good cheer.

Notwithstanding the inevitable formulaic dialogue and a superabundance of boilerplate superhero action sequences, Aquaman turns out to be, almost despite itself, an engaging undersea extravaganza.

The characters, the plot, and — unfortunately — the star are all interchangeable with the elements of hundreds of other international thrillers.

Knight does a good job of establishing the political complexities of a more theocratic age. But then The Appearance pivots straight to the usual assortment of things going bump in the night, which — as it turns out — aren’t suddenly less clichéd when everyone’s wearing robes.

Hospitality is both an exercise in atmosphere and an actors’ showcase, letting its cast settle deep into the skins of these people who just need something in their lives to break their way … even if they’ve done nothing to deserve it.

Perlman has a physical presence that makes him look like he stepped off the cover of a paperback. He brings soul to this old hired gun, who’s become a creature of habit, mired in a daily routine of killing other people and waiting to die.

The movie’s grating a lot of the time, but often very funny, and perversely fascinating. Most importantly, it's always as honest as it is painful.

The ending packs a lovely surprise, not because you don’t see it coming, but because for once you’re not simply grateful that it’s arrived.

For all the ways Dumplin’ does its best to avoid some clichés (no mean-girl antagonists) while embracing others (drag queens as coaches), it’s still a regrettably undercooked meal, even with those songs and the breezy magnetism of “Patti Cakes” star Macdonald.

The overwrought script is full of dusty old clichés like this, and Mullins and Co. don’t have the chops to sell them. The supporting cast offers wooden line readings, while Mullins is an uncharismatic performer, with a range that extends from dead-eyed to high-pitched yelling.

It’s a valiant but awkward effort.

Experimental, yes, but this one wildly overstays its welcome.

There’s clear affection for the ocean and its inhabitants in “Bernie the Dolphin,” but the movie’s script from Terri Emerson and Marty Poole is on the level of educational placards at a second-rate aquarium. It’s informative, but there’s little entertainment in director Kirk Harris’ film.

Elephants almost works, but it self-destructs with as much frequency as its damaged characters.

Amid the despair, Spitak nevertheless offers a glimmer of hope in the bleakness.

By the end of this clumsy, audacious story — the title of which turns out to have a doozy of a double meaning — Ben will be stripped of every last secret and falsehood, left with no more room to run or hide. You believe him at long last, even if believing the movie is a trickier proposition.

The movie doesn’t just feel coldly analytical; it’s raw and enveloping, darkly funny and terribly alive.

Bright and charismatic though Mary was, she was, in effect, born under a bad sign, fated, despite all her advantages, not to have anything like the happily ever after that royals have in fairy tales and Disney movies. In a similar way, despite numerous advantages (including splendid cinematography by John Mathieson), the film with her name on it has promise it does not fully deliver on. But when those queens are on the screen, all bets are off.

Oliver Parker’s Swimming with Men is a lazily formulaic male-bonding comedy.

The result is a compelling but chilling film, one that is inevitably disheartening and disturbing as it details both how Ailes came to understand the nature and power of fear and how he honed his craft until he could sell fear to his fellow citizens like it was going out of style.

It’s a potentially warm and delicate story that required a scalpel, but saw the blunt end of a sledgehammer instead.

Overall this is a solid portrait of time’s effect on what we miss, and how we miss.

Though there’s an abiding sensitivity in the often-noirish approach to the story’s many traumas and its characters’ flailing attempts at coping, as a whole it’s something of a tonal mess.

Gillan, returning to her Highlands roots to spotlight a depressingly high suicide rate there among young people, has not only given herself an expectedly meaty role that walks a fine line between sad and bitterly funny, but she’s proven to be a director with a keen eye for expressive visuals.

Write When You Get Work doesn’t work. Not as a romance, not as a Robin Hood-tinged caper flick, not as a social commentary on racial inequity or classism, and not as a male-buddy picture — all elements director Stacy Cochran attempts to wedge into her often muddled, under-focused script.

Sketches a provocative portrait of the prolific, trenchantly talented artist and satirist.

Happy as Lazzaro is slow to reveal its full shape: It’s a realist snapshot of downtrodden lives that gradually takes on shadings of fable and myth, a deceptively plain story that, by the end, all but glows with wonderment and surprise.

For those with little prior knowledge of Farhadi’s earlier work, Everybody Knows will play like an intelligent, engrossing drama about a sudden family tragedy that reopens past wounds. The director’s admirers, myself included, might find it harder to get past a dramatic approach that, sturdy though it may be, is starting to harden into formula.

The lines between good and evil are clearly demarcated at the outset and remain more or less fixed as the story progresses, a strategy that in no way compromises the filmmaker’s ability to mine fresh complications and surprises from his story.

Though all these technological trappings are newer than new, the human needs for happiness, applause and emotional connection are classic. The ability of People’s Republic of Desire to show these familiar desires playing out in futuristic surroundings is invariably surprising and never less than compelling.

There is a guileless quality to the enterprise as Young interviews stars such as Chita Rivera, Florence Henderson and Martin Short who worked in industrials, as well as the lesser known performers and songwriters who became his heroes.

As savagely satirical as it is gorgeously surreal, The Great Buddha+ is something else again — an outrageous, poignant punk Taiwanese black comedy marking the feature arrival of fresh filmmaking talent Huang Hsin-Yao.

It leaves one with the sense that Khaled wishes to reclaim a headline-tainted religious status from the acts of violent men and bestow that mournful grace to people in an everyday struggle with sensitivity and hopelessness.

Filmmaker Anahí Berneri, through her tough single-mother protagonist, mesmerizingly realized by Sofía Gala Castiglione, offers a no-apologies look at a member of a risk-taking underclass dinged on all sides.

Robert Townsend’s reflective Making the Five Heartbeats serves as an illuminating documentary detailing the considerable passion and perseverance that went into bringing his dream project to the big screen.

Master Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda makes family films, but not in the way you think. It’s not that his films are suitable for all ages, though they mostly are. And it’s not even that the family unit is central to his work, though it is. Rather it’s that Hosoda’s films stretch the boundaries of both style and content within the family film rubric.

A stellar cast and a breezy tone partially compensate for the movie’s shortcomings.

Director John Pogue brings some grit and energy to the action sequences, but ultimately Blood Brother is just a compendium of pulp clichés, with nothing to say about these characters or the worlds they inhabit.

Default successfully turns a global financial crisis into a movie that’s at once engaging and educational.

The film’s as eclectic as it is eccentric, and it stays true to its own twisted sense of poetry, all the way to an epilogue that’s somehow even odder than anything that came before.

The acting throughout is excellent; and it helps that Barrial isn’t playing Leonard’s predicament for cheap laughs or amped-up drama. Instead, he’s documenting what it’s like these days, to try and find some meaning in life while scrounging all night long, terrified to miss whatever meager scraps are being tossed.

Its incoherent script is packed with more “Star Wars” references than Kevin Smith’s entire oeuvre, but none of the laughs.

The script has a certain memoiristic quality that would edge into self-indulgence if McGhee and Stonebraker weren’t such warm and disarming presences on screen.

Other than showing moments of in-fighting, Meow Wolf: Origin Story is an almost entirely positive exploration of the collective and their art — but it’s an effective one.

The lack of a strong narrative through-line makes for a film that is informative but dry. Nevertheless, it is an urgent plea for us all to make conscious choices in our consumption.

The story...never comes together as a satisfying whole, even if it all proves relatively painless viewing.

This fantasy, about a miniature horse aching to join Santa’s team of reindeer, works hard but underwhelms.