Leveraging highly polished production values evoking the Old West with detailed sets, authentic weapons and period costumes, Wiluan gets enough of the details right so that the genre’s typical characteristics blend fairly seamlessly with the Indonesian adventure yarn.

McGowan doesn't try to turn the modest material into a nail-biting thriller. While grim confrontations between men with guns don't always convince us, they at least don't upstage the survival tale at the movie's heart.

Virtually nothing of real interest happens in the first half, with the excitement only kicking in around the 45-minute mark. Fortunately, what follows is scary and involving enough to make the lengthy build-up seem worth the wait.

The action is lively and quick-paced, and then suddenly over — at which point the film gets to hammer down some of its more wholesome messages.

Replicas manages to be perversely entertaining for its fast-paced first half, if only because of the sheer absurdity of its storyline. But it eventually devolves into tedious thriller tropes.

Having made a number of well-regarded, female-focused short films, the Icelandic director graduates to features with a sure grasp of naturalistic performance and an eye for character-shaping landscape.

Simmering and subdued, this '90s-set teen drama with supernatural elements features an intriguing premise but doesn't quite seem to know what to do with it. Such restraint is admirable in a genre not known for it, but it results in the film feeling more tepid than it should have been.

Well intentioned in the extreme, Sgt. Will Gardner is more effective as PSA than drama.

Writer-director Bilandic fails to infuse the painfully thin proceedings with any narrative momentum or comic flair, resulting in an oppressive weirdness for weirdness' sake.

Passion is spoken of and clumsily envisioned in The Aspern Papers, but not a drop of it is felt.

The film pretty much packs every canine cliché imaginable into its running time, but one look into the soulful eyes of its four-legged star will melt all but the coldest of hearts.

The screenplay boasts a psychological complexity rare for thrillers of this type, manifested most strikingly in the form of Bernard, who is far from a cardboard cutout villain.

While some thriller addicts may embrace the resulting misanthropic action, others may find their minds wandering — to the many real-life cases of fraternity hazing, gang-rape and run-of-the-mill antisocial behavior that inspire deeper feelings of dread than this unconvincing outing.

As a trilogy-closer, it's a mixed bag, tying earlier narrative strands together pleasingly while working too hard (and failing) to convince viewers Shyamalan has something uniquely brainy to offer in the overpopulated arena of comics-inspired stories.

This story of a courier racing against the clock to pay off a debt boasts a vivid sense of place, as well as some awkward dialogue and a lead performance not quite flavorful enough to make the character's self-sabotage compelling.

A cutthroat little thriller that's surely more fun than most of the riddle-solving lock-ins currently springing up around the country.

Director Fei Xing stages the violent mayhem in exuberantly giddy fashion, although it all has the feeling of a group of randomly assembled film clips rather than a coherent narrative.

Although it's enjoyable to make the acquaintance of the well-played, crowd-pleasing Strangers, the encounter is quickly forgotten.

The film is heartfelt and often powerful, but sometimes too sluggish to carry maximum impact.

The circus theme already feels played out from the start, while the story heads in mostly predictable directions despite the limited pleasure of seeing those mighty morphin power crackers in action.

A chin-scratching B picture that fares best when it sticks with stars Donald Sutherland and Vincent Kartheiser, it gets less convincing the farther it strays from the two-hander at its core.

Danluck's unfocused direction makes Katherine less a grief-struck enigma than a dull somnambulist; and the film's copious flashbacks, instead of drawing us into the character's confused emotions, mostly suggest that the film can't decide how to tell its story.

Boasting excellent performances by screen veterans Peter Mullan and Gerard Butler, the latter delivering one of his best turns in years, The Vanishing feels familiar in most ways, including its title (the same as George Sluizer's classic Dutch thriller and its mediocre American remake). Nonetheless, the film proves highly effective with its slowly ratcheted up tension and eerie atmospherics.

Being Rose suffers from its plot contrivances and cliched characters, but it means well and that counts for a lot. It's hard not to get caught up in Rose's fate, especially with Shepherd infusing her portrayal of the spunky character with subtle grace notes. Brolin is equally good, movingly conveying the loneliness and pathos underlying Max's good humor.

Upsetting but too curious to wallow in misery (and blessed with a few grace notes), the film pays tribute to a girl who rarely indulges in the self-centeredness that comes with adolescence.

Those who believe that all Buddhists respect their religion's core principles of peace and tolerance should take a look at The Venerable W (Le Venerable W), director Barbet Schroeder’s eye-opening chronicle of one Burmese monk’s long campaign of racism and violence against his country’s minority Muslim population.

Pulling off a rare three-peat, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is a tender, spirited coming-of-age CG-animated feature that proves every bit as emotionally resonant and artistically rendered as its 2010 and 2014 predecessors, if not even more so.

Genesis 2.0 is a double-stranded helix of a real-life thriller, chilling and unforgettable. An inquiry into the brave new world of "synthetic biology," it moves between two filmmakers in very different locations. Their twinned subjects, whose connections are gradually revealed, are past and future, superstition and logic, a hunter and his scientist brother.

Making their previous vehicles Step Brothers and Talladega Nights seem the height of comic sophistication by comparison, Holmes & Watson features the duo parodying Arthur Conan Doyle's famous characters to devastatingly unfunny effect.

Although the procession of talking heads inevitably gives the film a static quality, the visual tedium is alleviated by the filmmaker's handsome cinematography and the picturesque locations in which many of the interviews were shot.

Presenting an evocative portrait of a now-bygone era in the city's past, The Last Resort delivers plenty of nostalgia as is spotlights the work of two photographers who captured the period with vivid immediacy.

A labor of love, to be sure, but a simple, small-scaled domestic drama with none of the broad appeal of the hugely popular "Shakespeare in Love" of 1998, this thoroughly respectable Sony Classics pickup will command the interest mostly of older-skewing art house habituees.

Veering heavily into sexual territory, the film is more a gothic melodrama than a horror film. It certainly feels like a waste of not only Cage's talent (although the actor has a climactic, literally fiery scene that will forever change the way you think about the pop song "Leader of the Pack"), but also Potente, whose potential has been sadly underrealized in American films.

If there are any dadaist cinephiles out there, perhaps they can reclaim Second Act as a multilayered masterpiece of illogic. Certainly the film seems destined to survive all future nuclear winters, enduring as a time capsule of humanity at its most pitiably pedestrian.

The story's knotty aspects reverberate under its sentimental-cum-inspirational surface. In the guise of a glossy entertainment, Welcome to Marwen gets at some unnervingly irresolvable truths about humanity.

The Quake offers visceral thrills.

Through wit, surprise and an irrepressible ballsiness comes a scorching humor that neither curdles nor becomes exhausted.

Though fans will enjoy the behind-the-scenes view, and anyone interested in creativity can appreciate watching a master attempt to expand his turf so late in life, the doc's narrow scope and aesthetic limitations make it a fans-only affair, certainly not a full-bodied account of this man's towering career.

It offers some bits of fact and argument that may have gone underexposed, and it is more stylish than some earlier journalistic outings. But its potential to make change is hindered, as the film itself notes near its conclusion, by the fact that the already-stoked fear and rage of American citizens is neutered by those we've elected to make laws — many of whom have been taking checks from this deep-pocketed industry for years.

Last Letter walks a fine line between bittersweet and saccharine, and too often topples onto the wrong side of that divide.

In the end, the whole clean-up project is as shrug-worthy as most of the "Unrated Director's Cut!" edits that go the other direction on home video, promising more nudity and gore but changing little of consequence.

Less cranky and inciting than Gran Torino but persuasively expressive in conveying an old man's regrets along with his desire to improve himself even in late age, The Mule shows that Eastwood's still got it, both as a director and actor.

Sticking close to the enduring classic's template while injecting plenty of freshness to give the follow-up its own distinct repro vitality, this lovingly crafted production delivers both nostalgia and novelty.

One is grateful to have Momoa for company. Unlike some strutters who can't hide how delighted they are to show off their trainer-honed bods, Momoa wears his superb physique casually and his take-it-or-leave-it, devil-may-care attitude makes the narrative's long haul much easier to bear than would otherwise have been the case.

The selection of Oscar-nominated animated feature film director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) to helm the prequel turns out to be spot-on, as he exhibits an instinctual sense for the film’s requisite action quotient while attentively crafting the central characters’ emotional arcs.

Such an utterly routine, formulaic and forgettable example of its genre that watching it becomes an exercise in endurance. Even the always welcome presence of veteran actor William Fichtner, terrific as usual, isn't enough to save it.

Hospitality is the sort of film that looks like a thriller, feels like a thriller and essentially plays out like a thriller. The only thing it forgets to do is provide any actual thrills.

Director Anne Fletcher has made better rom-coms, like The Proposal, but they had better scripts. Written by producer Kristin Hahn, Dumplin’ clings timidly to its YA roots, which are firmly on the unsophisticated side of the spectrum.

The film has significant problems in the writing and direction, but the first challenge lies in the casting.

While its quirky storytelling style draws viewers in, many will tire of the subplots long before it reaches the two-hour mark.

The story's resolution is formulaic, but deeply enough felt that few will resent the film's manipulations.

Nothing in the proceedings rings remotely true unless you've been weaned on a steady diet of soulful hit men movies. But the film works to some degree anyway thanks to the terrific performance by Perlman, who infuses the title character with a compelling, world-weary gravitas.

Alexis Bloom's damning documentary is a competent but conventional affair, highly watchable but low on fresh angles or bombshell revelations.

DriverX, which has the style but not the substance of a strong '70s indie drama, stalls out quickly and goes nowhere interesting.

Aiming for charm but instead coming across as hopelessly forced, Swimming With Men barely manages to stay afloat.

While Back Roads doesn't live up to its considerable dramatic and thematic ambitions, it provides a strong opportunity for its filmmaker/star to stretch his dramatic muscles in the lead role.

Wise’s filmmaking style remains consistently engaging throughout the series as he demonstrates a characteristic ability to elicit particularly salient comments from interviewees, many of them already well-accustomed to media attention.

In short, it's a long-arc revenge tale fitted out with very elaborate effects, courtesy of Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films, and characters that are moderately decent company but hardly compelling.

On the surface it is indeed a gentle, well-mannered and elegant affair, but its caustic undertow, which becomes increasingly apparent, ends up making the viewer angry about a world that seems hell-bent on finding divisions where there need be none.

Despite some dead time and teenage moments, the film is lifted up by its belief in the imagination.

Only the comic parts soar, and they fit uneasily with the pallid romance and half-hearted family drama.

The work’s considerations of the intimate connection among being, art and life finally feel quite superficial.

Driven by a cracklingly energetic, committed performance by Sofia Gala Castiglione (more commonly known in Argentina as Sofia Gala) as a character whom we very quickly start to care about, events come at the viewer entirely through the heroine’s dislocating perspective, making the film a viewing experience of great immediacy, one with the rare capacity to dislodge prejudice.

Doesn't bring anything new to its very tired genre.

Strictly for the most obsessive fans of the series, The Gilligan Manifesto mainly demonstrates the pitfalls of intellectuals having too much time on their hands.

For all its slapsticky action and heightened reality (the subtitles could use a quick review as well), Cool Fish marries often uncomfortable, dead-serious drama to its hijinks, and it doesn’t always work.

Origin Story maintains an upbeat vibe as its heroes push forth into the larger world; here's hoping they show lots of people a good time before their world-domination strategy sucks the life out of them.

A refreshing reminder of the usability-above-all principles that once held more sway — look at nearly any contemporary website to see how far we've fallen — it benefits from both the work and the personality of subject Dieter Rams.

Young and Whisenant hatch a finale that is corny and wonderful — a rare chance to watch someone's dream come true, and an exhortation for others to follow their own weird enthusiasms wherever they might lead.

Some in the area have lost some hope, seeing so many of their neighbors fall for a candidate they knew to be a snake-oil salesman. But Hillbilly is forward-looking, believing there's something special about its region-specific variety of what elsewhere would be called rednecks or bumpkins.

The chief saving grace of Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer is its auspicious voice cast including Josh Hutcherson, Samantha Bee, John Cleese and Martin Short, among others.

Andy Serkis' decidedly non-Disney Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle may have intended to offer a darker, grittier take on the classic Kipling stories, but the end result proves to be more of a murky muddle.

This schlocky horror picture show combines a zesty young cast with an infectious comic energy.

The freshest and most stimulating aspect of the film is the visual style, which unites the expected Marvel mix of “universes” (it used to be assumed there was only one universe in creation) with animation that looks both computer-driven and hand-drawn, boasts futuristic as well as funky urban elements, moves the “camera” a lot and brings together a melting pot of mostly amusing new characters.

Modest in aesthetic terms but more jounalistically serious than many low-budget advocacy docs, the film will be an eye-opener for some, and should add to pressure on executives to stop pretending they're innocent of the crimes contractors commit on their behalf.

Most importantly, the pic gets laughs out of the class system without being glib about its cruelties. The gulf between rich and poor clearly matters to Huang, who poignantly shows how poverty robs even the dead of dignity.

Eighty-eight minutes is not nearly enough time to give full attention to every thread of critique here, but The Cleaners does a respectable job of fitting its unruly anecdotes into a coherent stream of thought.

Mendelsohn's villain is boringly one-note, Eve Hewson's Marion uses an incongruous Yank accent and always looks as though she's just stepped out of the makeup trailer, F. Murray Abraham swans around in fancy cardinal's vestments looking sinister and Foxx seems pissed off that he's not somewhere, perhaps anywhere, else. As for Egerton, he's a boy doing a man's job.

What the film does best is bear witness to what happened on the day of the arrest and place it in the context of Bland's political life.

Slack and unexciting compared to Ryan Coogler's blisteringly good 2015 reconception of a 1970s icon for modern audiences, this follow-up is an undeniable disappointment in nearly every way, from its dreary homefront interludes to a climactic boxing match that feels far-fetched in the extreme.

This unflinching yet compassionate depiction of marginalized misfits boasts a few pleasingly poetic flourishes, but it suffers from some common first-time director flaws, notably a listless narrative, thinly developed characters and a relentlessly somber mood.

An admirably audacious feat of documentarian access, Of Fathers and Sons is of obvious topical and anthropological interest as a glimpse into the gradual radicalization of young males and the deep community ties which underpin the process.

Unconventional in style and contemplative in tone, The Last Race represents more of a living document of a dwindling American subculture than a typical sports documentary.

Director Rourke exhibits confidence and enthusiasm in dealing with such juicy material in the company of her two outstanding young actresses.

More reliant on atmosphere than action to build suspense, Duncan Skiles’ The Clovehitch Killer offers an intriguing perspective on the darker side of American values, but lacks the conviction to entirely expose the cultural contradictions that often enable compulsive murderers

Scene by scene you wish 55 Steps made you angrier than it does. Yet August's docile filmmaking acts as an emotional soporific, removing even the potential camp pleasures of Bonham Carter's histrionics.

Like in A Silent Voice, Yamada has a very keen eye for depicting adolescent malaise in visually evocative terms, and Liz and the Blue Bird could have benefited from even more flights of fancy than she allows for here.

Scurfield's directing debut is marred by all manner of clunkiness, from the embarrassing performance of Kellan Lutz (playing Lansky's chip-on-shoulder nephew, who winds up Aronoff's nemesis) to the tissue-thin montages that try to sell us on Aronoff's second career as a racer and maker of speedboats.

Attempting to be a cautionary tale for the Airbnb era, the pic squanders its potential with ham-fisted execution.

Suffice to say there are twists, physical perils and moments of self-sacrifice.

Though not all the relationships are entirely clear — the thieves' relationship with Brandt, for example, remains somewhat vague — and there might be some minor issues that could become apparent on multiple viewings, this is first and foremost a rollicking and very imaginatively staged ride that’s enjoyable and different.

Family in Transition stands out both for the particularities inherent in its setting and the deeply sympathetic individuals at its center.

A turbo-charged satire that swaps out Gen X video arcade nostalgia for our current, all-consuming social-media-fueled obsession, the endlessly inventive Walt Disney Studios Animation follow-up impressively levels up with laugh-out-loud consistency.

While the film commits errors of taste and tact, and is generally all over the place from start to finish, those issues come off here as byproducts of a certain generosity — a sense that Anders wants to convey a full range of experience, including the messy stuff in between the usual formulaic notes and beats.

This is a wannabe shocker with a clever premise that doesn't really get down and dirty or betray the base instincts of a born horror filmmaker.

Amazing Grace will not enter the pantheon of concert films — it's somewhat shapeless as a movie, and gives little sense of emotional insight into the performer. But it does contain moments of bliss: As astonishing as the sound of Franklin's singing in 1972 remains, watching her do it is even better.

Despite its structural problems and mostly foreseeable storyline, the small, very human moments such as these ensure that Mario feels authentic and is, finally, moving.

Molina is captivating as Rothko pontificates, questions and explains, covering everything from Rembrandt and Nietzsche to Jackson Pollock and the convertible car that (as Rothko sees it) represented his descent into the tainted world of celebrity.