A solid adult drama, a movie that’s too soft at times but more often tender with its characters. It’s not a film designed to break any new ground, but Wight has skill with character, finding nuance in those moments that many other writer/directors would have turned into pure cliché.

Director Sarah Adina Smith has a gift for striking images and creating intriguingly spooky moods, bordering on gothic, but the plot is so overstuffed we hardly have time to even notice Jacqueline Bisset as the demanding director of the ballet group.

Without an establishing tone or style — the first scene sits there on the screen like a void — it can come off as trying to jump on some already-long-gone bandwagon.

I Touched All Your Stuff is an attempt to make us feel that sting of disappointment. In a way, it's effective. The movie is disappointing.

A certain sloppiness prevents The To Do List from entering the female coming-of-age pantheon of "Sixteen Candles," "Clueless" and "Mean Girls."

The Keeping Room does exceed “The Beguiled” with its progressive gender politics and morose minimalist approach. But when it comes to presenting a more watchable story, the older film would be the one that stops you from clicking to another channel if it pops up on TV. A little bit of pulp does help the message go down.

The story is so stripped down it feels like minimalist theater.

For all its investigation of rifts in reality and parallel universes, “The Universal Theory” provides proof only of the truth’s inherent slipperiness — and of its director’s great affection for his influences.

You can’t help but wish that this edition of the story was a bit more… groundbreaking.

There’s a nagging aura of “meh” encircling the proceedings.

In trying to say a little bit of everything about both men, James’ documentary unfortunately falls short of balancing its narrative priorities.

Escape finds an interesting subject in that ambiguous line, but never examines it closely enough to convey what it’s like to be invisible while in service to your own country.

Worse, Z for Zachariah is ultimately too dramatically slight and brief for its ambitions, despite its sometimes labored myth-making script and visuals.

The film is too ordinary to feel like it does her legacy complete artistic justice.

Those not on the Deadpool bandwagon already will probably not be converted by this version and those who are fans may find it to be a vaguely interesting curio they'll watch once.

So much works so well for so long in “The Good House” that it’s frustrating when the film casts its eye elsewhere and begins paying way too much attention to the town’s peripheral figures.

Ray and his co-stars’ easy chemistry makes you want to hang out with Will, if only to see where the plot twist takes him. “Destroy All Neighbors” wouldn’t really work without that essential playfulness; the fact that it works at all suggests that Ms. Lee and her team are the movie’s real MVPs.

An intelligent but not terribly effective drama. And its discussion of military ethics, especially with regard to what it means to be able to kill people without physical consequences, is promising, but it does not go far enough.

This is the kind of film that explains itself too early and then has nowhere to go except into rote, B-picture thrills.

It feels a wee bit padded even at a brisk 96 minutes (it’s tough to do “deadpan” in a comedy and not have it come off as merely slow) and has trouble staying on the right side of too-cutesy. But it sustains an innocent storybook tone throughout, thanks mainly to strong performances from its lead actors, Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher, and lush images of the New Zealand countryside.

Speaking strictly for myself, Vin Diesel, here coming back to play Xander Cage, the James Bond of skateboarding character he originated in 2002’s “XXX” is the least exciting component of this 3D slam-bang fest.

Christina Ricci does most, if not all, of the emotional lifting in the lightweight horror drama Monstrous, a period piece about a single mom and her son who, in 1955, run away from home and re-settle in an isolated lakeside house.

What Happens Later doesn't reach the heights of Ryan’s beloved romantic comedies, but its sweet comforts might be just the ticket if you’re looking for laughter-through-tears on the couch on a Sunday afternoon.

Me Time has some structural problems that drag the story, taking too long to reintroduce Huck in the second act, and littering the overall canvas with too many side players throughout. But it comes with enough rewards nonetheless thanks to an idiosyncratic group of lovable people who just need to get a little crazy in order to survive as their true selves.

Queen of the Ring isn’t a film I’ll watch more than once, but it’s a story that resonates with me. The nostalgia lands, but the inspiration sticks.

Sly is a frustratingly unrealized work, always hovering on the edge of real insight but rarely jumping into it.

At least audiences who hang in there will be rewarded with Arthur in concert doing a gravelly yet stirring version of Billy Joel's "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)". It's one of the rare instances when Unfinished Song achieves a heavenly state.

The Lost King gets sidetracked. Still, it's a great story!