It’s a testament to Jack Bryant’s lovely script and Kerstin Karlhuber’s thoughtful direction that this controversial concept is handled with such even-handedness and grace.

Even when Don’t Kill It veers toward the ordinary, Lundgren is there with his lived-in face and playful eyes, waiting as ever to spring into action. It’s great to see him in a fun movie again.

Catfight is the type of blackly comic film that works to alienate some viewers with its over-the-top approach and its unlikable characters. But those who enjoy its dark humor will cackle with mean-spirited delight.

Gass-Donnelly has a great eye and brings some genuine beauty to his movie’s rural setting. The preoccupation with aesthetics though means that “Lavender” is sometimes quieter, slower and artier than the material warrants.

The Lure may not be everybody’s siren song, but as debut features go, it counts as a splash.

There’s plenty of predatory behavior on display in the impressively acted Wolves, a curious if unsuccessful cross-breeding of gritty domestic drama with conventional coming-of-age sports crowd-rouser.

Lovesong is a character study of this relationship, casually yet carefully sketched out by Kim in subtle but meaningful gestures and glances. Much is communicated through the eyes, searching for answers in the void of what’s not said, but felt.

Through its keenly observed small moments and the presence of the charismatic Nafar and his infectious, socially charged raps, Junction 48 sensitively yet powerfully conveys the considerable challenges inherent in attempting to reconcile those rocky crossroads of coexistence and cultural identity.

This lyrical and ethereal film mixes the stark style of a crime story into a love story, capturing the highs, lows and the deepest, darkest recesses of grungy, stoned teenage life; a life always yearning for more.

Because the footage of Szegedi was filmed over a number of years, the documentary reveals different stages of its subject's thinking.

Touches of empathy and self-awareness invariably crystallize the unsettling emotions of revisiting one’s past life.

The main achievement of The Institute is that its cast kept straight faces long enough to shoot this risible gothic chiller. A

The movie is choking on fumes before it’s even had the chance to begin.

It’s surprisingly intimate at times, but we leave without greater insight into its subjects’ world.

While the approach taken by filmmaker Marina Zenovich, who directed 2008’s “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” relies heavily on talking heads — Gov. Jerry Brown among them — she admittedly paints a compelling picture of timeless greed.

What initially augured a spiky portrait of late-age restlessness recedes into a woefully generic case of shopworn cross-generational uplift, sprinkled with tired wisecracks.

As directed by Stuart Hazeldine, even its jolts of surrealism feel curiously stilted; what it needed was a director whose reverence would be tempered by a healthy sense of the ludicrous, an ability to tap into and draw out the material’s stranger undercurrents.

This is an unapologetically warmhearted comedic drama, a fine example of commercial filmmaking grounded in a persuasive knowledge of human behavior.

It’s without a shred of guilt that I say there is honest pleasure to be found in Before I Fall, which takes an unapologetically silly conceit and wrings from it a surprisingly nimble and affecting survey of contemporary teenage attitudes and anxieties.

While this carnage is defensible in theory, and while the filmmakers have taken pains not to linger on the horrific brutality Logan and his terrible claws inflict, the gruesome situations presented, including more than one beheading, work at cross purposes with the film's more serious intent and reminds us that a scot-free escape from the strictures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not in the cards.

The action sequences are strong, with spectacular crashes and explosions, dynamic camera moves and tight cuts that at times give the film an appealing breathlessness. But the cast takes a too-lax approach to this material.

It doesn't gel and lacks the kind of visual kinetic energy we’ve come to expect from films of this ilk.

Erasing Eden is an exploration of self-sabotage and destruction that makes vague gestures toward the self-empowerment found in personal choice, but those morals are lost in the downright disturbing and degrading gauntlet Eden has to walk through to find herself.

Kiki often casts a rueful gaze, but it’s also exuberant and alive, and never despairing. It leaves you with the bracing sense that however tough and resilient its subjects might be forced to become, their hope of a better, more tolerant future will never go out of style.

The oddly sympathetic, low-key and funny Phillips gets deft support from his limber costars, including Sarah Silverman, Jim Jeffries, Mike Judge and Mark Cohen. Amusing songs too.

Sometimes it’s impressively funky and stylish, and sometimes tediously derivative.

Given the scope of the early-1930s atrocity, the most shocking thing about director George Mendeluk’s new dramatization is how utterly devoid of emotional impact it is.

It’s got some future-world smarts that sporadically elevate it above the junk that dominates this genre, and they help carry it through the routine spatter-and-gore moments and sci-fi clichés.