Still see this film, but see it for what it is: a ferocious showcase for Whishaw, who’s never been nervier, and a promising first feature from a filmmaker with energy to spare.

In keeping with our current “poptimistic” age, “Kids Vs. Aliens” keeps the aggressive neon splatter, but loses the cynicism—a choice that, for all the F-bombs and fake blood, makes it a surprisingly pure film.

It's a film filled with humor, charm, excitement and so many memorable images that many viewers will find themselves struggling to keep from blinking so as not to miss any of the eye-popping delights crammed into each overstuffed frame.

What should have been a solid B-movie thriller with a premise torn from today’s headlines is instead as arid and desolate as the land between the United States and Mexico in which it is set.

But Live From New York! is required viewing only if the network’s own 3½-hour marathon salute to four decades of skit hilarity earlier this year was not enough of a retrospective for you.

Most of this is interesting enough, although a little too self-congratulatory at times, but A LEGO Brickumentary never really goes much deeper than that.

Human Capital is so exquisitely cast, down to the smallest role, that it puts viewers in the unusual position of wishing a film were a TV series or a much longer movie, the better to take advantage of its best assets.

Most viewers will find themselves wishing that writer/director Patrick Ridremont had come up with a few variations on this standard theme in order to liven up this competently executed but painfully familiar genre exercise.

Most of its strength emerges from a well-directed ensemble, one able to convey the high concept of a nightmarish situation without losing their relatable humanity.

It takes great effort to find what interested director Wash Westmoreland and company in the source material in the first place, but it feels like a project that reaffirms something I’ve long argued: just because something works in one medium doesn’t mean it will in another.

Ultimately, Quasi is a decent effort from talented dudes but a missed opportunity at something memorably hilarious. It's a few decent jokes in search of a better movie that needed a bit more improvisational effort in the comedy department and a lot more shaping in the editing room.

It might be kind of tedious, kind of sloppy, and mostly silly, but you could never accuse Dangerous Lies of false advertising. The new Netflix thriller, directed by Michael M. Scott, is practically designed for rainy day viewers who initially laugh at the title, and that’s not a bad thing.

In terms of both actual storytelling and subtext, there’s so much that the creators of Project Power could have done, but they chose the path of least resistance, turning a story of reclaimed control and buried human strength into a dull action movie that only gets by on the charisma of its stars and speediness of its filmmaking. It’s almost like they were afraid to unleash the power within their own project.

With enough enjoyable originality to differentiate it from the numerous takes on the super men and wonder women that so heavily populate film and TV these days, We Can Be Heroes flies Rodriguez back to one of his main areas of interest.

Desperation destroys comic timing, and this thing is drenched in the flop sweat of a stand-up comedian who knows he’s losing his audience.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The film plods at points, trudging along, and there are a few misguided narrative "devices" tacked on, but still, Trial by Fire bristles with anger.

If Nancy Meyers ever decided to dabble in gothic romance, it probably would turn out to be something like The Face of Love.

This is a flat, boring affair.

If Susie Searches wanted to critique the true-crime podcast trend, it could have done so more directly. For now, we have a movie at odds with itself and its main character.

Taurus isn’t meant to lionize its protagonist. But even in offering a cautionary tale, all it can deliver is shallow provocation and monotonous cliché.

Killing bigots is a fine enough pretext for this sort of watered-down post-grindhouse entertainment, but if you’re honestly going to go there, you can’t stop til you’re past the point of apology.

An old-fashioned Biblical spectacular with fresh blood in its veins.

Literate, sober, soulful, and considered as it is, the movie is also a little overly scrupulous in its tastefulness.

The two couples in this film are so annoying that I did not just want them to break up with each other; I wanted to find a way to break up with the movie, or perhaps scrape it off my shoe.

The film bizarrely takes what could have been a touching and powerful drama about the traumatic family ties that bind (and occasionally choke) and attempts to refit it as a straightforward, if mostly low-key horror exercise chock-full of scenes involving various things popping up out of the darkness with numbing regularity.

A handsomely mounted, never-less-than conspicuously intelligent but ultimately too-conventional historical drama, The Liberator shoehorns the epic life of early 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolivar into two hours of intermittently powerful cinema.

The attractiveness of the scenery, and a quiet, dignified performance by Ms. Peña in what could now be her last movie appearance, wind up being the main redeeming values here.