Two Plains & a Fancy is a cosmic joke forged on a Kickstarter budget. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, it made me laugh.

The result is very pleasing, even for moviegoers who don't pine for the Western's return, and represents a big step forward in the directing career of D'Onofrio.

Nonetheless, Island of the Hungry Ghosts casts an undeniably hypnotic spell. The documentary also serves as an important reminder that the United States is far from alone in mistreating its would-be immigrants.

Following a few years after "3 Geezers," Schumacher's reviled feature directing debut starring Simmons and Tim Allen, I'm Not Here represents a great leap forward, but still doesn't hold out much promise for future efforts that aren't built around performances by Simmons.

Whatever its impetus, the film is a warm bath of sensations that suffers little for any thematic haziness.

An English cousin to the earlier Jamaica-set films "The Harder They Come" and "Rockers" that is vastly superior in cinematic terms and just as valuable as a cultural document.

Despite the heavy dose of action and numerous tense situations, this Netflix offering has trouble staying in high gear once it gets there and the characterizations remain one dimensional — the men all speak exactly the same way.

It’s a film that wants to be visionary but isn’t.

The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane, marked by unimaginative plotting, cut-rate villains, a bland visual style and a lack of elan in every department.

A potentially taut thriller is marred by frequently laughable dialogue in Matthew Montgomery's debut feature.

The visuals prove crucial, as Qi makes for a weak central character.

This is a confidently shot and beautifully acted story that manages to transcend quite a few — if clearly not all — of the coming-of-age genre’s cliches by delving into how the Millennial generation experiences sexuality, ostracism and growing up and how they try to relate to their parents and peers.

Perry doesn't even try to successfully integrate the story's comedic and dramatic elements, merely toggling back and forth between them as if in need of mood stabilizers.

It is Monaghan who keeps the movie on track, capturing Judy’s fire along with her sometimes aggravating tenacity. This honest actress is incapable of idealizing the characters she plays, and her modest, energetic performance makes Saint Judy — which might have been a dry textbook lesson — engaging and moving.

Summarizing the great strides he made for journalism without ignoring his colorful flaws, Oren Rudavsky's Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People is an excellent primer, not just on the man but on the birth of the modern newspaper.

There's a scattershot quality to the proceedings, presumably caused by the Canadian writer-director not living long enough to complete the doc. But the individual segments register powerfully and the underwater sequences are beautifully shot, providing ample compensation for the narrative choppiness.

The performances are first rate; besides Woods' solid turn as the emotionally scarred cop, Fukuhara is movingly vulnerable as the frightened Nori and Miyavi takes full advantage of his natural pop star charisma as the long-haired young man who holds the key to the mystery.

A fundamentally serious film leavened by a streak of deadpan, droll humor, its quality will ensure even greater interest in Ailhaud's memoir in the run-up to its impending centenary.

Initial hints of a "Mean Girls"-meets-"Lord of the Flies" complication don't come to much in this straightforward pic, which will be zeitgeisty enough for some viewers while leaving most wanting something a bit more imaginative.

Vogler creates an intoxicating mood at times, especially through slick visuals and a trippy score by French electro maven Laurent Garnier, but her movie is like something you distractedly watch out of the corner of your eye in a café or train station or on someone else’s iPhone on the subway. In other words, it belongs on the small screen.

Hart has fashioned a tale of matriarchal inheritance, but one whose fierce message is undercut rather than deepened by its child's-book clarity. The intriguing setup receives underpowered execution, the intended jolts landing all too softly.

In the end, it’s hard to tell whether Simon is actually critical of her establishment’s methods or whether she fully embraces them, although she is clearly compassionate toward the applicants and offers a reasonable payoff when we finally learn who made the cut.

Pang’s cast of regulars is a well-oiled machine, and he and co-writer Sunny Lam are as fond of their characters as the characters are of each other.

A fascinating if ultimately failed exercise in histrionics and social commentary.

The deeper the script gets into how its version of witchcraft works, the less convincing it becomes. Uniformly solid performances and artful camera/sound work make the movie hard to dismiss out of hand, but the script doesn't sell its hokum as effectively as more mainstream supernatural soap operas.

Wickedly funny, fascinating and niftily made.

The story gets engrossing enough that we don't much miss what Avrich doesn't offer.

Admittedly, Elephant is a heavy affair, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Hu's characters remain very real, and they are never shown as indulgent to the point of being above the banalities of everyday life. Barbed humor abounds, too, in matter-of-fact dialogue.