Carnaval is like Girls Trip by way of Brazil, but the acting and many of the comedy’s punchlines are fairly over-exaggerated. The four leads are just a step above stock characters.

One almost wishes Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick had not tried to reinvent the wheel, and instead just stuck with the franchise’s sophisticated simplicity and tried-and-true paranormal formula. Without a focal haunted house, this one just doesn’t feel like a film that belongs in “The Conjuring” universe.

Despite the fact that you’ve heard these songs countless times in a variety of settings, these inspired incarnations will make you feel like you’re experiencing them for the first time, just as Moby Doc as a whole breathes thrilling new life into a safe and conventional genre.

The film, unfortunately, is poorly acted and offers Hallmark Channel-level craftsmanship.

While Plan B is not a perfect teen movie, it's one with a defiantly good heart and a vibrant, colorful atmosphere crafted by a talented director. On those grounds alone, this is a ride worth hopping on.

The timing of Oslo is less than ideal, current events being what they are. The framing, too, is blinkered and naïve.

The action in Funhouse is consistently cheap and generally silly. That’s sort of the movie’s point, but it’s also sort of hard to care when everything else is so tacky.

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

The main goal of Port Authority is the simple but unfortunately necessary message that “hey, trans people are people, too!” It’s too bad this film isn’t really about them.

The movie's characters are less compelling, however, and the film never deeply engages the issues of consent, culpability, and justice it asks us to consider.

The problem isn't that this concept has been reworked to death, but that Quintana and co-writer Chris Dowling (the scribe behind Christian dramas such as Run the Race and Priceless) fail to mold it into a winning catch.

There's no denying that Cruella is stylish and kinetic, with a nasty edge that's unusual for a recent Disney live-action feature. But it's also exhausting, disorganized, and frustratingly inert, considering how hard it works to assure you that it's thrilling and cheeky.

Part of the joy of The Dry is watching this excellent cast in action.

There's nothing about this kind of film that is innately less "formulaic" than what you get when see a Marvel, Star Wars, or Fast & Furious movie; it's just gentler and more human-scaled.

It becomes something heartfelt yet funny—a truly hard balance to strike—but Drunk Bus pulls through for our enjoyment.

The spirit of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental Shoah remains a nonpareil cinematic text on the Holocaust, lingers over and around Final Account, a film assembled by Luke Holland around interviews he conducted beginning in 2008.

With leaden performances and puzzling camerawork, it’s hard to feel in tune with the movie’s frights outside of the occasional jump scare.

Filmed in a rich black and white, director Zeshawn Ali’s documentary and feature debut Two Gods is an intimate, lyrical exhumation of the cycles that haunt Black youth and the challenge of putting to rest old habits.

A near-future dystopia that navigates a fractured society hours away from collapse, Michel Franco’s New Order is a relentless and blood-soaked study of social injustice, gripping to watch despite its graphic and escalating brutality. Sadly, it’s also one that only vaguely engages with the need for prosperity for all.

Their many challenges wrap up too neatly, but there are enough genuine moments of truth in Blast Beat to make you wish there were even more.

Those who are willing to give it a chance—and that would include thoughtful teenagers who would respond to a film that approaches their lives in a serious and reasonably non-judgmental manner—are likely to find it as fascinating as I did.

These thrilling sequences give the film plenty of adrenaline at its beginning and end, and play like a nod from a still-evolving Krasinski: he’s embracing “enjoy your ride” filmmaking, even if that can encourage a viewer’s passivity. Here’s hoping that “Part III” leaves more room for what got people talking in the first place.

Brutal, sad, funny, and disarmingly sweet-natured, Riders of Justice is not so much a revenge movie as a movie about revenge.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is more frustrating than the average mediocre horror sequel because you can easily decipher the wasted opportunity up there on the screen.

Admittedly, this 85-minute film is not the kind of movie you wish that had been a lot longer. And yet, it's still worth exploring for a number of reasons—primarily the strength of Crawford’s performance—and those who do not have a problem with raw and unflinching dramas may indeed find it well worth watching.

In Profile, the images mix real documentary footage with fictional social media and news organization posts. And meaning is elemental—a simplistic rush meant to induce viewer panic. While also being incredibly on-the-nose.

It’s an earnest, defiantly women-centric film that maintains a generally positive attitude about the future, albeit also one that feels a little less observational, a little more heavy-handed and prescriptive than the fiercely authentic Wadjda.

Too bad The Djinn is often as plodding as it is impersonal. This movie crawls whenever it needs to sprint.