The Legend of Tarzan isn't half-bad; actually, it's pretty good. Beautifully made and smartly set at the beginning of Belgian King Leopold II's rapacious colonization of the Congo in the 1880s, this is certainly the best live-action Tarzan film in many a decade (which, admittedly, isn't saying much) and offers a well-judged balance of vigorous action and engaging-enough drama.

Inspiring as her journey may be, however, the film tracks an overly familiar arc, dwelling on Shields' disadvantaged background, teenage romance with another young boxer and family turmoil but providing limited focus on the sport of women's boxing or the complexities of obtaining training sponsorship or lucrative endorsements.

Unlike the films he’s co-written for Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone…), which often rely on Audiard’s stunning capacity to foreground grand emotional sweeps, this is a much more constructed narrative that could only be described as a writer’s film, though one with several pleasant — if shocking is your idea of pleasant, that is — surprises up its sleeve.

It's to the script's credit that it doesn't tie up the story in cute little bows and instead leaves a number of questions unanswered by the end.

Challenging and richly realized, the drama about a cop wrestling with guilt over his young daughter’s disappearance effortlessly and effectively weaves together fantasy and reality, melding the tension of cop thrillers with the introspection of a psychological drama.

Setting out to show the range of expression found in a field of craft it feels is too often dismissed as a trivial women's pastime, Una Lorenzen's Yarn showcases four artists doing things with crochet your spinster great-aunt probably never imagined.

The Love Witch is an expertly executed homage that works brilliantly on its own original terms.

Rollins' villain is a deliciously deranged, compelling character, but the problem is that there's not enough of him in this otherwise routine B-movie clearly shot on the cheap, with low-grade CGI effects making the shootouts and gore mostly laughable.

Though it's better than its "dump this thing" theatrical release would suggest, Cell is far from excellent.

There are plenty of fisticuffs and shootouts to be found in The Duel, but precious little of interest.

It's all about as dreary as the constant rainfall featured as part of the Portland, Ore., setting, and the director, when he's not leeringly photographing his leading lady's naked body in the shower, vainly tries to up the scare ante by periodically raising the soundtrack volume to intolerable levels.

Shallow is a mild word for it. Others would be silly, miscalculated, unconvincing, artless, pandering, hokey, ridiculous. Or just plain awful.

Aside from a supporting turn by Hannibal Buress as a king-of-the-geeks character, the film's most diverting ingredients are its aggressively crude character design and its sickly color palette.

Slow and talky but suffused with insight and intelligence, the film is another noteworthy effort from the writer/director of such intriguing if unfortunately little-seen dramas as Glass Chin and Sparrows Dance.

The main thing consumers will be looking for from Resurgence is bang-for-buck entertainment, and that it delivers reasonably successfully.

A compelling and little-known story of the Civil War period is studiously reduced to a dry and cautious history lesson in Free State of Jones.

It’s as if co-directors Michael Thurmeier and Galen Tan Chu, both veterans of the Ice Age franchise, sensed that there was essentially nowhere left to go with the concept and opted to instead overstuff the production with too many characters breathlessly doing tired, pop culture-heavy “bits” like it was open mic night at the Paleolithic Punch Line.

As much as Don't Think Twice focuses on professional envy, though, it remains a love letter to this weirdo art form called improv.

There’s a carefree spirit about everything that happens, including all the talk about girls and masturbation, that makes the story as breezy as the summer air,

Although engaging enough to hold interest, the just slightly off casting of Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgard...dampens plausibility.

The taut pacing of the original is a distant memory here. On a positive note, Peter Kam’s fine, ever-present musical comment effectively pumps up the tension even when the screenplay fails, all the way to its final crescendo.

A compelling gateway documentary that should absorb both fans and novices alike.

Variety and depth of character are badly lacking on the female front, weakening the whole film.

The dynamic ski chases are the most exciting, not to mention novel, element of this medieval epic, although there's plenty of fighting with swords, axes, crossbows, and bows and arrows as well.

The film is a documentary gem.

There's not a scary moment in the movie, and its characters are neither likable enough to root for nor so repulsive we eagerly await their deaths.

It’s not a problem there’s a hole, as it were, in the common-sense logic of the film’s world; it’s that there’s a big, gaping hole where the illogic should be, a whole lot of nothing where there should be metaphor, playfulness, all that juicy, enigmatic, magical-realism stuff that helps films like Being John Malkovich and its many knockoffs become fodder for film-studies essays.

With all farces, timing and rhythms are absolutely crucial and Zulawski — working with editor Julia Gregory — maintains a disarming brio from the very first seconds.

Like the professional dogwalker who can’t exactly keep count of Max and his cohorts, it feels like the filmmakers are juggling too many chatty creatures at once, while trying to maintain a plot that tends to grow more outlandish as the story progresses.

Yadav’s concerns about discrimination and violence against women are evident in nearly every scene of the film, as her script positions each of the principal characters to undergo an experience of self-actualization in defiance of prevailing patriarchal norms.

Given the dearth of docs about the heyday of circus arts, one wishes for more of that spotlight showmanship on the screen.

Fascinating on personal, political and cinematic levels, the film resourcefully plumbs all sorts of resources, including secret tape recordings of Kim himself, but also omits certain aspects of the tale that would merely have added to its intrigue.

Central Intelligence demonstrates an above-average interest in story and character, and tries, if not always successfully, to craft real comic situations and action sequences. It's been made with a certain level of polish and professionalism. And it capitalizes on the chemistry between Hart and Johnson.

Serving as a gentle reminder that enduring love is still possible, My Love, Don't Cross That River is practically the cinematic equivalent of marriage counseling.

As with so many of the best mystery-horror films, the optimum way to enjoy a first viewing of this is try to remain as ignorant as possible about what happens. That said, it also brims with tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-them details that will repay repeat viewings.

Ti West's In a Valley of Violence plays like a grim, Eastwood-style genre revival before some conspicuous Tarantino-influenced humor infects its climactic showdown.

Another effective, great-looking and well-acted Scandinavian crime film based on a bestselling novel.

Where Guan excels is in straight dramatization.

Jonas is, it should be said, the most likeable thing about this watered-down noir.

Although it feels all too familiar with its storyline about a bullied 15-year-old, King Jack boasts an immediacy that makes it compelling throughout.

A thoughtful and illuminating examination of a provocative subject.

Traded features nary an original element but nonetheless registers as a solid if minor oater.

Drawing on a substantial track record of comedic performance, Guzman adopts his usual approach by coming on much too strong, a strategy that elicits its share of laughs in action-oriented scenes, but tends to overshoot the more dramatic moments.

While Olympic Trials don’t usually tend to be the sort of milieu that readily lend themselves to quirky comedy, the engagingly amusing Tracktown quite capably goes the distance.

The film probes the experience of grief in a subjective, intuitive manner, and it achieves remarkable intensity in exploring this theme.

First-time director Justin Tipping's finesse with dialogue and story is less developed than his visual sense. But if the movie is over-reliant on slo-mo, voiceover and almost wall-to-wall music to drive scenes, its silky blend of lyricism with urban grit marks it as a promising debu

While rambunctious and passably humorous, this offspring isn't nearly as imaginative and nimble-minded as the forerunner that spawned it.

Visually stunning if dramatically logy and willfully enigmatic.

Ruhm's lively pace keeps the plot's essential silliness from growing tiresome, even if it never kicks into the high-octane farce the picture seems to seek.

Most effective in its quiet dialogue-heavy scenes, the picture stumbles when anything more dramatic is required.

It's in the more personal moments — such as when the artist enthusiastically describes her painting of an elderly Marilyn Monroe — that it becomes most interesting.

The film never becomes morbid, though, which is both its strength and weakness.

Coming in a few notches below the terror factor of Wan’s most exemplary material, this somewhat less-satisfying variation of an ill-fated haunting nonetheless represents a solid debut for Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg

The cast’s performances adhere to appropriately exaggerated comedic expectations, but could have benefitted from more specific character differentiation.

Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

Meyer...and his easy rapport with the kids and Sacks helps coax sometimes surprisingly candid comments from his subjects. What’s missing however is adequate background on how the boys became such impressive young musicians and why they gravitated toward heavy metal rather than pop or rap.

Whatever social commentary is intended in this cautionary tale, it is lost in the overall thematic murkiness, and the film is reduced to being a series of increasingly silly, ultra-violent episodes.

Though never managing to surprise us much, this brisk encounter with the living past has moments of charm and the occasional fresh perspective.

The movie never really achieves the claustrophobic, under-siege atmosphere of Night of the Living Dead. And it's kind of a good thing we're not trapped with this family, since, despite some fine acting by Mille Dinesen (as Gustav's mom) and others, Mikkelsen's script offers too little character development to keep us interested in them.

A first-rate music film capturing a restless desire to communicate beyond the boundaries of any single idiom.

It's So Easy and Other Lies makes for a tedious cinematic experience that will only be appreciated by McKagan's hard-core fans. And even they're likely to come away less than enthusiastic.

Gurukulam succeeds in its goal of immersing the viewer in its gentle and spiritual setting. Whether you'll achieve enlightenment watching it is another question.

An intriguing but iffy look at alternative therapies that ignores some questions about its subjects.

Directed and scripted in boring, incoherent fashion by Francesco Cinquemani, Andron brings new meaning to the word "derivative."

Sluggishly paced and featuring lengthy voice-over narration by Strong in which his character ponders his role in the universe like a graduate philosophy student, the film never achieves liftoff.

The film feels a little too eulogistic, too reliant on hyperbole and too in love with its own gimmicks to make it more than just a serviceable crowd-pleaser.

Ferguson certainly has some strong, even encouraging points to make. And he has brought impressive filmmaking skills to his cinematic essay. Still, one wishes that he had presented his thesis with a little more energy and a little less didacticism.

Writer-director James Bird’s second feature tells an entirely familiar story with a dash of transvestism thrown in, but doesn’t do anything interesting with that twist – and the lumpen screenplay is drag enough.

Some viewers will find the film's mannered performances and direction silly; but while Wang Tianlin's lensing doesn't match the luxuriant sheen that Christopher Doyle and Philippe Le Sourd have delivered for Wong, the production elements do add up to a coherent style.

All this is portrayed in such elementary terms it could be the libretto of a 19th century operetta, or maybe a children’s film, were it not so disturbing.

As a film, Victor Kanefsky's documentary about the iconoclastic painter Robert Cenedella makes a great art exhibit.

Wan’s expert deployment of genre jolts is no less in evidence this time around, but as he takes his time — perhaps even a bit too much of it — interweaving the Warrens’ story with that of the Hodgsons, in the London borough of Enfield, he crafts a deep dive into dread. The film builds to a symphonic climax of heaven-and-hell emotion.

The film fares best when it slows down a bit and allows the Turtles' personalities, which are quite engaging, to shine through via their amusing comic banter.

Compared with the first film, this one embraces the premise’s essential preposterousness, although not necessarily to winning effect.

Popstar is filled with the sort of sly jokes whose targets music fans should have no problem recognizing.

The raging stamina, unrelenting violence, rapid-fire editing and truncated narrative all give one no pause for thought or even breath. By the time the central mystery is revealed in a nice twist, it gets swallowed in the messy, anti-climactic end.

Focused much more intently on video journals Gleason made as his illness progressed, the film both documents his rapid physical decline and ponders the many existential issues it raises — especially for a married couple expecting their first child in a few months.

The film's strength lies in its honest and realistic portrayal of mental illness and the toll it exacts on those in its sufferer's orbit.

More than just mining the past, Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang is fuelled by an anxious look toward the future - not just Jia's, but also that of his profession and his people as China marches on to the state-controlled drumbeat of economic liberalism and tight political control.

By now, it's clear that every Adam Sandler movie is dada of the high-concept, low-hanging-fruit variety, in which the Happy Madison stock company uses filmmaking (loosely termed) as an excuse to take an extended tropical vacation.

Absent any real sense of who these three women are as individuals, most of their behavior is reduced to what feels like tics that are meant to illuminate character in a rather crude way.

Liberally riffing on situations and themes familiar from the high school-set movies that established the renowned writer-director’s legacy, Lee has crafted an entertaining alternative interpretation that substitutes an international cast of Asian actors for Hughes’ largely white, suburban ensembles.

Honey Buddies is a comically contagious tribute to male bonding in the great outdoors.

Unfortunately, the narrative endgame is a mess, and should have been rethought in development, but there’s no denying Ezer has made a bold, audacious debut.

As dark and pessimistic as the rest of South Korean thrill-master Na Hong Jin’s work, The Wailing (Goksung, a.k.a. The Strangers in France) is long and involving, permeated by a tense, sickening sense of foreboding, yet finally registers on a slightly lower key than the director’s acclaimed genre films The Chaser (2008) and The Yellow Sea (2010).

The movie is character-driven every step of the way. That’s why, even if the world created by Jones and his talented design collaborators, both old-school physical and cutting-edge digital, isn’t seamlessly believable so much as staggeringly crafted, it casts a spell.

Some viewers may feel a little uneasy watching her being almost "catfished" by the deception, even if it turns out to be a delightful surprise, and a real emotional money shot when it finally lands.

The chemistry between the leads and a few finely etched supporting turns provide welcome counterweight to the movie’s formulaic progression, welcome especially for those who have seen their fair share of entries in the love-story-with-medical-complication subgenre.

For all its limited ambitions, The Ones Below serves its purpose as a solid calling card for Farr's filmmaking future, a gripping exercise in domestic suspense that sets out its stall on the shoulders of giants.

Because it wants to be a primer on a serious subject, an exciting cinematic exposé and an argument for more openness and some kind of regulatory framework, the necessities of these different strands end up getting in each other’s way.

It’s rare to see such confidence in a first feature, yet Ducournau seems to know where she’s going at all times, keeping the narrative lean and mean while utilizing an array of stylistic techniques – slow-motion, sequence shots and tons of on-screen prosthetics – that never let up until the witty, and inevitably grisly, final scene.

Wolf and Sheep is an absorbing ethnographic docudrama hybrid, marbled with a curious vein of phantasmagoric storytelling

Without a strong point of view, it becomes hard to care about either the people or the issues with which they are grappling.

With such an elliptical tease of a plot, which jumps back and forth temporally disdaining explication, some may feel a little of this travelogue goes a long way.

The movie is a small marvel of impeccable craftsmanship.

Benyamina has a hard time maintaining her film's pace and plausibility, especially during a third act that slides too far into genre territory and its accompanying clichés.

With the artistic choices he has made, Mendoza achieves a singularity of purpose in hammering home his message, and the experience compels one to watch even as one wishes to turn away.

Hands of Stone is far from perfect, but it punches above its weight enough to prevent it from being easily dismissed.