Folktales suggests that finding the threads connecting us to our collective past is work of great healing and rejuvenation.

It’s not often you find a film that’s so artless, it feels like one big joke. But “The Home,” James DeMonaco’s silly octogenarian horror flick, is about as hopeless as you can get.

Audiences are likely to see this film as more resigned to the inevitability of permanent conflict than providing any insight in how to move away from it.

It’s a deeply human experience to long for someone who’s unavailable and to treasure a love that’s true but can’t last. “Oh, Hi!” ruminates on this to somber yet entertaining effect.

The primary struggle of Chernov’s documentary is that it leans into the impersonal in an attempt at devastation. It can’t rely on the men as the crutch of the film’s emotion.

The problem is that the sociopolitical underpinnings of “Ick” feel relatively shallow and borderline sadistic, leaving viewers with a hollow “Blob” riff with too little to hold onto regarding character, setting, or even horror.

There’s nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it. So it’s too bad that “Four Letters of Love” is nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it.

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.

Despite some solid low-budget make-up work and decent central performances, “Monster Island” doesn’t have enough meat on its bones, somehow feeling narratively inert even at just 83 minutes.

This is a solid, intelligent, occasionally inspired comic book movie that delivers most of what a popular audience demands from the genre (including interstellar voyages and massively scaled action sequences) plus a little bit more.

Life After is a powerful movie that examines the political and social structures that surround and control people with disabilities, and comes to a conclusion that will spark many arguments.

The movie is, indeed, the tragedy of a ridiculous man. On the other hand, he does manage a maneuver by which his heirs avoid the estate tax. How ridiculous is that?

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

Drowning Dry holds you at arm’s length, but I found it more moving—and unsettling—because of that.

Unicorns, directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd, doesn’t reinvent the romance genre. Still, it overcomes any rote storytelling by gifting viewers fully fleshed-out and realized characters who color between—and sometimes outside—the lines of their archetypes.

Elegiac in tone, melancholic in style, and documentarian in spirit, Simpson thoughtfully captures the micro preoccupations of the film’s characters, against the understatedly political macro backdrop of our shifting and worsening climate.

The spirit of religious promise that Perione’s film introduces goes quizzically betrayed. What ensues becomes an attempted campy teen thriller, but without the tension or reward.

The Banished, about a grieving woman’s search for her missing brother, sometimes feels like a compendium of modern horror movie clichés. That doesn’t always matter, since the movie is thick enough with dread to work despite its distracting familiarity.

While there are several problems with the film as a whole, perhaps the central one is that there are long stretches where viewers are expected to take the concept at least somewhat seriously, which proves impossible.

The message about never confusing kindness with weakness is a valuable life lesson and a reminder of why the Smurfs are so enduringly beloved.

There’s just so much missing, including logic.

Admittedly, the logistics of filming a Tyler Perry film with Perry performing multiple roles is not what most viewers will be thinking about. But there’s little else to recommend it except for the performances.

[Costa's] outsider perspective gives no warmth of familiarity, only the startling realization of what they have accomplished so far and what remains ahead for a democracy trying to regain its footing.

A meeting of “Leave No Trace” and “Hell or High Water,” “Sovereign” is a thought provoking political work whose sympathetic eye is given focus by its potent cast.

Daniela Forever, Nacho Vigalondo’s first film since his excellent “Colossal,” eight years ago, is a baffling disappointment, a sci-fi mindbender with echoes of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Inception,” but no idea what to do with its many ideas or what it’s ultimately trying to say.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is inherently bound by its white perspective, but at the same time, it would simply be a different story if not through Bobo’s eyes.

Kermani deserves credit for expanding on Hill’s story, which has a great premise, but not much else going for it.

Juan Pablo Di Pace’s movie about memory, longing, time, and family is like a set of Russian nesting Matryoshka dolls.