The film's relentlessly quirky style of comedy is consequently very self-conscious. Every joke in Ping Pong Summer is a variation on a theme: 1985 was the most awkward time to be alive.

For better and for worse, Joshy believably creates the sensation of a low-key weekend hang with a bunch of bros. You probably wouldn’t want to spend that much time with these people yourself, but at least they’re never boring.

I can only recommend “Don’t Turn Out the Lights” so much, mostly because the characterizations and the dialogue are so cliched and unlovable that it’s often hard to enjoy all the twists and turns that Fickman (“Race to Witch Mountain”) tiptoes past throughout this diverting Choose Your Own Adventure genre exercise.

For the most part, Buffalo Boys is a decent folk tale, despite Lee and Wiluan's periodic application of "Game of Thrones"-style sensationalism.

While the documentary has the feel of a scrappy passion project, the message itself remains powerful. Given the chaotic times, There’s Something in the Water also serves as a stark reminder that not all governments have their citizens’ best interests at heart.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose work as the villain in Enemies Closer is the only reason to see this film.

As for the a capella performances, there is something a little prefab and not as organic as those in the first film.

Though it has a tight course of events and is spiked with a few surprises, First Love is far more impressive for how it collides its many characters than what it ever feels for them.

Dashcam succeeds as a barrage of icky stimuli that may go great with a rowdy audience.

If I wanted to read my way through a film that features words dancing around the screen as if they were waltzing Post-Its, I would have sat through a foreign movie with subtitles instead.

Hypnotic may not be clever or energetic enough to keep your mind from wandering, but it is charming in its own stumbling way.

The process of discovery that Evan goes through to get closer to Louise is what makes Spring special. But what Evan discovers about Louise feels like an after-thought that frustratingly overwhelms the film once it gets to where it's going.

At its best not in its scenes of men acting like children or the beats that feel more written than organic but in its most believable scenes of joyful, male friendship in between the broad humor and melodrama. I just wish there were more of them.

The fury of Osborne’s performance, nonetheless, keeps “Mārama” a worthy anti-colonialist statement that harnesses the symbolic virtues of genre cinema for its understandably virulent tone.

Watching The Lure is a bit like having manic depression—the thrilling high points are just as relentless as the crushing low-tide ebbs.

Entertaining in spots, obvious and irritating in others, with a one-note schticky performance from Christopher Waltz as Walter, Big Eyes is a strangely conventional entry in Tim Burton's filmography.

Looking Through Water wants to tell us about the importance of uncluttered connections to the natural world and to each other, but too often it ignores its own advice.

There’s a resemblance here to both the story and the movie adaptation of the story told in “The Perfect Storm.” The characters involved are making a good faith effort—but good faith efforts by humans can only go so far.

It’s a simple, stripped-down premise that transcends cultural specificity.

The film is not so much tone-deaf as old-fashioned, emerging from a more innocent time (say, three weeks ago) when "politics as usual" actually had some meaning.

Realistically, Overlord is a simple mechanism to deliver squib packs and swear words, a function that the film's creators accomplish despite their otherwise unremarkable story's choppy pacing and general humorlessness.

Tucci is wonderful, but Timlin comes close to eating him up almost as thoroughly as her character does his.

Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.

Like most Netflix movies, no matter what The Mother would be a perfectly serviceable thing to have on in the background while you tidied the living room or answered emails on your phone. The spy-movie setup is generic enough to follow while doing something else, and the villains’ motivations are only as specific as the plot needs them to be, which is to say not very specific at all.

It’s not always clear what the movie is trying to say, but even its misfires are more interesting than most because of what Reeder and her stars bring to their characters.

Egoyan has always delved right into fraught familial ties without shying away from ugliness, and “Seven Veils” is perhaps his most overt exploration of familial trauma.

Párvulos remains a largely successful, if sometimes too idiosyncratic, take on the zombie story. The creature prosthetics remain grisly fun, and even among the washed-out cinematography, the blood thrums with crimson terror in one gory sequence after another.

Kaufman keeps things moving at a brisk pace and delivers the sort of cheesy dialogue and story beats that you should expect from this dorky, but serviceable genre exercise. He’s a better action filmmaker than he is a straight-up dramatist, as you can unfortunately tell in scenes where the protagonists struggle to emote through visually and emotionally flat dialogue scenes.